*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 R6 (11th Gen) Owner's Lounge

I really feel like Alienware loves toeing the line to a possible class-action lawsuit. Disabling CUDA cores, and now disabling a standard feature available initially thus crippling (okay, hyperbolic yes, but disadvantaging for sure) the system? Seriously not impressed.

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I have to say. The m15r4 with the cherry mx is about the best I've had from alienware since the 17 r1. If it had an enabled mux switch i think it would be best. It is super solid and has great performance. I want it to allow power draw beyond 230w and a mux but small gripes considering how good it is

 

TBH I wasn't impressed with the R2-R4 due to the soldered RAM/WiFi and inverted mobo, although to be fair the R4 is a solid performer as you say. Little did I know what's coming next lol The R4 looks grand in comparison!

 

You are right. The soldered ram is lame. I never cared much about the wifi but i get it. I am gonna just keep this till i likely can't keep insurance on it anymore. Alienware is going a really strange way. The x15 is basically useless and the x17 is astronomically expensive

 

I haven't seen a single x15 user in the X-series lounge. One guy ordered and promptly returned.

 

The x15 when configured with 3080 rtx or QHD screen has been out of stock (out of the configurator) in Belgium and France since pretty much day 1. I don't know if it's the same in other countries.

What's annoying is that when I received my m15r6, I was able not only to undervolt, but also to overclock the 11800H up to 4 bins with throttlestop. Then I updated with the latest bios that unlocked the TDP of the GPU by a few watts (in combination with latest vbios), and all the options greyed out in throttlestop. It's disgusting to cripple a laptop after it was bought by the customer.

 

The disgust is real.

Not sure what it even means for an AW laptop to be in stock, with all the delivery date pushbacks. People have been waiting for their laptops for months.

 

I just found a ton of stuck pixels that can be observed on black background only. I’m running some programs to try to unstuck it but I have a bad feeling they won’t work. Worst part is that my warranty expired yesterday as this was a replacement laptop for an old 15r3 that died during the summer while still in warranty. My luck…

 

Sorry to hear. Very odd to see dead pixels appear at this stage. Good news is that replacing a panel doesn't seem that difficult.

 

They are stuck pixels, I can only see them on black background. I counted at least 20. Not sure what happened to cause 20+ pixels to get stuck all of a sudden. So far the software hasn’t helped unstuck them. Does anyone have a link for a qhd replacement screen that I can order in case the issue remains?

 

Ok, I tried another recommended method of massaging the stuck pixels. I held the backside of the panel with 1 hand and massaged the affected pixels with a thumb and a microfiber cloth. That helped removed them, but also I noticed that applying pressure would basically create other stuck pixels around. Took a while until I was able to completely wipe them all out. I think this is what created the issue in the first place - I was moving the laptop from 1 room to another with the lid closed (somehow the screen had remained turned on) and when I opened the lid there they were there. I'm still puzzled how easy it is to have pixels stuck just by carrying the laptop.

 

New 1.6.0 bios is available.

 

Did you also undervolt the gpu at the same time as the overclock? If yes at what voltage/frequency? I guess something like 825mv/1800Mhz?

 

I didn't bother undervolting. The gpu doesn't get hot. Especially compared to the cpu. I probably should. No reason to leave anything on the table

 

Would love to hear from those of you who have owned an M15 R6 for a while.

I've been watching the latest announcements over the last few days from Intel, AMD, Nvidia, laptop manufacturers etc. There's a lot of interesting laptops coming out this year, but many of them will not be out until the Summer and I suspect many of them will be quite expensive when they are released too. So I'm tempted to find a bargain just now.

I've been monitoring the Dell Outlet recently and there are some good deals on the R5 and R6. I was keen to pick up a model with a 3070/3080 and the QHD screen. Cherry keys would have been great too, but they are like unicorns in the outlet.

I've not found a direct performance comparison between the 3070 and 3080 models. I was leaning towards the 3080, but I know it's limited to 125 watts, whilst the 3070 has 130 watts. So there may not be as big a difference in performance between them when compared to other laptop models.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the 360hz FHD display. I've had my eyes set on the 240hz QHD model, but the reviews I have seen of the 360hz model are all positive. Don't think I'd ever hit 360 FPS in a game, but the reduced latency is enticing.

 

The 360hz screen is quite good. When I calibrated it with my Spyder X, it reached 100% sRGB coverage and ~350 nits at maximum luminosity. I very rarely hit 360 fps obviously in recent games, but you regularly see it peak above 200fps in some of them when paired with an overclocked 3080 RTX. I am pretty sure that you will be cpu limited slightly before you hit 360fps anyway at FHD most of the time. I would have prefered to go with the QHD 400 nits option, but it was not available in the configurator with the 3080.

You can also modify the bios with a hack to unlock the 11800h and overclock it by at least 4 bins. Buying aftermarket low density ram surprisingly increased the CPU score in benchmarks by more than 15%.

 

Thanks for replying.

I hadn't noticed that the 3080 wasn't available with a QHD display until earlier today. Weird they don't offer a QHD configuration option as the 3080 would be able to drive games better at 1440p than the 3070. It forces us to decide between a 3070 QHD model or a 3080 FHD model. You'd think it would be the other way around.

Which memory did you buy to increase performance?

I would probably underclock it rather than overclock as I'm keen to reduce noise when using it.

 

The most popular is the 32GB Kingston Fury 3200Mhz CL20 low density kit. It was available around 120€ in Europe during the black friday sales.

 

I think that's the same memory I took out of my M15 last year (see here). I ended up selling the sticks as they sat around gathering dust for so long.

 

Thanks again for the feedback. I'm going to keep my eyes peeled to the Dell Outlet for a bargain

 

Here is the reference of the low density version: KF432S20IB1K2/32.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the integrated speakers in the m15R5 and m15R6 are quite bad compared to the premium laptops of the competition.

 

Thanks. I'll take note of that. Looks like the 32GB kit is £132.78 on Amazon UK.

I'd love good speakers, but it's not a deal-breaker for me. I'd only really be watching YouTube with speakers and be using headphones every time I game.

 

New 1.8.0 bios is available

 

Looks like @Vassilis008 got you covered with his great reply. I own both variants and the 3070 is more than enough IMO for this system. The 3080 is nice for sure, but if you can land a good deal on the 3070 I wouldn't hesitate to pick one up. If you get one with the FHD the 3070 will drive 1080p without issues.

I'm running the Ballistix in my R6 due to them having the lowest timings and they're running great. Note: If you do go with this kit, it appears that for some strange reason that only the 64GB kit will work. Others that tried running 16GB or 32GB kits in this specific model of RAM ran into issues. Odd I know... but if you're going 64GB, I'd put this kit on the top of your list.

 

Thanks iunlock. That's good to know. Do you prefer the QHD display over FHD?

You're in a great position to comment on Alienware laptops as you have the X17 and M15 R4 too. The M15 R4 looks like better than the R5 and R6 in many areas, such as build quality, speakers etc, through from what I've heard, thermals aren't as good.

Out of curiosity, how does the 16GB 3080 in the X17 compare the 8GB 3080 in your R6?

That's strange that the 32GB kit didn't work.

I'm looking for 32GB of memory. In the past I used Premiere Pro, so I always wanted 64GB or 128GB in computers as my videos were using over 55GB of RAM during encoding. I now use DaVinci Resolve. It's less memory intensive so 32GB should be sufficient for me.

 

I can confirm that the 32GB Ballistix kit does not work, it's very strange.

It would be interesting to compare the 32GB Kingston C20 low density kit with the 64GB Ballistics C16 (high density?) kit. Can you run a timespy test @iunlock without any cpu overclocking/undervolting (i.e. full stock cpu)?

 

I have the QHD screen on my professional laptop. I would say it's significantly better than the 360hz FHD: higher luminosity 400+ nits (vs 330-350 nits for the FHD 360hz; depending on the panel, mine was measured at 350 nits), better color accuracy with 99% DCI-P3 and great resolution for gaming because you will often be a bit cpu limited with the FHD even with a 11800H. The 3080 on the X17 shines mainly because of the 165W TDP imo, rather than the 16GB VRAM.

 

Yeah the QHD panel looks amazing. It was one of the only laptops last year that had that resolution and frame rate, but we're now seeing other companies follow suit.

Good point about TDP being more relevant than VRAM.

 

Im using the ballistix 16GB kit on my R6, does these readings mean its working as supposed to?

 

Yes it looks fine. I tested the 32GB version of that Ballistix kit 3 months ago and there were compatibility issues. Maybe they fixed it with the latest bios versions.

 

Does anyone know what is holding the lcd panel in place? There are no screws. Epoxy?

 

There are rumors on reddit that the new 1.9.1 bios boosts the 11800H by 4 bins, up to 5 Ghz. I didn't have time to test yet.

 

Is this through bios?

 

Hi all!

New to the forum. Had my M15 R6 since early December 2021. Opted for the i7 11800H, 32GB, 1TB, QHD 240Hz, 3070 model. Loving it so far.

The latest 1.9.1 BIOS seems to have improved performance greatly. Now getting 125W-135W usage on the 3070, whereas before it usually stayed under 120W. Nice little upgrade.