*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

Custom fan control, and even the stock fan profiles don't seem to be working on either BIOS version for my RTX M15. CPU/GPU fan are whirring away at idle. I suppose I could re-paste, but I'd rather not since temps aren't really that high while gaming. Didn't think fan/clock curves could be more annoying than the 7577, and yet here I am.

Annoying, since it's an otherwise very excellent system.

 

WHat was wrong with the fan curves on the 7577?

 

Once the fans started they didn’t like to spin back down. There were times after a gaming session that the CPU fan would still be going with temps below 45C. I’d have to put it in sleep mode for a minute to get them to stop. Both fans also spun together, regardless of GPU activity.

 

Got my M15 yesterday but it comes with no screws for the M.2 slots. Anyone who upgraded the HDD to M.2 SSDs, how did they go about it?
Any place you can link where you bought the screws from?

 

I stole the middle screw of the 3 battery screws. I replaced it later that night when I got home, because I have extras there.

 

It's an M2x3mm with a large head. I stole one from my old 7577 until I could order a set of laptop screws from amazon.

 

At least that seems like something they can hopefully fix in a BIOS update. I'm happy to hear that they seem to have done a better job pasting the heatsinks this go around if you're getting good temps that don't make a re-paste worth it. I'm hoping to have my delivered sometime this week, keeping my fingers crossed it'll at least be good to go temp wise out of the box. It seems Alienware somewhat listens to software bugs, I'll remain optimistic they fix the fan controls.

Anything else you've come across or further insight you'd like to share? People started receiving them this past week but I haven't read any real reviews but the one posted a few posts before you.

 

Yeah, it seems like they are doing a better job with the paste this time around. Didn't have any noticeable throttling while playing BFV.

I wish the trackpad was a little bigger, but it works just fine. Nothing else except the fan noise at idle/while browsing even on battery, which annoys the hell out of me. Easy enough to get into, very solid build quality. It's quick with my two Samsung drives in there, GPU holds very high boost clocks. The red case looks really special. If they can fix the fan issue I'm having I'll be an extremely happy customer.

 

Could you link me the laptop screws you ordered from amazon?

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XK456SN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Got mine yesterday. Not had a chance to play too much other than un-box and update the os and software. But initial impressions are very positive. The 4k screen is sharp and vivid (photo editing being one of my main uses for this laptop). The cpu temps under photoshop load were pretty good, even the fan noise was quieter than i expected.

I cannot wait to get a game on this thing and see how it runs. But for now, i am so very happy with my purchase

 

Played around with the M15 I got today. Config is the RTX 2060, 144hz, 1 TB HDD, 16 GB.

Initial impressions are pretty positive with a solid feel on the laptop with good build quality. I went ahead and put in a 970 EVO 500GB and did a format.

Gaming in Battlefield 5 gives a pretty high temperature straight out of the box (with no undervolting) and hits 98-100'C. Undervolting by -150 drops about 10'c to upper 90s as max.

 

Make sure to vent it properly. My temps were pegged that high too until I moved it. You really can’t play games without lifting the back end off the desk.

 

Did you put any kind of heatsink on your 970 EVO? If so, where did you get it from?

 

Could you share the 4k panel Hardware Ids? Thanks!

 

Not 100% sure what that means, but hopefully i got it....from the invoice - 391-BDWO.

Is that what you are looking for?

 

1. Type "Device Manager" at the Windows 10 search box and open the "Device Manager"
2. At "Device Manager", double click "Monitors" then double click "Generic PnP Monitor"
3. Go to "Details" tab and at select the "Hardware Ids"
4. You can see the LCD panel code for your laptop

 

Or just run HWinfo64

 

Wow, I wasn't even close with my guess. Here is the info: MONITOR\AUO34EB

 

Hello everyone. I just joined the m15 owners club. Got my laptop delivered yesterday. I have my build with the RTX2070 graphics card.

I noticed my idle temperatures are mid 50's to low 60s and load hits 100c. I am going to get Kryonaut Grizzly thermal paste to bring down the temps. I also saw some folks undervolting their laptops. Would you happen to have a guide or youtube video on how to do that?

Thank you!

 

There are many sources for undervolting. I personally use Intel XTU. Here is a link to one such guide:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-XTU-Undervolting-Guide.272120.0.html

The key is finding the voltage offset where you will still be stable. Push too much, and the system will let you know with a BSOD. For my 7700HQ, I can only undervolt to around 130 mV.

 

Has anyone benchmarked the 2070? I am interested to see if it’s the 80w or 90w model!
Hoping it is the 90w like the Razer Blade

 

Well, I plumped for a 15m coming of the back of a 17 r4.

Got 16 gigs ram/144 screen/90 w/hr battery and the 1070 Max q at a very reasonable price compared to the RTX variant.

I figure the difference between that an RTX 2060 and 1070 is minimal and didn't warrant the £300/391 USD surcharge. I will wait until the Turing drivers have matured before plumping for anything higher at this time.

Used my head instead of my heart for once will be interested to see which is right!

 

To those who already have rtx versions of the m15:
-Can you run HWinfo while playing a demanding game (like BF V, Far Cry 5/New Dawn, Metro Exodus) and post a screenshot? (I would be interested in the cpu clocks, maximum temperatures and noise)? (Undervolting is the easiest way to improve temperatures, as it reduces power consumption which leads to less heat)
-Have you tried lifting the back of the laptop (just 1 or 2 cm) - the previous generations really benefited well by lifting up the laptop. How much did your temperatures improve?
-When ordered with just a single m.2 SSD, did you get the HDD Caddy and HDD Cable connectors? (only with 60wh versions)
-How do you like the m15 rtx overall?

 

I finally got my tracking number today, it says my 2070 m15 will arrive tomorrow. Although, with the storms in the area, I wouldn't be surprised if it gets delayed. I plan on testing lots of things when it arrives. The only change I'll be making before testing is adding an ssd I already have in my possession.

 

Yeah, yours will most likely be delayed. I received my tracking yesterday at about 1am and it’s supposed to arrive today but no tracking update. Still just says info has been passed to FedEx but no package yet.

 

So I was wondering the same thing before ordering and asked a friendly dude on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/arzado/just_got_my_m15_wrtx_2070_ama/?sort=new

His investigation seems to indicate the higher wattage and he got even higher clock speeds than the Razer!

I will probably order a 2070 max-q model so will be sure to update on here if I get my hands on it. In my experience Dell usually do go for the higher speed / OC cards in their Alienware machines. Would be great if other could post their results too.

 

Are custom fan curves in AWCC working for anyone? Release notes of nearly every new release of either bios or AWCC claim that they have been fixed, but they are still not working on my unit... (newest AWCC and 1.41 bios). Still the same behavior as with the initial release: Sometimes the fans react to what you set in AWCC only to return to the normal automatic behavior a minute later.

 

My m15 just arrived! I'll post more when I can.

EDIT: I have been spoiled by SSD's for too long. I forgot how slow other HDDs are. Feels like forever getting everything transferred to the SSD. Boot times are horrendous without it.

 

Hello all.

Thought I would give some info now I have had time to play with my m15. I am quite basic and very much a user when it comes to computers, so please ask if I have mis-stated something or you want more info.

1. Specification: i9 2080 UHD screen. 2x 500gb sdd.
2. Photoshop use: temps rise to 95 on cpu and fans spin up to 100% on both cool and performance profiles. No noticeable throttling or slow down in app (didnt log, but glanced at AWCC dash to the side on occasion). These are huge files so I expected some load on the cpu. Coming from an i7 desktop, the i9 is blowing me away..so yay for that!
3. Gaming use: Shadow of Tomb Raider game - logged through HWinfo64. 1500 logged lines 0

CPU - 5% of logged lines showed temps above 95c on all cores. Some peaking on one core, which makes me think that the cooler is not evenly loaded onto the cpu. But there was only 5% throttling logged. The speed stabilised across all cores at around 4.3ghz.
GPU - max temp 75c. peak clock speed 1800.​

4. keyboard - easy to use once you get used to the offset due to the keypad on the right.
5. Build quality - solid!!
6. Screen - awesome, and I am very picky on screen cos of photography. The surround though...talk about dust magnet!! And cos it is shiny, you cant help but see the dust!!

As a general observation and turning off the monitoring - gaming is smooth and wonderful, even turning res down to 1440p in game. didnt even feel the need to turn on fps monitor. This is one heck of a laptop, and, even though it is a noisy beast when at 100% fans speed, it is not really intollerable given what it is doing. I did have to raise the back off the desk to allow the base fans to suck in more air. I might invest in a proper stand and maybe even an active base with fans (are these any good, I wonder?).

I would not be so happy to run this on my lap, pretty sure it would run too hot. But given that mostly it will be on a desk, either at home or in a café / hotel, this is not a show stopper.

Hope that helps people in whether this is a good laptop. Happy to take any questions, and I will do what I can to answer.

 

Thanks for sharing. Now I know when gaming a headset or external speakers can be used but in your opinion how are you finding the speakers on the M15? Good enough for a bit of youtube or netflix?

 

I think the speakers are good enough to use for regular use. I personally prefer headphones whenever gaming or watching a high quality movie. I don't think the speakers are as nice as the ones on my Lenovo, which are my favorite laptop speakers. If I want to fill a room with a good sound I'll hook it up to my external speakers. but what's there is good enough for on the go.

 

Speakers are good enough for Netflix and tv - I would worry about fans noise making them a bit less worthy. Personally, headphones feel the win!! But you will be fine on the laptop speakers for all uses tbh.

 

After running some quick undervolting using the Intel XTU, I got zero thermal throttling at -120mW:



After running GPU-Z, it appears that the 2070 max-q variant is at least 90w according the specs on NVidia's site:



NVidia's specs:

 

That's -120mV or 0.120V

It won't let me edit my previous post

 

After playing the intro to Battlefield 5 on ultra settings, during which I maintained an 85fps, over 120fps on the cutscenes. This is what HWinfo shows:

 

No they aren't for me at all. Fixed or smooth ramp don't work, and the presets only kinda work. Based on my casual observations, I think that they are following CPU load to ramp the fan vs just temps alone. I'm sitting in the low 40s with bursts into the low 50s after my re-paste and the left fan is constantly ramping to 50% whenever I load a new page in Chrome or an app. I suppose it could also be the PCH temp, but I'm not looking at that all the time.

I also have some coil whine, and pulsing on dark screens(144hz panel), so I've got that going for me. Guess I'll put in a ticket when I get back home, because I love the system otherwise.

 

Here's the HWinfo on the 2070mq after 30 minutes of Robo Ready using revive through steamvr with a Samsung Odyssey+ headset on the highest settings while my headset display was mirrored on the m15's screen for spectators. This game was the most enjoyable of any time I had played it. So much easier to move around and grab things. GPU used 97w at its max performance.

 

For fun I just ran the benchmark test at userbenchmark.com and got a 108% on my 2070mq which is at the top end of the tests run.

 

Still, 1503 is a very low XTU score from an 6 cores i7-8750H
https://hwbot.org/benchmark/xtu/rankings?hardwareTypeId=processor_5711&cores=6#start=0#interval=50

 

I want to move the Windows OS from the default SATA hdd to the SSD drive.

I tried to do a search in this thread for my answer but couldn't find anything. Apologies if it's been asked and answered previously.

I've just picked up my M15 which has a 512mb SSD and 1tb SATA HDD. As per above, the C drive with the OS is the 1tb SATA drive and the SSD is empty as volume D. This config is how it came from Alienware.

I called Dell support but they were unable to advise how to re-install Windows with the OS on the SSD drive as primary 'C' volume.

Has anyone else here got a similar setup and has been able to re-install the 'right' way? If so what was your method?

Thanks in advance.

 

How did you get gpu power to show? I don't have it on my hwinfo64 and I have a 1070 Max q

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

What Hwinfo versjon you have? Tried reset settings?

 

The recent build shows it and if that’s not working try the beta version.

I’ve had trouble with this early on with RTX laptops.

 

It's version v5. 92-3580

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

There are various cloning programs available on the internet. I believe easeUS has one that lets you use it for free for 30 days before you have to pay for it and is relatively simple. There are other options too. One free option is:

https://lifehacker.com/how-to-migrate-to-a-solid-state-drive-without-reinstall-5837543

Other than that, you could reinstall Windows. I used a free method to move the OS to my SSD.

 

I used the latest version that needs to be installed, not the "portable" version. The portable version doesn't have all the latest features.

 

As a quick follow up, I've REALLY enjoyed my new m15. I don't feel any need to repaste yet, but still keeping that option in mind. Propping the rear of this laptop does seem to make a difference in thermals. After the preliminary undervolt and placing the m15 on a basic cooling pad (nothing fancy) I get zero thermal throttling from the cpu or gpu. HWinfo results showed that the gpu did not reach its thermal limit with this set up and regularly hit a boost clock speed of 1800MHz during a 5 hour play session which included over 3 hours of VR. While in VR with the headphones on, I could completely forget I had a laptop in the room with its fans going in performance mode.

 

@LoganWade which cpu thermal u got and does it constantly push 3,9 Ghz =?

 

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but I will try. I used XTU to undervolt and benchmark/test which showed a constant 3.9Ghz at a maximum of 93 degrees when undervolted by -120mV. However, in actual use while playing it got up to 97 degrees but still hit 3.9Ghz consistently according to HWiNFO.

I'm going to try a little more undervolting in the near future. I've seen other people undervolting the m15 by -130 to -150mV. I just stopped stepping it down when the thermal throttling stopped for now.