*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Ryzen R5 Owner's Lounge

Is the Kingston hyper x fury impact memory compatible with the m15 r5?

The exact model number is
KF432S20IBK2

 

HyperX is compatible with every AW laptop in the last 6 years (at least).

 

I used that and saw an appreciable upgrade in performance so I would say yes.

Sent from my SM-G970W using Tapatalk

 

Cheers guys just put my order in

 

Have had my M15R5 for a few days now, and I have to say, I don't get all the hate that this series gets. I have read so many threads from people who call it the "budget" model, or that it's cheap, but I don't really follow where that reasoning is coming from. It's solid....deceptively so. When I first picked it up it looked so small, but it definitely has some weight to it, and once you see all the copper inside it makes sense as to why it weighs so much. There is the smallest hint of creaking coming from the screen when I open it, but it's so minuscule that most people would probably have to really try to even hear it or notice it. The lid is also so thin that of course there is going to be some flex, it's super light and makes me wonder how the hell they even get them this thin. I guess there is possibly a tiny amount of noise when I open the lid, but I think it's just the flex in the lid. I definitely don't think it's because it's cheap or budget...

It's warm, I will give it that, but I expected that going in as well. A Cinebench R23 MultiCore test actually beats my stock non OC 9900k in the 51mR1, which I didn't expect, so of course it's going to get warm. It does not beat it by a ton, but the fact it beats it at all in this form factor is damn impressive IMO. 3DMark also puts this at or better for scores then the 51mR1 with a 9900k and 2080, which again is pretty impressive. Maxing the fans, holy, that gets loud, but again it's so thin that the heat has to go somewhere....IF I max the fans right out, I would definitely want to wear a headset to help offset that noise. Maxing the fans does keep temps much more in check, especially since I have not turned TCC on yet, and probably won't.

The QHD screen has ridiculously good colors compared to anything else I have, or have used on a laptop, and to finally be back to QHD is amazing. I really hope they get QHD into every model, because it's really the sweet spot IMO. The cherry keyboard also feels really nice, and it's now my favorite laptop keyboard. I love the clicky sound and the feel of the keys. Not sure why the function keys didn't also go mechanical, I can't figure that one out.

The one glaring con I have is the trackpad, it's really not that great. That being said, I use an external mouse 98% of the time, so for the amount that I use it it's kind of whatever, but it is most definitely a downgrade from previous models. The second is yes...it gets hot, but I mean the size between this and a full fat DTR is kind of hilarious. I expected higher temps then my 51m, and the M15R5 def runs warmer. I have not limited the machine in any way yet, so TCC and or Ryzen Controller could and would help here.

I did go ahead with a repaste to IC Diamond, but it didn't help a ton. It does help with idle temps, which sit lower and help the fans to remain silent. I had more fan noise and ramp ups on the stock paste. Repasting was really not that bad at all, and certainly not as bad as the internet makes it out to be. It's no worse then my Alienware 17R4 and or my A51m. I followed @iunlock guide, to make sure I was getting all the screws and cables on the first attempt and it was over and done with pretty quick.

All in all I really like the M15R5, it's certainly a breath of fresh air vs packing around the 51m and multiple power bricks.

 

Is there enough clearance for an ssd with built in heatsink like the sn750?

 

The "silence" power option in AWCC disappeared, any idea how to fix it?

 

Never mind, I figure out that I can create one myself with the windows power option. I fix the CPU frequency to 3200 in advance option then the fan would be silent.

 

Can anyone confirm if there is enough clearance for the sn750 nvme ssd with built in heatsink?

 

And still plagued with burn-in. Not a panel you can walk away from long time without take some caution.
I'm so upset over my OLED burn in for my Alienware M15 R4

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Btw. Dell have finally seen their blunder.... But you'll have to pay. Dell@Chris have posted this new info on Dell's support forum m15 R5/R6, second SSD, parts needed

 

That's so generous of them to let you PAY for the 0.25c part. Great customer services. (sarcarstic)

Dell: «you asked, we delivered........(as long as you are welling to pay 10 times the price it's worth) »
Chriss M.

Another great find from bro@papusan. Keep up the good work bro!

 

Just curious if anyone ever messed around with the speaker settings on these machines? The sound quality of the speakers sound really bad. Very tinny sounding. Guessing their really isn't much can be done if the speakers themselves are just bad?

 

I found that going into the sound settings through CC and changing the sound profiles helped quite a bit. The stock sound settings were def tinny for sure. Turn bass boost on and try the warm and crunchy EQ setting, see if that helps. I find they are decent once this is done ‍♀️

 

That's definitely better. Still a far cry from what they used to sound like on even some of the more recent models. I noticed the sound quality the most when I was listening to someone on youtube that has a high pitched voice. It really made them sound terrible.

 

Tell any of the owners, is it possible to enable the "discrete video only" mode?

 

Yes you can enable / disable Optimus in the BIOS.

 

I have had a lot of Alienwares and other gaming laptop primarily for Virtual Machine and setup for my work. I am disappointed with heat produced but its a lot thinner than the old m18xr2 etc so makes sense. happy with build etc just this AW software has gone to trash.
Has any thirdparty opensource applications been developed for fan and alienfx light controls?

 

They know, we have been telling the community team this for awhile. All we can do at this point is hope that beating a dead horse, and bringing it up over and over may finally get through to them.

 

Not much have changed since my 17R1 was released in spring 2013. Their buggy software is still a disaster.

 

Be careful if upgrading the cherry keyboard firmware. My antivirus killed the update half way through

 

Did it brick the keyboard? I know firmware updates are not a good thing to interrupt...I also did the update, but it seemed to go through without issue. Which antivirus are you using?

 

It did until I rebooted and ran the update again. The update app now lists lots of errors, but the keyboard seems to be ok now. I've got an open case with Dell to see what to do next.

It was Bit defender

 

My Audio Settings in AW Command Centre are showing up but are not changing sound profiles.. The stock sound is awful any fixes

 

I had to go back to the oldest drivers available on the support site before any of my EQ settings would work at all. Once I did that, and had control of them, I could update the driver and it's all still working.

 

Same issue with antivirus. The update tool deleted old firmware version and when start writing new one, Bitdefender acted and deleted some files leaving my keyboard bricked. I tried to start the tool again but it only generate a log file with FAIL inside. After restart I put antivirus on pause and start the tool again. This time everything pass with no errors ang keyboard was back to life.

 

Sounds like you should get rid of Bitdefender and just use the Windows built-in one. Less issues.

Sent from my SM-G970W using Tapatalk

 

That's two people with Bit Defender reporting this now....so I think it's safe to assume it's probably a bit defender issue of some sort. I will bring it up with Alienware either way, maybe they can do something to prevent this to future users.

 

I've noticed that my alien head and tron ring thing no longer light up or can be controlled ‍♂️

 

You have tried the obvious, reinstalling Command Center? Did you have the bottom open for any reason at all, could the cables have come loose? If you have done a reinstall of Command center and they are just dead then you are probably going to have to get ahold of support

 

Purchased Geil 16gb 3200mhz Ram x2 and on installing I’m getting alien head flashes 2 red 1 blue. Works with 2nd NVME installed and org 16gb ram that came with it. Assume incompatible ram

 

Picked up an M15R5 from Best Buy yesterday, the 5900HX / FHD 360hz / 3070 model that's on sale for $1899. First Alienware purchase ever and had serious doubts going in based on the comments I've read over the years and about this specific laptop. It needed a ton of tinkering; AWCC is complete trash but I finally disabled the auto-update feature (hopefully) so it doesn't update and erase the "high performance" option.

The build quality feels very solid, no creaking or flex anywhere and the keyboard is surprisingly fantastic to type on. Screen is nice and bright and even uniformity. I swapped in my 32gb Kingston Fury RAM since the system came with crap RAM. When I swapped the RAM I noticed that there is a standard 2280 m.2 SSD installed, and the second bracket also has a copper heatsink with necessary screw. Nice surprise, looks like Dell has done things proper with newer revisions?

Fans are totally off when doing routine tasks. I don't use Advanced Optimus, I prefer to use regular Optimus for daily tasks / work and dGPU only mode for gaming.

I also flashed the 140w 3070 vbios from the R4 and it works flawlessly. I used a +200/+1000 OC in Afterburner. I am so pleasantly surprised by the laptop, didn't expect it to be this nice. I have until January to return it if something goes wrong but so far so good.

 

hey brother, can you please help me guide how to flash the vbios so that i can also max the GPU at 140 watt?
i am kind of a newbie in this so help me a bit please

 

FYI, Best Buy dropped the price from $1899 to $1699. I'm going in later to get the price adjustment. Still can buy it a little cheaper from Dell, especially when adding the extended warranty, but mine works great and I don't want a hardware issue to arise on a new laptop.

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Be VERY careful if you are flashing vbios for the first time. It's very easy to brick the laptop but in this case since the IDs should match you should be OK. You should first download GPU-Z and save a backup of your current vbios. That is crucial. It will be labeled GA104.rom.

Make sure you are using hybrid graphics / are not in dGPU only mode just to be safe.

There are plenty of guides out there on how to use Nvflash if you have questions.

3070 140w vbios here: https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/236298/236298

Then download Nvflash here: https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-nvflash/

Make a new folder in your main C: drive and call it Nvflash. Copy the Nvflash exe file, your GPU vbios, and any downloaded vbios to this folder. Label the new vbios as "3070.rom."

Run a command prompt in Admin mode and go into the Nvflash folder. In my case it is "cd/" , "cd nvflash"

The command to flash the vbios is "nvflash -6 3070.rom"

Press "Y" twice when it asks you to re: any ID mismatch, it should work since both IDs are the same in this case. When it is done reboot.

You can check that the vbios is working by going into Nvidia settings and you should see the 140w TGP in the GPU properties.

 

When I did this previously none of the external display outputs worked. Is this still the case?

 

I have not tried external display, I only use the laptop display.

 

Worked like a charm,, thnx for the help brother,,3d mark score increased by 600 pts.

 

Searched high and low and can’t find an answer… I’m trying to find out the part number for the Cherrymx keyboard in Dark side of the moon for the M15 R5. Also trying to find out if it is possible to swap mine over from membrane style keyboard. The Cherrymx was is not available as an option from Dell anymore in the US. Anyone mind checking their order summary on Dell.com for the 6-8 digit part number for the Cherrymx keyboard when you expand the down arrow to show the keyboard details for me? Thanks in advance

 

Hoping this thread isn't dead but its looking that way. Purchased M15 R5 5900HX3070 RTX with 16GB 3200 RAM, upgraded to FURY 32GB 3200, and 1 TB HD. Was a little upset I wasn't able to order the cherryMX keyboard to test it out. I think I can live without since I don't type that much and use a one color FX setting. After running Cinebench R20 for a 4879 score and TImespy and Timespy extreme I wasn't able to get this machine to overheat (+90C). I ran prime95 and had same result under HWINFO64, the CPU temp would start at 85C and drop to 80C under the worst conditions with the fans on 100%. I was already prepared to repaste to LM and conformal coat all the internals around the CPU. I was about to give up and I loaded Cyberpunk and finally figured out the problem.... Running cyberpunk on RTX Ultra with DLSS on auto and perf I was running 50-60 FPS which was definitely impressive on the QHD screen at 240HZ, but I was running 90C-94C on CPU and 63-68C on GPU. While those temps are not unreasonable, especially coming from an AREA 51M R2 maxed out at 10900k and 2080 Super 200W, I am leaning towards a full CPU mounting area conformal coating and taping off and LM repaste, I wanted to hear anyone else's thoughts if they have completed the same mods. Any help is always appreciated. FYI: I still think this is an awesome laptop for its performance already and am glad I didn't listen to all the whining and crying about how it wasn't equal 100% performance to off brand low cost systems that outperformed it in an ugly fashion.

 

Eh it's not just this thread, most of this forum is a ghost town these days it seems.

@iunlock did a repaste of his R5 several months ago showing the temps with Liquid Metal, so you can give those a look and see what his results were.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/nm4lol/alienware_m15_ryzen_5900hx_rtx_3070_w_liquid/

Personally I did a traditional repaste and it didn't make that much difference. I just use the TCC Offset and set it to 15 and leave it at that and cap the system at 85c. When I did this my Cinebench score actually went up, and my 3Dmark scores dipped on the CPU side by a whole whopping 3%, which I can live with. As with you, I have more then impressed by this laptop and I think it got way to much hate at the start. The screen is fantastic, the keyboard is amazing ( I have the cherry ) and the performance is on par with my 51m R1 at a fraction of the size and weight. I never minded dragging around the 51m , but this is a breath of fresh air compared to that when I want to go anywhere with it.

There is a teardown guide from Unlock as well if you need some assistance there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/novfx1/alienware_m15_r5_ryzen_edition_repaste_guide/

 

Awesome good info! I appreciate the response and help. I’ll probably go ahead with LM when I get time next week. I’ll report back my results. Thanks again.

 

New BIOS is out, 1.4.0. Installed on mine and have not noticed any serious issues yet....

Driver lists the following improvements:
- Added the support for the microphone key and audio key light on Cherry keyboards to display white when on mute. This feature works after updating the Realtek High Definition audio driver to version 6.0.9254.1 or later.
- Improved the camera stability.

I can confirm that with the cherry keyboard the color changes to white when the mute features are enabled and the Realtek drivers have been updated. Kind of neat I guess, not that I those all that much, but good to have either way.

Wish I knew what happened to 1.3.0 and why it was yanked....

 

no issues on mine with latest bios. i have 3060 and ryzen 5800hs gosh this thing runs hot!

 

Have you tried TCC Offset? You can cap the temps at anywhere from 85c to 100c and from my testing on my 5900hx it made very little difference. My 3DMark scores dropped by 3% when I set mine to cap at 85c. I also repasted it out of the box, so that might be helping, but yes it does get hot if you let it.

 

What are the noise levels like once TCC Offset is set to 15?

Have you been using AMD's software for changing performance etc too?

 

Does not seem that bad to me, the fans still spin up as expected. It's certainly nothing like turning on full performance mode, they are quieter then that.

AMD's software does not work on the mobile laptop CPU's , it just tells me that my hardware isn't supported.

 

So I attempted to repaste with LM unsuccessfully. For reference, I have a lot of experience with LM and delid'ing and repasting. I followed @iunlock s guide, which is similar to my own methods. I went through and added a minimal amount of LM and reassembled, it was not enough and when running any process my temps spiked to max 105. I went through 2 more times adding more LM each time to the point where I knew it was too much on the 3rd attempt for safety but I wanted to see it work. It was still not enough LM to make proper connection to the heatsink. I don't know if there is an issue with my specific heatsink not being flat enough to use LM or what the issue was. I ended up using some Thermalright TFX for about a 2-3C drop over previous stress tests.

 

Thanks. That's good to know. I was hoping for it to be idle during light usage. I don't mind the fans kicking in during tasks.

I had the Razer Blade 14 briefly and I was using the software available at https://www.amd.com/en/support to adjust performance. I never faced any compatibility issues with the 5900HX.

 

Unless I am gaming I almost NEVER hear the fans. Sometimes on a cold boot when windows is loading they ramp up for a second while everything loads, but once that's done I never hear the fans for web browsing or anything along those lines. I leave it set to balanced thermal profile and I did do a repaste when I got it, so that might be helping.

 

Good to know. I'm still swaying between buying a 2022 model or picking up an R5 or R6 in the meantime, so this kind of information is incredibly helpful

Sent from my M2007J3SG using Tapatalk

 

LM is tricky on these units, because the heat sink contact is a hit or a miss for LM. Traditional paste works great, but with LM it's best to test the contact points first to see if LM is a good fit for it or not. Glad that you go things working with some temp drops...Anything is better than nothing.