*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

@LoganWade 97 degrees is still a lot in my opinion, you thinking about a repaste ?

 

Thanks so much for the reply.

I ended up using Dell's version of the Windows Media Creation tool on a USB thumbdrive. Then I opened the laptop and disconnected the SATA drive as per Dell support's recommendation. Booted the computer with the USB stick in, hit F12 then selected the image from the USB drive. 30 minutes later I had a fresh install of windows on the SSD. I then reconnected the SATA drive and used the diskpart commands in a CMD shell to turn it into a whole single drive.

Computer boots cold in 7 seconds now, as apposed to 90 seconds when it was SATA. Don't know why Dell do it the other way.

 

Awesome! Yeah, those SSD boot times are great. Once you experience that, there's no going back. I don't know why they'd set it up that way either.

That being said, I am impressed by the 60w battery. My expectations were very low to begin with but twice now, I've got about 5 hours out of it while using the web, constantly downloading games to the SSD and SATA, and a few videos. Have you had a chance to test out your battery yet?

 

Yes, I'm still thinking about it. I'm wondering if the gpu got a better paste job than the cpu in mine because the gpu is sitting pretty at a max of 70 degrees. But I also want to see what a little more undervolting does first. I feel like there are so many ppl who repaste alienware laptops before posting results I want to be able to compare it while it still has stock paste.

 

Well, my initial happiness has been tempered a bit .Not a lot cos this laptop is still awesome.

Idle temps arw spiking to 99deg on some cores, causing thermal throttling and 100% cpu fan speed.

So a support call raised cos i am not sure i am confident enough to do a repaste or an under volt...tbh.

Fingers crossed i get a nice response

 

Under what circumstance were the temps spiking to 99? Benchmark? What game?

 

Idle, desktop, no aps running or browsing windows explorer, internet.

Gpu is cool.

Temps monitored through hwinfo and the alien cc app.

 

Oh wow that is brutal. Mine has been around 55 in idle and then 80s to low 90s under heavy load. I did change my mode to “quiet” so it lowers the CPU power to 45watts or whatever, but I don’t think even under balanced that I was getting that high at idle.

 

Yeah. Missed it on first pass as i went straight into heavy load. But then i noticed the fans were full on when i wasnt doing anything on the laptop and started to check. A few cores are spiking massively. Assume uneven paste is causing it. They ramp up to 99 and then drop back quickly to 75 or so. Over and over again.

 

@Miko Skye I hate to say it, but I am thinking poor cpu thermal paste as well. That makes the most sense. If you don't feel comfortable repasting, call Dell and have them send a tech.

The more I try to fight it, the more I find myself wanting to repaste my m15 as well. No idle issues here at all. And I've left it running on purpose while I'm doing other things to see if it ever spikes for no reason. My main concern is that I just want the cpu to run under 90 during gaming. I'm going to try undervolting a little bit more tonight and see what I can get, but I've already ordered some fresh paste for the inevitable. I have a feeling that with these new m15s, the factory pasting went better with the gpu than the cpu. I've seen a few people talk about your fan issue in regards to the cpu.

 

Thanks. I hope it is a simple fix as this laptop rocks!!

The gpu is solid on temps. Havent sseen above 75 and at idle sub 40s without issues.

Oh well, sometime you have to work to get to the diamonds

 

This is interesting:
https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware/Coffee-Lake-temperature-concerns/td-p/7251354
https://www.dell.com/support/articl...ing-a-high-temperature-overheat-issue?lang=en

Basically, Dell is saying temps of 100 degrees are acceptable. Now, Intel is the one that actually makes these specs and Dell is just reiterating. So can't really blame Dell for this. However, I'm still going to shoot for better thermals. But it's good to know mine is within spec

 

Haven't tested the battery yet. But will try in a few weeks.

Have just undervolted CPU and am running Prime95. Happy so far.

 

I will definitely be repasting soon. My cpu is thermal throttling again. I got the undervolt all the way to -150mV to get thermal thottling to stop again. Ran some benchmarks and then got BSOD during time spy

EDIT: on the plus side, my gpu is hitting a max of 69 degrees while drawing 100W

 

I've got a little bit of light leak on my 4k screen. I'd rather not send it back to Dell to replace and hope for a better one.

Does anyone know if there are any guides for fixing it similar to this one for the 17R4 or 15R3? http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-17r4-15r3-panel-light-bleed-issue-fix.798918/

 

New Alienware M15 with a 240hz display and an i9-8950HK CPU =

 

Practically useless, high refresh @ 1080p is CPU bottlenecked and the current i7 can't even be cooled properly.

League of legends barely keeps 144 hz (around 120 fps more consistently) with a 1070 Max q (@ 30% gpu usage)

Apex legends hovers around 90- 120

I think it would be better if they stick to 120hz for all laptop screens and adopt higher resolution displays instead.

QHD @ 120hz @ 15.6" would be a REALLY nice sweet spot. RTX cards shine with higher resolution @ higher refresh since it's gpu limited.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Good point if the laptop barely is able to cool the 8750H then I guess it can in no way cool the 8950HK as well

 

Unless you have superhero eyes, you'll just be burning power for the warm glow of knowing it's in 4k on a 15" screen. I'm all for having enough grunt to push high frame rates on a big external display but on phones and laptops it seems pointless to me - just a stats war to sell stuff...

 

Opened up my m15 and found that sure enough there were air gaps in the paste on the cpu. Pretty easy to see in these pictures:

 

so how much does repasting help in terms of temps?

 

You can see they used too much paste and it pumped out.

 

It depends on your ambient and Dell started adding fake ambient temps starting from 15r4 and later revisions which throttle based on ambient temps. Pure stock, at 80-85C you'll see clocks dropping suddenly under load (happens to both) along with mild battery drain. For general usage, you can get away with decent performance and battery life of 4-5hrs. I can suggest only i7 8750H and GTX/RTX x060 GPUs and higher models with HK and Max Q are simply not worth it.
I couldn't even get some BIOS limits to shut off for example on heavy usage/stressing of CPU/GPU you might hear only one fan spinning at max and at the same time CPU spikes to abnormal 90C's and drop to 800MHz until GPU load is lowered. Maybe Dell fixed that with firmware update, I don't know for sure. Usually the very first few BIOS will have no restrictions and down the line they add more things to counter the thermals. You can see @Papusan posts or try DPTF tweaks from @6.|THE|1|BOSS|.9 which reports slightly lower TDP and can bypass TDP throttle when DPTF and disable power limits in TS are used.

 

I have an i7 with 1070 Max q. With a good repaste that I did, gpu maxes out at 69 C Max on full load and CPU with undervolt and capped at 3.6 GHz on all cores I get an average temp of 80 C with occasional spikes to 95 C on 1 core (probably uneven heatsink)

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Here's the results after my first repaste. Either heatsink is uneven or I messed up with the paste, I'll find out which soon. Before repasting, I was getting about 97 with undervolting. This is with the new paste without undervolting (same ambient temp):

 

Well, I'm hoping its the heatsink, but worried its something else. I repasted and got similar results. Here's what it looked like when I took it apart after the first repaste:



It looks like maybe I could have had more paste towards that one side, so I made sure it got coverage on the second repaste, but here's the results of second repaste:

 

Can you show your RTX GPU temperatures by scrolling down your HWinfo screen? One behavior I am seeing with non m15 laptop is heat sink saturation by the GPU. At stock, my 1060 is dumping 90 watts maximum for a maximum temp of 88 degrees. Underclocking the GPU by 200 mHz, I was able to halt my thermal throttling. Undervolting the CPU along with possibly disabling turbo boost are some options you can consider.

 

This is with the same repaste, but with performance mode on and a laptop cooler running Time Spy:



And here's the gpu. Before the repaste, I was getting a max of 74 degrees, 69 with the laptop cooler:

 

Honestly if you prop up the back of the laptop the temps will lower without having a cooler underneath

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You might want to try undervolting/underclocking the GPU via MSI afterburner. The voltage is what is driving up heat load. Try locking the GPU voltage at a frequency you still feel you get good performance. Doing so, I realized a 20 degree drop in max GPU wattage. I also noted a lower heat sink saturation.

 

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All the other temps I posted are with it propped up.

 

I have my CPU undervolted to -150mv on throttlestop with clock speeds capped at 3.6 GHz all cores. Since I have a Max q gpu, the max voltage is 812 mv on it vs normal gpu that can go up to 1200mv. I recommend a gpu undervolt could possibly lower the temps greatly. You have a 2060 correct?

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I have a 2070mq as well. I undervolted before the repaste, -150mV resulted in BSOD after 20 - 30 minutes of use so I backed it down to -140mV before setting everything back to default to compare stock paste to Mastergel Maker Nano.

 

I consider anything more than -80mV of an undervolt unstable. Might work for a while and even pass some stress tests but eventually, out of the blue, you'd get a BSOD.

On my MSI GT75 Titan with an i9-8950HK, anything more than -30mV works for a while then I'd leave the computer for a while, come back and it would've restarted on its own. The more you undervolt, the less stable your machine is.

 

If you are undervolting or over clocking, what you can get away with will be entirely dependent on your actual chip and the temps its operating at. That's why rules of thumb don't really work - you've just got to try and find something yourself.

 

That's true as well. On my previous 6700K in my old Clevo P870DM3 I was able to undervolt by -100mV and it was 100% stable but on this 8950HK it needs more voltage so anything below -20mV is not 100% stable.

One would have to try and see what works for him but still IMO -150mV is way too much of an undervolt and one would have to look at other methods to lowering the temps than just purely relying on undervolting such as applying better thermal paste.

 

Can anyone lift their m15 up and press in the middle of the bottom casing? Mine has some give and makes a little clicking noise as the plastic bends inward a bit. This is with barely any pressure, like you’re pressing a button or something.

Thanks!

 

Hello, I want to buy a m15 but I can not decide between the RTX 2070 MaxQ or RTX 2060. Which one performing better with a FullHD Display?

 

Does anyone know where i can get certain part numbers?

I need the dual copper plate for the NVME hard drives and the 90 watt battery. Any ideas?

Called Dell only to be transferred 20 times and them saying they don't have the part for a 6 cell hard drive.... SMH in frustration.

 

My recommendation is to go for the 2060, it has similar performance to 1070 Max q but cheaper and more features. 2070 Max q will get you 5% more performance and "slightly" better thermals. But you can always undervolt the 2060.

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Use their chat support. Regarding the full plate, I had to be persistent and answer their questions to keep moving along. I was told the part wouldn’t fit my computer because I had the larger battery which is false. Then they said I couldn’t get the part because I only bought one drive. They wouldn’t sell it either. Then I copied and pasted the text from their service manual where it tells the customer to contact dell support for the part if adding an after market drive. They finally agreed to send me the part for free.

https://www.dell.com/support/manual...a41682-56a2-4fd4-b6fb-d14a19c57aad&lang=en-us


Honestly just start with the quotes from the service manual. More than anything it just seemed like they don’t know what they’re talking about and are reading from prompts.

 

You mean 2070 MaxQ right? The 2060 has a higher power consumption?

 

2070 Max q> 2060 >= 1070 Max q

2070 Max q is about 5%-7% more performance than 2060

2060 is similar in performance to 1070 Max q and sometimes has 5% more performance than 1070 Max q in modern titles

2060 is the go to card for 1080p @ 144hz
2070 will do the job well but costs $400 more for only 5% more performance and less power consumption/heat output.

If you are on a budget and want to save money don't don't care for RTX, 1070 Max q versions will be going on sale constantly all year.

If you want RTX and maybe DLSS (DLSS is mostly useless cause it is mostly enabled @ 4k or higher resolutions on most games unless you want to plug in an external monitor) then go for 2060

I don't particularly recommend the 2070 Max q cause you aren't getting THAT big of a performance boost and those $400 could be spent on other peripherals, bigger SSD 1 TB NVME drive or even the Alienware graphic amplifier.

Honestly the 144hz 1080p screen is mostly CPU bottlenecked anyways! So you would be happy with any of these cards in my opinion.

TLDR
Budget = 1070 Max q when on sale
Balanced = 2060 is good performance per dollar
Money baller = 2070, spend that $400 for the extra 5%-7% performance Improvement with better thermals and power consumption.


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I'm getting much better than 5% better performance out of my 2070mq. Not to mention I've found many of the games I like to play use more than 6gb of vram. Also, there are more raytracing options with the 2070 if that's important to you.

 

Here's the video with some benchmarks vs 1070 and 1070 Max q. 2060 is closer to 1070 than 1070 Max q


I'm not saying it's a bad investment to get a 2070 Max q, I'm just saying that if you are interested in modern titles that are more optimized for Turing, go for it.

But the 2070 Max q doesn't fair well in some titles vs a full fledge laptop gpu that isn't power limited as much.

Also, for 1080p gaming at 144hz, the 2060 seems to offer a way better value proposition if you only plan on only using the laptop display. For external monitors or higher resolutions I think the 2070 makes more sense since it has more cuda cores.

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I saw that video a couple of weeks ago after I had placed the order for my m15. I cancelled that order in favor of a system with a full RTX 2080. The cost-penalty (difference between the m15 with 2070MQ and a P870TM-R with 2080) was negligible. I would have been using my m15 as a desktop replacement connected to my external 1440p monitor while at home. While on travel, the m15 would have been sufficient for my needs while 1080p gaming.

 

Anyone triend undervolting with afterburner on 2060/2070? On my 1070 flatline on 1750MHz (800mv) works great with 13C less during load and around 30% less powerusage with same fps cap (75C to 62C max). Performance is down 5-10% with this setting, but if you have thermal throttling a flatline curve might give same or better performance for some

 

I saw that video when it came out and didn't like how they use one 2070mq laptop to be an example for all 2070mq's. First off, they used the Gigabyte Aero which has consistently been the poorest performing laptop when it comes to max-q. They used the 80w variant and I don't think they know how to fully utilize the gpu anyway. Here are some results from notebookcheck.net, a site that has been able to compare more than one 2070mq. The razer will be closer to the m15 since they use they 90w variant. Notice that huge difference between the aero and the razer compared the 2060 used here, the MSI Stealth:




But lets look at a real world use, here's a Witcher 3 comparison by the same site:


Here you can see an even bigger difference in performance.

 

Again, the difference between 2070 Max q and 2060 is within 10% according to most of those screenshots even if you take the razerblade into account for Witcher 3. I don't really recommend basing the decision to buy only on benchmarks as many YouTubers have mentioned before that benchmarks aren't always indicative of real world performance.

Witcher 3 is also a Nvidia optimized title so it's not surprising the Gap is bigger between 2070 Max q and 2060. However there are other games that aren't as optimized from the video mentioned above that show that not all games will get that Gap.

Again I'm not saying 2070 isn't worth it for some but it's not worth it for most people for $400 more.

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I would like to see what evidence you have that shows the 2070mq is only within a 10% increase in performance over the 2060.

The other point of those screenshots was to show the difference between the gigabyte aero (which more than one site are jumping the gun saying 2070mq isn't that good are using) and something like a razer blade.