*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

I took my heatsink out. Pretty sure the fans and heatsink (along with all the fins and cooling pipes) all have to come out together.

I notice that when you lift the laptop off the desk while running, more warm air comes out the sides. When it's flat on a desk, less airflow.

Poor design on the engineer's part, imho.

And I totally can hear my SSD making noise. Just have to get close to the screen with the fans off, or put your head near the right Shift key to hear it.

 

Yeah but what bothers me more is the air that is escaping and NOT going through the back because of the gap between the fan and the heat fins. That's extra air that could be going through the fins and helping cool the heat sink....

As for the fans, I think im gonna see what I can do about them next week. Not sure I can do anything about it on Sunday night and I go on vacation from work next week so I'll have more time to tinker.

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@eddi3x3x3

The gap on fans can be covered by aluminium tape. Check for gaps on the sides, between fan and heat fins too. My SSD also makes quiet fax-like sounds lol a.k.a 'coil whine' sound.

 

You sure aluminum tape would be the right call? I can't use it until I fix the fans and repaste because then I'd have to take off the tape I think.

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I am sure. On Alienware 13 R3 there are gaps too, aluminium tape is the right stuff and it is commonly used. In my laptop if I remove heat-sink, copper fins and heat-sink come off in one piece. It is worth doing it, otherwise you lose air pressure and cooling is not so efficient with uncovered gaps.

 

I 100% agree with you, better efficiency = less heat and less fan noise.

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Lower RPM is the real deal.

 

That happens with pretty much all laptops. Regarding your ssd are you sure its the ssd making noise? I mean electronic noise is made by inductors and there arent any inductors on an ssd. However there are inductors next to it on the motherboard which are part of the power circuitry.

 

I guess I cannot be 100% sure since I didn't have it on while it was open. However, notebookcheck's review also noted an electronic noise (similar to coil whine) coming from the SSD area. So I guess it's normal, but it's still concerning.

 

I just checked the photos of the m15's internals. On the right and top right you see a couple of inductors so I guess those are the culprits. Not that it really matters. All inductors vibrate under load, only some do it at a frequency that is audible.It's not really a flaw just an inconvenience.

https://www.laptopmain.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Alienware-M15-Disassembly-6.jpeg

 

Bust out the hot glue gun? Lol

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So, I've had my m15 for a few weeks now with no problems. I went to use it tonight and it didn't turn on. I knew it was my fault because I put it in standby with a low battery and didn't plug it in. Plugged it in and it turned on no problems. There was a windows update and it prompted me to reboot for a driver update. I was browsing on chrome a few minutes later and it just froze. No mouse movement, no response from the keyboard, nothing. I figured it just locked up, so I held the power button to turn it off. Now it won't turn on. I get a rainbow power button if it's connected to the power adapter. It was flashing 1 red and 1 blue, but now it only does the rainbow. It'll sometimes light up the keyboard for a second, but nothing after that. I tried a full power drain by disconnecting both the main battery and the cmos battery, but no change. Any suggestions before I contact support? Side note, one of the back screw sockets was stripped from the factory...

 

Haha i really enver ever tried to isolate inductors. does it even work?

 

I'd give support a ring - that's what they're for...

As far as I can tell, rainbow power button means the battery is charging. I have had a few reboots where the power button was flashing blue and red - it dropped into a diagnostic screen which told me the battery was unrecognised and so wouldn't charge. Easily fixed by another reboot with a long 5s+ hold of the power button.

Good luck with your issue - please let us know what the outcome is.

 

That happened to me also during some update. No response, hard reset. that's when I got the reset bios promt. Just clicked the start button, Alienware logo blinked for like 10 mins and a black screen. Decided to take a shower and when I got back I had the promt window.. try give it some time!

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Not sure if this is accurate. When playing with the GPU I set max clock +175 MHz and 500 memory. I then went to curve for a small undervolt down to 900mv. After playing Forza 4 for awhile I paused to see how temps were doing as I'd been playing about an hour and a half. CPU was ok as it can be 87c GPU max 68c 1709MHz? How is this possible? Isn't the clock set to 1215? I'll try it again tonight see what I come up with.

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I left it plugged in overnight and still nothing. It's not even doing the rainbow now. It'll flash the power light and the keyboard backlight when I press the button, but that's it. If I hold it for 20+ seconds, it flashes blue. The alien logo on the back will glow red for a second right after I plug it in. Looks like I'm calling support after work today. Hopefully it's something minor...

 

Off-topic: lol i went on twitter, and saw that you upvoted a comment from me about the cryo-tech ******** lol. never thought that i would see you on notebookforums lol.

On-topic: They do not even know how their own products work lol, reason enough for me to go to the competitors, who do know how their systems work lol

 

Those of you who have the 144hz screen, in terms of light bleeding around the edges does it look about the same as in the attached image during boot (in a darkish room)? Compared to my old lenovo x230 it looks a bit excessive, but I'm not sure what can be expected from this type of screen. At a lower brigthness level it looks much better, but there is still a noticable yellow tint in the bottom corners on darker backgrounds. The screen seemed pretty even in the reviews I saw.

Thanks!

 

I had the 4k screen, but I would consider that unacceptable on any screen. You might try sticking your fingernail under the plastic surround under the display and pulling it away from the panel a little. That helped mine with the one little spot of light bleed that I did have.

 

I just uploaded my m15 review.
I7 8750h, GTX 1070 max Q
Repaste liquid metal by Hidevolution

 

I cant help wondering whether that repaste was a waste of time - I seem to be getting similar temps with just an undervolt / TDP limit...

 

I think it was..

 

Great review!

Only disappointed that the liquid paste repasting from HID seems to have made no difference in the temps from what others are getting..

 

I get similar temps with stock paste....

 

It's not all about paste, unfortunately. If fans, radiators, heatsink, pipes, - the entire solution has a bottleneck, - you are screwed. Pretty sure that's the case. Just from a quick glance at the schematics, I come to conclusion that the heatsink's alignment might be off, the pipes aren't being fully utilized, they are off-center, meaning, a big portion of the die's surface area is unable to pass the heat over to the heatsink fast enough. Other than that, the cooling look ok for the most part. Just my 2 cents here, take it with a grain of salt.

 

Thanks! Yes, it seems that others olare reporting the same as me. Some of my viewers have said theirs is fine with stock paste so there seems to be a QA issue with the cooling system I think. Shame.

 

IMHO the cooling system and fan and power profiles don't quite meet the average punter's expectations.

On my machine the cooling seems to be good for ~40W of CPU cooling if the GPU is working hard. Unfortunately the CPU is allowed to draw 90W for upto 28s according to XTU, and this happens before the fans have ramped up in balanced mode. So the CPU hits 100C within a second or two, and then even when the steady state power limit of 75W kicks in, the CPU stays hot, bouncing off the ~95C thermal throttling threshold.

Given the performance limits of the cooling system (which I suspect are constrained by the slimmer form factor) the only real way to keep the temps down is to reduce the CPU power consumption. The dynamic power of a chip is proportional to the square of the supply voltage times the clock frequency, so reducing the voltage is more effective than lowering the frequency. And lowering the voltage also tends to reduce the maximum stable clock speed too.

I suspect though that the CPU isn't guaranteed to work stably at anything below stock voltage levels, so while users can get away with undervolting, Alienware might not want to or even be allowed to undervolt out of the box.

Similarly if they had capped the power too low, the CPU would never hit 3.9GHz and people would moan that the CPU has been hobbled by AW!

So Alienware does have my sympathy but I really don't understand why they can't seem to get the user fan profiles to work - they seem to own both the BIOS and AWCC.

I also don't understand why the CPU seems to burn so much power doing very little - I often see 40W at <30% utilisation according to XTU. I can't imagine any dynamic fan profile can keep up with random spikes at what seems like low CPU load.

 

Thanks for the detailed explanation. They don't need as many watts to maintain 3900mhz. The Asus ROG strix Hero 2 maxed at 71 w during CPU work such as an Adobe Premiere render and when the GPU is also being used such as in a game I saw max of 59w and it always maintained the 3900 MHz.
I think if they capped it at 60w we would be seeing much better temperatures and still have good performance.

 

I have a technician coming out (hopefully) tomorrow afternoon to replace the motherboard. Pro support had me try removing the SSDs and both/one stick of ram. They said the only way to address the screw would be to send it to a depot. I've heard horror stories about that, so I'll live with it for now. We'll see if the motherboard fixes it.

 

I think the thing that I've read/heard that makes the most sense to me is that there are some other components interfering with the fitment of the heatsink on the CPU (VRMs or something of the sort, there's a whole reddit thread about it). Perhaps there's more than one supplier for the motherboard and/or heatsink and some people get a combination with issues and some get one without. That would explain why some people have the issue and some don't or why the heatsink swap is helping some but not others. It's frustrating because there's nothing that can really be done about it by the end users until/unless dell figures it out.

My experience with the tech support for alienware was mind numbingly, shockingly bad. Push back, escalate, you should be able to get resolution without sending it to depot. They tried to get me to send it to the depot for a heatsink swap, I pushed back and got the tech to come out (not that it helped in my case). I couldn't find what the screw issue was earlier in the thread, but if it's just missing you can get them on ebay or wherever, they're a relatively standard size I believe. That, or call back to dell and try again, they can definitely send you screws without sending it to the depot. If the problem was something else, then I'm still skeptical that it has to go back to depot but the solution might not be so easy.

 

So, the tech is coming out for the motherboard problem. One of the screws on the back is stripped. Not the screw itself or I'd just buy one, but the socket on the frame of the laptop. It came that way and I discovered it trying to troubleshoot the motherboard problem.

 

Great review, hope to hear anymore info you have for us on the m15. Your overclock is right around where I set mine. The undervolt I leave about -135 as it will start getting weird if I go much more. Did you undervolt the GPU at all? I noticed temps dropped to around 68c after an undervolt with the curve.

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As I understand the issue is that there is no one perfect undervolt setting for all CPUs. Some can take a bit more and some a bit less, so picking one number for all CPUs could lead to a lot of units with instability problems. Easier from a mass manufacturing standpoint to leave everything stock.

 

Similarly, they will pump way more voltage/wattage than is needed for their factory overclock levels.

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Yes, indeed - there's always some process variation and as chip testing is expensive the Intel factory probably won't be doing any more than they need to weed out the duff chips and speed bin them at the nominal operating voltages.

 

It sounds like you and I are kind of in the same boat. I actually RMA'd mine over a week ago and had it sitting out at the front desk at work to be picked up by UPS. Changed my mind and brought it back home. Then, BOAT showed us this OP 15+ laptop from walmart with a 1060 in it which I got for $699! so I changed my mind again and set the M15 up to get RMA'd back to Dell the other day. UPS still hasn't picked it up and my OP laptop isn't running right. So here I am, indecisive, trying to decide what to do. Meanwhile I've now ordered the new RBS 2019 model and an RB15 base model to test. Best buy is going to think I am nuts, but I really don't care!

You got a warranty on your M15, so you're in a bit of a different spot than me... But I've never had such a hard time making a purchasing decision. I've been through about 8 laptops in a month and can't choose. I'm finding I value portability over raw performance, but I really like the M15 overall. It's just that I don't trust it to last - and for the price, I need it to.

 

Wait, i thought your M15 was picked up by UPS. Also what is the RBS 2019 or RB15?

 

Yeah I thought it had. But it’s still at my office.

The Razer Blade stealth 2019 model. And the Razer Blade 15 base model. Both $1,599 at Best Buy right now.

 

Hi,

I've read on notebookcheck's review that the m15's AGA port uses 16 PCIe lanes, can anyone confirm this? If I remember correctly, the 15R4 used only 4 which could be a bottleneck. Another matter is the fact, that the AGA itself uses a PCIe x8 card to connect to the laptop. Does anyone have any experience with this? I mean getting the external GPU to use on the internal laptop display.

 

I dont think this is true. If i remember correctly, the limiting factor was also the cable itself which couldnt Transfer more than x4

*EDIT*
Found this at the Dell m15 website. So i dont think it’s x16

 

I called AW support on Monday to see what can be done. The laptop is great except for the keyboard getting so blasted hot - I can even feel the warm air being pushed out through the keys. The rep that answered the phone said she thought it was over heating and that a tech would need to review it with me but that they were to busy at the moment. We set it up for them to call be back last night - which they did not do. I'll try them again tomorrow as I didn't have time tonight. And, I hear ya. I was tempted by those OP's that Bob reviewed. I can return this and buy me and the better half one of those and come out even. Heck of a deal. But, it is Walmart at the end of the day. That 2019 RBS is a great looking machine.

Honestly, I'm just tempted to keep this thing. I debated on the R4. The all black looks great. But, all the reviews mention it's keyboard gets just as hot. So, trading one hot mess for another, and I'd loose the portability. Before the m15 I had stressed over what to get, with buying and returning several different laptops, but now that I finally have one that works well outside of the keyboard getting stupid hot, which wont be an issue 90% of the time, I don't want to go down the rabbit hole again.

 

It's so funny that UPS hasn't stopped by my office yet to pick that damn M15 up yet. My return period ends December 30th and honestly I might end up keeping it too if it doesn't get picked up today. I work from home on Thursdays and generally get in the office first and I asked the receptionist to put it back in my office if UPS didn't show up yesterday.

I like that machine a lot. It's not quite as portable as I would like, but it is portable enough. Just don't think I'll be taking it with me on cross country flights to do work on the plane. Guess I can always use my crappy company issued Lattitude for that.

I have return dates of Dec 30th, Jan 9th (OP) and Feb 11 (RB15 and RBS2019). This is it.

 

As others have said, the AGA and so the m15's port only have 4 PCIe lanes.

Are you sure you want to go to the expense of an AGA and GPU with more grunt than the internal one just to pump pixels back into the internal display? Not only will you lose performance as you'll be sending the rendered frames back over the same PCIe lanes as GPU commands but also the onboard GPU seems plenty fast enough to me if you're only running at 1080p.

I'm actually considering an AGA in the future but at the moment I am happy enough with the onboard 1070MQ even at 3440x1440 res.

 

I was considering it for the future as I usually get laptops for 3+ years, but if it's only 4 lanes then I won't even bother with it. If I wanted an external display I would get a desktop and all things considered on the gaming laptop market, I might as well get one as all of them have higher then I'm comfortable with temperatures.
The AGA port seems like a waste of space for me and something I would have to live with.

 

Yeah, I can see being on a plane it not being portable enough. A good two in one or 10" tablet is my go to for flights. Especially my tablet. Can download Netflix shows for offline viewing and go to town. Watched half a season of Frasier doing that not long ago lol.

 

The AGA was one of my best investments especially if you pair it up with the top tier cards gtx2080ti or RTX2080ti. It MUST be used with external display however. It traveling with laptop is an issue then your out of luck would have to deal with small form factor of the M15.

 

I understand, but most likely I won't be using it, I'm still considering whether to get a desktop or the m15/15R4, but it's good to hear other people's opinion. Doesn't the PCIe 4 cause a bottleneck? Are you able to verify the framerate you would get with all 16 lanes?

 

Some reviews I've come across seem to indicate that even x2 is enough as long as you're using an external display as the extra bandwidth is used to feed the image back into the internal display. Referring to Thunderbolt 3 here.

 

I was using an aga with a GTX 1070 in a 17r3 using the internal display. If your looking for a huge improvement over the laptop GPU you will get it if your looking for desktop performance it's close but the desktop will win and if that's what your looking for get a desktop.

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