Alienware 18 BIOS A10

Using wrong settings never used to be a big deal. You just changed them whenever you needed to... easy-peasy. Well, with the NVRAM storing BIOS settings, whether good or bad, on the new Haswell machines, that has become a real pain in the hind end. Whoever invented that idiotic way of storing BIOS settings on enthusiast computers needs to be put before a firing squad. The fact that it is "non-volatile" is a problem.

 

Mr fox your settings in intel XTU worked for me. I cracnked up the fans using hwinfo and temps are in hte high 40's right now . nevermind i was running the new ultra 4k firestrike lol.

 

Mr. Fox your settings worked for the CPU!! Check out my new score in firestrike. 9279. thank you guys for all your help messing with it. I think Im gonna lower the multipliers. Its probably not a good idea to run my laptop at 46, 45,45,45 everyday right?


View attachment 116617

 

If your temps are fine (probably not at those speeds) why not? I run both the M18xR2 and Alienware 18 at 43x4 all the time. I almost never lower the multipliers below 43 on either machine. Glad your machine is working better. If you want to run 43x4, leave everything set as is except the voltage. For 43x4, you can probably lower the voltage to 1.175mV to 1.185mV if you're set at 1.200mV right now.

 

What benefit has Dell that all adjustments in the bios you do, must be entered in NVRAM storing BIOS, and you can not reset the bios when you need it? What about all the other famous overclocking motherboard had done it the same way?

 

Hello everyone (...uuum, brothers)!
I did my first little overclock on AW18 for 4930MX CPU.

Multipliers are low, because of stock thermal paste. What must I tweak/change for better results and less heat?
Or maybe you do not recommend to overclock CPU on stock thermal paste at all?

Temps:
Idle - 44°C
YouTube - 55-60°C
InGame - 68-74°C
Stress - 85-88°C

 

For what it's worth. My Alienware 18 has since day one often suddenly shut down due to temps being too high when encoding video or rendering 3D Models. Since January of this year I've tried every BIOS as they were released. I've even had my heatsinks replaced by dell.

Version A09 is the ONLY version that seemed to stop my problems as the fans seem to kick in a lot sooner. So I've been using A09 since it was released and had no problems at all.

Upgraded to A10 tonight and boom, back to sudden shut downs. 3 in a row. The fans were way to slow at firing up.

So I downgraded back to A09 and everything is normal again. The fans kick is much sooner than A10.

I wish DELL would give us full access to the fans as I don't care about noise levels when I'm encoding video's and need the speed.

 

Fixing a proper fan profile should really be a simple thing and fix, but Dell want their laptops to be quietest of the gaming pc brands. With today's hardware is still a need for noisy fans, why choke them then when a hefty hardware needs for the fans going for the speed they are designed for. Dell's technicians know that Alienware is a powerful gaming laptop with powerful hardware, then they should clearly and created a more powerful fan profile inside the Alienware command center.

 

Well, the really amazing (and sad) part of that is, in spite of the engineered shortcomings to achieve auditory pleasantries at the expense of thermal goodness, the Alienware 17 and 18 have better and more effective cooling systems than any of the options available from their competitors. It's still not a good excuse for gimping the fan profiles, but it is a huge slam against the competition's engineering flaws. Sometimes the best still isn't good enough. The sad part is that the fans were gimped on purpose.

Don't hold your breath on that. As long as so-called enthusiast machines are being designed by non-enthusiasts and casual gamers, it ain't gonna get fixed. In fact, if the current trend is an indication of where things are headed in laptop-land, it will probably get much worse... very soon.

You'll need to fix this yourself: HWiNFO, HWiNFO32/64 - Download + Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra = Thermal Problems Solved

<iframe class='imgur-album' width='100%' height="650" frameborder='0' src="//imgur.com/a/UYC3s/embed"></iframe>

 

That becomes more and more laptops that come with a program that users can operate their fans themselves, or they have a turbo button and increase the fans. Why can not Dell and do the same? Dell only throttles the fans below the speed they are designed for. What if the fans could have gone on the speed they are under flashing the bios? This seems begin and be pathetic done by the Dell. :hi2:

 

Yeah, but even with those special features their laptops still still run too hot because their cooling systems are ineffective, LOL.

I agree that Dell can do better by fixing this artificial fan speed limitation, and by providing a native fan speed control solution. But, I doubt they will. We have told them what we want and need. They have read it in this and other forums, but a year later it remains as it is. They have their own agenda and a model that someone in a position of power set as a designed standard that must be adhered to. What their customers want is secondary... the model leaves no room for flexibility to meet customer expectations. This is not unique to Dell. Other OEMs have silly rules that are contrary to what customers want. On top of that, the inadequate cooling on the systems sold by their competition gives them no incentive to do better. Thus the comment, "Sometimes the best still isn't good enough."

 

Is it so very difficult and get an additional program in Alien command center that can speed up the fans then? They could have had two for example pcs speed profiles, and one that you could manually control the fans themselves. One profile could they use to those who wanted a very quiet pc and one is to heavy use. I believe this had become very very popular among users of the Alienware laptops.

Edit: But it is equally difficult for Dell's technicians and get a solution in command centeret as the mess they make with the fan profile stored in the bios.

 

I brought this up the other day, but i'm not sure if anyone has noticed when flashing their bios to a new one, there is a point during the bios flash that all the fans go to full power for a couple of seconds. I have set my fans to maximum using hwinfo and they don't even come close to the sound and force (if you put your hand behind the laptop) that the fans cause while flashing a new bios update.

Did anyone else notice this? If so , how was the creators of Hwinfo64 able to access the fans since none of the other software companies that usually have fan controls are all greyed out and you can't adjust them. I'm just curious if anyone knows of any other fan control software that would work wtih our systems, and possibly allow us to crank the speed up to what they are at when flashing the bios update.

I tried google and couldnt find anything. All i kept getting was apparently alienware used to have fan control access in their alienware control center software. I wonder if that old alienware fan control software would work with our laptops?

 

Dell has not wanted to do something with the fan speed or fan profiles on Alienware neither the 17 or 18. Hwinfo64 must be the only software that can control the fans manually in an Alienware. Dell will obviously not let Alienware laptops go on the speed of the fans is designed for, they would rather that their laptops will be quiet and hot during use.

 

It was in this thread that you posted (#53) and there were responses to your observation in posts #54 and #55. I merged this new thread with the one where it was already being discussed.

 

I can just imagine using my fans at the level they are during a bios flash all the time. That would cause more than a few fights with the wife and I would probably have to find some place to sleep after I got kicked out.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Yes, but it sure would be nice to have the ability available on demand whenever you want or need it. I can't excuse the fact that they've been gimped on purpose. It was super-naughty of them to do that to us.

 

I will not have and be banned out of the house of my wife, because she is very understanding and very kind to me. :laugh:

 

See what I have written to Martin at HWINFO: problems and move on values in multiple steps in (layout) settings
Hey Marin
Tested drag-and-drop support in the main sensors and this feature I never thought of. Excellent. Then I have no use for the function I used before, but you may well check it out.
Thank you for lightning fast feedback.
Have said this before, but I love this software.
Thank you so much.
Ps: Is there any chance that it will go and access the actual fan speed (cpu) for the new Alienware 17 and 18.
The fans of the new Alienware 17 and 18 runs at a much higher rate during flashing the bios, than they do during normal operation. Dell throttles down the speed of the fans to the new Alienware laptop. You have the option and check this?
Hoping for a positive response.
Regards
Papusan
I have an Alienware 17
Computer: Alienware 17 (new model) laptop
Motherboard: Alienware Model 05RW0M
Chipset: Intel HM87 (Intel Lynx Point HM87)
Intel Core: i7-4930mx
Graphics:: Nvidia gtx780m (GB Intel graphic)
Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD connected two SATA 3 (ACHI MODE)
Windows 8.1 x64bit

Edit. Can you maybe give a better description of this to Martin at HWINFO, then I'm not so good at English?

 

i have a question about this new bios update. my current aienware 18 has 4800mq and running the a09. it is running stock clocks with fresh thermal paste from yesterday. i have seen this many times, but sometimes the cpu fan does not even run. 0rpm. it stays at 0 no matter what i do, even if i run a cpu stress test and it thermal throttles at 100C, the fan does not run. the weird thing is in hwinfo, i can force the fan to run at desired speed, but this causes the gpu fans to not run, as hwinfo only detects control for the cpu fan, but inadvertently it disables auto control over the gpu fans.

when i restart the alienware, the cpu fan runs fine, so is there something can do about this problem? will updating the bios to a10 fix this? thanks.

 

Use this guide from Mr Fox to adjust all the fans in Hwinfo: HWiNFO64 Setup Steps - Imgur

 

It is really sad to think that this may soon be coming to an end in the world of laptops.

 

Her Mr. Fox, off-topic here, but the Alienware 18 (not M18x R1/R2) CANNOT accept a second power adapter, correct? All of those 4.7GHz/4.8GHz benches with 1150/6000 780M SLI runs you do is on a single 330W adapter, no?

 

These are beautiful and look at . Nearly 150 watts of CPU power. Had you been able to run at max power with both graphics cards fully overclocked under a hefty 3DMark Vantage test, would certainly laptop used over 660 watts. Unfortunately, Dell has destroyed the ability for you to do so. :cry:
About 3-4 years run benchmark tests with a max wattage of 10-15 watts on your processor. :laugh: Enjoy it while you can. :thumbsup:

Edit: What happened to the uncore clock (3002.3 MHz)?

 

No, D2, about the most you can do with SLI using a single AC adapter on the Alienware 18 with the CPU cranked up this high is around 1020/1500/1.050V, and that is only on a good day with luck on your side. You can go a little bit higher than this with the M18xR2 because the 3920XM draws about 95-110W tops versus between 140-150W for the 4930MX at the same clock speed. The overclocks you are asking about with both CPU and GPU are only possible on the M18xR2 with the dual AC adapter.

I am OK with Haswell after all of this time of experimenting... not my favorite CPU family, but I can deal with it. The temps in the above screen shot is just stock fans and Liquid Ultra. Not being able to use the dual AC adapter is a huge problem for extreme GPU overclocking. Hopefully, GTX 980M will draw enough less power that it helps make up some of lost headroom consumed by the crazy watt-gobbling Haswell CPU.

Thanks, papusan. Yes, it would be nice to have the power the machine needs to run wild and free. Maybe someday I will find a hardware mod that can circumvent this engineering limitation. Maybe replace something on the motherboard with a higher capacity. I think my personal ignorance of what I can mod and how is holding me back right now.

 

A soldering iron can certainly be used for yes, Dell will certainly not help Alienware 18 owners With unlock for dual psu.
By the way the new BIOS A14 allows + volts at the cashe offset and + volts on the Vcore offset start right away when my alienware 17 start booting up, and this before xtu come to start up. It's a little positive With the New bios.

 

So if I have alienware 18, I can soder two power supplies together and use it into the original power jack in the laptop?

 

Mr fox, I knnow this is a dumb question so please bear with me. Would it be possible to replace our motherboard in the Alienware 18 with one from eBay from a eurocoomm laptop that allows for the use of the dual 330watt adapters? I mean obviously some modding would need to take place to fit in the shell of the 18' but there are plenty of websites that sell custom made body's for do it yourself laptop builds.


Also isn't eurocoomm based out of Europe.? Their ac current is different then ours, but I have bought pool pumps and was able to easily change the circuitry to work with our ac currents

 

Eurocom is for some reason Canadian XD

Also, a P37xSMx or P37xSM-A motherboard wouldn't fit in your AW18.. the chassis are not compatible.

 

You can but it won't work.

 

Sad to say, that only provides a benefit on the M18xR1/R2. The Alienware 18 has something on the motherboard that shuts the system off just shy of it exceeding the full output capacity of a single 330W AC adapter. Perhaps the wrong person in the engineering department saw my mod and decided they needed to "fix that problem" for everyone. The mod works perfectly, but the laptop ignores the extra power at its disposal and behaves exactly the same as if one AC adapter is connected.

 

Dell has just removed the download of BIOS A10 and reverted back to A09 when I checked under the downloads of my service tag. Strange...

 

Really, I just checked on the DELL site and the A10 version was removed and reverted back to A09. Strange, I wonder what is happening !!!

 

I`m not going back though, this is the best BIOS that has worked for me and allowed me to get a stable 4GHz overclock out of my 4810MQ

Ok now it's back again! what the heck is going on!

 

Good question !! I'm also using A10 and the system is stable with @ 4.1.

 

Switching back and forth with the last version of bios that Dell has done many times. Think it's server error, then correct bios comes up after a while. I checked just now it was the old bios in place for Win 8.1 and the new version to the Win 7, but this time it could be that Dell comes with a revision of the new graphics card and a HQ processor. HQ processors = It makes me sick. There are several computer manufacturers have started with HQ processors along with their best gpu in their gaming laptops. HQ prosesoren have a better internal graphics card, but what should I do with such crap?

 

That's because those OEMs are [insert expletive] idiots that do not think twice about ripping off unsavvy wannabe enthusiasts with pathetic garbage sold at high prices. They see 980M and get all goo-goo-gah-gah and have no idea the CPU is a BGA turd. They should be required to post a prominently highlighted disclaimer on their sales/order confirmation page that the CPU is a low-TDP product that is permanently attached to the motherboard and cannot be upgraded.

 

This. The AMOUNT of people who get grab-happy at integrated CPU machines... like ugh. They don't know ANYTHING. I swear, I feel like writing another quick guide about how to tell what a mobile CPU actually is.

 

Intel can produce as many low performance processors as they want, but that a computer manufacturer put such nonsense in a gaming laptop with a high performance graphics card that I do not understand. And in addition they begin to assemble processors that are soldered on the motherboard is the total behind the net. There are many who want the ability and upgrade their processor when they have regretted the choice of processor they did previously. And this would PC manufacturers and destroy opportunity to do. If laptop manufacturers do this, they lose many customers who either would build a desktop gaming PC instead.

 

Apple gets away with selling disposable "Ultrabook" trash concealed in insanely expensive but attractive wrappers. They are permanently saddled by disposable components, including soldered CPU, GPU and RAM. So, this is not a new disease, it's merely spreading. Once this strain of cancer metastasizes it is really hard to get the disease under control again. Way too many PC lovers have contracted this deadly brain disorder. Their ignorance and what they can see on the surface looks fancy, so this creates a false sense of wellness. Little do they know, what they cannot see on the inside is the exact opposite of what they aspire to own for a computer.

As much as I don't want to go back to a desktop, I won't compromise on laptops with soldered CPU or GPU... no way. If it is going to be a disposable piece of garbage then it might as well be a cheap little $250-300 Acer or HP econo-turd laptop or Chromebook for web browsing and email. Then you can spend whatever amount of money you would have otherwise spent on a real high performance laptop toward building yourself a monster desktop instead.

 

I owned an 17" Acer laptop for over 5 years ago, it was the dumbest purchase I had ever made​​. :cry: I also owned a Clevo (w860cu), which we in Norway call Multicom w860c, but was terribly disappointed by the plasticky execution. It was delivered with i7-920xm and gtx285m graphics card that I upgraded to gtx470m. The power supply to this laptop was underdimensioned, so the laptop just turned off after some hard use. It is not so much and choose when it comes to a powerful gaming laptop that you can also overclock. I will never ever buy a cheap laptop or Apple, as I build either a desktop PC as I did before with fridge cooling. But it is also just as expensive as an Alienware laptop, if not more expensive.

 

Yup, that's right. An extreme desktop worth having is not going to be a more affordable endeavor no matter what all the gamer-boys like to say. You can plan on spending no less that $5K for something awesome.

An average gaming rig can be had on a fairly small budget, but that kind of machine is just too ordinary and boring to care about. Even the power-starved Alienware 18 is more powerful than many gamer's desktops.

 

The last extreme desktop I built with fridge cooling cost me over $ 9000 and it is almost 8 years ago. It was very much Money also in Norway. Only cooling solution cost over $ 1,000. My Alienware laptop cost me $ 3500, but actually cost $ 4600 with my i7-4930mx processor. The processor I received in exchange instead of my old 4900mq is Extreme edition . The price on my Alienware is now over $ 1,000 more expensive than when I bought it last year. And I did not miss anything when gtx880m went on sale. :laugh:

Edit: When I bought my Alienware, I bought it with 120MHz 3D screen too. The most expensive Alienware 17 with extreme processors, can not be sold with this screen nowadays.

 

If I had to build a desktop right now... a desktop that'd get me away from using laptops primarily, I would spend no less than $10,000 on it.

5960X, 32GB DDR4 3000MHz quad channel memory, FOUR GTX Titan Blacks (or maybe three and a 680 or so for PhysX offloading, but I say four to be safe), three 1440p 120Hz monitors and a 1600p 60Hz as a "second" screen (since in SLI one must use triple screens as one large widescreen monitor, and I want to do triple monitor gaming sometimes), A solid 256GB SSD for my OS and programs and such, no less than 2TB SSD storage (in Raid-0) for my games etc, a further 1TB SSD for any video editing stuff I need to do so it works as fast as possible, and then a further minimum of 4TB HDD storage for movies/outputted video files/local stream recordings/etc. Then I need a PSU capable of pushing it all and a solid watercooling loop for the system, as well as a nice motherboard to fit it all in and finally, that thing is going on the largest APC UPS I can find. Also, a case nice enough to hold it all is necessary... and I still want a DVD drive.

See THAT? That's the kind of stuff you'll never find in a laptop and I won't be satisfied with any less in a desktop. As far as I'm concerned, for me to move from laptops, I need to own in a desktop at LEAST double the power that's able to be had in a laptop. And believe me, I would use every inch of that thing XD.

 

No kidding about the performance desktops not costing any less part. This is my build. Notice I included the cost of pretty much everything, down to the case fans in order to do a proper comparison.

On paper, this desktop cost about $300 more than the Clevo in my sig, although it does have more than 2x the GPU power, and 50% more CPU power. But as you can see nothing is truly "top of the line" except for maybe the SSD and the PSU, yet it still came out to be quite expensive.

In case you're wondering about the choice of certain parts, I got the mobo for free, and only paid $600 for the CPU+ram combo. Win7 Pro key only cost me $50, and SSDs were simply moved from my laptop, and monitor was bought more than half a year ago. My total out of pocket cost was probably less than $2000 to put the entire thing together.

Now imagine throwing in 2x Titan X/980 Ti/whatever GM200 will be called, and the 4960X instead of 4930K. But then it makes no sense to cheap out on the mobo, so let's upgrade to R4BE. That's another $1800 right there. Now because I have all these high end components and an absolutely MASSIVE case that was designed specifically for watercooling, it just makes no sense to use a dinky AIO. So I decided to build a custom loop. Since it's my first time, I decide to only do CPU+GPU so as to not get over myself and not destroy my bank account. Well an off the cuff estimate shows that's at least another $1000 (480mm + 420mm radiators and decent CPU+GPU blocks would cost close to $700-800 alone).

But why bother with GM200 in 2 way SLI if you're only doing 1080p? So let's throw more money at this problem -- the ROG Swift! Well that's yet another $800 at least.

So as Mr. Fox correctly said, when all is said and done, a 4960X + R4BE + 2x TitanX/980 Ti setup with CPU+GPU loop and ROG Swift with otherwise identical components to what I listed would now cost $7500. Now that is a desktop truly deserving of the "monster setup" title.

Oh what's that you say, X79 is long in the tooth and we should do an X99 build instead? No problem, R5E+5960X+DDR4 that'll probably add another $500, so now we're looking at an $8000 desktop. That's enough to buy you a second hand Corolla, or use as a down payment for an Audi A4 rofl.

 

Every single word in the first part of this post is the pure expression of objectivity and observation skill at its finest. It was a fookin pleasure to read it

 

Indeed ! As they say at the track....All show and no go.

Well said as usual, Mr. Fox.

 

Well, I pley games siting on my couch in the living room or Laid on my bed!!!. So no way I can do that with a desktop. Sorry!

 

I don't know if maybe it's my alienware that had problems, but after updating the bios from A09 to A10, in the morning when I power the machine, sometimes the screen shows as a blank screen, but everything loads and stuff, I can hear the windows login page and yeah. But when I force shutdown and restart, it all works again, I don't know if this is another issue or just related to this bios update.

 

I had that happen when I installed Windows 7 in UEFI mode. When on the integrated Intel Graphics, it boots fine, but if I switched to the Dedicated GPU, the moment the Windows loading screen start, the screen turns black but I can hear the startup sound and the system is working but nothing happens.

This is not a BIOS issue.

If you did install Windows in UEFI mode, go to BIOS and enable "Load Legacy ROM" in the boot options