Alienware 18 BIOS A07

The Alienware 17 is much worse to reset the bios I think. I have to disassemble the entire machine. The reason is again the bios battery is installed such you have to disassemble the entire machine. It is therefore difficult to reset the bios with the memory chips. I am sure that i have to use the method with a different CPU. (i7 4700mq)

Mr Fox. Do you think it is a good idea to go With A10 bios for my alienware 17? Can I risk destroy overclocking on my machine with the new BIOS, such the problem is with alienware 18. I am sure it is worse to fix no post bios on alienware 17.

 

It could be different for you than it is for me. You could end up with the same problems as Mr. Fox since you guys are running an extreme i7.

 

Having manual fan control would be great and should actually improve your ability to overclock. As you can see in my last post, you can work with it on the Alienware 18 if you take the right steps. Since I do not have an Alienware 17 to test the theory, I cannot tell you what will work with certainty. I would expect a similar approach would work equally well with your 4930MX. What I can tell you with certainty is if I were in your shoes I would go for it and find out for no reason other than the critical importance of having manual fan control. In spite of the limitations that A07 imposes without circumvention, this is the best and most important BIOS change, to date, that Alienware has released for the Alienware 18.

I had an Alienware 17 for a little while. The location of the CMOS battery makes it inaccessible without removing the motherboard. This is a very bad design decision. The solution is simple. Cut away a partial circle area directly above the coin cell battery and then you won't have to take the motherboard out again. It's not difficult with the motherboard removed and you remove such a tiny amount of material that it has no adverse impact on the structural integrity of the chassis. If you do a clean job and use a black marker or flat black paint on the raw edge of the metal nobody would ever notice that you changed it. Only someone intimately familiar with the 17 could tell, and then they would need to pay very close enough attention to actually even notice the change because it is very inconspicuous. (The red circled area is what you would cut away and it is very small piece. Half of the battery is exposed, but not enough to remove it from the socket.)

 

Hi
Mr Fox
You said in a previous thread! (It does allow HWiNFO64 manual fan controls, at least on systems booting in legacy mode)
I use UEFI boot in bios now. Do I need to convert to legacy boot order before i can use manual fan control?. Do you think with the new BIOS the fan works better than before? I do not want the fans to go full speed all the time.

 

I do not use Secure Boot, Fast Boot, and never plan to use them for ethical reasons. Those support restrictive technologies that I feel are morally reprehensible, give the OEMs way more control than they are entitled to have, and interfere with end user customization.

That being said, I switched my system from Legacy Mode (non-UEFI) to UEFI with Legacy Option ROM and fan controls work both ways exactly the same. You should be able to switch to UEFI with Legacy Option ROM without having any problems with the OS. I switch back and forth all the time, but never enabling Secure Boot for anything.

 

reading all of these, donno if i'll go for broadwell in alienware. may as well drop everything and go clevo. at least prema and svl7 unlock bios and vbios for the machine.

alienware what have you done and what are you doing this?

 

Clevo has its own range of issues, starting with the build quality of most its machines that just sucks.

 

yep, quality, aftermarket parts upgrade, replacement etc, sound system and smaller screen. things i can probably live with though. performance wise its got everything, given if prema and svl7 continues their trend to unlock bios/vbios.

 

Have you tried looking for a couple of pads for cmos reset? For instance AFAIK the AW18 should have these pads located somewhere near the DIMM sockets.

 

Yes, I mentioned where he can find them on the 17 in an earlier post. They are difficult to access, but a minor modification to the chassis (like the one I suggested for the CMOS battery access) will remedy that chassis design defect on the 17. I thought I had photos of this from when I still had an Alienware 17 and I did. I just had to find them.

Alienware 17 CLR CMOS/CLR ME contacts ​	Alienware 17 CLR CMOS/CLR ME contacts ​
Both models also have power buttons located on the motherboard so you can power on the system for testing with the palm rest and keyboard removed. ​

 

What a pathetic place to put a CMOS reset point. I'm starting to really hate these newer models. I'm seriously considering swapping out for an M18xR2.

 

The best and only reason to "upgrade" to A07 is manual fan control. In spite of the undesirable lock-down to BIOS menus, the manual fan controls are too compelling to get hung up on the BIOS problem. Since you can still overclock using XTU and ThrottleStop, it's worth flashing A07 to gain the ability to manage overclocked temperatures more effectively. Here's a quick pictorial guide to using HWiNFO64. The last image is an " at a glance" guide to set up manual fan controls on the Alienware 18 with A07.

<iframe class='imgur-album' width='100%' height="750" frameborder='0' src="http://imgur.com/a/UYC3s/embed"></iframe>

 

well i donno if thats complete manual fan control Mr. Fox. I see you disabled the EC support check box which usually causes freezes and lock up in the R1 and R2 and i donno if thats changed in the new AW18 but without EC support checked, theres only 3 fan speed. 0, 2000 and 4300.

with EC support clicked it can go any fan speed but will lock up on discrete GPU (not sure about nvidia) when changing brightness etc.

if only SW checked without EC, only 3 fan speed profile is accessible for R1 and R2, is it different now for AW18?

 

My max temps went over 100 degrees , and usually is in the 90 degree range when running the benchmark in XTU. Computer is a piece of garbage. what a waste of 5 grand. I tried using all of mr foxes settings and i get blu screens and sometimes the computer just shuts off. I am sending my laptop to a tech support depot to supposedly be fixed. Not really sure what they plan on doing. even when i use hwinfo and set the fans to MAX it doesn't do anything. right now im typing this in chrome and my temps (with fans at MAX) are 61, 62, 59, and 65 respectfully. Don't know why but my one GPU is showing 89 degrees, and the second is showing 70 degrees!!! All im doing is browsing the internet. Does anyone know if people with the i7 4940MX are having the same heat issues as with the 4930MX?

 

Is that after repasting with Liquid Ultra, or still attempting to manage with the factory paste job?

Using EC is a little bit flaky with NVIDIA, but not nearly as spastic as with AMD. There are not hard lock-ups and no brightness control issues. About the only thing I have notice is that HWiNFO64 itself will sometimes stop responding and crash with EC support enabled, but it doesn't seem to affect anything else with NVIDIA cards installed.

I only disable EC support because I don't really need it for anything and I disable all of the HWiNFO64 sensors that I don't really care about. On the M18xR2 I only use stock fan tables most of the time. When I'm benching I force them to 100%, so it's kind of an "all or nothing" approach to use of the manual fan controls in my case.

 

I went back and flashed to A07 to see how things are.

My problem now is that Package Turbo Power is locked, and the option to unlock it is not available in XTU.

 

After much pain and annoyance I went back to A05. Not sure why, but there is no way I can see the Turbo Power Lock setting in XTU. I have uninstalled and reinstalled it.

I have also tried out every CPU settings in A07 BIOS. Things would be good, if the BIOS settings in A07 is exactly the same as A05. Sometimes, I find that the way Dell engineers fix things is, to be blunt, rather stupid.

Also, I don't have the problem like you did with Turbo Boost not working. Everything works, it's just the turbo power limits are locked.

 

OK it seems that after some hocus pocus I have managed to unlock the turbo power lock, I didn't do it through XTU though.

I flashed back to A05, then A04, to see if the Turbo Power Lock setting is in XTU, then from A04 I went to A07. I also went back to XTU 4.0, rather than 4.4.

And in my BIOS right now it says OC LVL 1. The multiplier is not locked so I changed it in XTU to 39x. Although in bios the turbo boost power says 71W, it is 90W in XTU (which is what I set it to). Also, in the BIOS it says short duration turbo boost is disabled. But in XTU it is enabled.

All in all, the settings suck until I start up ThrottleStop where my own stuff replaces the values in XTU/BIOS. I noticed that the core voltage for OC LVL 1 is a staggering 1.28V.

So I cold potentially set the core multiplier to 42x to make the machine boot up slightly faster.

More testing and benchmarks to be done.

EDIT:
Eventually I went back to A05. I don't know why, but sometimes the turbo power limits stick, sometimes they don't. I don't want XTU service to start up automatically. The point of having a MX/XM CPU is to have everything unlocked, including turbo power. Dell cannot be locking it down, and go tell around everyone loudly, we have "overclockable CPUs" in our Alienwares. As of now the way to unlock the turbo power is rather obscure. Mr. Fox's way doesn't work for me, I found another way that worked. It worked for a while until I went into the BIOS and changed something. Then it doesn't work now.

While I was on A07, I briefly played with the fan settings in HWiNFO64. Seems like there is only 3 speed for each fan. I'd expect at least 5 speed to choose from. I can't make a fan curve out of 3 RPMs. I also noticed that the max CPU fan RPM is 3700 RPM using the SW mode. In the EC mode, the max fan RPM shows up as 4100 RPM. Sadly though, the GPU fans stop in that mode.

Wouldn't it be great, if we have the current settings in A05, combined with the functionality to control the fan in A07? I am not really a fan of regression, issues that have been fixed, should not become issues again. This just shows how shoddy Dell's firmware guys are at doing their job.

As much as I love benching and pushing the machine and customizing it, as much as I'd like to have proper fan control, it's too much pain. Come on only 3 RPMs to choose from? If Dell is afraid of customers complaining about machine shutting off for no reason (due to internal circuit breaker tripping), then design a proper mainboard that can support higher wattage! And commission Delta/Flextronic to make a higher wattage PSU!

Corsair can ask Flextronic to make them a 1500W PSU (review of it here: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=378), I am sure Dell can do it. You can make it twice as big, and even have vents for active air cooling, and I'd still buy one.

As much as Haswell sucks and run hot, the effort and investment on the design of the AW 18 is just nowhere near the level of the M18x R2. It's just simply not as good as the R2.

Unlike Mr. Fox who's patient and willing to give Dell time, I, for one, am not very forgiving. Sadly, if I don't see the stuff that I want to see in the next few BIOS updates, I am most likely going to follow Mr. Vulcan and build my own desktop. At least that way I won't have overheating CPU/GPU, at least it won't shut off from hitting the limit of the PSU, and at the very least, I can control the damn fans...

 

My patience is running out, too. Either they don't care or don't know what to do to fix the 18. Maybe it has fundamental critical flaws that cannot be fixed. You notice which machine I use all the time, and it's not the 18. I'm about to the point of throwing in the towel as far as holding out any hope for the 18 to ever live up to the reputation the M18xR2 has earned. I do have hope that the current product line 14, 17 and 18 are not examples of what the future holds. If they are, it is unlikely that I will be a future Alienware customer. That possibility breaks my heart, literally, but I cannot afford to fret over things I cannot control... just move on to something I can control. I also realize that sometimes serious mistakes are made and a fierce showing of product superiority in the next generation is still within the realm of possibility. But, being an early adopter would seem foolish given what played out with the current generation.

 

really nvidia card makes a whole lot difference as i expected. if its only hwinfo freezing up then thats fine with me, way better than having entire computer freeze. 7970 or 6990m makes computer freeze randomly time to time, or when i change brightness it freezes, i should go for 780m or 880m and see how that goes.

so basically, you have EC box checked and can have multiple fan values in the table and only have hwinfo64 freeze?

 

sad news coming from u

 

Yes, that's correct. And, HWiNFO64 doesn't glitch out all the time. It mostly misbehaves at higher CPU overclocks. I prefer to have the EC disabled rather than have more fan speed values available. If you have the EC enabled and set a fan profile to use fan speeds between the 0, 2000, 4300 RPM steps supported with the EC disabled and then disable the EC sensor it will cause problems. If you disable it, be sure to go change your custom fan profile to use only those 3 speeds or you will have issues with the fans not running at all and overheating.

Nobody is more disappointed about it than I am. I had very high expectations for the Alienware 18 and was confident for the longest time that they would work out the kinks that keep it from being better than the M18xR2. They had always come through for us with fixes on the M18xR2, but enough time has passed with nothing resolved that I now lack confidence it will ever live up to its potential. They screwed things up for the M18xR2 BIOS after A10 as well, but I don't use A11 or A12. I could be wrong, but it almost feels like a conspiracy where they have been watching what I and johnksss have accomplished with the M18xR2 and have intentionally done things to try to block us from having the kind of performance we have achieved by creating roadblocks with the BIOS and power management. I am not saying it will never be fixed, and will be very pleased if it is. I am only saying that I have given up hope that it will be. There's nothing wrong with it for the typical gamer. It's just not suitable for enthusiasts with a passion for overclocking such as myself and johnksss because it has far too many performance limitations.

 

It could be that they won't ever "fix" those issues to keep their bottom line. Money is still king in the business world.

Maybe I am wrong, but it really looks that way to me.

 

ya trully sad, i really hope fox and johnkssss fix that thing, plz don't give up brotherss, is like watching braveheart without William Wallace to guide us. T_T

 

yea when i use fan control its just the EC disabled, 0, 2000 and 4300 fan speed. I don't like it because 4300 is way too loud and I would like to make those 3 values into 1800, 2800 and 4300 if I knew how to do it sadly I don't and seems mumak from TI isn't really interested in doing it. theres also risk factor cause changing bios is very likely to get involved.

on newer machines, it is really unfortunate but we all saw it coming, sort of. I still remember someone mentioned a hexa core cpu in a haswell/broadwell/skylake mobile cpu LOL as if Intel would throw away their tech, money and plans like that and give us what we want, and then theres the 2 years span for haswell. these big companies do it for the money and only way now is hope for the best, or learn to solder, desolder bios chip and mod bios which very few individuals know and willing to risk to do, like svl7.

so far nvidia/AMD seems alright in this department as they only ship out these cards for OEM to lock them down themselves. hopefully Dell won't do more silly things to their machines. with all the die shrink temps going down theres a chance for higher clock speed if system/hardware doesn't get locked down but thats another story.

 

Like I've always said, Alienware seems to be going "mainstream" in order to acquire a bigger market share. I mean just look at the design for the R2 vs the AW18. The exterior looks less flashy and more "dignified". Open up and you'll see that the flashy keyword is gone, and so are the media buttons and the alien head power button. All replaced with fairly subtle and plain looking components. If you turn off the lights the new AW18 actually has a very professional look to it on the inside. If not for the alien head on the exterior, you could totally use the AW18 in a professional setting.

I mean maybe I'm reading too much into this, but making the AW18 less flashy seems to be a sign that Alienware would like to appeal to a wider range of audience.

 

those looks in the eye of enthusiasts is secondary, performance, hardware and freedom come first. i would sitll get AW regardless design if performance is top notch. broadwell skylake is what im aiming for, or cannonlake if skylake still doesn't have dmi 3.0.

 

I'm saying that for your average Joe, looks probably carry a bit more weight. Also less flash means it'll appeal to a wider audience, probably the prosumer type that want a performance machine with little of the flash.

 

I love the design of the M18xR1/R2. The aesthetics are unmatched. I think the Alienware 18 also looks fantastic, although more sedate than I would prefer. The thing I miss most about the aesthetics on the new machine is the absence of the edge-to-edge glossy display. I love that on the older machine and the bezel is just butt-ugly. Although M18xR1/R2 looks better, the Alienware 18 is built better if the lack of features are forgiven. Honestly, the only thing that has me bound up and bothered about the new 18 is how the performance is so extremely poor in comparison to the M18xR1/R2. The performance issues are exacerbated by the locked-down firmware and the power-handling limitation that has been imposed on the motherboard makes the idea of pursuing an sBIOS chip replacement seem like a waste of time. With the locked down stock sBIOS it still overclocks more than the power limit on the motherboard allows.

It is very tempting to buy the SMD soldering tools to see if I can transform this slug into a monster performer. I don't have any experience with SMD soldering, but I have old components I can teach myself with. A mistake could turn out to be very costly.

The OEMs don't screw up the GPU firmware. It comes from NVIDIA already screwed up and they just leave it that way. I think they may have some kind of requirement or agreement with NVIDIA to not touch the vBIOS. And, the problems with the vBIOS are the same among all brands. Crippled GPUs are not an "Alienware exclusive" feature, LOL. But, they've certainly screwed up the sBIOS badly enough. I expect the thermal management to become more difficult with further die shrinkage, not better.

 

i'd agree with most except the shrinkage, especially if the chip is coming from intel (although should be the same for every chip/ram maker). intel have choice to do this, and the blame should be placed on them alone. I have seen some chip that can OC well and those certainly do exist out there, in quite a large number too. an example in this case would be the newly coming out 4790k with better TIM.

intel make a batch of cpu chip, they then find out which ones are good and ones are bad. good ones gets made into xeon chip if its lga2000+ for stability while the crap ones likely get turned into X edition for consumers. in this case most chip with lower standard are turned into early batch i3 5 and 7 and sold to consumers and good batch are likely 4790k. i have seen desktop haswell ES chip that OC at stock voltage to 4.4 ghz and temp is still amazing.

with shrinkage if theres no voltage issue, temp would most likely improve and if the chip and on die voltage regulator allows it, we can push for faster clock speed at same or lower temperature than previous gen cpu.

 

It may be more likely we get solar highways constructed across the land with defrosters put in the road to melt ice before we get a setup as good as the unlockable R2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU Its sort of like Ferrari struggling in F1 they haven't won anything for years, and they need to rethink the way they construct power units to tap the full potential of the technology available. Its my guess that the engineers are being handcuffed by the beancounters and policy has shifted with microshaft throwing a spanner into the works. Pointing the finger at Intel for chip shrinkage doesn't make any sense on why they would introduce a downgrade when last years stuff worked better. In terms of an agreement with NVIDIA on vBIOS , who knows? maybe that is what is happening, its political jostling. They say: "if its not broken. don't fix it". If its broken when you get it from NVIDIA you better fix it before your have a thousand clients screaming at you for not fixing it before you sold it.

 

,,,, what will happen whit a 4900mq ?

 

Look for some posts by Brother scracy in this thread. I think he might have mentioned his 4900MQ settings. If not this thread, maybe it was this one: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-18-m18x/734696-how-overclock-alienware-18-haswell-cpu.html

 

Being that most of you seem to think A05 is better Im still rocking it.The replacement system came with A06 and I flashed it back.

 

i tried to set xtu at the same values and reboot is necessari then it tells me that s impossible to change all practical then i have changed in xtu

 

sounds like XTU. some changes will stick even if it says not sticking. check all values and see what has and hasnt changed. also change 1 value at a time to get it to save overclocking takes patience.

 

A08 is out.

 

I so wish we finally had fan-tables.. It makes me worry a great deal about our laptops; I have been looking for a way to simulate load to cool it down after a heavy bout of gameing.

 

Manual fan controls work well with HWiNFO64 on A07/A08.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-18-m18x/755550-bios-aw18-a08-2.html#post9698007

 

Hello Mr Fox! I have bit of situation here. My m18x r2 is not posting. I have i7 extreme and single gtx 660m with A9 unlocked. I had on stock setting when in win7 i pressed FN+F7 after reboot it powers on for second keyboard lights up but screen doesn't and shuts of after second. And i'm wandering is the reset steps same on A9 as described by u on this forum? Any tips? I did try power drain and fn+ power button thing and no luck. Blind flash with stock A3 didn't work at all i mean it didn't do anything after fans started spinning at full speed it just kept spinning no beeping.

 

Bump. A17 won't post either.

 

I already tried everything out there what evet is available but none of it worked. the one that needs removing mem ram it's just beep twice pause and beep twice endless it Doesn't goes as it described, i guess i have to replace motherboard :-(