*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

Oh ya, it is always fun to go there unaccompanied by the wife when I don't have to be anywhere. Lots of wandering although I have much more self control than I used to. Lately I have added the networking section to my loop haha, my career is in cyber security and networking - those were not on my radar at all back in college.

 

Order through a person. You can get a discount this way!

 

Lol, I rarely ever get out without the wife or kids. Had to make it a 10 trip inside lol.

I do industrial security, but would eventually like to move to cyber sec. Probably cyber counterintelligence. I do want to setup a small server in my home though. It's on the "One day" bucket list.

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Stock CB i7-8750H on m15:

 

I experienced something similar a few years ago, when I managed to order after a few refreshes they sent me a laptop with wrong (worse) GPU.

 

Book the next flight to Vegas, you will make a fortune!

 

I'm assuming mine is performing well.

I will undervolt next time. That's on a bone stock Dell image. Opened it up, turned it on, ran CB lol

Unboxing done lol

 

guys i have this weird issue on my M15.... my screen freezes sometimes when unit is idle and gaming but I can confirm that the system itself is functioning since the sound when gaming is still on going as a work around though I made a batch file that forces the monitor to turn-off then turn-on again and binded it to a macro key via ACC.... do you have any idea guys what I should check my temps are good while gaming never hit 80C and no undervolting done just turned off turbo boost on CPU and no overclocking on GPU

Thanks

 

Since I updated to the latest BIOS I've had a couple of complete windows hangs IIRC usually after a gaming session, but while the machine is idle. Could be the same issue I guess

 

Anyone tried undervolting RTX Max-Q using MSI Afterburner?

 

Hello. I am interested to return / see again about the thermal performance. If the back is suitably propped up with a large enough air gap, or with a laptop cooling pad.

Specifically I would like to know the soaked in CPU performance during battlefield 5. To make a comparison against the new G7. Since OwnOrDisown recently reviewed the G7 and found that a slight underclock, by capping the frequency to 3.7ghz (instead of 3.9), helped the thermals to stay in control without such large power spikes. As he put it.

And yes - also after doing whatever was your undervolting, repaste, and throttlestop tweaks etc.

It would also be nice to hear comments about the fan noise, while the CPU is stressed. Thank you!

Well i guess that answers my recent question above then. Another thing I forgot to ask was: keyboad temperatures.

Because I have seen a video with an ir camera pointed at the middle 3rd section of it getting above 50c. And that is over quite a large area. I am assuming that would simply be too hot to touch / rest on during gaming.

 

FWIW with 8750+2070 on stock paste mad undervolted and balanced mode the thermals in Shadow of the TR in 4K Ultra + Ray tracing and max. details are absolutely acceptable IMHO: CPU in low 70s, GPU in high 60s/low 70s, the latter under full load. The only occasion CPU shoots up to high eighties/low 90s is in CB20 when Turbo Boost kicks up power over 45W. This seems to be time limited to 30s and I have yet to see this kind of load in a game.

I'm debating whether repaste is even worth the hassle.

 

Use MSI overlay to check if the GPU core and memory clocks are throttled to lower clocks instead of advertised clocks during gameplay at max settings. XPS has this issue and probably M series will have it as well.

 

Yes sir. GPU clock constantly hovers around 1600-1650 under the aforementioned max load. It managed 7450 in Time Spy (with high perf fans, 7350 in balanced).

 

Is it what gpu-z says for boost clocks?

 

Afterburner and HW Info.

 

Because cpu has less work to do at 4k. It reveals nothing whatsoever about the cpu thermal performance. For that you need 1080p, and try to get a balance right with full utilization of both CPU and GPU at the same time.

 

"Reveals nothing" is a bit of a hasty conclusion here. My CPU in the particular game operates at around 17-20W, lowering the resolution changing details to low brought up the framerate but didn't massively increase CPU utilisation (up to 25W). Conclusion: CPU performance is of no major concern in this particular game regardless of one's preferred graphics settings.

I was still curious, so launched Quake Champions in 1280x720 low, uncapped framerate and managed to squeeze low 30s wattage out of the CPU - still comfortable 70Cs. Again, no CPU performance or thermal issues to worry about. The laptop is quite warm to the touch on the surface above the keyboard, just mild warmth noticeable when playing on the built-in keyboard.

I think the main performance-limiting factor in this laptop from the perspective of playing games like those two is GPU TDP. Both 2070 and 2080 are locked at 90W, thus the only marginally better benchmark results for the latter. The situation could be a bit different with open-world games, I don't have any to test apart from Planetside 2 which is very old but was a CPU killer around launch - will give it ago but don't expect much since it's unlikely to push 6 cores far (update: nope, just 30W CPU power).

HTH

 

Ohh.. I always thought 4k pushes the limit of CPU and GPU.

 

Does anyone have OLED panel yet?

 

Hi I have the following problem with my Alienware m15. The S key on the keyboard is not recognized by frequent use. This error occurs irregularly. It may happen that I cannot run backwards in the games (for example CS GO). The error also occurs in Microsoft Word.
Can you give me some tips how to fix this error?

 

Open a support ticket via Support Assist app.

 

I ordered one but it's due to be delivered by 5/1. Lets see if that actually happens.

 

Honestly, I play with it on a cooling pad tilted up my cpu frequency stays at 3.0ghz on all cores, the gpu hits up to 1.6-1.7 ghz depending on the game. I always play with max fans on and temperatures in this environment stay at 60-70 on the cpu and 60-67 on the gpu. I LOVE THE PERFORMANCE with Battlefield V on ultra i'm getting 100-120 fps regularly while staying the coolest i've ever had a thin and light machine. As for the keyboard I have not noticed high heat from the wasd area, but the ijkl portion does get toasty, so as long as you don't play on a left handed set-up it's much more comfortable than a Razer blade 15 which i used to have with the rtx 2070, now that gets warm near your palm and hot to your fingertips. Glad I switched.

 

You can bring that up to 3.5GHz (at -150mV) by undervolting, risk free.

 

It is already undervolted, however the cpu only pulls around 20 watts, i'm not entirely sure why, after looking at own or disowns video by him upping the power adapter that he uses the cpu pulls full watts, i'm assuming it's power limit throttling but the fps numbers are great anyways, so i'm not too concerned.

 

It's not power limit throttling until you hit 45W. I haven't seen more than 32W in a game undervolted. CB20 can fully stress the CPU. Your seeing 3Ghz max CPU freq in a game is strange though - you should see 4.1-3.9 with partial utilisation.

 

Very interesting to hear how will you like it

 

Yeah it appears to be that way after re-downloading throttle stop it goes up to 3.5 ghz, but this is at the expense of 30 degrees C more heat, it hits 90 as a maximum but my fps on battlefield 5 on ultra shot up to 120-144 on average. I'm not sure which direction I should keep it haha, fps numbers are great in both scenarios but temps are amazing when it only hits 3.0 ghz.

 

Are you sure your stable temps shot up by 30C under non-turbo load? I'd bet you just observed a temporary temp spike due to Turbo Boost. Temps at full non-turbo loads should be the same assuming the CPU was running at 45W in both cases. Observe the package power carefully.

 

No I never said the cpu was running at 45 watts, it actually was pulling about 20W at most, now it's pulling closer to 35-40 and staying at 80C average with some spikes to 91, but that's because of the cooler design i'd say as some of the cores only reach a max of 83. That's why I thought it was power limited initially, my first response states the amount of watts the processor was pulling under load, but reinstalling throttlestop caused it to pull the wattage it was supposed to pull. I'm also undervolted -.200

 

What laptop cooling pads are people using and how effective are they?

 

I've got the butterfly shaped one with 4 120mm fans. It lowers the temps a bit (a few C) at the expense of faint noise. Just noticed one of the fans went (after 3.5 years), so I'm eyeing another Chinese one with 5 140mm fans.

 

BTW has anyone else experienced loss of Turbo Boost after the laptop gets woken up from sleep?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-from-sleep-m15-possibly-other-models.828552/

 

I am using the AmazonBasics Ventilated Adjustable Laptop Stand, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WRDS8H0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and get around a five degree drop. I decided against a cooler with fans to avoid the slight additional load on the 180W brick.

 

Fans will hardly use any power and would not steal it from the cpu or gpu, if that was your concern!

 

You are correct that the power draw would be fairly small. This of course would depend on the particular fan and number of fans as well as speed. For example one model made by Cooler Master that has three fans draws roughly 1.2-2.3 W. That is why I described it as a slight additional load.

 

I was amazed by this response so I tested this out and indeed, at least with my old and degraded pad, it looks like raising the rear of the laptop provides the majority of the benefit at load, although there is some very minor cooling effect provided by the pad fans at idle.

Idle (1 min avg)
1. No stand/pad - 47C
2. Raised stand/no fan - 47C
3. Raised stand + 3 out of 4 fans - 45C

CB20
1. No stand/pad - 88C
2. Raised stand/no fan - 82C
3. Raised stand + 3 out of 4 fans - 82C

A bit disappointing - although the top left fan (right underneath the CPU fan) is dead - so that might partially explain the weak fan effect in CPU load test. BTW If you undervolt you should be OK with the 180W brick anyhow - I get 67W max CPU power draw under TB.

 

You can lower the CPU draw to around 45 W if you go into Alienware command center and set the "quiet" profile

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Since the latest BIOS update, it won't actually make the machine silent at idle though

 

I never updated mine to the latest. I don't think quiet mode is really "quiet" mode as much as CPU 45 Watt mode. They should rename the mode tbh. Do the fans turn off at all on balanced?

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As far as I can tell, they never turn off at all in any mode! Hopefully there will be another release that fixes that soonish...

 

They shouldn't turn off as obviously the components need constant cooling, it's not a mobile phone. To be fair, the fans are barely audible at 50%.

 

They're quiet below 50%, but not nearly as silent as my old Macbook at low loads. Then again, those fans were supposed to run all the time. If the CPU is around 40C there really isn't a need for the fan.

 

The fans on my machine, post update to BIOS 1.5.2 are only silent during boot up. Once windows starts my CPU fan never drops below about 63% and my GPU fan 58% - this is quite audible and tedious to me! On previous BIOS versions it was silent and AW CP reported that the fan speeds were a lot lower - I'm not imagining this!

 

With this latest bios update with fans always going, has ne1 noticed if this has helped with thermals a bit overall?

 

Well the fans can't go faster than 100% so in my experience it's just louder when doing very little - I'm still hitting 100C on the CPU with 150mv undervolt and mid 80C on my 1070MQ with a decent overclock on Battlefield V.

 

I've noticed the same thing. After the most recent BIOS update my fans are always on regardless of the profile. I've tried creating custom fan profiles in the Command Center, but it doesn't seem to do much, if anything.

 

Dell has GOT to be one of the dumbest companies in existence. I called today to see if I can get credited for the 15% discount the site is running on my M15 order since it hasn't even shipped yet. The person on the phone said that it would be no problem. They placed me on hold for about 10 mins then came back and told me that my current order is now cancelled so I'm free to order the laptop again with the discount code. I never asked them to cancel my order! The idiot on the phone decided that all on her own. I was livid! I placed that order on April 3rd with a ship date of May 1st. Now I have to order it again and I have no idea when it'll ship now.