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

You might but I only have one install image on a USB and it has installed both pro and home I'm pretty sure. I have yet to type in a key. With Windows 8, this was rarely the case.

 

Can someone help me with drivers? I currently have the 344.88 GPU driver installed (for my 970M) and someone suggested me this site to download newer drivers for a potential fix to get Dark Souls 3 running
http://www.geforce.com/drivers

It lists mobile GPU drivers but none of those are listed on the alienware/dell site. They have only the 344.88 one. Can I use these without problems?

There is also that one other game (Divinity: Original Sin) that doesn't work properly and only used integrated graphics just like Dark Souls 3. I wonder if this will work and someone has experience with this?

 

@das boo:

You can absolutely use mobile GPU drivers directly from nVidia's web site.

Also, once you install Geforce Experience as part of the driver install, it can check for and download future nVidia GPU driver updates for you.

Regarding games using the integrated GPU, you can configure which GPU is used in the nVidia control panel or by right-clicking the game .exe and choosing which GPU to use.

 

Use What you want from Nvidia but not older drivers from Dell or the latest version from Nvidia download.

 

My system

Came out with Home as it was the only option in Malta but what I do is upgrade it to Pro after I install Windows. Also none of the images have drivers preinstalled but I am using the v3 image as it has all of the updates.

 

Has anyone had PowerDvd listed in the Alienware digital delivery with their r3? Mine was suddenly removed and I cant install it anymore.

 

No, but I don't need it because VLC works fine.

 

There's a version 3 image already? The one I just downloaded recently was v2. Which of the 3 links did you pick from the dell site?

Also, once you have the iso, did you just copy everything to a usb drive? Or did you use a program to install the iso onto a usb?

 

I think it waa the third option. I burned it onto a DVD as I use itbfor work too.

 

So when you installed windows using that image, did it have all the Alienware drivers and general drivers already installed? Or did you mean"have all updates" as in windows 10 updates?

 

It had the Windows updates included with build 1511 and everything but unfortunatley Dell has not released an image with the drivers installed. If they did it wpuld be great as I lost my factory image.

 

You'd think something they clone onto all Alienware could've been uploaded for us, no idea why they won't.

 

Yes im sure they use the same image on all machines. I dont know why they treat us like this when we paid a lot of money for our laptops.

 

Yeah, the stock image is borked. I would do a clean install using the media creation tool...

 

Maybe someone that's reinstalling their R3 O/S could create an image that includes all of the drivers and software, then upload it to a file sharing site such as Rapidshare. Others could download it to do their installs and just let it auto update itself afterwards.

 

Why use the image over a fresh install? Are the drivers no longer available?

 

Its just 3 extra clicks for the alienware software on the download page. An actual fresh install is much better.

 

What do you mean by 3 clicks? Unless I'm doing it the slow inefficient way, I've been installing each driver individually. Is there some way of mass installing the driver in a batch?

 

I think it would have to be hardware specific if you're talking about a drive image: e.g. same graphics card, wifi module, etc, (although wouldn't matter if CPU different), RAID or AHCI, can't think of anything else.

 

I too would like to know THIS....how 3 clicks? I do them individually too.

 

I doubt there is an easy way to do this, with an image or batch install...... Lets not forget how quickly drivers go out of date.

I'll stick to what I'm doing and installing drivers manually/individually, that way if something goes wrong, its easier to troubleshoot.

 

No not like that. But the stock image comes with very old drivers. So you have to download those anyway. The 3 extra clicks are just for downloading and installing the Alienware control for those lights.

 

Lol, my hopes went sky high for a moment there, they've safely landed back on Earth now

Fellas, what would be the best way to clean CPU/GPU fans once a month? Would a compressed air can do? If yes, should I use it with vaccuum cleaner (to suck the dust as it blows)?
I don't want to risk taking apart whole assembly just to reach the fans, fear breaking something

 

Compressed air can break your fans though. Quite some force comes out of those cans and thus spinning the fans with a higher pressure than designed an not evenly. Do it from a distance. But from my experiences/ There is not a lot of dust build up after 5 months.

 

I guess it depends on the house. My house is pretty dusty. After 3-4 weeks if I blast it with air, i'll see a little puff of dust come out. Annoying stuff.

 

In addition to this, spinning the fans with air effectively turns the fan into a mini generator and could send an unwanted current to the board. Could actually fry something!

 

What would you suggest then? I've always been blasting the fans with a can of air in my past 8 laptops, never had anything die on me from that. Taking the bottom plate off works but i worry the screws will strip over time.

 

There was quite a debate on it as you could imagine but the general consensus was that, as long as you didn't spin the fan faster than what the fan was rated for eg: 1800RPM then the was very little risk. The risk came when using cans of air that spun the fans much faster than that.

Personally, I have never used cans of air other than to blow the odd crumb out of my keyboard. When it comes to fans, I strip down as necessary and use an old make-up brush of my girlfriends to brush out the crap.

 

I've always used cans of compressed air to blow out the fans - in reverse, blowing the can through the fins & into the laptop, I remove the bottom cover to allow the dust to escape. I don't use a vacuum cleaner on it, since I fried some RAM in my laptop by doing so a couple of years ago. For sure when I clean out the fans they spin many many times faster than they ever would during use, but I don't keep it spinning for a long time (just short bursts) & the extra RPM helps remove the dust I reckon. No problems doing it this way thus far.

 

Couldn't have described it better! I blew air in my 12 weeks old laptop and I think I saw a puff of dust rising, that's when I started worrying.

How can you be certain blowing through the fins will always spin it in reverse? Or this there a certain angle you blow it from?
Coming to this, if I put laptop upside down with fins towards me, will clockwise rotation of fans be 'reverse' spin or anticlockwise?

Thanks for explaining, was looking for answer to this.

 

Yea I blow through the fin also. Basically blow inwards where the air normally would come out. With the computer off of course. Even with the bottom plate on, dust will go out the vent,but seems most of it comes out where you blew the air into.

As for the rated rpm of 1800 for fans, I'm pretty sure they're spinning faster than that usually, and a lot more during gaming. And before I used hwinfo to limit fan speed, if I game in 4k it would be at absolute max which was insanely loud. Pretty sure that was well over 6000rpm.

 

Power down the laptop and use a thin piece of plastic or a toothpick to hold the blades in place while you blow compressed air into the fans. Blow into both the blades on the bottom and the vents on the back.

I've heard vacuum cleaners are a bad idea for electronics, as they can cause static electricity.

 

Hi JerseyBoy


as you did to make it work the second slot pcie x4 ? only disabled nvidia gforce 970m from Device Manager?

 

Hi Alejandro,

When I disabled the NVidea card I got slightly higher speeds because the NVidea card had been sharing the same PCI port as the second SSD, however, the second SSD didn't show x4 on the port.

RAID is well fast enough despite the second M.2 port being x2.

 

Thank you JerseyBoy!

I opened a case in dell support for this problem. I waiting for an answer. I can not believe they give pcie x4 to type-c USB port and not a ssd port. It is very stupid.

RAID 0 works fine, but I need the disks run at 100% speed. I buy this notebook especially for the 2-port pcie ssd.

(Sorry, I'mean from Argentina, my English is very bad...)

 

Hi Alejandro,

Excellent, I hope they will soon offer a BIOS that allows the full potential of the EVO 950 PRO's in RAID zero to be realised!

Your English is fine My Spanish is far worse and my Levantine Arabic is non-existent!

 

Look this raid0 performance,

http://benchmarkreviews.com/35462/samsung-950-pro-ssd-raid0-performance-tests/5/

They did a benchmark and result in raid0 950 pro is much lower than yours. q32t1 3278mb, and you more than 5000 mb. They have the same problem? and they did not see it.

The BIOS is very poor. This is the first Alienware I have. I buy it 25 days ago. I very disappointed. I hope that next bios more evolved ...

 

Hi Alejandro,

It certainly looks like they have a bottleneck somewhere!

I also think the current BIOS is underdeveloped, especially as the 17 R3 is advertised as a gaming platform. Please DELL, open it up and let us geeks maximise the potential.

 

It is true. I do not use it for games. I use it for video editing and sound. How often they publish BIOS updates?

 

They've published 2-3 updates since I purchased my 17 R3 late last year.

 

I bought it 20 days ago. Dell support can give a solution to this problem?

 

If I remember correctly, said Dell representatives exactly the same with first Alienware Echo models early 2015. Since AW15/17R2 is advertised as a gaming platform <they didn't need Raid support>.
If you don't thrust me, you can search this and you will find the exact words... That AW line haven't Raid support. Remember... Right after Aw15/17 models was released lait 2015 said Aw reps also that the new line shouldn't have Raid support for the same reason. But Dell change their mind fast and push out Raid support.

 

Ah, when I was talking about "in reverse" I just meant blowing air INTO the outlet (air normally comes OUT of there like we all know) - I hadn't given any thought as to which direction the fan actually spins when doing so.

 

Hi! Anybody know any software to take care of the battery when it is connected all the time? Like lenovo energy manager, to increases the lifespan of the battery, charging only 60%. (Energy Manager works on lenovo notebooks only.)

 

Right mouseclick on the battery icon in windows and there you see such an option.

 

I did. I enabled the setting Desktop mode battery charging because I always keep my laptop on the charger. But when I enabled it, nothing happens the battery just stays charging and it stays on 100%. This setting should make the battery reach 50% and then start charging until 100% and then stop charging and do the same thing again. But for some reason the battery just seems to stay on 100%. Any idea why it does not work?

 

It takes 2 weeks of being plugged in most of the time for desktop battery mode to take effect.

 

But I look for something to do always. I can change the time value of ' two weeks '?

 

Howdy folks, will the Samsung 840 pro work in the 2016 r3? Also, how would one install Windows 10 pro in a new ssd as primary drive? Thanks!

 

Not that I know of.

I'm using a 2.5" SATA 850 EVO. I was able to put the Windows 10 installation media on a USB stick (probably using Rufus: https://rufus.akeo.ie/ ) and do a clean install to the Samsung SSD.