*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

Oh I know the awga only works with the m15. I just meant if it was worth getting over the simplicity of the core x. Good to know! I might try changing out the fan. Do you know if either of those cards would fit inside?

 

I recommend you ask in the Alienware graphic amp owner lounge. They will be far more helpful

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Apparently this build was just the same one we had but for the Dell G-Series laptops lol.... The light power button comes out mid February, been in contact with Alienware tech support, not dell's.

 

Sounds good. Still love this machine

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

With AGA you’ll get better performance it’s full desktop PCIe3x4 lanes vs max TB3 PCIe3x4 lanes Bandwidth that already from first limited by intel to not even 30gbs on egpu setting on both traffic from host to device and device to host. But the downside from it is you can’t switching the graphics easily you’ve to restart the system (correct me if I’m wrong) unlike hot plug on TB3 egpu. But again if you’re put priority on performance increase over your dgpu, AGA is for you. Btw on core x you can even water cooling it like this.

 

I was wondering if the m15 throttles fps on games (by downclocking gpu and/or cpu) while on battery? I have noticed that many thin laptops do.

My 15r4 does not do it as much, and I am able to play games at mostly full-ish speed on battery.

 

IMHO a better use for the TB3 port is a 10Gb ethernet adapter. If you hook up all your USB stuff to an AGA you can have a great docking solution with two cables plus power...

 

This is exactly how I use my 15 R3 today. And it works fantastically Alienware actually divided up the PCIe where both the AGA and TB3 have dedicated PCIe 3.0 x4 OFF OF THE CPU!!!! No DMI/PCH bottlenecking

I cannot speak to the PCIe layout on the m15 but would hope it is done similarly.

 

Looks like Alienware is definitely the way to go for my very first laptop. Hopefully the AW M15 I would get will turn out beautifully

 

For most ultrabook like my stealth I use one cable solution with all ports on Razer Core v2 full equipped with pheriperals and extra terabytes hdd, it won’t disturb gpu bandwidth because it has unique io ports controller that has separate lanes to control it without performance loss. For gaming laptops that need more than 100 watt TB3 max power delivery it would be two cable. I don’t use my usb c docking anymore since I’ve corev2 back in 2017.

 

If you've only got a single TB3 connection, you're always going to share the total bandwidth on those 4 pcie lanes - no magic in the external box can change that!

The other thing that appeals to me about the AGA is that it comes with several feet of cable - long TB3 cables are very pricey and I don't want an EGPU box on top of my desk.

Being able to do it all including power with one cable is very cool though - I loved that on my work Thinkpad Carbon.

 

The Razer Core v2 uses 2 TB3 controllers, one slaved off of the other. The primary controller manages just the eGPU and the connection back to the laptop. The secondary controller handles the USB peripherals and GbE. The box prioritizes the eGPU traffic so that gaming performance does not suffer from using the network or an external hard drive. In theory this all sounds wonderful! In practice, when I tried to use a Core v2 with my AW 15 r3 it was unusable with anything plugged into the USB ports. Period. Not just 3D performance was iffy, the laptop itself was unusable, something weird was happening with CPU interrupts where the OS would hang for about 2 seconds every 5 seconds (even the system clock would hang and then jump forward) it was a mess.

After trying this out (I was really hoping it would work so I could have a hot-pluggable eGPU and "dock") I returned the Core v2 and bought an AGA (for 1/3 the price). I now have to shut down the laptop to dock/undock, other than that it has 100% met or exceeded my expectations and the performance has been rock solid without a single hiccup. It would have been awesome if AW had figured out how to also feed the laptop power over the AGA cable as well but what can you do.

Oh, and the AGA consistently performed measurably better than a TB3 solution.

 

Not on Core V2 benchmarks and game FPS are similar with full pheriperals plugged and without.

As mentioned above, I’ll make benchmarks comparison on egpu.io and PM you. Of course if you put too many pheriperals like using again hub on USB ports it’ll cause dis and reconnecting issues since there’s also limited bandwidth on its io port, I believe 5gb.

 

Mice, keyboards etc aren't going to eat much bandwidth but as well as game I also do stuff like video editing on my machine which keeps both my (onboard) GPU and 10GbE network adapter very busy.

I imagine the Razer Core 2 is a great bit of kit but at the price it would need to be!

I'm not saying that thunderbolt 3 is useless for EGPUs, just that if you can avoid sharing bandwidth that's usually better, and daisy chaining is still sharing bandwidth...

 

Here is a link to my post a while back. I had more thoughts on the page prior in the same thread. I obviously am guilty of a very narrow test case (one game) but that was a limitation of what I have available.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ll-13-15-and-17.770323/page-325#post-10699241

The long and short of it is this, if you have a laptop with the AGA port....USE THE AGA! It is

-cheaper
-simpler
-more reliable
-better performance

The only real 2 cons I can think of (not counting appearance since that is subjective) are that you cannot hot plug the AGA and it is Alienware specific (proprietary)

 

Thanks for linking that, I’m agree due cheaper and better performance but in simpler point I’ve to say no, can you change gpu within 2 minutes, I can do that with a hand, but I mean with all full closed again. Idk about reliably point, yes it’s more expensive but personally i like the build quality and look way better on desk compared enclosure that exist in the world

Yes it’s right mouse, keyboard doesn’t take much bandwidth, you can try put usb hub with 4 ports and add it to your enclosure (idk exactly on AGA, but other enclosure like gaming box would reach the limit bandwidth) that what I meant above. Talking would disturb this thread here’s just the comparison between all ports being used and no ports being used. Using cuda Z to measure TB3 bandwidth speed on egpu setting.


Note there’s also hdd, Keyboard that is still not supported on that Synapse 3 and ethernet connection that unfortunately can’t be shown on screenshot.
And here’s the 3Dmark with and without comparison.
https://www.3dmark.com/compare/spy/6137759/spy/6137625

 

I do not have the images anymore (was mid 2017 when I did the tests) but CUDA-Z was showing higher throughput with the AGA vs Core V2 which I attribute to the overhead associated with running TB3.

 

Greetings Brothers and Sisters!!

Today, I become a member of the m15 club. I just submitted my pre-order for the m15. Big thanks out to @Donald@HIDevolution for his assistance. Choosing a laptop has not been an easy undertaking. Sometimes its better to sit back and read, learn, and figure out what exactly I need the laptop to do.

Specs are important, but following the issue of failing SSD on my GS63VR, ability to access and replace failed components quickly shot to the top.

Don't worry. I still have my sights on a custom liquid cooled, 9980 XE with overclocked 2080Ti. I'll just have to reset my timeline. Until then, my avatar will suffice.

 

I recently got my m15, but I've been having issues with the battery. With an underclocked and turbo-disabled CPU, lighting effects turned off, screen at minimum brightness, and battery saver on, I'm only getting around 4 hours at pure idle, and about 3 watching YouTube. HWInfo gives shows really high power draws, with a discharge rate of 16-18 watts idle and 23-25 watching YouTube. Is this an issue with the battery or something weird with software?

 

What battery size do you have? If you're pulling 15-18W the runtime will be 6 hours tops with the bigger 90Wh battery...

 

I ordered a new m15 when the RTX options were finally revealed. I ordered the 2070 max-q with 144hz Nebula Red 1080p, 16GB ram, and 1TB hybrid drive. I already have an EVO 970 512GB ssd to install in it and wasn't going to waste any money on their other hard drive options. At the time this made sense to me because in my budget, it wasn't much to go from the 1070 to the 2070. I only buy a new laptop every 3 to 5 years and have wanted an Alienware since before they were purchased by Dell, then held off after that. I'm really looking forward to the day it arrives, I have some VR games that my current laptop cannot handle well (or at all) and non-VR games that I'm waiting to load onto the m15.

 

I'm looking forward to getting mine as well. Similar specs and color as yours. I'm curious to see if this laptop will last longer than my current GS63VR given the gaming/work-load I have in mind. In particular, the long term effect of internal temperatures with soldered components.

 

Do you have an estimate of the delivery date?
I went with the 2060 , 144hz, 16gb and 1 TB HDD. Also got a 970 500 GB ready.

 

Hi, guys!!!
New fixes with new BIOS v1.4.1
https://www.dell.com/support/home/u...osCode=WT64A&productCode=alienware-m15-laptop

 

It says it will deliver by February 21st. When I started picking my options it had some earlier date, but by the time I placed my order it said 2/21. As of today, if I spec out another order like mine, it says it will deliver by the 22nd. I would be really happy if it gets here before the release of Anthem. Purchase order still just says confirmed though.

 

So just got in my new RTX 2070 Alienware M15. I pulled off the heatsink and cooler and it looks like they are finally learning how to properly paste these laptops. Here is a picture of the heatsink and the cooling material they used on my unit:

 

It's not dry so that's a good sign. What kind of temps were you getting before you pulled it apart?

 

That's reassuring. I'm also very jealous. Thanks for posting, I'm interested in hearing how the repasting turns out.

 

Nice Hopefully they take the same care and attention for when I finally order one, either with a GTX1070MQ or an RTX2060....

 

Sadly I repasted before even checking. LOL

 

Wise decision.

 

I see most of the thermal pads arent very indented by the chips/ GPU VRM'S from the motherboard. Is this normal?? I see the CPU VRM thermal pad are nicely making contact as the indentation in the thermal pad is deeper for better thermal conductivity to the heatsink. Is this all normal or should all thermal pads be nicely indented by the Memory/VRM chips to make the best thermal conductivity?? Can any confirm ✌

 

Hello all, new gaming laptop guy here. Hoping my new m15 turns up this week.

I am replacing my old gaming desktop and a laptop. Cant wait. As i try to contain the need to refresh the tracking page every 5 mins, i was wondering if someone could give me a piece of advice.

Most of the time when i am gaming, the laptop will be on a deak connected to my predator x34 monitor and hardwired into my home network. I see that the ethernet port is on the side of the laptop. But is there a better / tidier way to connect the laptop to ethernet and a monitor so cables all go out the back?

Silly question, probably, but so excited!!!

Thanks to all.

P.s. spec is i9 2080, with 4k screen.

 

Well except that he'll never know whether repeating has made things better,worse or no different than stock!

 

If money is no object, treat yourself to a TB3 dock and hang USB and ethernet off that. I have a Qnap 10Gb ethernet dongle on my TB3 port so now only USB is on the side. I may eventually fix that via a AW Graphics Amp for USB and more GPU. I might wait for the 21xx cards and some RTX content first though.

Congrats on your new machine!

 

Anyone here bought m15 with 4k display? I wonder how good the 4k panel is.

 

I have a dell TB3 triple display dock that supports 4K I use at home. It's more for working than gaming though. It even powers my 2 current laptops when plugged in. I leave 2 monitors, network, keyboard, mouse, and headset plugged into it so that when I work from home I just hook up my work laptop to that one TB3 connection and I'm set. I don't know that I would leave a gaming monitor plugged into the dock without testing it's performance directly connected and then through the dock to get the most out of it. However, my SteelSeries headset and Razer DeathAdder Elite work great off of the dock, as does networking.

EDIT: You will still need to plug in the power cord for the m15 as the dock won't supply enough power by itself to run it.

 

Just knew it had to be done eh? Lol

 

@Digits and @LoganWade Thanks both, that is exactly what I need.

@unlogic I get my laptop this week, and it has a 4k screen so I will come back and give you my thoughts.

 

So, what's the consensus, Guys? After repasting/repadding/undervolting, is it possible to achieve stable temps below 80C under full load?

 

Hi, I have Problems with my Alienware m15 with 144Hz Screen.
He has Screen Bleeding on the left Site down.
It's this a Problem of the M15 or is the Screen Broken?
Have any the same Problem or a Answer to make it good?

 

Didn't have screen bleeding for the one i received so you may have received a bad one. Is this the RTX or GTX version?

 

Hi Alias,
It's the Rtx Modell, can I fix it?
Or is it Warranty?

 

It's either replace or live with it. I would call support and tell them that you are having ghosting problems as I do not know if light bleed is a valid case for replacement. You can bring up ghosting if they do not agree to replace it, it's not very honest, but light bleed is a problem for you and since not all models have it than in my opinion it is a valid case for warranty repair.

 

Are you within the 30 day return period? If so, complaining about it may help you get the panel changed or the unit replaced.

 

It is perfectly valid reason. I exchanged my AW17R4 3 times before getting perfect one.

 

I got my M15 with a 2070 MQ, 144hz screen and a 90 Watt battery on Tuesday.

I received a 240V power supply which I was happy with as I've read some other getting 180V version.

Also when I opened the laptop up to install a secondary SSD, I noticed the primary SSD had a heat sink installed on it which was surprising to me considering I hadn't seen that in any of the video reviews I'd watched.

I accidentally forgot to plug up my charger to my outlet this morning and I got a low battery warning a little over 5 1/2 hours into my work day.

Played some Forza Horizon on my TV in 4K on Ultra settings last night and it was running great.

I was hitting high 90's temps with the fan at 100% until I lifted the laptop up off of the desk and let it hang over the edge against the wall to let it breath. It still wasn't venting 100% due to a fear of letting it hang so far over the edge that it falls, but I have a stand on the way now that should help in that regard.

The temps dropped way down after that. It'd spike up and down between the mid 70's to mid-high 80's under heavy load in the game. I'm pretty sure I was just defaulted at balanced performance in the command console. Also this was not me trending data. I would just occasionally open the Alienware command console and look at the CPU Trends when I heard the fan ramping up.

I'm not one to run tests anymore for FPS or temps as I find I just don't care enough to warrant the hassle.

So far I'm really enjoying the form factor and lightness compared to my 6 year old Sager as I'll mostly carry this for work and have an occasional gaming night here and there.


.

 

Ok I have a question about the TouchPad my TouchPad have 2 Clicks. The first one feels like loose. The Second is the Mousbutton Click.
Have the TouchPad 2 Clicks or is it Broken.

 

I'm still waiting for my m15,but when we decided to purchase these thin and lights, we accepted responsibility for the very limited thermal solutions. Undervolting, cooling pads, etc., will mitigate, but we should not delude ourselves into thinking these machines are benchmark worthy.

If I was the Hulk, I'd carry around a 17 inch EVOC. If I worked out of my home, and didn't have to travel for work, I'd be sitting around watching the custom liquid cooling make bubbles as i run all 18 cores at 4.6GHz. I really wish I could do that.

 

I just used the customer service chat and learned that my new m15 is set to ship to me on Tuesday! It's gone through production and testing. They said, "Order has been exceptional in work flow stages." They probably say that to everyone