*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

Than you will just have to screw it harder ;P The mounting pressure will just spread it. Just try again if temps are not good

 

Welcome to my world, except mine does it all the time, even flat on the desk. Been fighting support over a month now. Additionally when I put it down on a desk back to front, it makes awful grinding noises for a minute or so. They argued "you're using it wrong". I told them no matter what this is going to happen since the fan is only balanced on two sides by screws. You can even see where the fan grinds on the underside of the keyboard. Not to mention my work system is a 2-in-1 and gets moved around (sometimes upside down) all the time and the fan doesn't hit the chassis at all.

Decided I'd go the easier route and just say it's overheating and framerates are dropping, which has also been true this whole time (103C+ package temps). I've been through 4 heatsink replacements and most recently a motherboard. Support still won't proceed with an exchange process, probably because they don't want to try to sell this lemon again.

If you want to minimize the noise mess around with the tightness of the fan screws, I mostly got it to where it doesn't rub anymore. I like the machine, but this one has been a dumpster fire and would be thrilled if they just offered me an Aurora. My old 7577 is more than enough gaming horsepower for the road even if it is kind of a chonker.

 

Where did you order the R46DX heatsink? Does this work with the Alienware m17?

 

Just ordered an R46DX heatsink directly from Dell via chat (in US, https://www.dell.com/en-us/cp/chat-live-with-product-expert, select Chat: for Home). Cost was $10.

Be advised you need to provide your own M2x3 screws (X2).

During chat the sales rep will confirm the part is made for your laptop, they will ask for your Service Tag.

 

Ordered directly from Dell. @DrewN is right. You'll need your own M2x3 screws. I just bought a screw set for laptops off of Amazon.

 

I want to share some extra info about repadding/repasting the m15. After etern4l commented about his pads being 2mm, and thinking that maybe I made I mistake while measuring mine, I removed the heatsink and checked how much pressure was being applied on the Fujipoly pads. I found that everything just had very shallow marks from the chips except the pad cooling the VRMs close to the CPU, those had marks from some much smaller chips that are just over them, but I thought, "well, it was like that in the original pads from Dell, they should be fine".

Fast forward a week and temperatures here have been going up, and I don't know why, I decided to run some benchmarks again. I run Cinebench R20 and temperatures were all over the place: half of the cores around 80C and the other half between 90C and 95C. I didn't like it. I suppose that I moved the pads a bit and make the situation worse. My cores have been always around 10C apart but this was too much. The fact that half of the cores were running much hotter made me think that maybe the heatsink was not making good contact with one half of the cpu, maybe because Fujipoly is less compressible than the standard pads Dell put initially?

When I removed the heatsink I found that the top part of the CPU had more paste on it than the lower part. Bingo!

I made sure that all pads had the same shallow marks, to do so I cut small holes in the pad over the VRMs so it avoids the little components that were marking it badly. After doing so, my temperatures are even better, with around 28C ambient, max temperatures for all cores are between 81C and 85C. The difference is huge, first run of Cinebench R20 gave me 3135, and I kept getting between 3130 and 3138 for several runs.

So, if you are using a not very compressible pad (like the Fujipoly XR-m) make sure that the marks that you get on them are very shallow, and if your cores temperatures are not close, is probably because your pads have the wrong thickness.

 

Nice idea with the cut-outs. Presumably those little components (capacitors?) don't need extra cooling anyway?

 

Yes, I would say that they are tantalum capacitors, maybe 0402 or even smaller, I didn't pay much attention, but I'm pretty sure that if they are oiverheating, you have bigger poroblems

 

What Power limit and fan speed were you using?

 

I've tried both balanced and performance, but it didn't matter much. I'm using ThrottleStop in my performance profile that uses Speedshift 0

 

Does anyone here have the new m2 oled version ?

 

Someone got the i9 2080 4K OLED in Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/cfb54j/alienware_m15_2019_white_lunar_i9_rtx2080_maxq/

The cinebench results are too bad, something may be wrong there.

 

I have an i7 8750h with 1070 Max q and 144hz display. Do you guys think it's worth buying a refurbished i9 8th gen with 2080 Max q and 240hz display ? I hate the new soldered design....

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

LOL, 7300 TimeSpy.

 

Not sure about refurb or the 240Hz panel, otherwise good spec particularly if you are willing to take the LM route.

 

Man that white sure does look pretty, if it weren't for some comically bad decisions by Dell I'd have returned my r1 for sure. It's really hard to understand why they did what they did, the r2 is neither significantly thinner, smaller or lighter than the r1 yet it has a flipped motherboard, soldered ram and WiFi card(to make it worse it's a 2 year old card without Bluetooth 5.0 too). The Asus zephyrus line which has soldered ram too atleast gives you one open slot and it's significantly thinner, smaller and lighter than the r2. The MSI GS line which has a flipped motherboard is also the thinnest gaming laptop you can buy. Although razer somehow managed to make an thin and light without compromising upgradability, atleast the MSI and Asus ones are somewhat justifying their lack of/difficulty in upgradability with something. I find it hard to understand the m15 r2 though, it's a whopping .04in slimmer and 0.03 lb lighter, it's actually deeper by .1in and only slighter smaller in width(.11in). Dell seriously wants us to believe that it was necessary to solder the ram and WiFi card and flip the MoBo just to shave off a few decimal points in dimensions and weight. This is planned obsolescence at its finest. Fully expecting a 15in version of the area 51m to be released within the next year for the "enthusiasts" cause m15r2 is gonna get it's ass kicked by the competition which is better in every way imaginable, bet it'll be a whole lot more expensive too. But boy the m15 r2 sure looks pretty doesn't it.

 

On top of that, going by posts in A51M forums, the lunar white chassis is prone to discoloration. A very experienced user recommends using an external keyboard and pad. Epic, scratch that, legendary fail.

 

Who exactly is this laptop for? The thin and light crowd would never go for this over a Aero, Zephyrus, MSI or a Blade 15 which are all thinner, lighter and just better. If they're going for those who want power and performance without having to lug a giant around it's still not a good option cause you'd rather get something which doesn't sacrifice on upgradeability, laptops like the Asus ROG Strix/Scar are not much thicker or heavier and offer a no compromise machine with full power non max q cards. If this laptop was from any other manufacturer it would be DoA but since it's Alienware they'll still sell them cause it's probably the only gaming laptop manufacturer which has brand recognition amongst those who don't know anything about computer hardware. My biggest fear right now is that my m15 r1 has some catastrophic failure in the warranty period and dell sends me the new one as a replacement, lol

 

Damn not going to lie, that machine looks amazing. Kinda sad that I didn't know that they were going to come with such a laptop.
Would gladly swap my Area 51M for such a machine.

 

lol

 

People that will buy Alienware because it is an Alienware.

 

Anyone have a problem with dust getting stuck in the faux grill above the keyboard? How do you guys clean it out. My laptop is about 6 weeks old and I already have quite a few specks of dust stuck in there.

 

ehehe got that! i use a soaked microfiber cloth to clean it of (first world problems)

 

The wifi is a daughterboard. They could adjust the design to an M2 slot pretty easily. Ram, that's an issue but if they at least offered 32Gb as an option probably that'd be a start. Frankly at the rate the 51m's die off, and they do, you have to ask yourself just how much you want the additional power for the risks. As for the "ancient" wifi card they are using, it really seems like an internal hardware change is imminent. The M15 best models only come in white. Now the white might be a nice color but that seems strange. Using a several year old wifi card with BT 4.2? That's odd too. No offering of 32Gb, even though chips exist to give 32? Again, odd. And there is no 4K panel for the M17r2. I suspect that is limited the same way the 51m is limited in that no one makes a panel that fits. But for the 51m we are told one is forthcoming. If it is the same chassis parameters that same panel would go with the M17r2 as well.

I have a feeling the guts of this current machine are a first revision. Outdated parts, but new CPU's and a lot of restricted formats and colors (not a full range available). I'm of the mind that some of these elements are due to change, fairly soon and they only have a limited run of these available right now. For example why would they have gone with the 9th gen mobile chips and not updated to the AX200? We'll see in a few months if this changes or this has been moved to be the "Walmart" version of a gaming pc, cookie cutter guts with a flashy case delivered to every box store in existence.

 

Hi, I'm having issues with the brightness control. It is not working, and I've tried all the many options I've found googling for it without success. Could anybody that has it working export the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}

And send it to me? Thanks!

 

Hello,

maybe I have a problem with battery draw. My battery lasts about 2 hours. When I got the notebook the battery lasts 4 - 5 hours. With the battery bar program I see an consumption of around 30Wh. I think this is to much. Taskmanager says 1-5 % workload at 1-2 Ghz. HWmonitor says that the CPU draws about 10 Watt. I think this is normal. (lowest brightness Wifi on/Bluetooth of).

What is not normal is the Nvidia graphics card. When I start Msi Afterburner, the grafics card turns on and off the whole time. This is my first optimus notebook, is this behaviour normal?

Maybe somone knows if this is normal, or what the problem is?

 

My m15 does not seem to be going to sleep as it should, I close the hinge and the laptop goes to sleep but for the last few days whenever I get back home from work I've noticed the fan is on and sometimes the battery has drained to under 5% and the laptop has shutdown. I'm on bios 1.4.1 any ideas what's waking it up?

 

I've noticed this behavior when any of the following is true
1. MSI afterburner is running (seems to be constantly polling gpu)
2. Alienware command center is open (constantly polls gpu)
3. Check Nvidia control panel to make sure programs like chrome use integrated gpu vs Nvidia gpu

I eventually found some windows process had Nvidia gpu selected for it's process. Had to add it to Nvidia control panel and make sure integrated Intel was selected.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Use TaskScheduler to kill Afterburner when laptop goes on battery, and start it when AC power is back.

Use TS to set Speedshift to 180-196. Can also disable Turbo.
I once managed to get total system draw to 8W, but nowadays it's 13-20W on the latest BIOS.

 

Just FYI, the RTX 2060 and the GTX 1080 TI (in the AMP) work together without problems to give me a total 43594 LuxMarks when running on both NVIDIA plus the Intel 630.

 

Would sacrificing the easily upgradable Area 51m for a smaller machine with soldered components besides the 2 m.2 drives and a flipped motherboard so repasting means a complete disassembly of the laptop really be worth it? If those were the only two choices I'd go the Area 51m every time.

 

I'd go for the original m15 honestly and hope for a good Black Friday sale on it. Area51m might be too heavy for many

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Yeah atleast the 15 r1 you can swap out components. Right now I'm really hoping no else follows in Dapples. . .I mean Dells lead and start soldering everything to the motherboards. Making such expensive laptops basically disposable is really a future we don't need. Just get a gym membership and pump some iron. At one point DTR use to be bigger and heavier. lol. But, yeah lugging that around in a backpack all the time would be kinda terrible. Though I've talked to a few members that do do it.

 

I think the one thing I'm disappointed in is that we won't get to see any ryzen or zen core processors in the Alienware m15 r1. The mobile gpu on ryzen are better than the uhd 630 and support freesync. Imagine having freesync AND Optimus on these laptops with a 2080 Max q? It's such a great thought I wish they would embrace. I guess the only downside is no thunderbolt 3 support with AMD processors but that might change next year since Intel is making it part of USB 4.0 and royalty free

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

I mentioned this in the Area 51m forum that since Frank Azor is going to AMD there is hope we might see that kind of thing in the future if we tweet him our interest. With his connections to Dell/Alienware he'd be a good middle man to get that rolling. Plenty of us would be excited for a socketed AMD Area 51m like laptop. So if that happened the mobile chips would follow.

Freesync would be nice since you wouldn't have to pay the premium for it. And no thunderbolt 3 I think on an Alienware is less of an issue since they have the graphics amp. Plus their port selection is normally good on their machines. So I'd take that sacrifice if it ment getting s Ryzen cpu in a laptop.

 

No TB3 hubs and no CUDA? Eek. Don't mind them offering an AMD alternative but should only do so in addition to the Intel option.Anyway, we digress quite wildly

 

Anything connected to the TB3 port? That will prevent sleep.

Another thing to try is setting sleep state to S3 mode (not OS controlled) in BIOS.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I think they should do something like the zephyrus g, AMD CPU with Nvidia gpu

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

I have a similar sleep issue and have had it through multiple bios releases.

 

I perfectly understand where you are coming from, but in my use case, it's a different story.
I don't care about biodegradability, I buy a new laptop every 3/4 years. I don't like doing a repaste, I don't like doing a disassembly in general at all. I like portability, I like efficiency. The performance per Watt you get is higher on the m15 in comparison to area 51M.
But I cannot deny that the area 51M is simply a superior machine with the only compromises: Size, weight, more enegry consumption which also means more heat.
E.g. I don't like gaming on the area 51M in these hot weathers as the components create insane heat. And until I'm ready to buy my own house, I cannot put a damn air conditioner in this house I'm in currently.

But Perhaps it's better like this with the 51M, as I barely move it around, and I still have my AW 13 r3 that I use as my work laptop, which I use whenever I need protability, and I don't think an m15 would be able to run my 144Hz 1440p monitor as good as the area 51M does.

 

If you have the AW13R3 and pretend to keep it, why not the AMP + 1080Ti or similar? I had this configuration connected to two 144Hz 1440p monitors, an the AW13R3 was more than capable to play anything at 144Hz 1440p. I moved to the m15 r1 because I needed more internal storage and because the 13" screen was a bit small for my needs while on the go.

 

How did your Phobya repastes go guys? With a bit of luck I'll get to do mine this weekend. BTW People in the 51M forums are pretty much unanimous: this paste is so thick it needs to be spread.

 

I was actually about to post a question about this, I ordered the phobya nanogrease instead of the ic diamond after reading so many positive things about it on here. It's gonna get here on Friday and I'll do the repaste this weekend I was thinking line method for gpu and maybe the x method for the CPU. If anyone has spread manually how have your results been? Isn't it harder with thicker pastes as there's a higher chance for air bubbles?

 

I have better results on my Area51m with the phobya nanogrease than the Kryonaut I was using. Just my experience.

 

Cool, TFS. What application method did you use with Phobya?

 

I spread this out using the included tool.

So I was about to purchase this laptop mainly for a more portable version of my Area51m, and then I've been reading that the ram and wifi are soldered on board? It is the RAM I'm concerned about. So 16GB is all you can get out of this thing?

 

Thank you.

Only the R2 variant suffers from this limitation (and a couple others).

 

So, in the end I gave up trying to get the 9750h and I'm now testing an m15r1 with 8750h with prime95.
No undervolting, no repasting (yet). It runs at 3.3ghz pretty stable, then goes to 3.0-3.1 for a few minutes, then 3.3ghz again. Temps are about 92+/-3 on all cores, except one which is at 95+. Is that the expected freq and temp range with about 28deg ambient temp? I think notebookcheck was showing 3.4ghz at 80+/-2deg... I used performance power profile and latest drivers/bios

 

Don't use prime95 muhh and don't even remember the numbers without undervolting. It's the immediate thing to do and you will see significant improvement.

 

P95 is the one you can find most temp readings on, I am fully aware it is not a realistic usecase. Just want to check how bad the paste job is on this unit, or even the heatsink, which they probably slightly tweak when they release new hw configs