*OFFICIAL* Alienware X Series Owners Lounge and Discussion

I have been testing a couple of other laptops while I wait for an alder lake/GPU refresh on the x17. Spotted this in my Microcenter and thought what the heck. This Maingear has unlocked memory overclocking. Here is what i have been able to push thus far:

 

In my opinion the quality of speaker are bad, the quality is very bad above 70 %

But the x17 are not designed for speaker, but have one of the best 3080 for laptop 165 w max....

 

Those are some really solid scores... Why is your latency so high though? 3466 at cl 18 should have way lower latency. My 3200 cl17 kit pushes 64-62ns.

 

Gear 2

 

oof right. I honestly can't see where Gear 2 provides any benefits over gear 1 aside from slightly higher speeds.

It's particularly annoying for DDR5 because we're getting even higher gears to keep up with its high clocks. Gear 4 exists now, with even worse latency than Gear 2.

 

Why is it so hard for these companies to make a notebook that performs well and has good speakers? Why does it seem to be one or the other.They are playing funny games with thermal limits to keep these thin things below the magical 100c that everyone has hammered them about for years. I HATE HATE HATE MSI but their gs76 has a very fast 3080 and decent speakers.Everyone defends their purchase to the death as the best thing they have ever bought well except the speakers (I mean who would want good sound with their 3080 in their $4500-$5000 dollar laptop?). No NO NO if wasnt designed for sound it has a great gpu and throttles at 87 or in some cases 83c to keep it from melting into a big puddle of liquid fire on your desk. Long live the 18r2 in nebula red in all its glory.

 

I mean honestly you have every right to be mad about the quality of laptop speakers, but why not get a nice pair of headphones? Noise canceling ones pair particularly well with gaming laptops as it cancels out all the fan noise. I use my AirPods max when I’m out an about and when I get home I just plug them into my razer Nomo which were about $100 bucks.

With a decent pair of headphones noise canceling or otherwise, you’ll never have to worry about sound quality again for any of your devices.

 

I do use headphone on occasion. Honestly I care more about performance than the sound on a notebook. Just ranting about how these companies seem to skimp in some areas with the money they charge. I mean reality is Apple has decent performance what their target audience and they have some amazing speakers for a notebook. My 12" Ipad has better sound than the x17, lol. But in the end i want a non thermal throttling laptop that keeps heat under control with a good screen. Sound is just an added bonus for $5k..

 

fans on x17 max out at 50-51db.

 

But will Asus include a MUX switch this time around, after the amount of flak they have received this year? If they don't, then it's a dealbreaker.

 

Exactly!!! Why wouldn't a $4000 laptop have good speakers? I heard the 16" Macbook pro speakers the other day and I didn't know that kinda audio quality was possible in a laptop! So it's definitely doable. It's just manufacturers don't seem to try!

Also, why do you hate hate hate MSI?

 

Gear 2 and single rank to boot. I am just using what came with the laptop. I posted my m17 r4 earlier in this thread and I think it was mid 50s on the latency. I will look in the bios and see if it will let me switch it although my guess is it will not post at the timings and speed.

No gear mode in the bios that i see. Would love to lower latency but not sure if i can other than the oc i have.

 

Received a Realtek driver update via windows 11 updates today that made the speakers much better. Way more full with deeper bass. Anyone else get this and can test? I’m very ocd and caught this right away when playing cod vanguard

 

That's good news! I had someone with XPS 15 also have a drastically different audio experience with different drivers and uninstalling the native audio software. It's crazy to think the hardware is there with Dell/Alienware and it's basically nerfed by drivers and software.

 

I always said Asus had amazing hardware hindered by terrible firmware for its motherboards. And as we all saw with the X17 the MUX switch is just a matter of firmware.

 

Agreed. I was complaining about the tinny sound from early on. And with technology today they make flat speakers produce audiophile sound quality.

 

see if windows 11 has a Realtek update, it made a nice change to the audio quality on my x17

 

Does it fix the resonation problem?

 

It’s better only because it seems they toned down the high pitched, tinny-ness of the speakers and now have a more full, deep sound. I can go to much higher levels of volume before the vibrations start again. That can’t be fixed with software really, best way is to open the bottom panel and just reseat the speakers and maybe add some cushion to stop the vibrations from resonating through the chassis

 

then that won't help my case.

i've even tried testing the speakers while holding them in my hand, and i can clearly feel the bad vibrations are coming from within the speaker unit itself when the resonation sound happens.

 

Do you know this realtek driver number ?

 

thats a defective speaker. I knew mine was not the speaker because my vibration and distortion noises would go away and soon as I pressed on the corner of the laptop where the speaker is. Just have Dell send you a new speaker. If they send a tech, tell the tech you will do the swap yourself and will send the bad speaker back. Most techs agree and just drop the parts off at your door.

 

Yes and this is already my 2nd speaker unit. I have a 3rd speaker unit currently on the way.

Do you get the vibrations all the time? Mine only happens when playing sound frequencies near the default windows notification sound (and also the default outlook new mail notification sound).

 

its very specific tones that activate it. Some voices in games do it. The windows 10 sounds did it as well but the windows 11 sounds do not. As soon as I touch the bottom right corner of the laptop and lightly press, the vibration sound goes away.

 

New realtek driver released on the X17 support page for all the good it did. And again I am annoyed that my tiny Apple Airpod Pros which are a lot smaller then the X17 speakers sound so much better. And why do the old generic realtek drivers have so many more controllable options? The realtek audio console is just pathetic.

 

And unrelated, I wanted to give my son a PS5 for Christmas but I don't have time to chase one down so I decided to upgrade his PC that is so old it won't pass a windows 11 upgrade test. I gave him a choice of an Alienware laptop or desktop and he chose desktop. It kills me to buy a prebuilt system but the only way to not get screwed on the GPU cost was to go that route. I really wish Dell didn't use proprietary system parts because I prefer to watercool everything and I doubt I could find a waterblock that would work on the Dell video cards. I chose a 12th gen Core i5 which has already been reviewed as the best current gaming CPU and an RTX 3070. Supposedly it will arrive by December 16th and I hope Dell doesn't screw my son's Christmas. This desktop is gonna smoke my X17 for a $1000 cheaper. I'll upgrade the system drive and ram as soon as DDR5 memory becomes available. 8gb of memory is terrible but we all know Dell uses the cheapest stock memory.

 

Why does Dell purposely come up with ways to complicate issues? I'm referring to the ability to overclock on the fly through the Alienware command center. But not any longer. Now when you make an adjustment it requires a system boot to go in affect. Must have something to do with the recent fusion update. Normally I don't overclock anything accept for my memory setting to XMP. If you could call that overclocking but now if you overclock through the command center it disabled the BIOS XMP setting which requires reboot to reactivate it. Also when you overclock through the command center it requires a reboot to go into affect. so they went from on the fly overclocking with command center to 2 reboots. Make the change then reboot. Do your business then reboot to turn it off and re-enable XMP. Why Dell has those 2 functions together in the BIOS is stupid. That is one I'll give to Asus. At least on their motherboards overclocking memory and the CPU are exclusive functions. Also, why go through the trouble of allowing us to adjust the memory and clock speeds but not give any control for the timing. The ability to tweak the timing settings is where the magic really happens. Dell just allows overclocking for dummies. And while I'm on the subject, why does my old 64gb of GSkill DDR4 3200 CL14 smoke the hell out of all the DDR5 benchmarks I've been seeing? In all regards. Speed and latency. OK, yes my memory was quadcore but that is all the more reason for these damn pc makers to stop pigeon holding us. And, of course my ability to tweak the timing. One last thing before I'm done ranting. Prior to using that GSkill 3200 I had GSkill 2400 CL16. After Upgrading the memory my 3dmark scores in every benchmark improved over 45%. And that is no exaggeration. Some people here know but others might not realize exactly just how important good memory is for system performance. A 45% improvement by upgrading my memory is much more then I ever expected. At the time. If Dell was really serious about allowing their systems to reach their full potential they could start by enabling quad core memory and allow more flexibility with overclocking, Such as memory timings. Another perfect example of how great hardware is hindered by crap firmware.

 

bad news: i got the replacement speaker unit and it's got the exact same vibrations with default windows 10 sounds, just like the 2 before it.

 

Are you sure it’s not the speaker resonating in the chassis? Are you testing it by just holding the speaker itself away from the chassis?

 

Yes.
Did the same test with the 2 previous speaker units too. All same result.
The first thing I checked was the speaker mounts after seeing pics posted by others, and those were already installed properly.
Something I also noticed is that it only happens on the right speaker at volume > 50%, and becomes generally noticeable above 70%, while the left speaker is always fine.

 

Does dell have a history of having great deals on black friday or cybermonday? Thinking about the X17!

 

interesting as it was my right speaker that was the worst as well. It’s also strange that I could eliminate it by just pushing down and stopping the vibrations. We could be talking about two totally different issues here that have similar symptoms. I would have Dell send speakers till you get one that doesn’t distort.

 

Speakers issues are not new I am afraid. I had similar issues with my previous 15R3, and I had to replace them twice. I also replaced the small subwoofer on my old m14x once.

 

Finally received my Alienware X 17 after almost 5months.
Sound seems ok I guess for me, not sure tho I'm a fan of the mechanical cherry keyboard tho.
After 5 months of wait I'm up in the air now of even keeping it.
4k display definitely is beautiful though

Sent from my SM-F916W using Tapatalk

 

What don’t you like about the cherry MX keyboard?

 

To be honest it's my own decision getting it, I should have known about the clickiness about them.
Also the no backlight in the symbols was a dumb move on Dell

Sent from my SM-F916W using Tapatalk

 

You can change the backlighting through Alienware Command center. I agree about the symbols but some colors make the symbols easier to see.

 

Turilo mean, the symbols don't have transparency for backlight.

See mine it is same like Turilo.

 

Can anyone confirm that this memory kit is basically the best kit available kit for the X17 currently?
https://www.gskill.com/specification/2/197/1540867459/F4-3200C18D-32GRS-Specification

3200Mhz, 2RX8,CAS Latency 18-18-18-43
1.20V JDEC and XMP compatible.

Or would you guys stick to the Kingston Fury Impact
https://www.kingston.com/dataSheets/KF432S20IB1K2_32.pdf

3200Mhz, 2RX8,CAS Latency 20-22-22
1.20V JDEC and XMP compatible.


Edit : I bought the Kingston Fury Impact kit, it was 135$ while the G.skill kit was 210$.
Plus the Kingston kit is known to work flawlessly on every laptop.

 

That was a good choice. I have the same ram and it was just plug and play with a very nice performance boost to CPU benchmarks and come CPU bound games.

 

Anyone know if the 240W power supply can be used safely with the RTX 3080 model?

Id love to buy the smaller PSU for when i travel with the laptop and keep the beefy one at home

 

It’ll work but it’ll warn you the psu is to small and it will downclock the cpu and gpu.

 

Hey maybe the new x17 r2 will fix the speakers?!? But they will probably break something else that isn’t broken.

 

If Dell saw the speakers as a huge problem they would push for an new minor revision of same speakers. And if they don't see it as a problem, then they will most likly continue offer something similar for the refresh of the X-series. Don't expect a major changes into middle of this chassis lifecycle.

 

Eh was a joke.

 

If someone is looking to buy, the X17 3080 models are now relisted on the US Dell website.

 

And also offering the i9-11980HK. Prices have gone up to match. I paid $3100 to get an RTX 3080, Core i9 11980HK, 4K, and cherry. With those specs the cheapest configuration before discounts are like $4500.

 

Totally makes sense to compare a price before discounts with a heavily discounted one.

 

Regardless of the discount, they have upped the price significantly.

I paid 2175$ + taxes for my 10800H / 3080 / 360hz / 512GB / 16GB / CherryMX.
Right now the cheapest is 3050$+ taxes for 10800H / 3080 / 360hz / 1TB / 32GB / CherryMX

 

Mine's got: 11980, 3080, 360hz, 32gb 3200, 1tb, cherry
Unit Price: 3,125.72
Order Date: 07/20/2021

Basically, I wasn't able to get any meaningful discount on it back then other than a "free expedited delivery".