*OFFICIAL* Alienware 15 R3 Owner's Lounge

No it's not a problem in that case BUt the fact that this core COULD be 12°C cooler with a good heatsink contact is angering.
I was able to reduce this differential and it's now max 5°C in ALL cases thankfully but I don't have the 6820HK.

No no no, you might be on your fourth one but in the end the return rate is < 1% don't forget.

 

So my replacement unit comes in tomorrow. I currently have one with a 1080p IPS screen, 6820Hk cpu, and 1070 gpu. Just finished running an hour of OCCT and then an hour of Prime 95. Cpu temps Maxed out at 83/71/83/71. I assume that would mean that repasting would help and that the heatsink does not have full contact.

The replacement machine I am getting (I have a bad wireless nic and wifi antenna is defective.) Is a 6700HQ with 1080p G-SYNC. They threw in more ram (16GB 2667 as I ordered it with just 8GB 2400 MHz) and a 512gb M.2 NVME SSD to compensate. Should I before sending back the 6820HK model run some stress tests on the replacement to see if the temps are any better or worse? I would assume if its worse I could tell them to have the replacement back and just have them send me the antenna wires and wireless nic?

 

I talked to Dell support today and they changed a few setting including updating the graphics drivers. They ran a graphics test and the temp of the GPU was around 68 degrees and then ran a CPU stress test and the temperature was peaking into the 90s. The support guy said that was just fine and was pretty confident that he had solved the problem. I was skeptical especially since the temperature on the short test was peaking into the 90s.

I ran the Dirt Rally benchmarks again and paid more temperature readings while the benchmark was on. The reading appeared to be pretty consistently in the high 60s low 70s but the max temps were still getting into the 90s. When I came back an hour later, the max temps had reached 99 for three out of the four cores but the temps still appeared to be pretty stable in the 60s and 70s. When I stopped my benchmark, my average fps was even higher than previously. So I'm wondering if my fps drop was actually a driver issue and the temperatures that I am reading are actually just random noise from the temperature sensors and not real readings.

 

I can now say I have the most powerful laptop ever! It uses more power than all combined at 13k watts ....stupid glitches

http://imgur.com/zmGEXwj

 

Does anyone have any experience connecting their laptop to an external monitor?
My GTX1060 laptop feels like it should be a tad more powerful than the AMD 7850 in my desktop.. not sure what the performance hit (if any) would be like if I connected my desktop monitor to my laptop instead.
Although, GTX1060s are kinda cheap so could always throw one in the desktop.

 

Testing out the older machine right now with a slight undervolt -.10 running OCCT right now and my temps are 69/59/69/59. This is without doing any re-pasting, I guess did I get lucky? And should I test out the replacement first before sending this guy back? As I mentioned in a post last night the only thing this guy needs is a new wireless card and antenna.

 

Prime95 and Furmark are bad representations of real world performance, and overstress systems.

 

OCCT a better tool? That is what I am using right now to test and my temps are really good ironically.

 

I actually have the m11x with the hinge problem right now. It worked great for years but a friend used my laptop while I was out and when I came back the hinge was broken, he said all he did was open the laptop up. I never had the chance to get it fixed because I use this computer for work and can not be without it for longer than a few hours. Maybe once I get a new laptop I will send it back to finally have the hinges fixed. You just got to open it very carefully or it will totally break and the screen detach...

 

Linus uses Aida64 to stress test. Honestly, I don't see how anything except Heaven Unigine and 3DMark Fire Strike can be more effective at showing real world performance. These are machines designed for gaming, which very rarely utilize 100% of the CPU and GPU, let alone utilizing them at 100% for extended periods.

Imagine running a car on a Dyno and leaving your foot on the throttle at redline for an extended period. You would never do that to a car, right? So, why overstress an expensive laptop? It's an unrealistic representation of thermal management. These systems are not designed for 100% utilization of all system resources for extended periods.

 

That's exactecly why DELL says 100°C isn't too hot and the I7-6820HK can be overclocked to 4.1 GHz as advertised (as long as it stays idle).

And that's why they're people here testing the machine to its limit to know what is true and what is marketing Bull5h!t !

 

I also see it that way @leeloyd so in case there´s no overheating or throttling within games or applications, everything should be fine (especially < 100°C spoken for CPU core temp in focus of the 6820HK).

If you run 2 "burn in benches" alike Prime 95 stresstest and Furmark for example, i mean, .. if that overheats or went into thermal throttling it´s not an issue.

But some guys here (as i will interpret) had issues while gaming in focus of thermal max reached and throttling CPU (or even: CPU heat prob´s) which won´t be that nice für a 2k gaming rig

 

Dell has discontinued the M11x hinge fix program (its a 6-7 year old system). They no longer make the parts. You may be able to find the parts you need on ebay to do it yourself.

 

If the new machines can't do Cinbench R15 or Wprime 1024M stress test which is more like a real use without go into flames or thermal throttle... Something is completely wrong. So Alienware only make "gaming" machines now? Oh"well.

 

I'm not implying they shouldn't cool well... I'm just saying that using unrealistic tests and complaining about the results is unavailing. The new Alienware is disappointing, period. It's not going to change. They are more focused on saving money by reducing costs than anything else.

 

Every buyer of new machines should stress test their new machinery with demanding benchmark tests. Not only Heaven/Fire Strike. If the machine can't execute the tests with decent results... Return it!! I don't say you need to run P95 but Fire Strike isn't enough.

 

Hi,

so mine arrived today. Everything seems fine on the first look, there´s no super ovbous lightbleeding on my UHD one which "really" bothers me pretty much. I mean, yeah a little bit on the top but that´s not any kind of weird and pretty usual.

It´s pretty durable, alike a pretty big XPS15 i would say. It´s pretty heavy, it´s super heavy for it´s size . The Charger brick is flat, but giant. It´s good for "on the go" and better than usual bricks. I dont like that the power cable goes straight to the back, a 90° option would be nice as now i have to make sure to not "break" it on my wall

I need to arrange myself with the keyboard layout now, as it´s little different than those steelseries i´ve had before, but it´s pretty comfortable to type on and it´s really quiet, i guess i will like it. The trackpad is okay so far as i can say. The audio quality is also okay (cannot mess up with GT72).

Out of the first tries, i love the UHD panel, it´s pretty color accourate and super detailed, good black levels, nice viewing angels and seems fast enough. I guess it won´t have GSYNC but for me thats not a point as i want to replace my XPS13QHD+ also.

Guys press thumbs, i need to do a clean win10 install now and put my SSD´s and 2x16Gigs memory into my new baby. Stay tuned, hopefully i not have to repaste anything ^^

regards
aVa

 

Why did you choose UHD over Gsync or FHD IPS ?
I'm about to order mine but I havent decide yet between UHD, Gsync 120Hz or FHD IPS.
Ive read some good reviews about the FHD IPS 60Hz on this forum, so Im thinking about this one

 

Second unit just arrived with the FHD TN panel. I'm happy to say that this one has zero backlight bleed!

 

Which tests do you recommend and what results would you deem unacceptable?

 

Hi, because i can

Just kidding. I´ve choosed UHD over GSYNC cause I´ve replace my productive machine (QHD) and also my gaming rig (GT72 FHD) and won´t go with FHD anymore. In focus of gaming I would definitely prefer GSYNC, but for that i wanna put an external screen supporting GSYNC on the device.

regards,
aVa

 

So I received my replacement R3 a few days ago, but I've noticed a high pitch sound coming out of it which is starting to annoy me. I can even hear it when I close the lid of the laptop and put it in sleep mode. Any ideas what could be causing that and how to fix it?

 

If I got a car for racing you bet your ass that thing would be readline all the time. If I get a computer for gaming I expect to be racing the parts to 100% non stop with no problems. If I got a normal computer I would not expect the thing to be able to work on 100% for longer than a second if at all. Just like I do not expect a normal car to run redline non stop.

 

One problem with your analogy: Alienware is a Dell computer in disguise. It's about as normal as it gets, internally.

The old Alienware's could handle these tests without a problem. And people could overclock them nearly 30% over stock performance, out of the box. They were anything but normal. Now, they're essentially feeding off that old reputation and manipulating customers into believing their product is "out of this world." Nah, they used to be... Guess that's what happens when you only care about money and reducing costs.

 

There is so much wrong with this statement.

Do you even race bro?

You don't redline it all the time when racing. You don't even WOT it all the time. And the more WOT and more redline you do the more **** breaks or needs replaced, even and especially in racing cars.

Putting 1k miles on the racetrack is like 10k miles of regular driving or more.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

That, too.

Anyway, as a veteran Alienware owner, I can attest to the fact that the new Alienware is nothing special. In fact, they've gone backwards. There are more complaints about performance and throttling with the new 2016 Alienware's on this forum in the first months of their launch than I saw in all of 2012...that speaks volumes.

Then again, the entire gaming laptop market is shifting this direction, so it's not all that surprising.

 

mine is getting collected friday for a refund shame nice laptop just has issues

hope the 13 r3 wont have theese issues

 

That's a 10c differential between cores, too high... the point where Intel allows swapping for another CPU - if it were the CPU that was the problem.

In the AW case it's the CPU heatplate pressure against the CPU die, it's misaligned causing poor coverage on one side - the pressure of the arm over the CPU is either too high or too low, causing the 2 screw side to apply more or less pressure.

I would either tune it yourself - adjust the screw take timing and pressure, or reject it to AW to fix, or return for refund and order again when AW figures this out.

 

I tried running OCCT and Prime95. OCCT will not run for more than a few seconds before it states that the maximum temperature of 90 degrees was exceeded. When running Prime95, the core temp for core0 quickly rises above 90 and the clocks for all cores drop to 3000MHz or below. At 30 minutes the core readings are 94, 95, 72, 72, and the clocks are at about 2800MHz. The core readings are really erratic jumping from the 70s to the 90s and back multiple times per second. I'm assuming that this is really bad and that I need to get this laptop replaced.

 

Yeah, that's bad, and it needs to be returned if you're not wanting to try fixing it yourself.

 

Its your power connector. You have some coil whine, somewhat uncommon condition on any electronic device where your electrical input is causing vibrations on a single, or multiple components producing an audible noise.

 

Actually the coil whine issue is pretty common on lots of models of laptops and desktop's, power supplies, GPU's. It's also common on ULV CPU's - also power related.

 

Do you know how it can be fixed?

 

It's usually a problem endemic to the design, so all models will have it to one degree or another.

Sometimes turning off Turbo can do it, set the Balanced Power Plan to 0%/99% or the High Power Plan to 99%/99%.

It can also happen during particularly high power draw situations like playing a game and charging at the same time.

You could let your laptop charge while powered off to charge faster, and when it's charged - the green light comes on - then use it - see if that makes a difference.

You could also try swapping it for another unit, I'd want to try to get one from another production run - different parts batch - so return it for a refund and buy it somewhere else.

Please come back and let us know if any of those options work for you

 

swapped both hdds and booted up , windows is still activate and all working fine , although the light bleed isnt much better on this unit i recieved today , might do another replacement.

 

Very good tests is Wprime 1024M, Cinebench R11.5 - R15, Older 3Dm11 and 3DM Vantage who is more demanding than newer tests from Futuremark. And of course Aida64 and OCCT. Stress tests only for gpu isn't enough.

You're completely wrong here bro. The big change with complaints about performance and Throttling came with the early 2015 Echo models. Have you forgot all the talk about the famous 180w brick and the following Battery Boost aka Hybrid Bios? Even with a more correct 240w psu had a lot of people massive throttling problems.

 

URGENT! ALIENWARE RESPONSE - TELL EVERYONE ONE. SPREAD IT.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/5elw77/urgent_alienware_response_tell_everyone_one/

Atleast they accept the problems and are fixing it their word, but take it with huge grain of salt

 

Preserving the image of the Chat with AW, in case it "disappears"

 

Hi, seems I´ve got a noobie software issue cause i cannot force in UEFI boot from USB

- i´ve put my m2 2280 SSD (SATA3) in the AW15 which works (jay)
- i´ve created a USB win ISO stick for install win10

I´m unable to select "boot from USB" by using UEFI and i have no idea why ;O)

So in leagacy mode it will boot from the stick and i can start the install, but i want to go with UEFI (due to fastbook and whatever) but just can choose any network boot options.

Anyone any idea what i can try ?

Regards
aVa

 

it would be good to know when will they release the revamped one... Well i gues there goes my plan to recieve mine this year lol (4-5week shipment to my country with custom parts - there are 2-3 prebuilt types with 1week shipment...)

 

I'm talking about the 2016 redesign compared to the 2011-2012 redesign. (The Alienware today versus the Alienware we knew and loved.) I don't care much about last year... My statement holds true.

 

I'm confused - what do i have to switch to 0%/99% or 99%/99%?

 

I'm about to order the AW15 R3 with a i7-6820, GTX 1070, FHD IPS 60Hz, 16Gb@2400, 128 Go SSD + 1To HDD.

My question might be stupid but I never owned a SSD and I am wondering about the 128Go SSD, is that enough ? How does a SSD works ? The games are installed on the HDD and the SSD is only for windows ? Or the games should also be on the SSD for better performance? I'm gaming on Witcher 3, LOTR Mordor and WoW at the moment.
There is a big difference in price between 128Go and 256Go SSD (+90$)

Any other thoughts or comments on my specs before I make the order ? I was thinking about waiting after christmas to see about this overheat issue but there is a 12% discount now on AW in Switzerland. Which give me this one at 1920 $

Thanks!

 

SSD's are just as they sound: solid state drives. There are no spinning components or moving parts. The information is instantly accessed through flash memory, which improves response times (load times, etc.). The usable disk space on a 128GB drive is about 86GB's (after OS installation). The average game is between 30GB and 50GB in space. I'll let you decide if that's enough... It's not for me.

You should read through this thread before pulling the trigger: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ven-core-temps-due-to-uneven-heatsink.797477/

 

i would definitely go with SSD in any new device as boot drive (i guess 128GB is enough for system only) and put a 2.5" SATA3 SSD (by removing the HDD) into the device, as they´re almost cheaper than m2 2280 sticks, but SATA 3 only (means 550mb/s read/write max).

I use m2 2280 sticks (also SATA 3) which end up in 550 MB/s read/write, they´re enough for me as they´re superfast and significantly faster than any HDD outside - pointing to the random access time. The new NVME/PCIE m2 2280 sticks will go up to 2000MB/s read/write which sounds pretty awesome, and is pretty awesome, but they´re more expensive and you won´t feel that in the system as the accesstime is similar to the normal sata3 SSD´s, but there´s no SATA overhead anymore ... and they will get little "warmer" than older ones.

Trust me, you will feel an HDD vs SSD like it´s a whole "different system", from SSD (SATA3) to SSD (PCIE) it´s not significantly reasonable but they´re also an option, in case they´re not that much higher priced anymore and you can live with some "different boot options".

I would order the AW15 without SSD and buy them on amazon or whatever and put in afterwards, by also doing a clean install of the windows.

Regards
aVa

 

Thank you for the explanations, I will have to do some research about the different SSD (sata3, m2 2280,..) I dont know anything about it.
But replacing de HDD with a SSD sounds good to me, I had s quick look and found a 2.5 samsung 850 pro 512Gb for less than 200$.

So I will go with AW 15 128SSD for windows and replace the 1To HDD.
Thanks again !

 

Hey! just got mine, basically, i'm *kind of* glad with OCCT's results, I expected worse, I think that with a repaste and tightening of the heatsink screws it will lower temps and even Cores temps enough, here's the results :
Note : the max temp of 89°c was only at the beginning and went away to never come back a few seconds after it started. "Current Value" is what I had all the way.


I still didn't undervolt, should help too, I don't think it's a "must be returned" unit, just want to know what you think, undervolting + repasting + tightening screws should get it where i'd want, everything at 40°c while idle by the way.

PS: I don't regret that 120Hz TN panel, that 400 nits is amazing, the angles are REALLY good even from side and top, love it!

 

I almost made my mind on the FHD IPS non G sync Panel... but now you make me think if it is that amazing!

 

Do you still have uneven temperature after 89 drop (I mean in running OCCT)? My 3rd is coming, if this issue still happen I will send it back again.

 

1st, there's a lot more chance to get backlight bleed with IPS, i got 0 with the TN (and many others than me too), 400nits is GREAT, the angles are surprisingly good, 120Hz for gaming is great. The only thing that makes a difference is if you need Optimus or not, because you can't switch to the Intel GPU, it will always use the GTX1070, so you lose battery life..i didn't test it yet, but it shows me 4h+ browsing the web, more than enough for me on a gamer PC .
Last thing is, are you working on photography? Do you need perfectly accurate colors? then go IPS, otherwise, i love the TN colors, it's bright and popping, white is REALLY white, and black is better than IPS.

Yes, Core 0 and 2 are ~10°C hotter than Cores 1 and 3, screws could help on that and be enough.