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

great, thanks... good to know!

I hope the 1TB 7200rpm HD that comes stock with the machine won't be too terrible (noticeable only to the super hardcore)... it gets pricey to switch to SSD so I'm sticking with the stock for now...

 

Whats up guys, Just purchased and received my AW 17 R3 980m. Pretty happy with it except it came with the operating system (windows 10) on the 1tb HDD instead of the 256gb ssd. I would like to move it over to the SSD however I'm experiencing difficulty. So far I've tried using macrium reflect and changing the boot order to the SSD but I get a tiny white lettered message saying no media found when I choose it from BIOS. I've also tried "resetting" windows hoping to be able to format the drives the way I want them set up but it just reloads windows when I choose the usb recovery stick that came with it.

Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks

 

dethmanrulz,

You should check reviews on the Hitachi, they show 100-130 meg read write, I was getting that 15 years ago. You have SATA 6gbps as a baseline in the AW 17 R3, you'll get 4x to 5x the speed by throwing out the Hitachi (personally I don't think it belongs in such a high spec laptop anyway) and putting in an SSD.

4k read write is down to a rate of 1 meg, the OS works in 4k, go figure if you plan to use this as an OS drive. You can see benchmarks for the Hitachi on storagereview.com then look on there at the Samsung 850 or other SSD's, you'll get 50x the 4k rate with an SSD.

Gforc3,

I would disconnect the HDD, do a fresh install of the OS on the SSD ensuring it was selected as the first boot drive in the BIOS. Then reconnect the HDD and source all the drivers from there, WIN10 will search the selected drive and find the right drivers, it's easy. Then go on the Dell site and get all the software and driver updates.

That's what I plan to do when I install my new SSD's.

 

I used macrium reflect with limited success. It was a major pain and i had some issues after it finally worked. If recommend a fresh install. It's much much quicker and super easy since you don't need a product key

 

I used reflect to copy (and resize paritions) to 256gb 950 pro m.2. Copied to new drive, shutdown and removed the 1TB drive and booted on the SSD. Then shutdown, connected the 1TB again and rebooted. Was perfectly smooth. Final thing was format the old 1TB and that was it. Was expecting a painful process but was really easy.

Sent from my SM-N910W8 using Tapatalk

 

I do hope RAID 0 will work on the AW 17 R3. Using RAID 0 almost doubled the write speed in this setup.

"We also ran two 950 Pro 512GB drives in RAID 0 using Intel's Rapid Storage Technology."

"To use RST RAID 0 and still boot, the M.2 slots must come from the PCH, RAID Mode must be enabled in the BIOS and the array must be configured either inside the operating system or at the BIOS level."

Benchmarks here
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/samsung-950-pro-ssd,review-33341-3.html

 

Yeah but unless you are working with very large files you will never notice the difference. RAID0 is generally only worth bragging rights you wont boot faster or open games/Word faster.

 

altecX,

Did you look at the benchmarks from the link I posted? Write going up from around 1500 to 3000. As I said in a previous post, I'll be processing astrophotography files (100's of images being processed into one image) and 4k video. The write speed increase would hopefully make a difference here for me, so not just bragging rights.

The read speed goes up a bit, but as you say, it won't make a lot of difference to boot or load times.

RAID 950 Pro by JerseyBoy posted Mar 18, 2016 at 11:10 PM

 

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it. Currently trying this method however no matter what I try I can't get it to boot from the usb to reinstall windows. Extremely frustrated at this point. I've tried what feels like every combination of settings in bios and I get error messages every time no matter which usb stick I use or which port.

 

You have to format the USB stick as

The problem is that Alienware 17 R3 has a UEFI BIOS. Use Rufus ( http://rufus.akeo.ie/) to burn the ISO to USB, and set partition scheme to GPT-for-UEFI.

 

Gforc3,

I've copied this from another post on here. I guess you don't need the respawn if you've got a Win10 bootable USB, but the BIOS settings might be what you need.

--------------------------------

Ok so I have actually been asked this in private tells so I will share my procedure for migrating my OS to the SSD. First is to make a recoverable USB with the alienware respawn software. Once that is done (check the drive to ensure files are present, I used a 16gb drive), shut down the system and power off.
Install the ssd into the first M.2 slot (if you don't have screws installed, You can request them from alienware but I sort of borrowed one of the panel screws temporarily). Disconnect the 1 Tb drive and reboot the PC and enter the bios. The boot menu starts defaulted to the UEFI, you need to change this to legacy boot. Once you are in the legacy boot menu, change the boot order to usb first, followed by Drive 2 (i believe that is what it was, going off memory). Connect your respawn usb that you made previously and reboot system.
Alienware respawn did it's thing for me without much input to be honest, and just did it's thing until it said it was complete. Now when I initially rebooted the system did not boot. Kept trying to go to the LAN boot option. Went back into the bios and changed the boot sequence from legacy to UEFI boot, and success I am booting into windows. I had to reset up windows as if I had never logged on before, and once that was complete I went into admin tools, verified that the respawn had actually recreated all of the partitions that were present on the initial hdd install with recovery 8 gb or so at the tail end of the drive. I then shut down the system, reconnected the 1 tb drive and started system up. The system continued to boot correctly with the ssd and not the 1 tb drive so I'm assuming that my boot order was retained. Only thing that I may go back and do later is move the ssd above the usb but for now it's not an issue.
I think i disconnected the primary battery each time, but I might have gotten lazy when i reconnected 1tb lol.
As far as original contents still being on the 1 tb drive, yes they are still there. So far I have left them as I wanted to be 100% certain that my install was solid and I'm getting pretty close to that. And I just went ahead and created new folders and whatever steam / origin / uplay games i had already installed I could just simply move them to another folder and reinstall on the new os install.

 

Gforc3,

There's some other info and options on the following page. I prefer the clean build but the cloning option will also work. I would read the whole thread.

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19659674

 

Thanks so much guys got it up and running properly now. Machine is a beast, my last gaming laptop was a msi gt60 680m overvolted and OC'd and it doesnt hold a candle to this

 

Gforc3,

Excellent news, well done

Clean build or clone?

 

A useful video for overclocking the 17 R3 so it surpasses L3 and is more stable than the AW OC L3 preset.

 

My fingers are firmly crossed for delivery this week, so that I have a long weekend to try out the SSD configurations and test speeds, then do the clean build on the SSD's (either as RAID 0 or to a single disk on the x4 port) and do some tweaking and performance tests.

Amazon advised the SSD's would be arriving earlier than they expected, they were expected next week or the week after, but they shipped this morning, they expect to deliver them tomorrow or Wednesday.

DELL started with a delivery date of 8 April, now Syncreon are showing an expected delivery date of this Thursday.

 

Tried out this method and my computer failed to boot and had a 4 beep bios error. I had to take out one of the memory cards to get it to start up. I guess my computer didn't like changing the memory ratio. Anyways, I still wasn't able to get 4.0ghz

 

4.0GHz should be a piece of cake. Maybe you got a lemon in the lottery?

 

I was excited that the 6820HK is overclockable, but looking at the benchmark score curve from people's posted XTU profiles makes me think that it really just doesn't have much headroom for squeezing more performance via overclocking.

 

Sluggz,

Does the L3 preset work for you?

Do you have stock memory or replacement?

If it won't do L3 on stock memory I would call Dell, as it is advertised as overclockable to 4.1ghz.

I will be trying mine at this level with the stock memory and again with replacement memory when I buy it, I will post the results here for everyone.

 

HunterZ0,

It has been shown in the video that 4.1ghz on all 4 cores is possible. That's pretty good for mobile cooling isn't it? Also someone on here has got to 4.6ghz.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-alienware-17-r2-r3-benchmark-thread.770320/page-106

 

The 4.6GHz OC you refer to... Is crippled aka Invalid

 

Papusan,

That's not what it says on the thread? Please point me to where the owner states what you are telling us. The fact he ran benchmarks shows it isn't crippled.

"4.6HGz...ran benches, browsed the Web etc...haven't gamed yet...but, with alot of fine tuning.... here it is...."

 

I fixed it for you ↑↑↑
You should learn to read Bench results http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...enchmark-thread.770320/page-106#post-10195060
See in my hardware sig for correct bench results. Or use Hwbot.org


Or you think it's normal that 4.2GHz OC beat 4.6GHz in wPRIME 1024M stress test with same machine? http://hwbot.org/submission/3120340_iunlock_wprime___1024m_core_i7_6820hk_2min_45sec_435ms

This is a big mess http://hwbot.org/submission/3119211_ He should cleaned up the mess in his Hwbot profile.

 

All is well here. The 6820HK is a Beast. Unless you get unlucky in the lottery.

The truth is, there is really no need for OC'ing unless you truly need it for CPU intensive tasks. For gamers, forget it. OC'ing your CPU just introduces fps robbing heat with no practical benefit to fps.

Ex. I game at stock clocks with the gpu OC'ed to 135/75 on stock voltage that gives me the same performance as me OC'ing the CPU (useless) to 4.2GHz and GPU to 215/460 at +75mv. Absolutely worthless and unwanted heat that does more harm than good.

The bottom line is, not all silicon are created equal. If one can't get past 4.1GHz, as advertised you've obviously got a lemon. Call Dell and get it resolved with a replacement. Even if you don't plan on OC'ing, it's hard to imagine one being happy with paying for a Ferrari and not being able to go past 100 MPH But that's just me....

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How so...the point of the 4.6 was to show that it was possible. What don't you understand?

The benches regardless of what the clock was set at is irrelevant to the benchmarks.

Don't you think a higher bench score at 4.2 is more impressive than one at 4.6? Also, isn't it obvious that heat may be a factor?

What don't you get? And to get a like on your post that isn't logical is just comical.



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Your post is invalid. I have successfully achieved 4.6GHz.

What's with the pointless sarcasm? Why...because it's BGA that can achieve 4.6? Lol. .. Be a good sport and supportive and not a .....

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@JerseyBoy, yes that was me. I've achieved 4.6GHz, though it seems as if some people find that surprising. Just baffling. Some people and their unproductive remarks lol...SMH...just ignore them.

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Well, in my mind it shows that overclocking to 4.6GHz on a 6820HK is not worth it - I think the point Papusan was making was that you were getting more temperature and/or power throttling at 4.6GHz in comparison to your 4.2GHz setting - thereby making 4.6Ghz a bit of a sham, a bit of a false achievement. Especially if it was power throttling, then that could show the crippling of that line of CPUs that he was referring to.

 

With the proper cooling the 6820HK is more than capable, therefore, I see it in a different light in that the clocks (capability) is achievable / possible. --- The liquid cooled ASUS laptop has already shown to make the 6820HK shine to what it's capable of and it's pretty darn impressive.

I agree....4.6 is useless in our AW with stock cooling. The point of even being able to drive the laptop while at 4.6 is just a fun fact, nothing more nothing less.

The point I was trying to make in my earlier reply was me SMH to some people's worthless sarcasm.

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I will not rip up in this... But what is a normal wPrime 1024M stress test - Cinebench 11.5 bench score for an OC Skylake at 4.6GHz on all four? Show me your Benc score from your stable 4.6GHz OC in wPrime 1024M and Cinebench 11.5... I know the score results because I've done plenty bench tests with my laptop at 4.2/4.4/4.5/4.6/4.7GHz, but do you know the results? If you look in my sig... You can also see what 4.8GHz on all 4 cores shall deliver in sam bench tests.

 

You still don't get it do you? The point of the 4.6HGz was not to prove any benches. You act as if that was the purpose....please correct yourself and come to realize that.

 

And please show me the 4.6GHz bench results with the liquid cooled ASUS laptop. I remember one who said look at my bench results with 4.6GHz

 

Iunlock,

I have to agree with you, as the simple addition of a decent cooling pad enables the heat to be removed, the overclock (at whatever higher rate) is then usable.

Isn't i7-6820 the fastest 6th gen mobile processor before overclocking? It's no slouch and does not deserve to be *****ed about.

People slagging off BGA processors in their tagine and attacking people's achievements is very counterproductive. Technology, CPU's, RAM, GPU's etc are all great human achievements that are constantly progressing, but if everyone treated each generation of these as rubbish, the progress would halt and we might as well go back to living in caves.

 

Here's the overclock record of 4.6ghz for the 6820, for those that are interested in achievements.

4490ghz not far behind.

http://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/core_i7_6820hk/

 

Indeed. I mean come on...what a pathetic thing to put in your tag line and to come into a forum to bash? WTH right? Absolutely rediculous. Worthless.

The 6820HK is quite impressive and I'm sure there are others out there with the CPU accomplishing great things with it. With a low TDP and it being a mobile variant that can out pace desktop cpus, while knocking on the door of its big brother 6700K, what's not to love about it eh?

I'd take a desktop 980 gpu any day before even thinking about the 'not' so need to upgrade my 6820HK as I would prefer a lower TDP cpu that can handle it's own and then some over one with a higher TDP in a laptop environment.

Nonetheless, I know it's obvious due to the 6820HK being the newest and best mobile CPU out right now, but I'll say it anyway....in that it's the best darn mobile cpu I've ever experienced/owned in a laptop.




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I'm more interested in benchmarks done at 4.6ghz for the 6820Hk. Not a valid link with clock speed of 4.6GHz. Remember 4.6Ghz is not much to brag about, if you can't use this higher clock in benchmarks or in normal use... A laptop that does not have sufficient cooling to cool down a OC'd processor is just the tip of the ice cream. If a laptop OEM would, they could increase the thickness of the laptop so they could defended the use of an i7 who is intended for OC'ing... But they go the opposite way as all know... Makes them thinnerand lighter.

 

"A laptop that does not have sufficient cooling to cool down a OC'd processor"

Rubbish. Never heard of a laptop cooling pad? Surely anyone overclocking to that degree on laptop OR desktop has to have some extreme cooling? So your analysis is flawed as you are assuming no extra cooling.

http://www.thermaltake.com/mobile/p...&subCategoryId=C_00002257&seriesId=C_00002275

 

This is mildly nonsense . if you search the forums, you can read about some run benchmark/gaming with the laptop on his lap... Nicely OC'd at 4.7GHz. In addition, such stock coolers is quite useless without a mod .

 

So I am thinking of consolidating my computers and retiring my desktop to become a VM Host server. Just wondering if anyone else has done this?

I also plan to take the 980ti I have and put it in a Graphics Amplifier.

 

No I am pretty sure I dont have a lemon. I use throttlestop instead of xtu and i was getting 3.9ghz which is basically 4.0. My concern was more toward the memory part. I also see what both of you guys are arguing about and it's kind of pointless. 4.6 ghz is a nice achievement although not practical without the use of some additional cooling (which I don't think exist for our computers). Yes it would be nice to throw a desktop cpu and gpu into a laptop but most of us dont really want a huge, thick, 3000 dollar (i believe papusans was 27000 krones) laptop. It is pretty well noted that you hate bga, which is totally cool. But knocking us for having one is a bit unproductive.
Also, no the L3 preset does not work for me

 

I'm not knocking people because they want BGA. People can and should choose what they want and prefer. I'm knocking the idea to use soldered hardware in 15/17 inches laptops. Especially in 17 inches models. Sacrificing cooling and upgradeable hardware vs slimmer design isn't the correct way to go. And I know what they want and will do when they shrink the size on their laptop models. Use of shared heatsink and heat pipes is a crippled design. So you should be able to OC your processor with a use of an graphics amplifier. This isn't an good idea. Not everyone want to be tethered to a fixed place if they want a higher clockspeed from the processor.

I fixed that for you 3.9GHz isn't basically same as 4.0GHz... Yeah. In the same ways as 4.8GHz isn't basically the same as a nicer 4.9 or even 5.0GHz OC
Edit: And of course Dell will never ever manage to make good OC profiles in bios. You need to manage that by yourself. It's best that way.

 

Indeed, absolute rubbish. The guy is skewed and is a slave to his rediculous tagline.

It's a waste of breath...

On a productive note, for those who are using BIOS to OC, make sure to set CPU profile to default -> then restart and enter into BIOS again -> then enter in your custom multipliers and voltage if needed....it's important to do the first part as doing so is the only way to clear the previous values that is stored in the cache.

So for those having issues with having OC values stick, set to Default profile, F10 and reboot back into BIOS..

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So my 950 SSD's should be here tomorrow as they just passed through customs.

The laptop ETA is fluctuating! Earlier today it said 30 March, now it's back to 24 March! My guess is it won't arrive tomorrow but I might be able to go get it from the post office on Saturday morning, so long as it clears customs quickly enough. I'm not counting any chickens, if it doesn't arrive until next week then so be it.

On the cooling front I've read several reviews where overclocked laptops dropped 10c with laptop cooling pads, where the fans could be located right under the internal laptop fans. The overclocked 4.1ghz i7-6820 has been seen in benchmarks hitting 75c in places, so 10c off of that makes it perfectly OK for the increased speed to be effective.

 

Nice! You're going to love the 950's. Keep us updated...

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I dont know how true this is though. I actually have a pretty good laptop cooler and it maybe keeps the cpu 2-5 degrees cooler when not underload. It doesnt seem to have much effect when underload though. It would be pretty cool if someone could come out with some sort of a fan that actually cools the air before sending it upward. Kind of like a cold air intake does for an engine.

 

Sluggz

"10 degrees less measured with SpeedFan" from the first review in the list.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Laptop-Notebook-Cooling-Cooler-Stand/dp/B00EKJQLS2

"Studies have proved that cooling pads can keep your laptops up to 20% cooler (5-10 degrees cooler)."
http://www.laptoprunner.com/best-laptop-cooling-pad/


"I have actually tested all three instances (Laptop standard on desk, rear end proped up 2" to allow airflow, and with Targus Twin-Fan chill pad) and using CineBench got average CPU temperatures of:
Standard Laptop: 91 degrees C
Laptop propped up: 88 degrees C
With Targus chill pad: 83 degrees C"
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2301132

"When gaming, both my processor cores and graphics card got insanely hot, to the point where the air coming out of the fan vent could scold the skin if left too long. With the fans on, the temperature drops anywhere between 6-8C (by about 10%).
In regular use, my core temperatures drop by well over 10C, by about 20%."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/revie...AT343P/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_rvw_2?ie=UTF8&cursor=2


So it depends on the air flow rate of your laptop cooler and especially the position of the fans in relation to the position of your internal fans. The recommendation is to buy a laptop cooler which has fans that can be positioned to line up directly with your internal fans, this is said to reduce temperatures by the largest amount. Check your own cooler and see if the fans line up, check the air flow rate cfm, this may tell you why you're not getting as big a temperature drop as other people.

 

Something else that's recommended is to have a separate USB powered hub, plug the cooler into that. Some people have burned out a USB port by using a laptop cooler plugged directly into their laptop. Less likely to happen with the power of USB 3, but possibly a case of better safe than sorry.

 

Nice DIY cooler demonstrating that cfm and perfect targeting of air flow does make a difference. Yes it's from way back, but proves the science.

"I made a laptop cooler that pumps up to 110 CFM directly over the CPU and GPU heatsinks. Before, my Geforce Go 7800 was clocked at 250 MHz and peaked at nearly 80 °C under load. Now, I'm able to hit 370 MHz without breaking 68°C!"
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/513046-Ultimate-Forced-Air-Laptop-Cooler

 

That's right, I have the same results with my laptop cooler, details in this post ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ers-lounge-thread.721578/page-473#post9877925). I have a 10 degC lower idle GPU temperature with notebook cooler, and 'only' a 7 degC decrease in GPU temp under load with notebook cooler. On my laptop I can get the exact same low temperatures by just propping up the rear of the laptop by 1.7cm - notebook coolers aren't a magic solution, often times bottle caps to prop the rear of the laptop up will give same results and allow for more efficient use of the laptop's internal fans.