*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 R4 / m17 R4 Owner's Lounge

Heaven alone dosn't tax the Cpu. And what with the GPU? Same TGP as for the m17 models? Aka 140W card.

 

Hello folks, I'm looking for input on using a docking station with the Alienware m15 r4. I am not finding a specific one being suggested by Dell/Alienware so was curious IF anyone is actually using a dock (usb-C/thunderbolt 3), or what specific docks anyone can suggest that has already been down this road?

 

Dell laptops tend to work best with Dell docks like the WD19TB. You’ll still need to use the standard brick for power but otherwise everything else should be good to go.


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I charge at work with this one. You have to disable the bios warning but this seems to power my m17 r4 10980 and 3080 no problem. I am just doing office tasks though:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086WNTDXS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Against better judgment I went with another Alienware to replace the bulky old A51m.

Ordered via HID so have conductonaut on cpu, nanogrease on gpu, fujipoly extreme pads on other components.

Have my gpu at +165mhz core +500mhz mem and seems stable, max temp during 3dmark tests was 67C with balanced Fans.

CPU currently sitting at -135 core and cache (will play with it more later to see if either one can go further), hitting 75C max with balanced fan profile during cinebench and tp bench, but it seems to lock at 4.1ghz regardless of having TPL turned off. Bit frustrating but it's OK I guess. Much less annoying to work with than the A51m was for some reason.

Very close to a 13k time spy score. Will be trying to achieve that after surgery.

 

Congrats on your purchase. I'm interested at the Alienware m15 R4 (with OLED display) and was wondering how competitive was HID-Evolution's pricing? This would be my first ever "Dell" laptop, as I usually buy every 2-3 years either an MSI or Sager (my go to online retailer is GentechPC.com). I'm super happy with GentechPC, but they don't carry Alienware as far as I know. Any other outlets anyone here recommends to buy customized Alienware from (in addition to HID-Evolution)?

 

Far as I can tell it's pretty close to msrp. Main reason to buy from refitters like these is to get services like liquid metal and pad application, engraving, what have you. Can 150% recommend HID on that note. It of course costs more than buying direct from Dell and doing it yourself, but this removes the risk of you breaking things and really just adds convenience, which is what you're paying for.

 

Send a PM to @Spartan@HIDevolution for a forum discount.

 

Anyone order a m15 as of late? Mine went into production and then back to confirmed two days later and still sits there. Being the estimated ship day was today, it seems being late is guaranteed. Anyone know what the turnaround time has been on these?

 

Thanks for the tip. I actually contacted Ken at GentechPC, as I'm a long time customer of them (since 2012) and have a good rapport with their sales rep. Not trying to undercut HID or anything, but I'll stick with GentechPC, for the reasons mentioned above. Ken said I can order the m15 R4 through them and have them install liquid metal (or any thermal paste of my choice) on the GPU/CPU prior to shipping. I'm sure Spartan @HID is great, but I gotta go with my old time friends at GentechPC.

On a different note - does anyone here recommend the new m15 R5? It's releasing later this month and was wondering what you guys think. As for me, here's what I'm looking at a new gaming laptop to purchase this year:
1. RTX 3080
2. Thin and lightweight
3. 32GB of RAM
4. OLED display
5. Must have thermal compound on the CPU/GPU.
6. Nice to have: not a black/dark theme chassis (my last 4-5 laptops were black).
=The m15 R4 checks all these boxes, and looks extra appealing in its "Lunar Light" theme.
I don't know the specs the m15 R5 has to offer...

 

The R5 doesn't offer the 3080 and has lower TGP 3070 and 3060 cards versus the R4. Avoid unless you are a pure AMD fan

 

I'm actually an AMD hater, lol. No need to check the R5 then. Now off to selling my 2019 MSI GS65...

 

Kind of annoyed with this already. Just installing some apps and Steam downloading a game. My last day to return my other ASUS Zephyrus G15 as well. So far the Zephyrus has NOT come close to getting to these temps at all during any kind of usage. I would expect with a 17" they have significantly more room for cooling so this should be running cooler but it's definitely running all around significantly hotter.

EDIT: This is a new in box unit by the way. Idles in the mid 60's with drops to upper 50's every once in awhile.

 

I went from a G15 to a M15 R3 and the AMD processors keep temps at bay a lot better at idle/light usage. By controlling my boosts/voltages with Throttlestop I am near mirroring what I had with the G15 but the G15 would go a lot further in silent mode without turning the fans on, something I wish the Alienware would do more of.

Edit- Under gaming loads the GPU was a lot hotter on the G15 and the processor would bounce off thermal limiter (95c) regularly so they are in the same camp there.

 

I must've accidentally closed my browser but I was asking do you have recommended guide on Throttlestop and does it help with idle temps as well?

 

Not sure if this is normal but I was doing a test to see how long the laptop would last under web browsing under a full battery (got about an hour and a half to 2 hours total) and I plugged back in. I noticed my FPS on gaming took a HUGE hit until it recovered to about 15% battery (guesstimate). Is this normal? This is a 240W power supply.

 

I'm guessing you have the 360hz screen, and if so, then yes because there is no optimus enabled. The displays without optimus typically get 2 hrs on battery at best.

 

There is an entire thread in the general hardware sub forum dedicated to ThrottleStop.


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Do keep in mind the Asus G15 has liquid metal on the cpu. That definitely is helping keep things cool and under control. Alienware has been pretty notorious for bad paste jobs since as long as I can remember. So a repaste would go a long way.

 

My educated guess is that it's not simply about the size of the power adapter, but a thermal constraint/safeguard. Charging the battery creates a lot of heat, and it may be charging at max rate until it reaches around 15% charged,

 

Yeah I just did LM on my M15 R3. With a 100mv undervolt and Throttlestop set to 50/49/26 my temps stay below 50c for general browsing. Under loads in COD:BW which was my benchmark I netted 200mhz sustained across the three throttle points I use (TCC -15/-8/0). The CPU has a low risk of damage with DIY LM, but the GPU is a little riskier due to the stupid caps around the chip. Id recommend a repaste of some kind for the more experienced DIY'er and LM for the advanced builder.

 

Hey - Is anybody else having issues with Fn + F7 MUX after 20H2 windows update? Any solutions? I have the 144hz panel and have been able to swap from advanced optimus to nvidia only using FN-F7, but after the windows update it's dead.

Naturally, crap dell service is clueless but it's an easily replicated issue.

 

Review of the bigger brother....

Alienware m17 R4 laptop review - Gone up in the atmosphere (i9-10980Hk - 3080)


Edit. The English version


Alienware m17 R4 laptop review: Burning up into the atmosphere

 

Yes, it is, but that is fine. I didn't really buy this to run off battery. I have a Zephyrus G15 as well.

 

Have you tried doing a clean install of NVIDIA drivers? Might help...

 

Does anyone have a line on a GOOD review of the R4 with a 3070 and a 3080? The reviews I'm reading are showing the 3080 model as getting around 100 FPS on the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark (which seems REALLY low for a 1080p test) and my 3070 is getting 107 FPS, it's actually getting more than some reviewers are claiming. Benchmark is being done at "Highest" setting so not sure what the difference would be. Trying to decide on whether I want to return the one from Best Buy and pick up one direct from Alienware with a 3080 and 32GB of RAM.

EDIT: Makes me think they were running their benchmarks before the battery was charged based on the low numbers all around people have posted.

 

I have returned my machine already but I have a case open for this since mid of March. They kept saying they were waiting for their IPS team (???) to respond. The ticket is still open even after I’ve completed the return lol. It’s the OSD app’s notification module that is not working correctly. They’ll probably update it when they release the r5 or r6. If they don’t, use it as a reason and return it and get something with advanced optimus instead of mux switch.

I had the 17 r4 and I was getting around 135fps on the highest settings preset. It was CPU bound most of the time at 1080p, which I assume is not actually due to CPU usage but RAM being the bottleneck

 

That makes more sense, so what the heck have the reviewers been doing wrong?

 

Thats too low. My GS75 gets 116fps (OCed) in SOTR at highest so something is definitely wrong here.

 

So after a few days of pretty heavy use, my experience and thoughts.

-Very impressed with how thin it is despite the internal components, but I'm coming from an A51m R1 so anything is thin compared to that.

-Performance is great for what it is. Can hit just over 13,000 time spy with an undervolt on CPU and a hefty gpu OC (got some very decent silicon this time around, can do -155 on cpu with little to no performance degradation and capped out Turbo speeds for extended use, and gpu managed +175 on core +550 on memory).

-Thermals. They're impressive. I had HIDevolution put in liquid metal, nanogrease, and fujipoly extreme pads so it isn't a vanilla experience but I can say with thermal mods that the thermal performance of the vapor chambers in the 17 inch model leaves little to be desired. Haven't seen the GPU spike above 70C yet and the CPU has hit 80 once during a stress test and under normal usage hovers between 55 and 70C. Can't say anything about mining performance, not insane enough to try to mine on a laptop.

-In love with the mechanical keyboard. Not sure I'll be able to go back to regular chiclet style laptop boards after this. I don't mind setting my 915TKL aside if I can't bring it with me wherever I'm going and that's a big deal.

-Screen is good. I've ever been wowed by a laptop screen but since I don't care to have a 4k display in my laptop and I'm addicted to gsync I did not opt for OLED. 360hz is dumb imo but it sure feels nice on the desktop. Maybe the r6 will have 1440 OLED options.



Happy so far once I got passed the usual Alienware garbage software issues and initial windows reformat and reconditioning. CPU holds it back in some use cases but otherwise I don't regret the purchase, despite my trepidation toward going Alienware after the horrific experience I had with the A51m.

 

Some users were reporting slow nvme speeds in a previous post. I tested 2 nvme drives in my unit and the speeds definitely seem spot on. Latest bios.

 

Done tweaking again for now. This is gonna be my 24/7 profile, not looking to break records. Broke 13k which was a personal goal for this configuration.

System Specs:
Alienware M17 R4
360hz IPS Display
Cherry MX Low Profile Mechanical Keyboard
Intel i7 10870H
32GB 2933MHz RAM
nVidia RTX 3080 150+15w
2x 1TB SK Hynix SSDs in RAID0
1x 2TB Samsung 970EVO
Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut on CPU
Phobya Nanogrease on GPU
Fujipoly Extreme pads on all other components


Benchmarks:
Cinebench R20: 4202
( https://i.imgur.com/6PauWDC.png)

Cinebench R23: 10870 (spooky)
( https://imgur.com/d1B83RG)

TimeSpy: 13131 (14010 GPU, 9688 CPU)
( https://www.3dmark.com/spy/19793014)

Max CPU Temp: 73C (package)
( https://imgur.com/YFeejD7)
Max GPU Temp: 60C
( https://imgur.com/OozDaW3)

Each bench was run at least 3 times, no reboots in between. Temperatures were recorded after the high scores in the same way, 1 loop of R23 though because I don't have all day. Gaming temperatures should be similar +/- a couple C.

CPU Settings:
SpeedStep On
SpeedShift On
HyperThreading On
TCC Offset 0
TPL Off
VMax On
Thermal Velocity Boost Off
Cache Min 39
Cache Max 42
Core Offset -135mV
Cache Offset -135mV


GPU Settings:
No custom power curve (found it to perform worse)
Core clock +180MHz
Memory clock +1200MHz




Overall very pleased with this performance. Silicon lottery was finally nice to me. If I need more juice I have my 5950x + 3090 machine in the other room that I can Steam Link to, but the purpose of this laptop is to provide a mobile gaming and general entertainment platform to stop me from getting too depressed in the hospital and when I'm bedridden so in that capacity it serves perfectly just like its older, chunkier, more temperamental brother did, though this one is much much much more mobile, and noticeably quieter as well which is great when it's right next to your bed.

 

For benchmarking I can hit +200/+1400 on the GPU but in games that don't fully stress the GPU it crashes because it boosts too high when not under maximum load. I miss the days of set clocks and no boost tech. So for black ops cold war I have to keep core at +65, for a game like red dead redemption I can run +200 on the core. Very annoying since any de-load on the GPU causes insanely high boost clocks that will cause instability

 

Have you tried running Cold War with Reflex enabled? Its supposed to lock the boost speeds to prevent spikes.

 

Does anyone know what brand of SSD comes with the Alienware m15 R4 (buying it at Dell.com)?

 

Yeah I have reflex boosted enabled and it's still all over the place. Will go from 1850 - 1900mhz loaded to a CPU intense scene that brings down the GPU load, allowing it to boost over 2000mhz

 

Yea but for some reason no one on here will post benchmarks of games. I like Time Spy, don't get me wrong, but I would like to see some benches to see what exactly is going on because multiple reviewers have stated they've had a little over 100 FPS for Shadow of the Tomb Raider so it's not just a single reviewer.

 

Most reviewers (including me) show the SoTR benchmark, which is a bit demanding in some sections. That may be why you see lower frame rates shown in reviews vs. real world play in say an open jungle that's easier to render at high frame rates. Why do we use the benchmark in our reviews rather than open world play? Because that way all PCs are running the same test with no variability in content challenge.

We'll be posting our m17 R4 review soon, and will include the benchmark from SoTR. I did some open world play and the frame rates were higher than in the benchmark.

 

You are misunderstanding. The benchmark in "Very High" for reviewers is showing on the 3080 lower than on my 3070. There is something wrong with how the reviewers are doing it. I shouldn't have a higher FPS in the same benchmark they are running on the 3080.

 

Do you have the Ray Tracing edition?
2 versions of this game. One with ray tracing the other one don't.

 

Hello, what is your rtx 3080 boost mhz? default!

 

Any disassembly teardown guides on the Alienware m15 R4?

 

No but if you run it with that on you are now not running at the highest setting possible, you are running a "custom" config. The reviews are not enabling ray tracing, or, if they are, they are running custom and should be saying that.

This review, for example https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/alienware-m17-r4-review specifically calls out "ray traced" version of Metro Exodus but not SOTR

 

This disassembly teardown guide for Alienware M15 R3 seems to be pretty good ?

 

Mine is using highest preset without RT

 

Ah, sorry, misunderstood. We test with the game's default "very high" setting and Ray Tracing off and DX12 mode (all stock default settings). But our unit is a 3070 with review coming out tomorrow, and you're looking for the 3080 SoTR benchmark.

 

Correct, since whoever is handling these "reviews" for these other companies are obviously doing something they shouldn't be or not reporting how EXACTLY their benchmarks are being done. Glad you are getting a 3070 for review though because every reviewer is getting 3080's with the i9 and the i9's wattage might actually be causing the laptops to severely limit themselves due to power/heat limitations.

 

It makes sense then.I tought maybe one review was with ray tracing on but it would then be custom settings like you said.

 

I couldn't find anything in this forum reporting Ethereum mining speeds on the Alienware m15 r4, so I did some testing slowly bumping up speeds on the GPU from stock, here's what things looks like on my laptop (RTX3070, 32GB RAM, i7-10870H CPU, 2x 512GB RAID0/OS, 1x 512GB/Storage):
All tests had the Alienware Command Center configured to use:
- THERMAL (Fan) set to FULL SPEED
- POWER set to HIGH PERFORMANCE

STOCK speeds ether mining 3070 GPU = 53.8MH/s
---
- MSI afterburner tweaks = 56.75MH/s
CORE CLOCK: MINUS 502MHz (lowest possible setting)
MEMORY CLOCK: PLUS 400MHz
---
- MSI afterburner tweaks = 58.82MH/s
CORE CLOCK: MINUS 502MHz (lowest possible setting)
MEMORY CLOCK: PLUS 675MHz
---
- MSI afterburner tweaks = 60.19MH/s
CORE CLOCK: MINUS 502MHz (lowest possible setting)
MEMORY CLOCK: PLUS 850MHz
---
- MSI afterburner tweaks = 60.98MH/s
CORE CLOCK: MINUS 502MHz (lowest possible setting)
MEMORY CLOCK: PLUS 950MHz
---
- MSI afterburner tweaks = 61.35MH/s
CORE CLOCK: MINUS 502MHz (lowest possible setting)
MEMORY CLOCK: PLUS 1000MHz
---
- MSI afterburner tweaks = 62.04MH/s
CORE CLOCK: MINUS 502MHz (lowest possible setting)
MEMORY CLOCK: PLUS 1100MHz
---
- MSI afterburner tweaks = 62.85MH/s
CORE CLOCK: MINUS 502MHz (lowest possible setting)
MEMORY CLOCK: PLUS 1175MHz

 

Its more efficient to use the voltage/frequency curve to undervolt and limit the gpu clocks. What you're doing is underclocking the core so its running low clocks at higher voltages. Basically overvolting the gpu and making it less efficient

This is what you're doing


This is what you should be doing