*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

For those that have the Nebula Red option. Has anyone noticed any issues with the soft touch finish being easily scuffed or scratched, or visible wear from normal use?

 

The amazing thing about MP510 (apart from the performance to price) is the quoted reliability. Don't remember exactly but something in the region of 3700 TBW for the 2TB variant. 3x more than Samsung. Looks like this is the SATA SSD killer I was looking for, thanks @Aivxtla!

Just to mention the obvious, higher capacity drives tend to have better sequential performance, I guess that's the effect @propeldragon was referring to (e.g. comparing a 2TB HP drive at the price of 1TB Samsung EVO 970).

Anyway, I'm supposed to get it tomorrow - will post some feedback.

 

Actually most manufacturers are rightfully pretty conservative when giving out “warrantied TBW” numbers. The MP500 also reserves more space for factory default overprovisioning than most drives that’s why they rate a higher endurance and same reason the drive is listed as 1920 Gigabytes rather than 2000 Gigabytes even though it has a full 2048 Gibibytes (not a typo) of flash.

Funny thing is Samsung did update the warrantied TBW for some of its drives a while back, months after release to be more competitive and I believe HP did the same with the EX950.

 

Well, let's compare (over-)provisioning with good old Sammy. My "1TB" 970 EVO Plus has 930GB available. Of course, they don't market the drive as 930GB! Anyway, the rest is completely invisible, so they "factory overprovision" 94GB, or roughly 9% of the drive. Yet, Samsung Magician has the bloody cheek to recommend another 10% of user overprovisioning, I suppose to minimise their losses on warranty claims. I ignored the recommendation on the basis that the drive is lightly used and nowhere near full capacity anyway.

For this, I assume honestly marketed, 1920GB MP510, looks like they factory provision 128GB, or just 6% and still claim much higher reliability. Both drives come with a 5 year warranty too.

 

It's actually close to 1788 Gibibytes formatted as Windows reports, (1920 GB is in Gigabytes that companies use for marketing purposes) on the MP500, so 250+ Gibibytes of factory OP, that's why it maintains performance even in full drive conditions similar to the higher priced 970 EVO which has less OP but a better controller, so things even out. Companies use the difference between Gigabyte to Gibibyte conversion as the minimum OP (~7%) and on 1920 GB drives OP is actually like (~13%), not a big loss considering you get good performance and endurance.

With NAND oversupply and lower priced drives using good quality Toshiba/Micron NAND these days, even Sammy's being forced to drop prices.

Update us on if you manage to get cooling under the drive in the M15, some really thin copper sinks with wraparounds might just fit in the gap between the PCB and drive.

 

Somehow I didn't quite realize storage manufacturers and Apple use the "new" IEC units. Bizarre shenanigans. Still, doesn't seem like manufacturers actually report the true underlying physical drive size and default overprovisioning? Corsair doesn't seem to be:

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categ...ries-MP510/p/CSSD-F1920GBMP510#tab-tech-specs

How do you know the 1920 "GB" MP510 actually has 1920 GiB (2060 "GB") underlying storage? Still in this case the factory OP would be 7%, I'm not sure how you arrived at the 13% number, unless you are saying that the underlying storage size is something like 2000 or 2048 GiB - but would that be anything more than a guess?

Anyway, I guess we'll have to wait for that Sammy price drop in the UK. For the moment it's 2TB MP510 £260, 2TB 860 EVO £311 (SATA, lol), 2TB 970 EVO Plus £443

 

So a 1000 GB (Gibibytes) TLC drive has 931.6 Gigabytes of user space with 92.4 Gibibytes of OP. 1920 Gigabyte drives do actually also have 2048 Gibibytes of space so 1788 (Gibibytes) -2048 (Gibibytes) gives you 260 GB of OP which is 12.6% of 2048 Gibibytes.

There are even for example some enterprise drives that are 800 Gigabytes advertised (With 1024 Gibibytes of actual space) so over 20% OP.

The 970 PRO for example advertises 1024 Gigabytes (24 GB more than TLC drives) so ~954 Gibibytes of actual user space after the default OP. This is probably because MLC drives have higher endurance and don’t need to reserve extra space for a minimum SLC cache as they don’t need it.

Pretty much every drive review I’ve seen with details of internals have shown that they use standard 128/256/512/1024/2048 Gibibytes of flash with varying degrees of default OP, the MP500 is using 2048 Gibibytes of NAND Flash. Only on rare occasions will you see deviations from this. Some manufacturers have dedicated sites to explains this.

Here is a review of the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro which practically uses the same internals as the MP500. As you can see in that table they show the actual and user NAND capacity in the specifications section. The 1920 has 2048 GB.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mydigitalssd-bpx-pro-nvme-ssd,5830.html

Here’s an explanation on OP from Seagate:, including factory default, scroll about 1/3 way down for the table:
https://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/

Apple for one, uses the Gigabyte notation for reporting space unlike Windows which uses Gibibytes so if you are on an Apple laptop one might believe they see almost the "full space".

Companies make things very convoluted lol, I’m not sure if I explained stuff well enough.

 

I personally don't fill my ssds past 75% regardless.

 

Thanks, I get it. but the confusion is immense - even the Tomshardware review claims the underlying storage is 2048GB where they should have stated 2048 GiB to be correct and avoiding confusion.

https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/corsair-force-mp510-ssd,review-34591.html

Anyway, the drive is in - at this point, it is indeed cooler than the 1TB 970 Evo Plus (38C vs 47/58C at 26C ambient).

Any thoughts on the optimal allocation unit size for this drive?

Will post benchmark results after I update the firmware and format it.

 

Leave it at default allocation size.

 

Hey guys, any current Alienware M15/M17 owners encountering issues with BF5 and Fallout 4? My M17 encountered a Blue Screen whilst playing BF5 but my temperatures were below 90 Degrees Celsius, and now it won't even open. For my Fallout 4, it would open and run for a few minutes but then it would suddenly exit back to desktop without any warning or error messages. I am also encountering problems with my RGB lighting wherein it won't DIM in the Command Center, but when I lower the brightness of the RGB, it would blink and flash rather badly. I am hoping that this is just a software issue, currently trying to resolve my problem with HIDevolution, maybe someone else have encountered the same issues.

I do not have any problems running my other games (World of Warships, Black Ops 1, COH2), and my RGB is stable when I place it at max intensity.

 

Yep, the default is 4KB (pardon me, 4KiB lol). Firmware was up to date actually.

AS SSD at 1GB:



Which is barely worse than my 1TB 970 EVO Plus



In terms of temps (at 26C ambient), the benchmark barely moved the needle, in contrast to the Samsung:



So far a fabulous SSD - many thanks again, @Aivxtla!

 

If you love to tweak the crap out of stornvme driver use MSI util v2 to increase queue value of stornvme from 65 to same value as of Samsung NVMe driver. I'm using 2047 (Max is 2048). It did net me an increase of 20-40MB in write speed on PM951 280MB/s to 320MB/s.

 

Which Nvidia driver and Intel drivers were you using?

 

Currently, I am using NVIDIA Driver version 25.21.14.1749. I did update my driver previously using the NVIDIA GForce Experience Program, but I was informed that Alienware uses it's own proprietary drivers so, I rolled back the update and I am now waiting for current driver updates from DELL.

Current CPU driver is 10/0/18362.113. I did also update my Windows recently. My AW command center is all wonky at this time. I am hoping that these are just minor software issues and not some major faults in my hardware. It is performing fine in some of my games and the temps are quite manageable.

 

Definitely use the drivers in GE Force experience.

 

Okay, I managed to get Fallout 4 working again after I reinstalled it, but yeah, I would still need to continue to test my system. I would wait for HID to get back to me, hopefully in a few days to get their input on my situation. I have also undervolted my system by 100 mV and pegged my CPU to boost only up to 3.6 using throttlestop, it BSOD when I ran it at around 150mV.. oh wells...

 

I think part of the problem might be caused by Nvi GFE telemetry and background streaming. Tried any slimmed driver or any repacks w/o GFE? You can use NvSlimmer or similar.

 

I would verify this with the folks over at HID. I have also managed to get my FO4 up and running and it is able to maintain the max refresh rate of the game at 1080p Medium/High settings, which is amazing. And the highest temperature I got was around 86 Degrees Celsius, which I find to be very impressive. So far so good, hopefully these are just minor software glitches, I would hate to have this laptop sent back, it is performing quite well all things considered.

 

Okay, I spoke too soon. Encountered another Blue screen, "Driver_Power_State_Failure" unfortunately whilst playing FO4. All my other games seem to be performing fine, only BF5 and Fallout 4 seems to have issues atm.

 

I remember seeing that BSOD type unfortunately. Have you seen Video_TDR_Failure as well? Which GPU have you got? Have you done any OCing?
Try clean installing the latest Nvidia driver (I'm on 430.39) using DDU... you should have zero BSODs after that.

 

Funny you should mention that one, yeah, I have also encountered the "VIDEO TDR Failure" and something which mentions this, "nvlddmkm"

I have the RTX2060 which has been factory overclocked, I have not done any overclocking myself since that would risk voiding my warranty, I have done some undervolting with the guidance from the folks over at HID.

Will try, although I believe me and HID have done that method during a session a few days back. I would have to wait till they come back online on Monday PST.

On a side note, when it came to configuring my settings for the first time with Fallout 4, the game have given me LOW settings on all, like it failed to detect my GPU. Although my system detects it no problem and when I do run FO4 on Medium to High graphics on 1080p, I have no problems maintaining the maximum refresh rate of the game.

 

Sorry to be delivering the bad news, but it looks very similar to my DOA GPU. You need to get the mobo replaced. Don't make my mistake and waste a week trying to sort it out on your own. I've had zero BSODs since the replacement.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/new-m15-2070-max-q-video_tdr_failure.828310/

 

Now that is so not good, considering I would need to have this shipped back to HIDevolution in the US and then they would send it back to me in the Philippines, problem is the Bureau of Customs in my nation would give me a VERY hard time with this, since the BOC in my country always look at every opportunity to grab money from the people.

Hopefully this would not be the case, cause this unit has been good so far, despite the glitches, I mean the screen is by far the best I have ever used and the thermals seem alright. And I do not have any problems with my other games, such as Black Ops 1, World of Warships, COH1 and COH 2, as well as World of Tanks.

 

Well, read through my agonizing recount in that thread. Sometimes the laptop would work and I devised a bunch of coping strategies and workarounds which seemed to improve uptime and gave me false hope, but then I managed to isolate specific ways to reproducibly cause those BSODs - see if they work for you.

How long have you had the notebook? Have you noticed any crashes after unboxing? For me it was very evident something's wrong since unboxing (BSODs from the start). Of course, I was hoping it would just end up being driver glitches. Nope, straight up faulty mobo / GPU. Remember, the normal state is zero BSODs.

 

For me, it only occurs on Fallout 4 and BF5. Right now, I could not even open my BF5, and currently, I am still stress testing my Fallout 4. I just updated my system using the Alienware Update APP, and I immediately noticed I was getting worse thermals. It appears the latest update pushes so much Watts into my CPU or something, previously it did not even reach 85 Degrees, now it reaches 90 Degrees and I am not even actively playing, just idling around in Fallout 4 in one of my settlements.

All my other games ran fine however, such as World of Warships, Black Ops 1, etc. I have not encountered any issues with those games, just with FO4 and BF5.

I have only had it for less than a week, and when I first booted up, it all ran perfectly. Even played BF5 without any issues, that is until it all went flop. I updated my Windows, and my NVIDIA drivers and then my AWCC and my RGB backlights went wonky. Oh wells.. my memory is terrible so yeah.. can't really go into full details on the updates I made. So I contacted HID, who then rolled back the NVIDIA updates to what is provided only from the DELL website... uninstalled GeForce Experience.. updated Windows, and the BIOS, etc.

 

Does it look like this? My brand new oled 2060 m15 has been in the repair center for almost two weeks now

 

Sorry to hear. I vaguely remember seeing that one too, although VIDEO_TDR_Failure and VIDEO_SCHEDULER_INTERNAL_ERROR, and something to do with DPC watchdog were most common.
Affected drivers included: nvlddmkm.sys, watchdog.sys and dxgkrnl.sys.

 

Oh yes, I also encountered the watchdog. That is when I undervolted to 150mV. After rolling back to 100mV, it did not appear since.

 

The DPC watchdog BSODs had nothing to do with CPU UV. It's just a Windows mechanism which kicks in when e. g. a driver stops responding.

Try running Cinebench 2.0 on an external monitor. It was crashing every time for me. Also, while there seemed to be some (unfortunately naive) hope on AC power, things would get much worse in battery. XCOM2 wouldn't start at all for instance. With your symptoms I would try a clean windows install with latest Dell drivers and the aforementioned Nvidia driver (should take 1h). A single Nvidia BSOD after that on stock clock/voltage settings just RMA/return or you will suffer living with a lemon for what? Years? What if it gets worse?

 

Returning with added shipping cost will be too much.

 

Are you @Flying Endeavor 's accountant? Why on Earth are you advising him/her to keep a clearly malfunctioning notebook, when you had been advising me to return mine in practically the same situation? What kind of false economy is that?

I remember myself being in the same situation, and struggling to come to terms with the annoying reality. Sure, it's unfair, sure it will cost more to return/replace the laptop upfront but does one really want to keep a faulty machine and pay the huge cost in terms of time, money, frustration, and possibly a total failure of the lemon over the coming years?

 

Its not false economy but HID only covers one way shipping and the amount can be close to 600-800$ for shipping back and forth in the worst case scenario. Not a good thing to have on barely a month old PC.
Why I suggested returning for you since you guys have grace period. In my country, there's no grace period or whatever and issues will be solved in warranty only! Then again, there's value of the item, most of them will put a heavy price just by seeing Logo and flashy lights.
EDIT: If HID can ship new mobo or laptop to Flying Endeavor then its okay.

 

Actually, it's a clear example of a false economy. What is the value of a malfunctioning laptop. To me it's negative, whereas the expected value of a returned laptop is purchase price less return cost (which hopefully wouldn't be as nuts as $800).

I'm not sure I understand the last part of your reply. Are you suggesting he/she would be better off pushing the lemon on someone in their country?

 

HIDevolution's Global warranty covers shipping costs both ways.. You need to seriously STOP posting false information! Your credibility is next to 0, you just keep trolling!

 

The prices are fixed by officials after seeing inspecting the product.
I'll put it in another way, my AW Joketop mobo retails around 400-600$ in USA whereas whilst importing to India the cost will add up to 1000-1500$ the cost of new PC which has latest hardwares w/o high specced SSD and RAM.

 

My gosh, that's dailight robbery by the corrupt state! There are 1.3b of you guys? Can't you rise up against the injustice?

 

Oh sorry, My humble Apologies.

 

Actually if you have very deep pockets you can fight for another 5 years and then go pauper. Too many hands and your options are low.

 

Well, it's your country guys, your responsibility (although the Chinese would probably have the resources to help sort the system out for you if you asked nicely).

 

Yeah but its happening very slowly. The situation can help when more people are aware how tech works and sort of internal workings w/o looking at brand Logo especially Apple. When they see Apple logo their eyes glow, even I was in the same boat but I switched my opinion when I got one and it was over-hyped and felt like normal device plus the iFruit logo.

 

Well, I would have to wait for HID to come back online to hopefully find a resolution to my problems. Hopefully it is not as bad as what you've experienced, considering import costs here are murderous and I have already paid the necessary taxes... Unfortunately, the Philippines Bureau Of Customs have such a thing as an AD VALOREM tax which is a tax on goods imported back to the country after being sent out for repairs, even if said goods are under warranty. There is also the issue of storage fees wherein you would have to pay an equivalent for the total amount of time the item is in their storage warehouse for "inspection". And that could accumulate rather quickly.... not to mention they are not really gentle with how they handle goods that pass through them and of course.. things have been known to go "missing" or "lost in the mail" once it passes through them.

I trust HIDevolution would be able to find a solution and hopefully steer me clear and away from the PH Bureau of Customs. >.> They do not call the Bureau of Customs among the most corrupt organizations in the Philippine Government for nothing, and my country is already placed badly in the International corruption index... so RIP. If I have to send it back, then so be it.. hopefully I get a properly functioning unit this time... but I am sure I would be in severely hot water with the Bureau of Customs because I might have to pay the full equivalent of the taxes especially if they have to replace the whole unit.

 

Sorry to hear about this state of affairs in PH. If it is the mobo, perhaps they could send you one - it's quite easy to replace.

 

Hello!
People with OLED screens, do you have any problem with your luminosity?
When I start the computer it always starts at max luminosity even is it was at minimum when I turned it off. It does the same thing when it was sleeping and I wake it up. And sometimes when the screen was turned off due to inactivity. I have to hit the FN-F9 or FN-F10 key to have it back to the desired luminosity.

Same thing if the laptop is on the battery and I put the battery saver slider to the far left, the screen will light up at max luminosity when it is supposed to be the best battery mode. If I put the luminosity way down, slide the slider to the middle then left again, the screen will go back to max luminosity.

Am I the only one? I contacted Dell support. They took control of the computer, updated the drivers, fiddled in the options but it didn't change anything. They didn't seem to be aware of the issue or know what to do about it.

Thank you!

 

I think it's a windows bug.

 

It happens on Win 10 v1903 too. Max brightness on startup even on battery.

 

say hello to the new m15. Gone with the old, in with the new. it's sorry to hear but AW keeps losing themselves more and more with every machine they release. This honestly looks like an outdated DELL workstation IMHO and AW "worked" toghether with $hintel while if they where a brand for the gamers they would've strike an deal with AMD like ACER with their upcoming full AMD line-up (no word if it's LGA or BGA).

 

The new m15 looks like a fail. Only 76WHr battery, seriously?

https://www.computerbase.de/2019-05/dell-alienware-m15-m17-2019/

 

Not only that, but also the ram is soldered! This has to be the nail in the coffin (if you ask me) soldering parts was only done on the ultrabook type laptops, now that Dell want's a piece of that pie, you'll see more of this macbook type anti consumer practices. I can't call AW AW anymore.. they lost all of their credibility..

 

Soldered RAM? As a happy user of CL14 HyperX Impact I politely say "FU Dell, thank you".

I want a proper full fat AW 15 back with 99WHr battery and superior cooling!