Why I returned my 17R3 to Dell

I was very excited to receive my 17R3. It was spec'd out with a 6820HK, NVME SSD, and 4k. I slapped in 32GB DDR and upgraded to a Samsung 950 Pro.

Here's what I liked:
- nice 4k screen on a 17" notebook (rare)
- FAST when OC'd to LVL2 (4GHz), particularly on benchmarks.

Here's what I had problems with:
- The OC reverts to stock CPU speed when you resume from sleep. I believe there was a similar BIOS bug in the R2, and it took Dell forever to fix it. I wasn't going to wait. This bug has been confirmed by another user here. Fortunately, ThrottleStop can be used as a workaround.
- The graphics drivers kept crashing every few minutes, particularly when using the Edge browser. I updated all the drivers, but the problem didn't go away.
- The keyboard has no tactile feedback (personal preference)
- Touchpad was a total POS (too small and the buttons were mushy)
- The case styling is a little over the top for me (personal preference). Plus there was a lot of plastic for a supposedly up-market notebook.
- Took forever to cold boot

I really like the Dell XPS line (I have 3 of them). Too bad there's no 17" XPS with 4k. All the best.

 

The graphics driver is not a problem caused by Dell. It is an intel driver problem and all laptops with windows 10 and a dedicated gpu ext to the Igpu have these issues.

The touchpad by the way is one of the more accurate and less jumpy ones out there. I do not consider it a total POS by a longshot.

 

Also the slow boot times has been beat to death in threads its a driver issue with freefall sensor.
Dell just added a new driver last week, but even before then you could click update driver from web and it fixed the issue.
Regardless if you don't like the overall design then for sure you did the right thing by returning it.

 

Strange issues you had. Mine boots in 2 seconds flat, if that.

If you ever expect a touchpad to be close to usable on a gaming laptop, you bought it for the wrong reasons. An external mouse is a must for gaming or anything serious. The case was over the top for you? Interesting as well. I guess you prefer to cheap plastic of the XPS line. The XPS used to make a great laptop, now they look like something your grandmother would want to check her email, lol.

I shouldn't post this, but I will. You had buyer's remorse. You wanted to spend half of what you did and get an XPS. Come on, tell the truth, don't bash the Alienware.

 

Whoa 2 seconds cold boot? From hitting the power button to reaching desktop? Do you have the free fall sensor driver installed? That's insanely fast.

 

Mine came with the 128 SSD, so that obviously helps the boot speed. Yes, the freefall sensor driver is installed. How does this affect it?

 

You mean it "resumes" in 2 seconds. I'm assuming you know that's not the same thing as a cold boot.

I wasn't aware that it was a requirement for "gaming" laptops to have unusable touchpads. So, why, pray tell, did Alienware even bother to include a touchpad in the first place - since 100% of users will be using a mouse anyway? (using your logic)

That's a matter of opinion. The XPS line has a precision touchpad and a keyboard with tactile feedback. It's also isn't thicker than a laptop from the 1980's, and it doesn't have a thick bezel around the panel. I own 3 and none of them give me the impression of cheap plastic. In fact, the use of premium materials is impressive. Based on your comments, I'm pretty sure you haven't seen the 2015/2016 XPS line in person.

Nobody's bashing Alienware. I simply stated the reasons why mine didn't work out for me. If you like yours, great! I'm happy for you. You don't need to implode because somebody didn't like theirs. If you want to know, I ended up buying a 17" Lenovo that cost me slightly MORE than the AW17 configuration. As I mentioned, I already have several XPS laptops, and I wish they made one in 17" with a 4k screen.

 

The first Aw Echo models isn't fixed yet. Nearly 1 year after the releasing http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/aw-17r2-after-sleep-current-limit-bug.787220/

 

This is only the case for some users. I now had 2 AW15/17 motherboards in use and there arent any throttling issues whatsoever present. I cant be the 2 out of thousands that do not have any issues.

For some reason I have the idea it is something intel driver related.

 

I can't talk for all other with same model ... But he is pissed of and have problems... Remember it's not all computer owners that have the knowledge. I think a lot of owners don't know they have problems at all even they have. Also a lot of people don't know how to use a monitoring software as Xtu, Hwinfo, cpu-z osv. I have seen very many strange things from computer owners over the years. So this is not surprising.