*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

Whr / W = hours of run time- there's no magic unfortunately, and beefy CPUs and GPUs are power hungry...

 

Digits it is you with digits yt channel and m15 review/unboxing?

 

Guys, finally there is solution for all this thermal throttling

 

No - sorry, not me!

 

I was getting 29XX. Change the process affinity in task manager for CB from "Normal" to "Realtime" and score should increase.

My laptop was completely stock, only a undervolt.

 

OK guys, so the SSD cooling problem has a super-simple solution. I tried playing around with that 3mm "slim" heatsink - no way it would fit without touching the external chasis and causing PCB flex. So, I just put 0.5mm Arctic pad on the bottom, and some no-name 1mm pad which came with the heatsink on top (wasn't sure if it's going to work at all, so didn't want to waste better pads), and secured the pads using thermal adhesive tape.

Lo and behold, max temp1 during SSD stress test 53C, temp 3 68C (not sure what temp1 and temp2 are referring to). Problem solved.

 

Haha, nice little hack - 2900, 100 more than usual.

 

at -170mV I get a 2950 CB20 score but the temps are still really high (max temp 97, 97, 85, 97, 93, 95, 92) average in the high 80s low 90s
So the CB20 score is increasing, less thermal throttling but still high temps. Are these temps normal with the undervolt?

at -175mV it freezes as soon as I log in. I don't have time to change it back. Didn't know what to do so I did a factory reset...

 

Temps are a tad high, but kind of expected at this stage, you are no longer hitting 100C. Good cooling pad will bring the average temps down by 8C (for now you can just raise the rear of the laptop for a 5C improvement).

What are you using to undervolt? TS I hope? Whatever it is you should be able to boot in safe mode and disable automatic startup . Obvious lesson here is to not set it on auto until you've finished stability testing.

 

Yes TS. Indeed, next time I'll wait until everything is stable before creating the task!

I did one test with the back raised and got a lower CB20 score (probably just a bad run)

 

You can just enable/disable the task as well.

What about the the average temp though? Should have gone down.

 

Got a black screen at -160 so I think I'll leave it at -155 even if 2 cores reached 100 during CB20.
On idle I'm at mid 40s to low 50s.

 

I haven't noticed any option to prevent burn-in. Though from what I read it will probably never happen with normal usage. I'll probably hide the task bar to be safe.

 

Just got my 2080 m15, CPU is the worse out of the bunch (4th laptop exchange...) hitting 90’s just using the browser, word, etc. launching a game instantly hits 99 and throttles.

Trying quiet mode, but it won’t boost in quiet mode. On all my previous ones, it would still boost in quiet mode. I wonder if this was a recent bios update or if it’s another issue..

So disappointing. I’ll try repasting, but it should at least be able to handle simple tasks out of the box without that amount of heat.

 

I'd leave it at -150mV MAX to keep stability.

 

Sounds you've completed step 1 (for completeness' sake, you can also undervolt the GPU but it's more tricky - would leave for later), temps are roughly in the expected ballpark. Onwards!

 

Sorry to hear. I would expect 2080 to run just a bit hotter, mainly on idle (same TDP after all), but your temps sound ridiculous (assuming ambient 22C).
Follow the 3 steps: undervolt, good pad, repaste.

 

There is no magic.number and undervolting is inherently safe and protective. - 160mV is rock solid for me, someone else boasted - 200, but say Ultra Male claimed - 125 was the limit for his unit.

 

Not sure if this is quite the same, but remember a big scare about burn-in on plasma screens. Had one such TV for several years, sometimes left static images on overnight, rock solid - no discernible permanent burn-in.

You shouldn't have to hide the taskbar on your laptop screen - in fact I would test if for burn in and if there is anything permanent or hugely distracting, just return the laptop and get a usable screen type instead.

 

I don't own any recent games so I tried playing the Shadow of the tomb raider demo to test the card. It crashes non stop, even if I close throttlestop. I updated the drivers, removed the steam overlay, put it at 1080 and even then I get an error message saying that there might be a problem with the screen drivers or that the system isn't powerful enough to run the settings. A 2060 should run 1080 at ultra without any problem. Did anyone with an oled screen run into problems running games? I get 5 fps in the menu at 1080 before the crash...Could it be that the 2060 isn't kicking in?

Edit: Problem was the nvidia overlay. Once I disabled it the game started running fine.

 

Where'd you disable it from?

 

GeForce Experience. Yoo know that well known bloatware which follows the driver package

 

I wrote about this earlier: SOTTR demo is a bit buggy. I've seen the 5fps thing, and disabling Exclusive Full screen solved the issue for me. The message about insufficient resources is a bit worrying, as it was one of the symptoms of my bricked RTX. Have you had any nvidia dll related bluescreens at all? I can't relate to Geforce Experience issues, since I played it safe and refrained from installing it. It comes pre-installed on the factory build though, so you might want to get rid of it.

Anyway keep an eye - you should be getting zero graphics driver crashes.

 

No bluescreen, just game crashes or computer freezes but nothing since I removed the overlay.

Just talked with dell technical support to show them stocked temps and battery wear (9%)(was trying to get a new battery and maybe a repaste as someone on the forum got new heatpipes and paste). Obviously for them these are normal temps and battery wear in HWMonitor means nothing. So I guess I have to decide if I'm keeping it or going with something that has better cooling (whatever laptop that is). Obviously if I keep it I'll do a clean Windows install. So hard trying to find the right laptop. Getting portability and a bit of performance while keeping the cost reasonable.

Thanks a lot for your help etern4l!

 

@Skolar
Cool, although still slightly suspect. Are you on the latest drivers from Nvidia?

I'm actually not sure about this HWINFO Wear Level reading, the tech could be right. When I got the machine, it showed 5.x%, now it's showing 8.9% wear after over a month of use mostly plugged in so I know for a fact that there has been hardly any actual wear:



The battery in my old AW 15 R2 lasted for over 3.5 years with heavy almost daily battery use.
I'm not sure your're going to find anything in this class with better cooling, screen, form factor, build, easy access to internals (hello Razer, Gigabyte and MSI), support and with AGA as an option obviously

Just to motivate, my web browsing temps:





You know the steps

 

Will they instead trust Windows own tools for checking the battery wear? Or is this tools also worth nothing for them? https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/generate-battery-report-windows-10

 

I'm kind of new to the world of laptop. Always had a desktop so I'm not used to have to got to these lengths to get good temps!

I also notice that the screen is sometime flickering. Might be normal with an oled, no idea. I've noticed small random fluctuations and sometimes it would go back to full luminosity. The leftmost option while on battery (optimal battery autonomy) also puts the screen back to full brightness for some reason.

 

I'd say that HWMonitor was spot on!

 

Yeah, software like Hwmonitor etc is based on Windows own implemented tools. So this didn't come as a surprise But maybe for Dell (tech) support?

 

Well, how does Windows know what battery capacity a given voltage level corresponds to? When I go to ePSA (Dell Diagnostics) it shows:
Battery charge: 96%, health : Excellent, voltage: same as HWINFO. So there is an issue somewhere, as ideally Windows would see the same charge as Dell diagnostics, i.e. around 86WHr.

I'm not too worried about it. The m15 was out last year and I don't recall any serious battery complaints here (as opposed to constant noise at the time AW 15R2 came out - mostly related to Express Charge, and it turns out it had a fantastic battery).

 

Just to put these questions in concerns in perspective, a guy just reported his new Area 51M burst in flames and apparently it's not just him

 

I'm testing the battery presently at about 1/3 brigthness while web browsing, listening to YouTube videos and coding. I have not optimized everything for battery conservation. I'm at 50% after 1h44. That would make the battery last about 3.5h.

 

I mean it's kind of hard to do testing this way because web browsing can be quite intensive due all this JavaScript stuff running. Unless you're just typing away in vim, coding can also be fairly to super CPU intensive. I'm looking for some standard battery tests. PC Mark maybe?

 

So the battery was at 8% after 3h of coding in nano over a putty ssh connection while listening to music on Youtube and reading forums. So really close to what my normal usage will be (though I will use an IDE if possible)

But I'll look into standard battery tests.

 

Something is definitely messed up with this Windows battery life reporting:

powercfg /batteryreport /output MYFOLDER\mybatteryreport.html

It shows full charge capacity as 81990, but current charge as 84910



The report also gives a bunch of historical battery life estimates which for me range from 2h to 9h...

I think the battery needs to be cycled to recalibrate Windows.

 

Hi Skolar! Thanks for your feedback regarding the OLED screen.

I’m waiting for m15 to come with 9th CPU option and I’m really interested in OLED screen. However, I’m concerned about the OLED burn in, flickering and screen degradation because I always keep my laptop for about 4 years cycle (or more).

Currently I believe there is only one OLED panel supplier (Samsung?) for 15.4” laptops. I assumed both Alienware and Razer are using the same panel. In this video (from 4:49), I can see the OLED screen was flickering in the Razer Blazer 15.

 

240Hz next big thing according to Razer... Looking forward to a further Razer laptop with a 960Hz screen refresh rate, so I can better utilise my Mk IV 5kHz Ocular Implants.

 

I also heard that Samsung is the only supplier for these panels but I might be wrong.
The flickering I'm experiencing is nowhere near as bad as in the video. It is not a rapid sequence of flickers but just one flicker once in a while. I haven't noticed any in the last couple of hours.

 

and from speculation, the 240Hz panel will only come from Sharp.

Also interesting that Dell is now listed the IPS UHD option as 500-nits 100% Adobe color gamut. I wonder if this a new panel?
Previously, it was IPS UHD with 400-nits 100% sRGB.

 

Really weird, activating the battery saving mode (the left most option on the battery) cranks the screen brightness to maximum even if the box "lower screen brigthness while in battery saving" is checked in the options. Does your m15 do the same thing?

So when I hit 20% battery the battery saving mode activates and the screen brightness raises to maximum level...

 

I’ve noticed the slight flicker here and there too. I got the laptop repasted through microcenter and 91 is the warmest it gets on one core with a 3.2ghz -127mv undervolt. Far cry from 99 on all cores and thermal throttle with same settings. My gpu is sitting at 86c when gaming on the 2060 is this safe long term? My blade 15 had much better temps all around and maxed at 78c

 

OLED's on the AW13 were Samsung too - not many reports of those having issues (a few but they sold in pretty good quantities) and these panels are newer more advanced models. I mean it's easy to go to a local store and see any of several different types of high Hz or 4K screens on different laptops to know just how attached you may or may not be to OLED. Samsung will be putting out panels in 13.3, 14 and 15.6 so I think they are pretty confident they can keep problems at bay. I guess only your eyes can decide if the quality is worth it but with OLED you get HDR, even better than "high gamut" LCD color range, no backlight bleed and pretty much perfect contrast.

 

My conversation after commenting on the Frank Azor twitter page

 

Their twitter support is pathetic. They told me I had to send it into a facility to fix my overheating, I told them I wanted an exchange and they finally said they’ll send a tech. They also had to replace the screen. I made sure the parts were not back ordered and they said a tech would be out the following week. Oh look at that, I check the status and there is a thing saying back order with no eta... I tweet frank a bunch and he finally says I can message him and real rep calls me.

That rep tells me the twitter tech had schedule a straight up full rebuild essentially of my laptop. They were going to replace the mobo, GPU, cpu, network card, etc. he was shocked and said I would definitely get way more issues if I allowed this. He offers me an exchange and upgrades me to the 2080 from 2070. Just got that machine and it’s worse than the last! Throttles right when I start playing, touch pad double clicks along the bottom, crazy. I emailed him and will see what he says Monday. This is ridiculous they can’t even make sure exchanges at the highest level don’t suck. Ridiculous.

 

TOTAL BS. Absolutely furious with this. I’m sorry for your situation as well

 

GPU temp is very high after that repaste. What compound did they use? Did they repad? What's the ambient temp? My 2070 is at 65-67C under full load (which is way better than what Blade 15 users report - they are happy with temps in the 80Cs). I'm using a cooling pad, but obviously that doesn't explain all the difference. Sounds like the microcenter messed up. Bear in mind the m15 is very simple to repaste compared to say the AW 17.

 

Thanks for the response. I’ll give them a call and see what’s up. I thought that was pretty high. They used IC Diamond!

 

Its a Win 10 bug present on v1809 and also present on v1903. On battery brightness is 100%

 

I'm on 1809 and no such issue. Hopefully just an OLED teething quirk.

 

MSFT calls this a feature on 1903 aka Spring Update 2k19 where screen luminosity uses previously used values and doesn't change unless user changes them.