*OFFICIAL* Alienware X Series Owners Lounge and Discussion

Yup. The m15 R6 is pretty awesome. Great laptop. You can under-volt it and make it shine.

Here's my Cinebench R23 with the R6 (11800H): Pretty impressive what it can do.


Gaming temps are fantastic as well. I have it right along side my X17 and still use it daily. It'd be a great upgrade.

 

I would assume they had a good technical reason for slowing down RAM in the x17, but not in the slightly thicker m15 R6.

 

I'm also very interested in this topic

 

Thanks for the recommendation. It's the only 15 inch choice really as I need TB4 and SODIMMs.

Can you post some AIDA memory benchmarks?

BTW Looks nobody has bothered creating a lounge for it, which is a shame...

 

MSI produces a lot of mainboards, so I assume they have less problems to max out the circuitry in the GE76. AW on the other hand is no mainboard company. Maybe bro Papusan is right and they are simply not able to get gear 1 CR1 stable. Remember the ram mess mith the 51M. However, worse would be if they could have opted for 3200 ram in gear 1 CR1 but desided not to do so because of marketing reasons (only notebook vendor with 3466 MHz ram). But there are worse companies, ASUS for example solders x8 ram on the mainboard of some of their notebooks giving you even no chance to increase performance by somewhat risky bios tweaks.

 

This is the original article

This is the follow up article about setting it to Gear 1

 

I suspect/hope the slimming/high density interconnect mobile phone technology could have lead to interference, but of course your suspicions have grounds too. We'll never know unless someone hacks the BIOS to enable Gear 1 to confirm one way or the other (which I would have thought to be unlikely to happen, but now we see some hacks enabling MUX so who knows).

 

@pitha1337 You now have some experiencing with RU.EFI, keen to give this a go?

 

LOL, I just followed the chinese guide like a zombie I would not say I have any experience with RU.EFI

 

Just read that XTU 6.5.2.40 is able to change ram timings. Sitting atm at my 51M R1. Will take the risk and try it out on the 51M.

Installed said XTU Version. In theory you can change alle mem settings including CR to 1. But when I do so, XTU needs to restart to change the settings and after restart it says it could not apply the new settings because the bios is locked. Sooo, I gues bios hacking is needed.

 

Is there a way to pin a post in the thread with all the findings we’ve found so far for the laptop, i.e. for Ram, SSD’s, tweaks etc so there’s a summary that can be easily updated and referred to for new people who join the thread etc?

 

The 7i's vaper chamber seems to work much better when benchmarks start compared the x17, that due to the design of the chamber, thermal compound, or power tuning?

 

Someone can correct me if I am wrong but I think it's because of the fact that the vapor chamber has more directions and surface area for the heat to initially spread out to.

An analogy would be the heatpipes on the X17 are like highways for heat to emanate out from the source whereas the vapor chamber on the Legion 7i is like having a giant parking lot at the source where you can have heat moving out in multiple directions. Initially the Legion 7i has the advantage because it has this huge parking lots worth of space to move heat into, but eventually this heat reaches the exits(i.e. fins at the fans), where you can only have X amount leaving, and that's where it becomes saturated. So the Legion 7 will have a stronger start but the finish is determined by how much heat can be eventually removed from the fins around the fans.

 

I might need to send you a starbuck gift card for all the great info Monkey.

And oh, the X17 doesnt have a vapor chamber? Why did I think that when researching? Yea, definitely explains the differences. Not great for the x17 for quick short spikes in work that would thermal limit and downclock instantly where the 7i can go 30-60 seconds full blast until the chamber gets heat soaked. I can see why LM would be such a big improvement to the X17's thermals on short benchmarks like CB23. Damnit am I learning a lot about cooling getting into laptops. For about 18 years all i knew was (or needed to know), put a nocuta air cooler on any desktop build . . . and done. Then for the last 3 years was water cooling which is, dont worry about short term temps cause they will always be amazing, worry about long term temps which is about fans and radiators.

 

The CPU has vapor chamber in the x17

 

That's the version I'm running

 

That's good to know. Didn't realize the small block was actually a vapor chamber. Maybe a better wording would be that the Legion 7i has a bigger vapor chamber, so it has more area for the heat to spread around first compared to the X17, whereas the X17 only has that narrow area to spread out to before needing to pass through to the heat pipes.

 

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck.

I'd like to clarify my reasons for why I believe certain individuals are posting tainted benchmark results. Whether it be photoshop or otherwise. First and foremost because I have seen people do it. Specifically with 3DMARK. I was competing my system which I spent several months and many thousands building and in the process broke many records. My system which consisted of a 6950X CPU and dual Titan Xp's was cooled by 4 EK XE 480 RADS and 32 Noctua fans in push pull configuration is a Caselabs chassis. The only system that was consistently trouncing me was a guy out of Vietnam. No matter what I did I couldn't even come close to his scores. After a little digging come to find out my water cooled system was competing against liquid nitro cooling. If he hadn't been rubbing my nose in it and wasn't upfront about it then it wouldn't have been an issue but he wasn't. I don't know why some people feel the need to be misleading over a matter of benchmarks but the fact is it happens.

 

So, is that small vaperchamper directly connected to the heat pipes for purpose of phase change material or does it go through a another thermal interface to flow heat to the fins/fans?

Side question, in the service panel, how do you tell which screws are the 1 through 8 for the sequence?

 

I can say something about this. I've been using Dell and Alienware laptops for ever, my last one was an m15r1. This year I decided to update it to take advantage of all the new things, and after a LOT of back and forth I decided to go with the Lenovo Legion 7i (11980HK + RTX 3080). And even if I hate to say that, because I really like the Alienware concept, the Lenovo is the best out of the box experience I've ever had. It is able to dissipate 100W keeping temps around 75C for ever with factory paste and just a slight undervolt. This is the first time I haven't felt the need to repaste a new laptop, and I have LM in my Alienware m15. The 16" 16:10 screen, the keyboard, the port selection, the chasis, all of it is a perfect fit to my needs. I only miss the space for a 2.5" ssd that I had in the m15, but I already assumed that no laptop would have it anymore after m15 r2. I really prefer the 15" inches form factor over the 17" one, so x17 was not an option and x15 .. well, is not in the same league.

The main reason why I loved Alienware was because the upgradability and easy maintenance. When they started soldering things, inverting motherboards and finally removing the AGA port (instead of upgrading it), I just couldn't justify it anymore. Anyway I think that the x17 is a great change in direction and let's see what the r2 brings to the table. An AGA port with PCIe v4 (or v5) could be impressive

 

I know how you feel. From the perspective of an m15 R1 owner, the 15 inch offerings just tumbled downhill afterwards - hitting rock bottom with the x15. The main cool development since has been the addition of a vapour chamber, now shrunk again in the X-series, and not sure of the x15 has one at all. TGP went up and down again too. The AGA port, the phenomenal ease of maintenance, 4-point heatsink mount, the full keyboard, plethora of I/O including DP+HDMI, market leading performance (in addition to the robustness the on-site support, and of course the RAM slots) were huge sellers for me. All these things are gone in the current models, unfortunately. There are glimmers of hope such as reintroduction of RAM slots, but even this has been evidently botched by imparing latency in the x17, and is missing from the x15. Perhaps they will make improvements in next generations... I pretty much lost all hope though.

 

For anyone with an Alienware X15 or X17, the trackpad now works in Ubuntu or Pop!_OS. Update to kernel 5.13.12

For those who aren't building their own kernels refer to this post on the alternative PPA to use for updating kernels since Mainline is broken for 20.04 LTS at the moment.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/p3dxm6/mainline_kernels_broken_for_51117_and_above/

 

Bingo and well said. That's exactly it. Also with the 7i having a lower power limit it helps it to sustain better overall and not throttle in benches etc...

Great to see another Linux user! I have LinuxMint w/ Cinnamon installed on the 2nd SSD right on in my X17, but haven't had much time to get it all set up. I did notice that it didn't recognize wifi or Ethernet when I had plugged it in.

I'll have to figure out what the deal is there, but I hope that the baked in wifi card is compatible, otherwise I'll have to try out another distro, but I really like Mint w/ Cinnamon as that's what I've been running for a long time on my 17R5.

 

Since yesterday my x17 does not recognize my AC adapter anymore. In BIOS it shows 330W AC Adapter correctly. Already tried another original Dell 330w AC adapter without success

Reverted my BIOS settings to defaults

Any ideas?

 

I don't remember - did you repaste with LM?

 

Yes, but I solved it 1 minute ago. I powered of the X17 and opened the bottom panel. Disconnected the battery and pressed 15 seconds the power button. Afterwards I connected the AC adapter (without connected battery) and the laptop startet on AC. Then I powered it off again, reconnected the battery and everything is fine now

 

What was the idea behind the 15 second power button press? Anyway, it's all quite strange. Obviously, in case it happens again, it might be worth re-checking all the connections that were touched during the repaste.

I remember getting some AC adapter detection messages with my m15 in two situations:
* Occasionally on arrival from "the factory" after flexing the lid - the laptop needed a mobo replacement, primarily due to faulty GPU
* After a repaste when I wanted to do a quick sanity check boot prior to re-attaching the lid - went away with all the screws in and lid attached and never came back, nor have I seen this with any other laptop

 

I have the feeling it is just a bug. Yesterday I rebootet and the issue was gone. Maybe something related to hibernate Mode.

Pressing and holding the power button releases the rest power out of the system when no battery is connected. Also this clears CMOS I guess.

I will have an eye on it

 

So I am going to attempt to flash the 140w 3070 vbios to my X15 since it has thermal headroom. Since I also have integrated graphics, I should be safe to flash and revert if I have issues. Would I be safer using the vbios from an X17 or will the M15 3070 vbios work?

 

Your risking bricking your system.....

 

Cross-flash firmware between models can often lead to unforeseen problems...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...r5-owners-lounge.835745/page-19#post-11098288

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...r5-owners-lounge.835745/page-18#post-11097631

 

Another important thing is that the vapor chamber in the 7i is covering both GPU and CPU and all the fans are connected to it. For CPU or GPU only loads you have much better cooling than with heat pipes, that is a big difference. For my use case, that most of the times includes either CPU only (CPU rendering or number crunching) or GPU only (ML CUDA) it is a game changer feature. Also, as you said, the heat dissipating "mass" of the system is much bigger and for time limited temperature increases (like when putting 130W only through the CPU during the PL2 interval) you will even not need to speed up the fans to take care of it. For games and GPU+CPU intensive loads during long periods of time it is not better, but for my particular use case it is just perfect.

Edit: And do not forget that we are comparing a 15" with a 17" laptop, that fact alone is significant.

 

If the Legion 7i had castrated graphics TGP as the x15 it would run a lot colder. And there is still a difference between 16" vs 17" size (x15 have a bigger footprint but a bit thinner).


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

Final conclusion from Dell's lead thermal engineer Travis North. If the user-base accept increased prices then they'll guarantee you thinner machines down the road.

Alienware Discusses Making Thinner Gaming Laptops | Ask a PC expert - Part 3

 

Does anyone know if the keys on the non mechanical keyboard are removable? My shift key has a slight squeak when I press the right side of the key, and nothing when I press the left side. Wondering if some light lubricant might help, or if I should leave it alone and hope it goes away.

 

Anyone else having keyboard problems? It's happened twice now where my keyboard just stops recognizing key strokes. I have cherry.

Logging out and logging back in fixed the issue for me and a few searches showed pressing FN + F1 works which I haven't tried yet but I don't like leaving little issues because they tend to become bigger ones later. Any thoughts?

 

It has been happening on my X15 frequently. It's getting to the point where I may return it to bestbuy. Happened 4 times today in my games and the only way to fix was to power button out to the login screen and log back in.

 

Good to know it's not limited to cherry. A few searches showed that Dell had a bunch of bad keyboards on the X series and others said the only option was sending it back.

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware/x17-R1-keyboard-randomly-stops-working-on-both/td-p/7981892

 

It's a known issue among some owners. The key sequence works for most. Mine seems fine so far on the X17 and I've been gaming and typing it on it extensively. The Cherry Keys on my R6 are perfectly fine as well.

If it's not a software issue then it's likely the ribbon wires that are bent 90 degrees. Perhaps the traces are pinched, which is common in all laptops where ribbon cables are used.

 

It's intermittent and has only happened twice so far on mine. I'm still within the first 30 days but undecided about sending it back to Dell. When it happened on mine both times I was on the edge browser. Something peculiar was the second time it happened I was able to just log out of windows without restarting and after a few keystrokes began working again. I also passed the hardware check.

 

I have something similar on my 15 R2. Keyboard repeat rate slows down to the point of being useless. The solution is to go to the control panel and "toggle" the repaat rate slider, or reboot. Other users reported the same. The problem never got fixed.

My rookie mistake was not returning (after suffering shipment delays, of course), particularly given that the machine arrived with another unfixable issue.

 

I'll keep an eye in the keyboard. My 'problem' is lately I'm using a external keyboard since I use the laptop as work device during the summer.
Because Dell 'forces' us to get the premium warranty when we buy an Alienware, we should be fine about this issues, and they will fix any hardware problem.

What toogle is that mate?

 

Yeah, if you want to mess around with "Dell" technicians or system replacements, which would undo any repaste/repadding, and may or may not be beneficial then it's fine.

There is a slider in keyboard CP settings controlling repeat rate. I would have to set it some other value press apply, then back to the value I wanted. Tried to automate this using command line tools, nothing worked.

 

i think the 7i has the same TDP as the x17. The 3080 it has can run 165W, but how that's divided is different. I think the CPU only gets 45 watts and after that 55. But that's from the top of my head.

 

Dear current x17 r1 owners,

After thumbing through some of the x17 r1 gripes in the thread, is waiting for the imminent r2 or r3 the better option?

I bought an m15 r1, and sent it back due to malfunctioning battery, what a blessing, because the r1's were such trash in comparison to the later revisions.

I had actually bought the i9-4k 120hz x17r1, but sent it back because fedex decided to play frisbee with the package, and the laptop lid came bent and scuffed, so I did not have the opportunity to mess around with it longer than a day.

That screen is amazing, but maybe its worth it to wait?

 

I'm not a current X17 owner, but a long-time and current owner of other Alienware products. I believe for the amount of money you're willing to spend on a laptop at this level you'll get more bang for your buck elsewhere. The Asus G15/17 G713 (either the all AMD Advantage edition or Nvidia) costs around $1000 less, is similarly configured, and has equal or better performance. As far as dimensions, the G17 (the larger of the two) weighs nearly 2 lbs less. If you opt for the all AMD version, expect roughly 8-10 hour battery life with a CPU that is easily equal to the i9 X17.

While this is the Alienware corner of the forum, I can't help but point out that this is a missed opportunity for Dell. It might be an unpopular opinion for some, but I think you're better off either waiting for the next iteration or looking elsewhere.

 

I would rule out the G15/Zephyrus due to one RAM module being idiotically soldered, but then again it might be fine for someone who thinks m15 R1 is a bad machine

 

The G17/15 G713 is a different machine. No soldered RAM.

For reference.

 

OK, so basically G15/G17 Strix. Looks good, albeit all Ryzen which is awesome unless you need TB support, according to the chooser: https://rog.asus.com/laptops-group/

 

Unfortunately, no TB, which I'm conflicted about. I recommended the G713 because it's probably going to be my next rig. I was, for a while, stuck on the idea that I need TB, but the more I think about it, that may have just been in my head. The eGPU route doesn't seem to be getting much love from the AMD side of the house and that's the only practical application I can think of for thunderbolt. I think with the money I'm saving going this route, I can get a widescreen monitor and skip the eGPU altogether.

 

Yeah, the eGPU support is the main seller of TB for me too, and TB4/11th gen confers a notable performance improvement in that department. Unfortunately, the ongoing scalping is still making the approach expensive. Furthermore, the available enclosures tend to be too small to take cards larger than 2-2.25x.

That said, would still like to have the option personally. Other applications include things like TB docking stations, high-speed drive enclosures, and 10G Ethernet adapters, but again most people won't really need those.