*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

I've built many PCs before so have no problems applying thermal paste etc, but I'll probably check out a tutorial or two before doing it all just to be sure I'm doing everything right. I have seen some people saying that it is worthwhile changing the thermal pads. Not sure if it's worth it or not.

I'll give it a try anyways.

Makes you wonder why Dell doesn't stick a dollar onto their laptop prices and just use decent thermal paste. I guess I can understanding cheaping out in the lower end Dell G3 range etc, but not in their Alienware range. It seems short-sighted as they would undoubtedly get less support queries and less returns if everything worked better out of the box.

I know firsthand about Dell's crappy screws as I had to return a precision 7540 recently because the screws for the keyboard wouldn't move at all. Which meant I couldn't change the memory.

The screws on the back of the M15 seem ok, but the M2 SSD screws are really bad. I bought a box of M2 screws that have bigger screw heads on them so I replaced them with decent ones.

I'll just have to be really careful when I have to deal with the smaller M2 2.0 screws as the ones Dell use are absolute garbage.

I saw this one on Amazon UK selling for £24.99.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/MQUPIN-Wireless-AX201NGW-802-11ax-Bluetooth/dp/B07STTGLM7/

But the same one seems to be selling from China for only £11.91.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-4Gbps-...774539?hash=item48ce2e1f8b:g:fL0AAOSw-ftdKFJI

Are there many fakes going around? I reckon there is a black market for things like this, but they do appear to be identical.

 

Mine is refurbished so I will have to be careful of that.

I am reluctant to send my laptop back for repair as I will be using it most days. So if anything was wrong, I'd rather they just sent me the part so I could replace it myself.

 

As far as I am aware they are unlikely to send you the part. I know you can buy the whole heatsink online BUT it costs like $115 last I checked.

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If it was truly that bad I'd be tempted to just return the laptop at this point. I wasn't happy about the lack of an SSD caddy as the specs advised it could handle three hard drives etc. Their supoort has been useless regarding that issue and today passed me around 5 people and then transferred me in the middle of talking to a company in the UK who said "Don't think we can get that part". So why did the sales information say three hard drives are possible haha.

Are there any tell-tale signs that I have a dodgy heatsink?

My temperatures aren't too bad now that I've undervolted so I'm hoping that it will be really good after a repaste.

 

Compared to 2.0.4 the fan profile of 2.2.1 on balanced for example is way less aggressive, it let the cpu temperatures rise way more, before kicking in and ramp up the fan. It seems that dell has tuned it to make the R1 produce less noise, at the expense of thermals. A no go for me.

edit:

exactly!

 

It is hard to find that balance.

When playing a game, a little noise isn't too bad as the noise from the game will drown some of it all.

But before undervolting, the fans were so crazy for me that I couldn't browse the web or watch a video etc. When doing light tasks, I do want it to be silent.

Of course, I don't want overheating either. So what I will do is try the repaste first and then see if I can drop things further with a laptop cooler or something. I can always revert the bios later if necessary

 

Nice! i like them, might as well get a pair, so when in some airport lounge or if i bring it at the office i can lift it without need to pull out the other stand, that i can use in my room. Thanks for sharing it

 

before I call tech support - wanted to know if this was normal or not

My M15, I love it - except the trackpad. It appears to be "loose" - in that the bottom edge has a bit of wobble to it - in that I can press down lightly and it will depress a bit, but it isn't clicking in. I can then press a little harder to actually engage the click as normal. My M15 R2 was rock solid on the trackpad (and had a significantly better surface). I know many folks don't even use their touchpad, but I have to to support my use cases for this thing. Looking at the repair manual, replacing the trackpad is about as trivial as you can get, so I was thinking of requesting a part repair as opposed to sending this entire unit back in. Since I've got thermals and performance dialed in, and my OLED display is outstanding, I didn't want to mess with a full return/replace and gamble a unit that doesn't undervolt as well, have a worse OLED panel, etc.

 

There are M2 screws that hold the actual trackpad mechanism in place. Have you tried tightening them?

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Not all of their customer base is concerned about high temperatures (as long it works without shutdown not all will complain). And the thermal paste they buy in is intended for longevity and not best possible hardware temps. Get hold of cheapest possible will help as well on the bottom line.

Uneven quality of heatsink and use of thinner and softer thermal paste as Kryonaut etc instead for the printed thermal stamps would in fact increase tech costs within the obligatory warranty period. As well Dell's new policy regarding temp problems.... Increase temp limits for newer models will easly stop most of the customers from claiming new thermal paste. See... Up to 100C is within specs. Be you sure. Dell know what will lead to less costs.

 

Wow. That's pretty crazy that they think that 100 degrees is to be expected.

I'm not an expert on thermal paste, but with regards to the lifespan of thermal paste, does a long-lasting paste mean it won't be as effective? Surely a good thermal paste will improve temperatures and last well beyond the warranty period.

 

Long lasting thermal paste (TIM) are designed to maintain their performance for an extended period of time. Their performance is generally sub-par compared to aftermarket TIM that, while granting way better thermal transfer, they degrade over time and require the end user to reapply them more often. How often? hard to say, it depends a lot by the TIM and how well (or not) it has been applied.

Let's take for example Conductonaut Liquid Metal, if you have a look in the internet the user experience will vary a lot in terms of how often a reapplication is needed. People in this forum had them lasting a pretty long time, while others had them loosing their performance in terms of few weeks. For Liquid metal is really important to manage the right amount and to create a barrier that has the double function of preventing accidental spilling (is extremely electrically conductive!) and to isolate it from air to prevent it to dry out. In my case, i'm running my machine on the same LM application since over 4 months now and temperatures are consistent as they were on day 1.

 

With the exception of LM, I'm wondering if the "better TIMs don't last as long" isn't generally some kind of urban legend. Don't recall any expected lifetime warnings on any TIMs I have used. I bet TIM lifespan is primarily the function of heatsink fit.

 

Logic or common sense will beat “expected lifetime warnings” on any paste. But thinner and softer thermal paste will pump out first http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...and-liquid-metal.806840/page-21#post-10938224

 

All those screws are on one side, and they are on the top of the trackpad - the bottom edge is just slotted in - but I take it that your M15 doesn't have this wobble to it at all.

 

Right. I also had a loose, double clicking trackpad in one of the refurbs I returned. Tightening up those screws fixed it.

 

Well if it's that easy to just tighten some screws, guess I'll be doing that shortly

Update: tightening those screws helped a smidge, but still somewhat loose floppy bottom edge so I'll just have them bring a new part out and replace it overall.

As another question, anyone try this:

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Style-A...s=240+watt+dell+adapter&qid=1574621582&sr=8-3

see if it works with the M15, and if it's really any smaller than the existing 240W.

 

Sorry, what's the logic argument? Is there any measurable pump out at all if the sink fit is excellent?

 

Has anyone experienced an issue with Diagnostics starting up during wake up from hibernate and reporting a problem with GPU fan? As a result the CPU fan starts running at 100%. Shutting the machine down and restarting resolves the issue. This happened to me before and support suggested I clean the fans, but the fans are clean. It sounds like some software issue, given that a restart resolves it.

 

I will try to reproduce the issue on my machine as soon as i can (i have hybernation disabled)

 

I rarely use hibernation (and may disable it later), however I've noticed the fans going crazy on startup. I disabled most apps at startup incase that was the issue.

I've ordered some canned air and paste etc. When I'm doing a repaste I'll check my fans too. In your case, I reckon dust could cause a minor issue, but not 100%.

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Thank you, but do not bother, since it happens very very rarely. I am also wondering if this fan issue has happened to anyone else, perhaps when not using hibernation.

 

I bought that power supply. It is smaller. It does work. However, every boot, it halts at the bios and complains about it. Don't get it.

 

Thanks for the feedback - however, can’t you disable power adapter warnings in the BIOS? I remember doing this when I used a 90W adapter on my Alienware 13r3 - it would pop up with that warning, but I easily disabled warnings in the BIOS moving forward. I think it’s good they check for 98% of users, but I’m not in that mainstream group.

I also have a 130W adapter coming in today - plan to see how much power it allocates to GPU for mobile gaming. It worked pretty well on the 13r3 a couple years ago for me - was about 80-90% performance that running off 180W was surprisingly. I can’t remember if there was any battery drain when doing so though; or if it just puts less power to the GPU.

 

I don't see an option to disable the power cord check in my bios.

 

I sent an email to Dell asking about the 2.5" caddy. Their initial response told me to call and when I called I got transferred around for over 20 minutes and then sent to an external company that said they don't have the part.

I emailed again and pointed out that even when idle, the laptop sounds like a plane taking off (I've since dropped temperatures a little via undervolting).

Their response is interesting to say the least, stating that 100 degrees is normal. The guy has requested I jump through a ton of hoops. Conveniently, he failed to address the noisy fans in his reply.

Dear Kevin Muldoon​

Thank you for contacting Dell hardware support.

I am sorry that you are experiencing problems with your system. I will do my best to solve it as soon as possible.

In order to find out the cause of the problem, I would kindly like to ask you to perform the following steps:
Please accept my apology i dint understand why they didn't transferred you to us as they normally do so with any alienware related issues.

Furthermore the 2.5 inch. HDD/SSD housing and the interposer cable to connect it are optional parts in case you chose a pure M.2 SSD configuration.

During the online order creation you can use the selectable option to pack them to the whole order however they need to be payed extra. If you wish to purchase these parts please let me know the country you currently located in and i will provide you with price calculation.

Regarding the temperatures please perform a system stress test to check the system behavior under load and send me the results to check the CPU behavior since your CPU is expected to reach around 100°C on cores(CPU die temperature) and short peak spikes on package temperature to 103-105°C with without any issues.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...-8750h-processor-9m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html

CPU:

Please download and install program HWiNFO64bit:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php

Please be informed that the initial readings might be off due to the initialization/calibration phase due to this we are interested in the readings during the test alone not nominal values from the main screen of HWiNFO64bit that can contain also readings from calibration. These can be obtained by enabling the logging to file as following Open it and select SENSORS ONLY, click on the button which creates .csv files (small paper sheet with green + at the bottom right) and play the game Once you finished the stress testing or gameplay go back to HW info app and click again on the same sheet but now you should see red X there. So it ends the logging. The log should be made also in case your system will restart during the stress test and it will be visible in the log

After that, please send me the created .csv file. as attachment to email reply

Please download the Intel XTU and perform the stress test set it to run at least 15 minutes and send me the screenshotted results please.

In the graph please click on the wrench in the top right corner of the graph and check the Thermal throttling and Power throttling as well as all of the cores temperature and all of the cores frequency to be displayed.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU

GPU:

Please also download GPUz and Unigine Superposition benchmark to stress up the GPU In GPUz under sensors tab please check the Log to file box and insure the Nvidia graphic card is selected in the bottom window this will create a TXT log of the GPU behavior please send me this log as well

Superposition benchmark:
https://benchmark.unigine.com/superposition

Gpuz :
https://www.techpowerup.com/download/techpowerup-gpu-z/

Instead of synthetic benchmarks feel free to perform some gaming and send us the results from a longer gaming session

To avoid repeated service calls please check your system for any other hardware failures which you didn’t mention in your E-Mail. Thank you.

Please send me by return all results of these essential steps/diagnostics to be able to move forward in this case.

Please use the same E-Mail address and don’t delete the previous conversation as well as the E-Mail subject to prevent the delay in our communication. In the case that we don’t get a reply within next 2 days, we will contact you from [email protected] to ensure that you have obtained this E-Mail.

I wish you a nice day.

Yours sincerely,
Michal Doblej
Senior Technician, Consumer Support Services
Dell EMC | Support & Deploy Services
Call: 0800-028-2660

 

I know these guys, they are polite but about as useful as support can get in Dell organisation, sadly. They sorted out my DoA mobo replacement well. Then I was trying to get them to help with a tricky broken short turbo boost after sleep issue, they told me they contacted the devs who claimed that system is "working as designed". I tried to go through Twitter / Azor (in departure mode, unbeknowst to me then) - almost same result: yada, yada, yada, working as designed, but devs will try to fix at some point (lol).

 

That's been my experience too.

A lot of it is being lost in translation and they don't appear to actually want to provide a solution.

It did surprise me that they think that 100+ degrees is normal and acceptable.

Guess we have to accept the limitations of this laptop and work around them as Dell aren't going to help.

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Der8auer is now shareholder in Grizzly company (hence he have removed his thermal paste reviews and stopped with it). Right from the horse mouth. Re-past each year. Thin paste is is doomed to pump out. Exelent heatsink fits will only prolong the time before it will happen See it this way. The fits between IHS and Die is damn good... Intel would never swap their thicker paste intended for longeivity for soft thermal paste similar Kryonaut. RMA is expencive. More costly than use of so called softer and better thermal paste.

 

Ah, you are talking about Kryonaut specifically. Yes, it is quite watery. Phobya NGE on the other hand is thicker (but not too thick, applied very nicely), temps >= Kryonaut, and felt like it would last forever.

 

Yes, they have a positive attitude, but lack in knowledge, clearly work within the guidelines from HQ (the 100C BS came directly from Azor), and to be fair are probably fairly poorly compensated. Yes, translation can be a bit of an issue too. Best to use very straightforward language.

 

In the grand scale of things, I don't mind a 20 minute repaste job once a year if it keeps temperatures low and ensures the laptop is more usable.

Of course, I suspect most people commenting on this thread have a more hands-on approach, whereas most general laptop users will just keep things as they are.

 

I know. Dell support isn't the best. I do understand that the people in support aren't compensated fairly, however it is frustrating going round and round in circles every time you ask a question.

 

Bizarre thing here for me

Battery life on my M15 is pretty bad, maybe 3 hours total for this 90 wHr machine. Even with OLED, I expected it closer to 5 hours. This may be some sort of ThrottleStop thing, but I've turned off turbo-boost with a specific profile, and I've disabled a ton of dell background services, etc. On top of this, over night it likes to drain the battery a ton. I did a sleep study analysis in POWERCFG and saw some bizarre stuff. For example, it seemed to wake itself regularly on a very specific interval, then it essentially sits on for 15 minutes until it goes back to sleep. It repeated this several times over night and in the morning. I have a 93% battery and when I woke it was under 50%. Anyone have any idea what would cause this? It's stating an "unknown app" is burning through a ton of battery life. I'm adding that my lid was closed the entire time - so I'm not sure what is waking this machine up.

 

There is a fair amount of battery life optimisation discussion earlier in the thread. You should be getting into 12-13W/hr discharge rate after solving culprits and optimising settings
Basically anything that triggers the dGPU will finish the battery off pretty quickly. Afterburner is one such culprit, bad drivers could be another.

 

I get that. But doesn't help me figure out why this thing is waking on a regular basis with the lid closed. I ran another powercfg command and see that wake timers for some windows update (had orchestrated in the name) and some other "start menu experience" thing is listed. Weird though that any wake timer would impact when unplugged and the lid closed. I checked power plan settings and no wake timers should be allowed when on battery. I saw an update to windows 1909 is available but still can't see what's up as there wasn't any update pending a restart overnight outside of "active hours"

 

I'd be curious to whether you can get to the bottom of this. I generally keep mines plugged in, but I will use the battery from time to time so I want to make sure no rogue apps are draining it. Battery drain when asleep is obviously a pain.

Track it over a few nights to see if the same thing happens. Perhaps a few updates were installed (Windows seems to do this, even when you don't want it to).

 

For battery drain issues I normally went through the power saver battery plan and set it to default settings. I also disabled "hibernate after x amount of time" as it kept waking my laptop from sleep. Also recommend you install the original drivers as sometimes the updates do more harm than good and test each version one by one.

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I only hibernate because of the TB bug, and obviously once the laptop is in hibernation there is zero power drain.

 

Yeah, and the end results will be more like this after some time... Laptop is horrible

 

Hey everyone! Glad I found this thread. I have been struggling with settings and reading, and watching videos. I need some help with my settings, I have a M15 R1 with I7 9750, 2060 RTX, 32GB ram. Here’s my Throttlestop settings. I came to this point after reading an article and YouTube videos. Temps are staying 84c and below, but man does the keyboard still get warm. Infared thermometer shows spots getting to 112-116f. Maybe it’s normal, but I feel my settings are not where they need to be after reading pg 315 on this thread. Thanks!

 

You will find a ton of info on this earlier in the thread.

 

Workin on that, there’s 350 pages. Have any idea about what page to start on?


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Work backwards or maybe Google thread name and kahuna0k who posted a lot of original useful info.

 

Definitely found his post on pg315. I’ll look for more.


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Just wondering what his turbo boost wattage was set, guessing 55-60? If he used speed shift, BFprochot, or any set multiplier. Thanks again!


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Adjusted everything except it will not let me undervolt the GPU to -.0605mv?
Also the ICC max adjustment, does that apply only to the GPU, or the Cache and CPU?


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Hi Marty,

When you talk about undervolting your GPU, you mean your iGPU right? (as of the intel integrated gpu)
in order for the undervolt of the igpu to work properly, you need to undervolt of the same ammount also the igpu unslice. This being said, the igpu undervolt is the least of the settings that will help you tame the heat of the R1. You need to work out on the CPU undervolt so that your TDP will max out at =/< than 60w.

As per @kahuna0k findings, that some of us have followed up and tested succesfully (always kudos to him!) the best undervolt is with a fixed core voltage rather than with the adaptive one.

this down below are my fixed undervolt (profile 2 on my machine) as an example (ymmv!)

with this settings my CPU stays at 3.9 Ghz on the 6 cores under full load stress test, maxing out 54.5w

My normal profile (start up) has an adaptative off-set as follow:

It is not as effective as the fixed voltage undervolt, but perfect for light loads

Keep in mind that i've repasted with liquid metal, and that you may or may not achieve stability with the exact same settings.

Have you repasted/repadded your machine?

 

Gotcha. Still learning quite a bit. I did not repaste yet, but wanted to at least get throttle stop setting right. I was going by this post.
I set up all 4 profiles. I’m just confused where he has the Intel GPU @ -.0605mv?
Also setting the ICC maxes, do you set them for the CPU and GPU.
Also the static setting for profile 2, do you still undervolt the core as well or leave it at 0?
The -1.582 undervolt seems too much for my cache. I have blue screened a few times


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Baby steps.

If you start to set everything at once yoy wont be able to pinpoint the source of eventual instabilities.

Start to get your CPU voltage down and stable, testing it for extended period of time with something like prime95.

I reckon that your -1.582 is a mistype and you meant -0.158 V or -158.2 mV, right? If that's the case, and you are not stable at those settings, dial it up a notch, until you find the sweet spot. Not all cpu are the same. What work for me may not work for you.

Question, and don't take it wrong, is this the first time your are dealing with undervolting a laptop/pc?