*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

After today's security news it appears that getting the 9880H CPU and disabling HT might be a good strategy

 

Are you talking about ZombieLoad discovered by Bit Defender?

There was a big security patch in the recent BIOS 1.5.2 - looks like it could be for that?

"Firmware updates to address security advisory INTEL-SA-00185 (CVE-2018-12188 CVE-2018-12190 CVE-2018-12191 CVE-2018-12192 CVE-2018-12199 CVE-2018-12198 CVE-2018-12200 CVE-2018-12187 CVE-2018-12196 CVE-2018-12185).
- Firmware updates to address security advisories INTEL-SA-00191(CVE-2018-12201, CVE-2018- 12202, CVE-2018-12203, CVE-2018-12205)."

Why do you think disabling HT would have an impact on security?

 

BTW Had a good LOL about 9880H in the m15:

"The 4.8 GHz can only be reached using the " Thermal Velocity Boost" which allows one core to boost to 4.8 GHz (+200 MHz) as long as the CPU temperature is ***below 50°C.***"

 

The problem is there are no detailed specs for those panels (such as PWM freq)
If we had a model number we could maybe find out more.

Anyone with the OLED model that can provide that info?
Also maybe post a video of the screen at low brightness, possibly in slowmo?
That'd be very useful

 

Why are you so worried about the pwm frequency? Isn't this only noticeable when dimming the screen or vice-versa? The pwm frequency should be equal or greater than 240hz.

 

According to the IEEE recommendations for LED lighting, that frequency is just borderline and might have a negative impact on health. If I can avoid a potential risk, I would like to.
https://www.dial.de/en/blog/article/ieee-1789-a-new-standard-for-evaluating-flickering-leds/

 

Those panels are insanely bright and should be operated at 30% tops under normal indoor conditions, which exacerbates any PWM issues. At 240Hz PWM and 30% brightness it would flicker like one of those mid XX century TV sets. Safe PWM frequencies start at 3kHz.

 

The article confirms what I read elsewhere:
"It is strongly recommended that LEDs should be operated above 3 kHz because at this frequency no evidence has been found of any effects on humans."

 

Precisely.

 

50c?!?! The m15 freakin idles at over 50c.

 

Well, mine idles at 35C (23C ambient), but 50C under full load would be difficult indeed Basically, what Thermal Velocity Boost will achieve is overclock the CPU when it's doing very little work, or for a second or so when it's starting to do some real work - that's it. 4.8GHz looks good in marketing materials though.

 

BTW Disabling HT doesn't affect idle temps, but temps under load go down significantly (13C) - around 59C in CB20. On the other hand, the boost provided by HT in CB20 is around 47%, therefore a 6 core CPU with HT performs like one with 8.8 cores. HTH

 

ok guys, HWinfo says about OLED dispay in my m15 with 2060:
SAMSUNG [Unknown Model: SDCA029]
156WR04 [DELL P/N: 0HHFM]

I tried to measure flickering without any device ment for it, just by camera moving with shutter speed known and thin vertical line with different brightness settings. My conclusion is that even on 70% brightness there were none flickering observed / only thickened line/ on 40% there was line dividing into 8 lines so with my camera shutter at 1/33s it could be around 260 Hz, but only at realy low brightness.
So it looks like at the higher brightness settings there is no flickering as for PWM.

as for link about flickering, thank you, good reading.
Well there are some serious health threats with these, but all this seems widder than it is. If you are concern about health and what could harm your health you have to take in acount also things like TVs, Lamps, all kind of lights and lightings, not just OLED, LED. Also all kinds of microwaves starting from bluetooth /as for wireless headsets which are so popular nowadays - airpods itself have some serious claims against about harming brain tissue/. Games themselfs have always warnings about epilepic and health dangers even nowadays after CRT era. So ok, if OLED are bad, it should be fixed, but than ... what about TVs ,even LED TVs, cell phones, lights, waves, everything, ...electric smog,...than you realize you take all or nothing, cause saying we limit one but let other 100 unhealthy things in our lives is not ok as well.

 

Thanks for the info!
At what brightness level do those lines appear? I think 40% is still a bit high for evening/low-lights usage...The Alienware 13 uses 240hz at brightness <=100% so I'm starting to believe they will behave the same...I doubt they're using a hybrid DC-PWM solution like Samsung does on some Desktop monitors, but who knows

 

Dont know the breakpoint for that, I just tested 3 values 100% , 70% and 40%, but let me tell you... 40% is realy low for this panel, the colors dont corespond to true likening, 100% is realy strong, 80-60% are ok , not disturbing. I have TV with 1500 nits and comparing to that its a lot lower

I think we have to wait for the review of this oled from notebookcheck, they have precise display tests including PWM so all this is just my amateur opinion

 

Light intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance to source therefore direct comparison between laptop screens and TVs is meaningless, unless you usually sit 3 metres from your laptop. I guess it would make sense to divide TV luminosity by roughly 15 to get a laptop equivalent luminance, in this case your TVs equivalent luminance is 100nits which makes sense since the optimal is somewhere around 120 nits. At the end of the day, your retinas - your screen brightness setting.

 

ok, no arguing with that, I am just comparing what I can, what I own. I dont think so much about all this brightness, to conclude, you can have the highest brightness possible, if your room is realy bright during the day, even during the night if you have strong lights inside, than it doesnt realy matter.

 

Is it really impossible to get a 8950HK with a RTX 2060? I already have an AMP with a 1080Ti and would like to have the best possible CPU, and on the go the 2060 is more than enough.

 

Yes you can get the 8950HK although you'll be able to get the 8 core 9880H in about a month.

 

Lowering the heat by reducing the threading helps improve clocks, although in something as heat laden as the m15 that "help" will be small. The 9700 with 8 cores and no HT outperforms the 8700K and 8086K when clocked the same. 6+6 is less effective than 8 real cores in a lot of scenarios (not however something like CB, but I don't care much about benching nor video work which likes a lot of cores).

I don't expect to hit 4.8 peak clocks at under 50c. However if 8 cores are max capable of 4.1 and with heat well managed I may well get 8 to 3.9-4.0. That's not desktop speeds but it's not bad.

 

https://www.oled-info.com/pulse-width-modulation-pwm-oled-displays

SDC (Samsung) uses pwm in all its mobile OLED displays, apparently so does LG TV's if the article is correct (they have only camera which they admit is a limited test).

Notebookcheck also keeps a running database of pwm tests at this link
https://www.notebookcheck.net/PWM-Ranking-Notebooks-Smartphones-and-Tablets-with-PWM.163979.0.html

You'll find that notebookcheck found that all iphones which use SDC OLED panels all come in around 240Hz. Which is also what the Alienware 13 came in at, so it's possible that's what the 15.6 OLED panels will be doing. I'm sure notebookcheck will be testing OLED panels from AW, Razer and even HP so you'll probably have testing to verify this in the not too distant future.

But if people found the AW 13 OLED to be "great" in most cases that was using 240 pwm. So you'll have to factor that into "want it"/"don't want it" decisions.

 

On my machine disabling threading has zero impact on clocks. There is no thermal throttling ever, however, keeping temps under 50C under loads is impossible, even LM (unsafe in mobile devices) would probably struggle. Given that the new processors are based on the same architecture, I wonder how much faster they can get in practice given that they have the same power limits.

4.1GHz is a Turbo Boost speed which in that processor will be time limited and locked to something like 30s, and therefore it has little bearing on performance under sustained loads.

The question is: what will be the max clock at full load to the standard TDP of 45W for the new processors and we don't know because Intel doesn't advertise that. It is around 3.1GHz for the 8750H, however, this processor undervolts like a dream so mine runs at 3.6GHz on all cores at 72C. Again, heat is of little concern.

Since the architecture is the same, I think the real performance improvements will be mainly on 1-2 core loads and due to the larger caches, and as such will be limited. Check out Ultra Male's review of the i9-8950HK unlocked processor if you haven't already.

You talk about "real life performance rather than benchmarks". Well, I guess what you are saying is "under smaller loads" and in those scenarios the 9880H will clock higher (again, for example older games only utilising only 1 or 2 cores), but then there is little benefit to having additional cores, and the overall practical difference will be limited in most cases.

 

I'm worried about heavy ownership bias in user reports on the current OLED screens, caused by amazement by some of the features and the inherent difficulty in effectively correlating any issues with the screen.

This is clearly apparent in the Notebookcheck review of the AW13 OLED. They say the screen has "no drawbacks" but then they state:

"A test grey-to-grey was unfortunately not possible, because the fluctuations were too high due to the flickering (around 240 Hz; one of the few drawbacks of the OLED screen)."

LOL. The facts are clear: 240Hz PWM is very low by today's standards and well under the 3kHz recommended minimum PWM frequency and thus very likely unsafe. The 400nits m15 screen should under very few circumstances be used at full brightness, and dimming exacerbates PWM issues.

Adding to that the 4K resolution, I pass with confidence for now.

 

Check out i9-8950HK review by Ultra Male then save your money and get i7-8750H.

 

lets just wait for profesional review of m15s oled and just dont judge berore its clear. It may be bad, it may be good. You pickpoint one thing from many, what about your phone TV, lights, headphones, bluetooth devices, even m15 IPS is not healthy as well - HD or 4K, doesnt matter.

 

I would like to ask something about BIOS, is there anything important before clean install or after for average user to change in BIOS on new m15 or I should leave BIOS intact? And if I am on newer version from stock is there way to move to older version? Thanks

 

"Everything is unhealthy so whatevs". Is this supposed to be your argument? My phone honestly sucks, 1.1kHz PWM - I wasn't aware of that when I was buying, but it's perceptible. At least I'm motivated not to stare at it for too long.

I hope the m15 OLED gets reviewed properly, but not clear how much focus professional reviewers put on health issues, if even guys like Notebookcheck can go like "this thing flickers so much we can't even test it, but yeah, it's great".

What health hazard does the 144Hz IPS pose after calibration to remove the excess blue levels, at a safe brightness setting, and with night mode on please (that I can't mitigate using computer glasses)?

 

I'd disable Express Charge.

 

Where? HidEvolution only has the 8950HK with the 2080, and in the alienware page it is the same. Should I call Dell directly? Do they have options not available in the online shop?

 

Yep I read about the 8950hk quite a bit. And don't think I don't hear you etern4l. And I think I'll let the world get pretty full of OLED screens, knowing that the XPS 15, Razer 15 and HP models are all using the SDC OLED panel, and we should begin to see the compromises show up in people's opinions somewhere. Failing that I'm willing to bring one home and if it fails to live up to the billing, I'll send it back.

And this is particular because to me the choice is down to 15.6 OLED m15 or UHD m17. In a perfect world maybe I'd have the option of 17 OLED, but we'll see. And do also remember that OLED has 1ms transitions (and yes I read your gtg comment above and yep that's a problem if 1ms doesn't cover all the transitions). But that's worlds faster than all the LCD panels available. The color gamut is also good as is the text readability. So let's see how this goes. I don't think it's instant win (as you say there are "issues" that get glossed over) but many of the positives of OLED are things I'm looking for.

As for the new cpu's, let's see. You don't get higher clocks. Noted. But you have undervolted and enhanced your cpu to it's maximum ability. You' have to admit that how well your cpu behaves is better than the out of the box. Certainly that same level of treatment would improve a 9880h (not the hk). And we'll have to see if that proves true in testing.

 

It doesn't always save you (sometimes you are prevented from rolling back) but saving each BIOS update file (they aren't huge) in a directory so you had a path backward would probably be a good idea.

If you are super sensitive to downtime (I'm laughing a bit because darn it who ISNT?) and you don't really badly need what a BIOS update has to offer, you may try waiting a couple of weeks just to see if the web goes crazy over some botched update. It's one thing to rollback an OS update or take an image of your drive before changing software or settings, but BIOS changes are tough to undo if things don't go well.

You will often see people here checking if others have implemented a given bios update before committing to applying it to their own machines.

 

Sounds like a plan. The main things that worry me about OLEDs so far are the PWM and the fact that it's 4K only. I do wonder why only 4K OLEDs are available, even in 13". Surely FHD would be enough in practice for most people and I imagine the display would be more power efficient? Perhaps the weird pixel geometry creates artefacts at lower resolutions? Would also be good to actually see power draw numbers, particularly during display of a white image. I've seen an article where Dell claimed "they learned their AW13 lessons in OLED heat management" suggesting some serious max wattage.

We'll see, that all depends on whether the new CPUs will retain the undervolting capacity of i7-8750H, or (as per your own comment earlier I believe) Intel undervolts out of the box and call this a "Coffee Lake refresh". The underlying technology and power limits are the same, so probably no major miracles until 10nm.

Do you mean the install files? There is no huge need to save them because the full history is available on the website. Trouble is: it's impossible to downgrade the BIOS just by running an older installer (or so I heard, and that was def the case with the AW 15 R2 BIOS updates after Spectre).

 

I'm pretty pleased with my m15 overall. It's very quick, well built, and much more portable than I ever dreamed a gaming laptop would be. I use it for work (building software) in addition to gaming and some video editing.

Being that I use it for work and travel, battery life is important to me and was a consideration in purchasing this particular machine with the 90Whr battery. Sometimes the battery life is excellent and I can get upwards of 7hrs with the screen at 50%, battery saver on and the battery profile selected in throttle stop. I've also undervolted the cpu cache, core and integrated graphics.

Other times the batter life leaves something to be desired and I'm getting around 4-4.5 hrs with the same settings performing the same tasks (browsing, streaming, etc...). I've read that it might be Windows updating in the background, but haven't been able to confirm this.

What gives? Anyone else experiencing the same issue? Is this just a Windows 10 issue or should I contact Dell support

 

I read a comment some ways back where a lower res OLED panel was criticized for "showing some fringing on text characters". Probably since phone resolutions are what their machines are coming from (just building bigger) making the screen 4k was an easy win, and they seemed to have made sure that down res to 1080 is visually very good so people would have, in theory, the best of both worlds. I'm not saying if it is or isn't but it could be the theory.

Moreover, look at who would be willing to pay for OLED panels, people generally not shopping 1080 15.6" screens right? The most likely step up to OLED would be UHD high gamut buyers for whom the OLED appeal would be very strong.

Personally I like the higher resolutions screens. Some do not and it's fine to have both types. But if you are building a panel that you know is going to cost more, you probably build at least your first model or two as one to appeal to buyers spending more.

The world is going to be full of OLED panels in 5 years. They are a lot cheaper to make than they were 5 years ago. Just as 5 years prior to now, LED's themselves were just beginning to be put into everything. Factories were ramping up production of them, just as multiple manufacturers are building OLED factories now (or converting existing to OLED in many cases). That means you will get the 1080 1000Hz super panel someday and that won't be far off.

I was worried this might be true. I just have a built in tendency to backup files that I need and not rely on a web location to keep a record I can always get to. But... if you can't go backward it won't matter.

I forgot all light sources generate heat. LED's have come way down and the methods for controlling them have improved. OLED's in small devices are still improving and engineering still needs to account for heat. That's one of the problem areas with microLED's too - dealing with the heat output increase over regular LED's.

 

Well, I'd think that's wrong

Glad you are happy with your m15. Battery life numbers look good, but can probably be improved. Install BatteryCare to monitor instantaneous power draw and discover what's draining your battery (the W10 battery drain monitoring app is somewhat useful too). Check out my posts on this topic a few pages earlier. Undervolt as much as you can including the Intel GPU (mine is running at -120mV and I'm still looking to push this further). Run in W10 battery saver mode to limit power draw to 20W. Good luck.

LOL I only just realized I've got OLED displays in my Rift. It's not apparent because blacks are not black, and the reason for that is that OLEDs have another issue - a perfect black can only be achieved by powering a LED down, but that's way slower than changing brightness resulting in motion/blur ghosting which was too visible even at 90Hz. It also probably explains most of the headset heat, which is significant. PWM is not an issue because the display operates on a single brightness setting I think - they could do that because of the effectively constant lighting conditions under the headset. While the overall image quality is very good and pleasant, it doesn't appear to be much better than IPS, although surely that's in part due to the much lower effective resolution and it doesn't look like they particularly calibrated the Rift for colour accuracy. I will look at some colour calibration charts next time I'm in VR.

BTW What charge/wear/capacity does your battery show in HWINFO when fully charged and how long have you had the laptop?

 

The oled blacks should be as black as they get if calibrated properly. When oled displays blacks the pixel turns off. Hence why oled can get stuck pixels. Maybe they're using something else.

 

Thanks for the advice.
Capacity is 87.530 Whr. I've had the laptop since the end of March.

 

Credit to Etern4l for thinking to ask this question, but do folks with OLED screens notice a bothersome amount of motion blur when moving a colored object around on a black background? This is a test of black rise response which is a weak area of OLED (all of them) as the fully off (no power) pixel to lit up pixel response time is the slowest response on an OLED panel.

This test is going to be subject to perception, not everyone will notice equally. But since we have several OLED panel users here, perhaps we have at least a small sample set. Should be a large all black background and then some brightly colored object being moved around on the black field.

 

Looks

It's a Samsung OLED. I'm pretty confident the Oculus Rift team led by Carmack configured the display optimally for the experience. The quality bar is much higher than in a 15" 4K display, because the user is looking at magnified image which is supposed to be delivered at an absolutely smooth 90Hz, so it's clear that any artefacts would be much more noticeable.

Thanks. I've been asking Dell why the sold me an 82Whr battery but no reply so far.

 

I have been using a solid black background for 2 weeks now and when I start the computer up I get confused and think, didn't I just turn this on? Lol but anyways. When I have Max brightness moving around the hwinfo windows I get zero color discoloration and it moves smooth and snappy to me.

 

Thanks!

 

That's all I need to know about the practicality / longevity of an OLED notebook display for anything other than watching movies...

BTW It's interesting that Samsung themselves have abandoned OLED TVs on due to burn-in issues.

3:20... incredible.

 

Hello everyone - I have owned my m15 now for a few months and had a real chance to use it in "anger". After an initial false start with an overheating model(Alienware swapped for new one without hesitation), I can honestly say this is a wonder of technology. The first few weeks I became obsessed with temp watching, performance testing, just constantly wondering if I had made a mistake. I mean, it is a lot of money so wanting the right bang for buck ratio, well, testing is a must.

In this I was wrong. watching figures on a screen misses the point with this laptop. AS soon as I stopped monitoring and started playing / using, my feelings changed from doubt to one of wonder. It does not miss a beat. Solid 60fps on ultra in any game on my 1440 wide screen monitor distracts from the buttery smooth graphics that the GPU can push out on the external or 4k internal panel. The processor effortlessly snaps huge RAW images into a pano, my usual phone twitter browse no sooner started before the image is stitched. The keybaord a delight to type on, the weight more than acceptable when carrying in a shoulder bag.

This is a beast in a portable package!!

Is it without issues? Oh god ,no. It is noisy when at full power (fans spinning, cooling needed). It does thermal throttle when under load for longer periods (a re-paste might be in order), and the battery life sucks unless you cut back on the use to a point that it is no more use than a tablet. And dont even think of using on your lap, those fans in the bottom NEED air!! But eyes open, this is a gaming laptop with a high end CPU and GPU, to expect any of the former not to appear would be unrealistic - maybe in 5 years, maybe not. For now, this is a veritable delight to use and one that I hope sits on a stand on my lap or desk for years to come.

 

According to MobileTechReview, m15 OLED has poor colour accuracy of out the box. I wonder is it really hard to calibrate an OLED display using your own colorimeter?

 

i dont especially want to read through 235 pages but can you guys tell me what expected temps for a alienware m15 with i7 8750h with undervolt and kryonaut repaste should be ? ive heard alot of people say that the m15 gets 100c quick and is hard to get below 95 without limiting performance etc like crazy, what have you guys achieved with uv and repasted at once ? i also plan on getting the 2060 version since i heard that that one is cooler than the 1060 ( cooler in both ways ), coming from a blade 15 and no i wont accept answers like prop the device up ..thats a "gettho" fix for me

 

See the tests and temps in my review. You should get slightly lower temps with the 8750H as I had the 8950HK which runs hotter:

Alienware m15 / i9-8950HK Review by Ultra Male

 

Quite a bit of glare on that OLED. The IPS they used in the comparison looks dim - must be the 60Hz variant. The 144Hz is painfully bright and also miscalibrated to be a punchy retina burner. Not too difficult to correct even without any pro equipment though.

Out of the box Turbo Boost will make it hit 100C quickly, but that's relatively unimportant in practice because TB is time limited to 28s in i7-8750H anyway. Undervolting helps a lot, a good cooling pad will shave a further 6-8C off temps under load, repasting works. With all that, temps under full load (CB20) for the i7-8750H CPU are under 80C (max temp under TB 92C), 2070 max-q under full load runs at 65C. The CPU runs much cooler than that in all the games I've tried (60s, low 70Cs). Balanced fan setting, 22C ambient.

Awesome notebook after a bit of tuning.

BTW search function helps.

 

what about the tdp limit ? ive heard that the limit is "unlocked" therefore the cpu tries to get as high as possible resulting in high temps, i would limit it to the 45w i am used to from my old blade, and a cooling pad is also a nogo for me cause i would have to get it along when i want to play on the go

 

CPU TDP is 45W and 90W under TB (although my CPU only consumes around 65W when TBing at 3.9GHz due to the undervolt). It's trivial to disable TB (using ThrottleStop) if you don't want to use it. As per my previous post, temps when playing games should be fine after tuning, even without the pad. There is no heat to speak of on battery, total system power draw is limited to 40W (or 20W in battery saver mode).

Edit: just got curious and ran CB20 without the cooling pad:
1st run: 98C max, 81C average
2nd run: 100C max, 86C average

With the pad the temps are
1st run: 96C max, 78C average
2nd run: 98C max, 81C average

SotTR on max settings without the pad runs at: CPU 81C max / 70C avg, GPU 74C max / 68 avg

Ambient temp is 23C.

In conclusion, TB is going to push the temps pretty high in benchmarks either way, but thermals at 45W (basically the average number in CB20 results) look much better. Gaming temps are fine without a pad. Still def worth using one when the laptop is sitting on the primary desk.

 

tb 90w ? my blade was able to get 4.1 tb on 2 cores and 39 on all cores with only 45w dtp, for hours , why do they need such high tdp to get the tb, ? it wasnt even getting that hot with average 85, and max for split second of 95 if the tdp is limited to 45w, will it be abkle to hold the turbo ? cause it wont get into thermal throttle and throttle below the turbo for all or 2 cores ?

i saw in one video someone saying that limiting to just 45w was enough to bring the temps down alot while still having goot frequencies, ( i cant remember what video that was )