*OFFICIAL* Alienware X Series Owners Lounge and Discussion

Good point and I feel your pain with selling things at a loss, but that's just how things go with highly depreciating items like PC hardware. There definitely is value in owning and enjoying something "NOW" rather than waiting and waiting and waiting, because the same dilemma of something new coming out will always be there.

Getting a hold of the current hardware is another story.

I'm still so impressed with my 17R4 with the GTX 1080. It games just fine. Even more impressed are my 1080Ti's that still holds its own.

It's a very interesting scenario right now between all the stuff going on. NVIDIA knows that it can milk the 30 series for a long long long time...it's hard to imagine how these companies can even think of a 40 series, when they can't even meet the demand of the 30 series.

The current hardware will remain relevant for a lot longer than usual.

 

I do that with my iPhones. Smart phones have become so expensive that I'll skip 1 or 2 generations before upgrading. I just Paid off my son's iPhone12 pro, three apple watch 6's, his Samsung S7+ tablet, and my 12th gen 12.9" Ipad pro. All those devices are on my Verizon account, and was costing me $460 a month. With the payoff my monthly bill dropped to $220. The only item I have left to pay off is my Iphone 12 pro max which I'll pay off after Christmas. I want as little debt as possible before the inflation increase hits us in Texas. I also have only 15 more payments on my factory ordered 2019 Corvette which only has 5700 miles on it. My last big purchase was this Alienware X17 for $3100 and I have no intention of upgrading for 3-4 more years if possible. I only mention my divorce because it took that extreme to make me have no other choice but to tear down my PC. But on a side note I got the house with all the equity, 100% of the community property, and full custody of my teenage son whose turning 18 in January. She got to keep her Mercedes until she lost it after a DUI. And she got COVID in September. Karma is not her friend

 

So in our present situation being an early purchaser had the advantage. I'm only saying because didn't he or someone say that the 12th gen Intel mobile CPU wouldn't be available until late 2022? That's a long time to wait for something that will likely be in short supply.

 

You can thank PS4 and XB1 for that. Last-Gen compatibility is still holding back games. But if you look at current-gen games, things don't look so good. The best example I have played is Cyberpunk. I only get FPS in the low 20s @ 2560x1600 with decent settings on my 7720 (E3-1535M and P5000). Currently games like Cyberpunk are few and far between, but I expect this will start to change next year.

I agree that nVidia 30xx series will remain relevant for the next 2-3 year (40xx series is rumored to come in Q4 22 with at least double performance on desktop). But I think that Tiger Lake is already yesterday's news. If Alder Lake (performance) notebooks arrive early, we won't see much support for Tiger Lake platforms any more, I'm afraid.

 

Alder Lake will probably be early, not late. Indication are that we already have 12900HK benchmarks leaks and the leaked Intel roadmap. Tiger Lake H45 was pretty late. Benchmark leaks only started in May 2021.

 

Especially since Nvidia's CEO said that they weren't going to release any upgrades for 2022.

 

alder lake and the usual super refresh will most likely come in Q1 2022. Asus and MSI are usually first followed by alienware 1 to 3 months later. I can guarantee my life on it we won’t see gaming laptops with high end alder lake this year. Alder lake is already old news if we go off some peoples logic. We have competition in the CPU/GPU space now like back in the old days, so expect new releases every few months while they battle it out between AMD, intel, and Nvidia.

 

I have to disagree. Alder Lake will have a much longer shelf life than Tiger Lake in the performance notebook space, if it arrives in Q1'22.
Raptor Lake (Intel 13th gen) is about one year off with performance notebooks probably arriving in Q1'23 and it's only a minor upgrade to Alder Lake with Gracemont performance cores mostly staying the same and more and updated Golden Cove efficiency cores according to rumors.
AMD will bring updated Zen3 plus V-Cache early next year and Zen4 in Q4 although it's not clear when it will arrive in mobile space.

 

Looks like a shortage of the 16GB 3080 variant, other models with the 8GB version are available.

 

This is where technology like DLSS come into play. For the purest like me I like to run things as native as possible, pushing the hardware to the fullest and making it sweat. ie...I don't use DLSS, but it does serve a purpose to make things possible.

I can run 4K just fine in most games with little to no tweaks. There are some settings that I normally turn down anyway like motion blur etc...

Tiger Lake mobile was a pretty nice leap in the mobile field and like with previous gen mobile CPUs, it'll game just fine. I think the 10nm 11th Gen Mobile CPUs IMO are fantastic.

Between the various circumstances of the world, stuff hitting the fan, production, competition etc... we're in a strange phase with tech, refresh cycles etc... because it's not normal right now. ie... as mentioned NVIDIA can milk the crap out of the 30 series and still maintain that huge grin all the way to the bank.

Honestly, can't blame them. There's so much more money to be made with the 30 series. Just add Ti's to the end of the numbers and if they can produce it, people will gobble it up. It's a double edge sword in a weird way.

Having AMD finally re-entering the field again with mobile CPUs is quite refreshing. I think the 11th gen Mobile CPUs have a lot of life to it and for most it's still preferred over AMD. The 11th gen mobile is also in a unique position, because we don't know if the BigLittle of Alder lake will be a success or a flop in laptops or heck even in desktops with multi-core performance. A lot has been promised, but I think it'll be interesting how Intel battles out their 12th gen against AMD.

We won't know until we know... Pretty exciting.

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-raptor-lake-24-core-rumour/

You mean Intel will let AMD once again take the whole cake and eat it too' right before they release Raptor Lake a few months after? You mean they haven't learned anything from the past 4 years? Won't happen.

 

If you look at the Alder Lake desktop previews that appeared everywhere yesterday, it's certainly looks like Alder Lake will surpass Tiger Lake. Efficiency core will help battery life in the notebook space. Tiger Lake is not a bad platform, just too close to Alder Lake. And Alder Lake being a new architecture, it will need a lot of engineering resources at Intel and OEMs, so I guess Tiger Lake will be treated like a step-child from now on when it comes to (engineering not customer) support and fixing thing.

8 additional efficiency cores won't help gaming performance much (To see why, compare Ryzen 7 5800x with Ryzen 7 5950x gaming performance). I guess we will see notebook CPUs with 8 performance cores for raptor lake, which will help. (There are rumors of an Alder Lake-H55 notebook CPU configuration with 8 performance and 8 efficiency cores coming out Q2'22). Apart from that performance gains will come from cache and frequency improvements. But, of course, we will see some major gains from new GPU architectures (RTX 40xx and RDNA3). But the new GPUs probably won't arrive in notebooks until Q2'23.

Developing CPUs isn't exactly a fast business. I'm not sure there is so much that Intel can do. The updated Zen3 plus V-Cache are rumored to bring about 15% performance gains in games. This will put it close to Alder Lake's performance but not necessarily ahead if Intel's slides are correct. So this should be fine for Intel. But when Zen4 arrives in Q4'22, I'm not sure Raptor Lake will fare so good. Especially in the notebook sector where AMD is rumored to put 16 Zen4 performance cores into it's high performance notebook chips. Meteor Lake (14th gen) however is said to deliver some massive gains. Interesting times.

 

That's a good news meaning less nerf patches.

 

Windows 11 has finally fixed the WIFI issues with killer drivers. I have about 48 devices in my home all sharing WIFI bandwidth including two 4K TV's that are almost always streaming 4K content. So this is about 70Mbps better then before.

 

So since I’ll be hooked to an AC adapter and not mobile for the next few months, what’s a good custom charge mode to set for battery health? I was thinking around 60 percent state of charge would be optimal? In custom mode I have it set to start charging at 60 and stop at 65

 

Also, what has everyone done to stop certain low tones from the speaker from resonating in the chassis and causing a distorted vibration sound? Someone said the o rings holding the speakers may need to be reseated and that it’s a common issue.

 

I noticed Dell removed the RTX 3080 from their website for the X17/X15

 

maybe they are getting ready for the 3080ti laptop GPUs coming early 2022

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidi...base-could-launch-in-early-2022.576160.0.html

 

Why shoulde they destroy sales in Nov and Dec to be able to deliver new refershed laptops in Feb/March? And current 3080 is on GA104. Whitch mean cheaper in-prices for Dell. Why kill the milking cow? BGA is meant to reduce stock of parts and cut costs.

Edit. Dell still list and sell models with 3080 in other countries as etc Norway.

 

Utsolgt means Sold Out. ;-)

 

nah, it's purely parts shortage.

 

The RTX 3080 and 11980HK CPU options are back on Dell website.

 

So I guess their are advantages for using Dell credit for additional discounts then paying it off immediately. Dell just increased my credit $1000 without me asking. Ironic that they are obviously loosing revenue from the cost increases which result in loss of sales so they are trying to tempt purchasing by increasing credit.

 

Not for the X17

 

it is for me, it wasnt there a couple hours ago

 

Dellcares on twitter told me on the 25th of september that my system was in the "Final stage of being shipped out of factory" and that it was currently "Being tested by engineers" and is moving to the ship stage very soon.

Today they again wrote to me and said the order ships date remains good for the 11th of november and that they will keep me updated if anything "Changes"

So i decided to write an email to Dell customer support directly and this was their awnser :
"As I have checked with the manufacturing team, the orders for the Alienware system are on hold due to the limited supply of parts and they are working on the same to get the parts procured. Once the part is available the orders will be shipped out in first in first out order."

My revised date is 11th of november, if they don't ship it by than, i'll be cancelling my order.

 

So my right speaker distorts and makes a nasty resonating sound during specific tones. It goes away right when I push the corner of the laptop near the speaker. This means it’s not a bad speaker but vibration right? Anyone know how I can fix this? I added more cushion tape around the speaker but it made it much worse so I’m back to nothing.

 

The speakers are held in place by little red/orangeish rubber donut looking things. Check to see if they are properly seated. If it's not that, check the surface of the actual speaker as I've seen a lot of little metal C clamps stuck to it (magnetic) on multiple X17 units. Those metal C clips are the washer piece for the lid screws. That was affecting the sound on some of the systems that I've seen, including my personal unit.

 

I had to dig to find this post lol as search was acting weird when trying to find it. How's the dock working out far? I was looking to order one since I need to plug in my HOTAS Set up (Joy stick, Throttle and Rudders) and other stuff which exhausts the HUB's that I'm currently using. iirc you were deciding between a few HUB's and was wondering if there was any particular reason you chose to go with this one specifically?

Thanks

 

What does everyone keep their fan profile at when gaming? I keep mine at performance, but that lets the GPU hit 83C max. Full speed fans is a little too loud, so I’ve pretty much accepted 83C on the GPU as being fine and CPU temps hitting the 90s. Vanguard is the only game that hit these high temps.

 

I just set mine to max if I'll be purely gaming. GPU maxes at 70C-73C with the CPU cores in the mid 70C's. If I run 5.0GHz All Core the CPU will hit high 70C's to low 80C's. Full fan speed doesn't bother me since I have my headset on, but compared to my other laptops the fan noise is a lot more subtle than others.

 

yeah I guess I’ll just max it out for the titles that stress it. Another thing I noticed is the top vents above the keyboard and side vents to the left and right of the keyboard are starting to collect dust in the mesh fabric that Dell used. How do they expect us to clean this? You would literally need to remove the motherboard to get to it or just blow air into the vents and hope it comes out.

 

I keep the dust at bay by using my hand held dyson vacuum to give it a quick maintenance clean up every so often. I've seen other systems where the fine dust builds up leaving it white on the intake areas. In that case take a small paint brush or something soft and brush it out while vacuuming over it.

As for maxing out the fans it's worth it if you'll be gaming as it'll eventually ramp up anyway, except that you'll have higher rpm's with it manually maxed so you'll be better off than the curve.

 

Anyone able to get forza 5 to run without it freezing after a few minutes? I've had no luck figuring out the issue

 

It was running fine for me. Have you tried updating to the latest driver? It has some optimization in there for the newer titles that just came out. However, Micro$haft games are buggy by nature and can be pretty picky. I had a nightmare trying to get MSFS2020 updates to work. Had to reinstall the whole darn thing...it was a mess.

 

Greetings. Sorry for such a newbie questions, but Alienware does not seem to even bother publishing an Owners Manual so I though I would ask here. If you turn on Overclocking in the command center, do you have to reboot the system, or leave the command center open, or can you just change it in the command center and close it?

Also, when using the MUX option in NVidia app, is it necessary to re-boot to have it take effect or will the SW do it on the fly?

Thanks!

 

Little update,
After delaying a 1st time due to CPU shortage
2nd time for GPU shortage.
I just received an email saying there is now a screen shortage and my order will be delayed once again.

I'll be cancelling my order.

 

jeez, terrible time for PC gaming. If a major company like Dell can’t get parts, then no one can.

 

With 12900H and RTX 3080 Ti on the horizon that might not be the worst idea.

 

They will not release a TI mobile version.

 

Is that so?

 

After having the motherboard replaced together with a new heatsink, I can now get 157xx of CB23 score with the 11980 OC'd to 4.8GHz all-core when the system is cool. CPU stabilizes at ~130W package power near the end.
This is with the stock Si/Ga paste, and stock 3200CL22 RAM upped to gear1 mode.

 

Hey guys, so it looks like the throttle temp of the GPU in the X17 is 83C. Is this confirmed? Is there a way to raise this?

 

Throttle temp on the GPU is still 87C on the X17. Not sure where you are getting the 83C figure.

 

Well Asus is putting a 3080ti in a laptop. And if Asus is gonna do it then you can be sure Dell will do it to. A 12th gen X17R2 paired with a 3080ti GPU would be a site to see. Especially with dual PCie 4.0 and DDR5 support. I'd be really happy if they added a 2nd, 3rd or 4th thunderbolt port and got rid of USB A. The XPS line can do it so why not the Alienware laptops. All my external devices connected through my dock are USB C anyways.

https://www.techradar.com/news/asus...ition-away-with-rtx-3080-ti-and-new-ryzen-cpu

 

ive noticed that the GPU keeps itself at a 83C wall when gaming and when it hits 84C it likes to bring down the wattage and clocks a little. This is with performance fan mode

 

Although it will hard throttle on 87 deg, gpu boost 4.0 is always working in the background, and it is VERY sensitive to gpu temps. I personally believe that this gen of gpus will begin to throttle at anything higher than 74 deg, but that’s just based off of what I’ve seen with my own laptop 3080.

 

you're not using the proper program
use gpu-z to read the number that actually count: gpu hot spot temp.
the gpu will throttle when hot spot reaches 87c

 

My X17 order (11980HK, 3080, 4K) from August, 25th went into production yesterday and they stated that they will meet the revised delivery date of November, 30th.

 

Hello X17 owners,

How are the speakers? audio quality on the X17? Does the speakers get loud enough to "hide" the fan noise?

Trying to decide between the Alilenware X17 vs Asus S17 with similar specs.