*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Owner's Lounge

I really like my AW17 r2 for the most part. There will always be little things that irk you but overall i'm very pleased with the purchase. I believe the cost of the laptop has a fair amount to do with level of complaints. If you spend 2 bucks on a burger and it is not 100% what you wanted, well...it's a $2 burger. If you spend $75 dollars on a time shelf Prime Rib dinner and it's not up to snuff you tend to get a bit more irked. The laptop is held to a higher standard because the premium cost. So take that into account when you see people voice their complaints.

 

I created this account exclusively to sing the praises of this machine. I got my Alienware 17 R2 fully spec'd out... came yesterday.

THIS THING IS GORGEOUS! The one thing I will say is that you need to be sure to get the 240w power brick or else you will either BSOD or throttle as your GPU and CPU compete for limited wattage provided by the 180w power brick. I do not mean to understate this faux pas as it definitely is a serious one... but it is one worth resolving for this gorgeous piece of machinery.

This brings me to my next point... SERVICE! Alienware's service is second to none for gaming machines. NOT DELL's... Alienware's. Be sure to put all of your query's directly through to Alienware using [email protected] for emails and 1-866-287-6727 for tech support. They helped me get the 240w brick to my door the day after I got my machine.

I do not benchmark things synthetically much... but I play Witcher 3 on Ultra settings smooth as butter on this thing. That is real life. 'Nuff said. I have an amplifier sitting next to me as well that I plan on outfitting with a high end card when the price is right which provides me all the upgradability I need for the foreseeable future.

Get this thing. You will not regret it. You may have to earn it more than just shelling out cash (getting the power brick, dealing with RMA stuff if something comes screwy, etc.) but you will be supported by Alienware and they WILL get you where you are going. Which is well more than I can say for MSI, Asus, or even Lenovo.

 

Witcher 3 on ultra settings 1080p, 45fps average

 

Anyone know the part number for the replacement 240w powersupply?

Will the 240w PS from our R3's work safely on the 2015 R2's?

Also, anyone have a weblink for the A00 Bios?

We were essentially TIED to the Dell NVidia video driver undates with our R3's. Is this still the case or can we just use the latest NVidia drivers from their website now?

 

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/accessories/productdetails/331-9053

This is your adapter. Dell has super limited quantities... I have two of them. The one I ordered was delayed and the one alienware sent me was as well. I still got it super timely though.

 

My thanks. We just got two R2's yesterday and still assessing...

 

Is that with hairworks turned on?

 

I've got hair works on I'm averaging around 4o fps.

 

Having an issue keeping wifi internet connection with new r2. Anyone have similar issue?

 

Unfortunately I've not heard of this issue. My wifi has been tremendous. Download games on steam at 8 MB/s.

What is the nature of the issue? How often do you lose connection? Have you tested other wireless devices in the same vicinity relative to the location of your router?

 

Upon wake up and reboot we drop wifi connection randomly but after 5 to 20 minutes it seems to work ok. Our R3 work perfectly so it's not our router. Not sure yet if it's related to both new r2 adjacent can effect?

 

I turned off Hairworks to get 45fps lol

 

game is super demanding, but it's very pretty

 

I also have an 17 R2 with 970M & i7-4710HQ. What do you guys think of these temps? I played Heroes of the Storm & recorded them.

http://postimg.org/image/hzmm9za79/
http://postimg.org/image/wjwe658yl/

I'm not that worried about GPU but CPU temps seem kinda weird. (I have bios A02)

 

Your CPU temps are alarmingly high. Playing The Witcher 3 for 5 hours straight puts my CPU no higher than 67C, and my GPU no higher than 59C

 

Anyone else get the runaround delay from alienware resolution help experts when requesting the 240w power adapters when all information supplied in first request email?

Also, still having a lot of trouble with both r2s regarding wifi drops and lag for unknown reasons!

 

Hideous result. 30 degrees too hot. 60-65 degrees is more normal for a processor.

 

I really wonder what is up with that 240w power adapter...

Not sure what I could do about these temps but I looked around & found that the max temp for that CPU is 100°C.

I guess I'm fine then. I couldn't find any max temps regarding the GPU.

I tried Cinebench & max temps where as follows:

CPU 94°C
GPU 72°C

Edit: I used a different programm (Realtemp) to monitor temps & the max temp for CPU is 81°C when the fans are going all out. Seems like there is something wrong with HWiNFO64.

 

Anything above 85-90 degrees over time shortens the lifetime of thermal grease.
I get 81 degrees in Cinebench 11.5 with AW17 max fans and 4.3ghz Overclock on all 4 cores.

 

I'm trying to understand does the Touch-screen option have true-life and is 120hz? It comes with a 980m. Or if it doesn't say true life does it not have it? This is through microsoft store.

I think what i read is the new IPS touch-screen has true life but is not 120hz capable?

 

Okay so I just got my AW 17 R2 (i7-4980, GTX 980M, 128GB m.2, self installed 1TB 850 EVO) Friday and as I normally do I fresh installed Win 7 and got all the newest drivers and stuff from Dell, A04 BIOS included.

So I go about the last couple days downloading my game library and whatnot and when I fire up The Witcher 3 GPU temps seem normal enough, but CPU maxes at like 85°C and doesn't seem like the fans are spinning quite like they should be. The noise coming from the fan(s?) when playing BF4 are much more along the lines of what I would expect. But it appeared temps were still about the same.

I spent a few hours reading through the last 20 or so pages on here and have seen that I should set the power plan to "Balanced" instead of high performance, and downgrade BIOS to A00 if I have a 240w (friend let me borrow his until I can ask Alienware for one, if they even give it since my system came with the 180w) to get the better fan profiles.

Is that all I need to do? Or is there something else? I saw some talkings that downgrading from the later BIOSes may not work flawlessly? Is that true?

I just want this laptop to run normal temperatures.

Also, any suggestions as to what to say to AW to get the 240w?

 

Also, I saw somewhere that A00 would give lower benchmark scores, but what about actual performance in game? I could care less about a few points in a benchmark, since you can't play a benchmark, but a couple FPS could be noticeable.

Any ideas if the lowered performance claim is true on A00 and is it a game changer?

 

warranty last only a year thou, I'm thinking that I save and use a04 to try to get an excuse to have a tech someover to replace the grease before it expires?

You can also download fraps to view the actual performance or fps in game.

 

High temperature over time ruins hardware. If you need to replace eg processor because of heat issues before their expected life, so you need to replace the entire motherboard. Say thanks to Dell. A couple of extra fps or less heat ?
Edit: @creationsh ; Change thermal grease yourself, or remember to have a good paste you can let Dell technicians use.

 

I use Afterburner set up with all the pertinent including GPU core temp and clocks.

That much I know. The banner may say I'm a newbie but I've been to the rodeo a few times lol. Is the difference in temps night and day compared to the 5% performance hit? If so I'll just OC the GPU (like I need to lol)

I mean so far today all I've done with the laptop was open HWmonitor, Afterburner, then opened Origin and downloaded the Razer drivers for my mouse and its showing max temps of 79 80 77 79. That doesn't seem normal. Might be something to bring up when I call for my 240w PSU. If they give me any issues in saying A04 was created to address power issues or whatever I'll mention A04 is running my machine hot!

So, back to my final question, is there any issues rolling back to A00 from A04?

 

Maybe you get soft brick but this happens rarely... Make sure you do not have unnecessary software running and be powered on electricity when you flash the bios ..

 

Okay so doing normal day to day things the laptop runs the CPU around 80c.

I just got done playing some Witcher 3 and max temps were 87 87 86 85. Little hot for my tastes so I'll get on the flash probably tomorrow.

Surprisingly the GPU maxed at 74c running ultra at 1080. Not too shabby. So at least that fan works properly.

Does the A04 BIOS "bug" only affect the CPU fan speed?

 

The fans are controlled by bios/ec. The fans start at a specified temperature programmed by Dell engineers. The processor runs more uneven load than gpu during use.

 

These Dell engineers are a real bright bunch I see already. Sigh.

Does anyone know exactly what A04 did aside from raising the fan threshold? It seems like no one has had anything good to say about 04.

 

1.Detect panel size to setting ModelName.
2.Disable touch screen when BIOS flash update

 

Fix one thing break a few more.

 

Dell in a nutshell

 

I wonder if there's any chance they'll get a new BIOS update out that actually addresses the problems before the standard warranty expires for our machines. -__-

 

Perhaps a better fan profile but certainly not good enough... My AW17 has come up in bios A14 now but still have a crippled fan profile almost 2 years after the launch of Aw17 and 18 models.
If you look in the link so can you see exactly the same problem as with the new Aw models. The engineers at Dell did not want to fix such heat problems... In addition Dell engineers have also made a "fantastic" modern hybrid bios for the new Aw models. Tragic http://www.ideastorm.com/idea2ReadIdea?v=1423165283100&Id=087700000009WVoAAM

 

I kinda have the same problem with the temps. It goes easily up to 95°C on my CPU before the fans do anything & then they have to "fight" like the guy in the link said. It takes a while until it goes back to 81°C. It seems like that the fan profile is in favor of being quiet rather than efficient in taking the heat off. This laptop is very expensive & I normally don't buy hardware that costs that much, it was a one time thing. I expect that everything works perfect because I pay extra for prebuilt. If this is how it is, I will never buy any laptop ever again & just go through the hassle of building me my own PC.

 

yes it definitely is, A00 has the best fan profiles so that is what I stay with.

 

I feel the same way about this purchase. This is a big chunk of money for me and the fact that Dell seems extremely incompetent at dealing with simple issues such as fan profiles and making sure they provide adequate power supplies makes me doubt the future of AW.

I certainly won't be buying another one in the future if this is what we will come to expect.

I'm downgrading from A04 to A00 tomorrow. The fan profiles actually work well? What kind of temps should I expect?

Playing games has the CPU at around 85-87 and GPU is around 75.

Is the GPU fan profile ramped up as well?

 

Hi all,

I just bought my first Alienware 17, after convincing myself that they will eventually add raid support. However, I'm noticing stutters in older games and youtube playback. After reading some of these threads, I'm having a serious case of buyer's remorse. A lot of people seem very critical about Alienware's history of bios updates. My question is, what are the chances that Dell will fix these problems (esp RAID and stutters) in the next few months? I'm tempted to return this laptop and picking up an MSI or Asus, even going back to a 970m. This is my first laptop with the best GPU available, and the stutters has left a bitter taste. It seems the other brands have better bios engineers. What keeps some of you holding onto your AW 17 when you have such a poor perception of the brand?

 

Dell has already confirmed that raid functionality does not come in the new Aw models.

 

Talked to Dell today and had them send me the new PSU. The rep asked a few times why I wanted it and I had to reiterate that the system has top of the line specs and the 180w is probably maxed out as it is, then he finally admitted they had issues with the power adapters. Guess its a little of a CYA thing to try to get our of it for people who don't push back when questioned. So that's good.

Will roll back to A00 later after running a baseline of games to see max temps before and after A04. Also will post stock and GPU over clocked (+135/+125[probably could go further on mem just did this real quick]). Before stock was 83xx and OC was 89xx in fire strike. We'll see with A00.

 

Test with 3Dmark11. A better test.

 

Today recive my 17 with i7 4980 and GTX980, install World of Tanks and guess what? Its shame!!! 18-30FPS ahhahah on Gaming Laptop for 3k$. On youtube guy with gtx 970 have 60 fps.
Thats all thanks 180PSU I think, because GPU only 60 load ingame. I try bios A01 and A04.
Maybe any suggestions?

p.s. I read that topic also https://eu.alienwarearena.com/forum...y-got-35-fps-on-wot-with-max-graphics-setting

 

Hey Metalocalypse, make sure that it is using the DGPU

 

Ofcourse I sure, and monitoring it with GPU Z - GPU load wont go higher than 60% ingame and I have frezees and ~25 average fps.

 

Nvidia Control Panel -> Manage 3d settings -> Program Settings -> Use Global Settings (Auto-Select: Nvidia GPU)

 

A04 BIOS is the top one. A00 is the bottom.

As you can see the score is very similar but the temps, both highs and lows, are much better. Highs are only 5*C cooler under load but the idle temps are incredible. A good 15-20C under the A04 BIOS when long idling. A04 was usually around 60 at idle.

What's wrong with Dell making BIOS with dead fan profiles?

 

Hey Team,

So I've had this issue crop up on the system recently. Seems new. The GPU will back way off from time to time. Right now this graph from Afterburner is from BF4. Temps look good. Really good actually. GPU runs around 62 degrees. CPU is around 70. But suddenly, for about a minute or so, the GPU usage drops to like 30% and my FPS tanks. Then it climbs back up again. Doesn't seem to be thermal throttling. Any ideas? Running a 240W PSU on A04 right now

 

I have noticed my R2 does it in certain games.
I found out my 4980hq CPU is stopping its turbo boost and limiting it to 2.8ghz for a while, making the GPU usage drop. Then it will boost back up and GPU usage will increase again.

I used throttle stop to find out this info whilst having the game in windowed mode.

Could be a similar issue with yours?

 

I do not believe it is 120 hz. Check with mr. Google?

 

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