*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

I've been testing a Lenovo P1 (8750h) at the same time as m15. Idle freqs P1: 3.9-4.0ghz, idle temps: 50+/-2. Idle freqs m15: 3.8-3.9, idle temps: 60+/-2. That is after the p95 stresstest, so both devices were overheated and then were given the time to cool down until temps stopped going down and reached the bottom. Ambient temp probably 30-32deg. A bit disappointed, honestly. The only problem with the P1 is that even though the fan is quieter than m15 (even under load), it's got an annoying high pitch jet engine sounds.

 

Idle temps tend to be very unstable. You have a great degree of control over idle clocks using Throttle Stop's Speedshift. I would focus on performance in benchmarks.

 

Not sure why SpeedShift would make a difference in this case? The freqs were stable, it's just that m15 could not seem to be able to dissipate the heat when cpu util is about 0, while p1 seemed to be able to do a better job. The temps were not oscillating

 

If you remove the "grill" sticker from the bottom, it makes the noise much much better (at least it did on the X1E).

 

thanks, yeah I read about that, but I'm afraid I can't try or I won't be able to return the p1 if I end up choosing to keep the m15 thanks anyway

 

You suggested that the Lenovo managed higher clock speeds, which Speedshift could address.

I'm not convinced you (or anyone else) could manage to equalise the load exactly in what you call "idle state" . What about performance under full load, which is reproducible?

 

the slightly lower freqs should have been an advantage for the m15, if anything. Regarding idle state, I am not sure you can justify 10deg difference when there isn't any considerable difference in the system load shown by task manager and the likes... That said, I also did the p95 test, both laptops at the same time, but the Lenovo behaved so differently that it's not easy to compare the two. Don't have the data with me atm, but I will be happy to share the results once I am done testing I need to check if one can disable the automatic PL adjustments using ThrottleStop, it doesn't seem to be possible using xtu, as its settings still get overwritten during the stresstest

What is the minimum discharge rate that you guys see in hwinfo64 with all programs closed? I can't get it to discharge slower than (-)25W, which would mean depleting the battery in less than 4h..wifi is enabled, brightness is at the minimum level. I disabled a lot of devices from the device manager too: nvidia, bluetooth, ethernet, webcam... And I'm on Quiet profile, so the cpu freqs are mostly 800mhz and hwinfo shows about 2.5-3.0W of Total System Power.

EDIT:
Ok, it turns out not all the updates were installed.
After upgrading to BIOS 2.1.1 and installing the remaining driver updates, the discharge rate on idle is now 9-10W.
I guess the previous drivers/bios were incorrectly handling low power states of CPU/GPU

 

That's pretty good.

 

The solution for my very fast battery discharge was a problem with the grapfhics driver. I deinstalled the drivers (Intel and Nvidia) in safe mode with DDU, then I reinstalled the drivers. Now I have a discharge rate from 8 to 15 Watt. (in comparison before: 30 - 35 Watt).

 

TFS. Which drivers did you install?

 

How is possible that he gets 45~50C with a 8-cores i9-9980HK while getting ~85C in the 2080 maxQ? Is he locking the game to just one ore two cores and disabling HT and undervolting and repasting? I cannot believe that he gets those temperatures out of the box. If they are doing that kind of stuff in the name of marketing I won't buy Alienware again.

 

I mean it could be the fact that this game is very GPU intensive (especially with rtx on) and might not be as CPU intensive. It could also be that with their additional voltage regulators and possibly changed how they up and down clock the CPU frequencies more efficiently based on the workload.

TBH I don't think they are smart enough to pin a game to 1 or 2 cores. For all we know he might have covered the vent for the GPU fan somehow or something to as we didn't even see the laptop in view.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

I had this issue in some games, and using inspectre to remove spectre protection fixed this.

 

Who on Earth would trust their internal reviews / benchmarking?

 

Intel: latest from Intel homepage
Nvidia: latest form Geforce Experience

 

Hi did anyone succeed in ordering the original 2 x SSD heatsink partnumber: R46DX, i also heard that it comes without screws, does anyone know what screws are needed?

For information the single SSD partnumber is: 0910J

 

I ordered a few weeks ago through the online chat, no problem at all. Just gave the part number and my laptop service tag. Got it for around $10 with free shipping. Took around 3 days to arrive. You need 2 M2x3 screws, highly recommend you to get something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GE9V55E/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

It cost me 10$ plus 15$ shipping (yeah 15$ shipping for a 10$ part) in Canada . For the screws they were cheaper on ebay. Got 50 for like 5$.

 

Yeah ordered a set just like it on miniinthebox.
Thanks for your reply, did you notice any difference in the Temps on the ssd's?

 

Hey did you receive your phobya nanogrease yet? I got it on Saturday but didn't get time to repaste this weekend and will probably end up doing it tomorrow night. Gonna go with manual application first to see how it works out, let me know if you've already repasted what were the results post repaste

 

Sorry, I've been swamped. Would like to tackle this by the end of the week though, fingers crossed. Let me know how it goes. I read nothing but glowing reviews of Phobya, so should be smooth sailing.

 

Hey, is 180W powersupply sufficient for this with i9-8950HK and 2080 RTX?
I have a spare one from my 13 R3. Or do I have to get a damn expensive extra one .

 

Might be enough for an undervolted system (cpu 60W, GPU 100W) without any power hungry external devices connected via USB, and with some very frugal storage configuration, but it would be close. Two 970 EVO Plus drives alone might eat up those remaining 20W.

 

OK ordered one via Ebay, hoping it will do the job then, and I can sell the 180W with the prices Dell want for a powersupply it's, almost gold
Thanks friend

 

I have an issue with my m15 r1 (8750h + 1070 max q) and I am wondering if any of you guys have been experiencing this issue.

First of all I run riva statistics tuner to pretty much give me the frame time while I am in game for games like league of legends and overwatch. No matter what settings I have, the frame time has a small blip of inconsistant frame and sometimes randomly in game, I get this huge spike of losing frames, it only lasts for 1 second and doesn't come back for another 30 seconds or more. I have undervolted both the GPU and CPU, tried disabling the undervolts on both (keeping temps reasonably under 80 C on CPU with carbonaut) and I can't for the life of me understand why it happens. Times like these I wish these laptops had G-sync, I would get the alienware 51m but it's just too heavy for me. Anyone have any idea what it could be? Also I cannot get consistent 144 fps on league of legends and I can only get consistent frames at 90 fps and even then sometimes there'll be a spike of frame loss. hw64 says temps are fine, nothing is overheating, I even tried disabling turbo but obviously the fps tanks. If I cap the fps at 60 or 72 the frames are 100% consistent but there will still be those occasional spikes of frame loss every so often.

 

Just received this refurbished system, and I cannot connect on the gigabit Lan port? Wth.

Is the ethernet internal on the motherboard? What is the ethernet controller called in device manager? Can one of you with a working one post a screenshot? So I can check if this is a missing driver issue.

When i plug the ethernet into my 13 R3 it runs right away.

*sigh*

 

It's called Killer Ethernet something. If you go to the Dell drivers page you will get more details. Safe bet it's on the mobo.

 

You will probably kill the battery before time. 180w psu ain’t enough.

You haven’t temp sensors on VRMs etc. Check pads.

 

Oh no... Don't tell me... T_T anyone have a diagram of the vrms? Anyone have the suggested sizes for each? I remember I scraped some of the pads to try to even out the heatsink...

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

I’m on my small phone. Look into the +2015 Alienware sub forum or search for uneven heatsink/TRIPOD etc. Im sure you’ll find something which will help you. Or open up and measure the gaps.

 

Can anyone reach 'Package C8' state? (you can check with hwinfo).

I can see the Lenovo P1 is mostly on Package C8 whenever it can (mostly when idle with screen off) while on the m15 I can only get as low as Package C3.
Max powersaving settings, default Windows install, latest drivers and BIOS.

The P1 goes as low as 0.6W Cpu Power at 1ghz 0.8V.
The m15 can't seem to be able to go below 1.5W at 799Mhz 0.68V.
Lower voltage, lower freqs, I'd expect the m15 to consume less, but since the cores can't reach the deeper power saving states, it ends up consuming more.

I'm hoping it's just some software not letting the CPU go into deep sleep, ant not some BIOS config we have no control over

 

Your right, I just tried gaming with this system on the 240W PSU shipped with it, and it started draining the battery right away, after 10 mins it was down 20% and the system charging. Im going to return this to seller. As im sure thats not supposed to happen, the system should be able to carry itself. and have "room to spare" for USB accessories. could be a defective PSU, but im not taking any chances.

 

If it’s a Delta ot Flextronic psu they are quality and rearly fail. But the Delta brand is the best of them.

 

Just tried plugging headphones for the first time. The computer detects the headphones but the sound does not switch to them unless I reboot the computer with the headphones already plugged in. Anyone else has that problem or knows how to solve it?
Thanks!
(I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Realtek drivers)

 

Did you try selecting your headphones from the speaker icon in the system tray?

 

That's unexpected with the 240W PSU period, the prior discussion was regarding the 180W PSU.

Did you run ePSA pre-boot test? What did it have to say about the PSU?

 

When I plug them I get a prompt asking to confirm that it is a headset. But I can't select them from the speaker icon in the system tray. I only see Speaker/Headphones (Realtek(R) Audio). Seems to be the same choice for both.

But if I reboot the laptop with the headphones already plugged in it works. If I remove them and replug them, they don't work.

edit: Found a workaround. When I get the confirmation prompt instead of clicking ok if I click on the right arrow to move the notifications to the control center the sound is transfered to the headphones.

 

Mine gets here on Monday. I'll test it.

 

Anyone running Linux on the m15/17?

 

Bump! I would also like to know if it's possible to install linux mint on this machine without too many hiccups!

 

Also - quick question, is it possible to turn off turbo in the UEFI BIOS like the Dell XPS machines?

 

The wifi didn't work on Ubuntu 1904 or 1804. Ethernet worked. I had to set nvme to ahci instead of raid (this will break windows, but it will be on if you set out back). I used clonezilla to backup the factory image before first boot.

I need to test the head phone jack tomorrow, then I can attempt an install.

I see mint mentioned. That would be the same as 1804 effectively. Any other distro requests? I don't have time for arch or gentoo.

 

I successfully installed ubuntu 16.04 and PopOs 18.04. No problem in neither of them. If you don't need the 16.04 for some work related reason like me, I'd suggest you PopOs because the nvidia-prime switch works like a charm (so you can switch from igpu to dgpu) while on ubuntu is broken and you're stuck with the nvidia card (leading to high temperature and very bad batter life (max 2h).

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk

 

Did you get Killer WiFi to work, or did you order the m15 with Intel WiFi?

BTW good to see a decent # of responses on the Linux topic. Perhaps Dell will start supporting this OS as they do for the Precision laptops. OK, waking up now.

 

I ordered the Intel WiFi! I just have to say that the WiFi signal is quite unstable on ubuntu 16 but I believe it's more a software issue. No problem on windows side and pop os.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk

 

Mine switch over just fine using my BT headphones. My old school audio jack head phones prompt be for what I just plugged in before they switch.

I would suggest uninstalling the audio drivers and reinstalling them.

 

https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

Using that PPA should get your graphics working in Mint. Untested yet though.

 

To slightly diverge from the core topic, how mature and secure are PopOs and Mint. The smaller distros often look fine until a gigantic security vulnerability surfaces months after it's resolved in something like Ubuntu or RHEL.

 

Would you mind checking if your CPU can reach Package CState 8 in Linux when fully idle?

 

Mint and PopOS are just ubuntu with some changes, kinda like different models of the same Ubuntu car. Mint has more changes. Both are pretty secure.