*OFFICIAL* Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge Thread

If you are in the USA, you can send me your cards to be tested and flashed.

Applied Spectre microcode patch from Intel, within 24 hours, CPU is dead and two mosfets are blown on the motherboard. I'm debating repairing it, but i'm not inclined to drop any more money on such a crappy computer.

 

I’m located in the UK. Cards have been sent back today to have dell bios put on them. Seller is trying to say because I’ve tried to use prema vbios I may have damaged the cards. How can I flash something that’s not even showing in my bios or device manager from first time I installed.


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I’m more inclined to think you’ve damaged the cards through ESD or the motherboard.

 

I use esd wristband at all times. Motherboards fine as I installed 770m’s after trying 980m’s and they was fine. Working like they should.


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Thx! They are a rare find here so coming over an m18r2 will be difficult haha. But I’ve read nearly everything there is about the 18 lineup and I can see why ppl like the m18. But the AW18 is the one I can get my hands on. One thing I haven’t found out is the thickness of the pads (vrams)on the gpu and cpu as I will replace them with fujipoly pads and of course LM as on my AW13. Also the gtx780 should have the 100w pipes yes? So a swap with 980s should be a hot swap? In regards to cpu the 4930mx or 4940mx do they require additional cooling or is this a easy swap also?

 

In the AW18 I think they only came with one three-pipe heatsink, the 780m should have 100w heatsinks stock, and the 980m cards did come in AW18, with latest BIOS it should be an easy swap as long as the cards are good.

 

So All I've done is gone back to Windows 8.1 and not much else since I don't have a lot of time, but my issues are still present (edit: Outside of booting up and loading. Those times still aren't as great as they used to be, but it was a significant boost). I am nearly certain that my GPU is being throttled a lot. It seems very random, but contrast to what I said earlier in this thread, it seems to be much more frequent during very busy situations. If I move my character in World of Warcraft to a room with no one else in it and just stare at a wall then everything goes back to normal. I know that sounds like it's just a simple FPS issue but it's not like a gradual decrease like I've seen in the past. I will go instantaneously from 40-60 FPS to 5.

I've never taken apart my AW18 to clean it and remove the dust. I thought that could potentially be it.

Would you still recommend I go to Win10 without the bloatware and use the new intel chipset and dell win10 drivers?

Sorry for complaining so much and I know this laptop is old by now, but I spent $4k on it and I think I should be able to at least still play WoW and Overwatch on basic settings without dropping to 5FPS.

 

The Windows 10 Bloatware Free version + the thread I posted is closed. Too much work due the Micro$haft Morons screw up the whole OS with to much ****y 2 time a year. The thread creator @Phoenix was sick of dealing with it... If you go the Win 10 route. Start here....

NBR Windows 10 Clean Installation Guide
Windows 10 Tweaks and Fixes (Index post #1)
O&O ShutUp10 - Do not use Windows 10 without it!

For drivers Intel's Chipset - Intel MEI Drivers - Recommended AHCI/RAID drivers - Dell support's Win 10 drivers for AW18

 

you did it right bro, but this is a nice bonus also:

 

Sorry I forgot Can't rep you.
Yeah, I know about that video. I prefer do thing my self. But maybe you should but this video in your NBR Windows 10 Clean Installation Guide if you not already have done it. In a spoiler or...

Damn, M$ Morons.... This steps shouldn't be needed!!!

 

Thanks for the help guys. I created a separate thread and found out that I'm getting throttled and need to deal with some temperature issues first and foremost.

 

Before anyone even touches a computer with Windows 10, they have to do those 101 things to fix the OS like manually adding power plans and disabling this and that. Yeah Micro$h4ft screwed it up so well for us it's not even funny.

With Windows 7, all we had to do is to a few Windows updates and your taptop is ready for action

 

Aka New is always better And we get <new> 2 times a year now

 

Hello,guys!!! Is it possible to install hdd like this Barracuda Guardian SATAIII ST5000LM000 ?It is 2,5" , but thickness is 15mm.I want to install it unstead of dvd drive with hdd to dvd case.

 

Dell just posted the A13 bios. I don't know what changes this makes hopefully all the petitions got answered?

 

Lol no. That update is to fix the 'meltdown' and 'spectre' security flaws relating to the intel chipset. No enhancements; in fact, I ran wPrime before and after on my AW18 (4910mq processor) and found it took about 13.3% longer to calculate the square roots of 1024 million integers. Due to the nature of the security flaw and thus the fix for it, all PC's needing this patch will have their performance negatively affected by the patch.

 

Could you please run InSpectre tool [Recommended by Intel to observe your status + able to disable Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability patches] with Meltdown and Spectre patches disabled in same test? Thanks.

 

Just ran it and came back with only an additional 4% time to perform the task with both patches disabled, down ~9%.

 

You mean you lost 13.3% performance with (new bios + the M$ patch) And lost 13-9 = 4% if you disabled Meltdown and Spectre vulnerability patches? What is your new µCU code? If you can remember the old, post it as well. Thanks.

 

Sorry, I should be clearer about the performance hit. Time to calculate the square roots of 1024 million integers:

A12 with both meltdown and spectre protection enabled ~244 seconds
A13 with both meltdown and spectre protection enabled ~276 seconds
A13 with both meltdown and spectre protection disabled ~253 seconds

The uCU code is now 24, unsure what it was before.

 

Thanks. +rep This means the loss would be even bigger if you run older A12 with meltdown (already patched from M$) protection Disabled.

 

This is why I stayed on Windows 8.1 and will not update the BIOS to A13. I am not concerned about meltdown or spectre as they really don't target individual consumer PC's and there is no evidence there have been any issues because of them. I assume that by staying on 8.1 and having WIndows update disabled, I should be safe from getting these patches and suffering from any performance degradation because of them. I figure I have another year or so to be able to use my 18 before I need to get something new to keep up with the latest games. Because of that, I need every bit of power this thing can give me and can't afford a 10, 20 or 30% hit to it's performance.

 

So what is the conclusion now, should I stay on A12, or update to A13? my priority is the system stability and cooling.

 

Rather put it the other way... Want security or performance? If you don't encounter problems with stability or cooling with old firmware you use today... Stay on the old bios. it will come standalone Microcode who boot with the OS (the Linux version).

 

If the A13 already flashe, is there is any issues to downgrade to A12?

 

I don't think it's possible to roll back to older Microcode with a bios downgrade. It will be stuck on latest.

 

About to attempt to re-do the thermal paste on my gpu/cpu for the first time. Wish me luck.

 

Good luck, be careful if you will use liquid metal, and don't forget to check the thermal pads as well.

 

Thermal pads? Also I'm kinda surprised at how much spilled off from the manufacturer. I have a lot to clean off.

 

It's not necessary to replace them all, but you have to check them and replace if needed.

 

They seem to be just fine.

So I'm all done.

I have 3 extra screws, so that's troubling, but everything seems to be solidly back in place.

Had WoW running for around 5-10 minutes now. CPU is averaging 55ish degrees, peaking at 75-79. I feel that should be lower, no?

 

You can run WPrime. Right click and run it as Adm. Click Advanced settings, select 8 threads and run the 1024M stability test. Follow temp with Hwinfo64 or similar tool. Post results

 

Edit: redoing test

 

You run it wrong. To high numbers. Lower the better. Click Advanced settings and select 8 threads Then save and run 1024M. Rememember post score and temp.

From the older i7-4900Mq https://hwbot.org/benchmark/wprime_...Id=processor_2882&cores=4#start=0#interval=20

 

Looks like I'm ok?

 

Temp seems ok. Because the fan profile in Alienware 17 and and 18 is slow to start up.

 

Awesome. Such a relief. Never done a thermal paste job on a laptop before.

 

Run the same benchmark after a couple of weeks. See if temp is the same. Good luck

 

Can anyone vouch for how well these batteries are as a replacement for an AW18 battery?

http://www.laptopartstore.com/dell-c-1_9/86wh-12cell-dell-alienware-18-battery-p-4532.html

 

Nevermind, just found a whole mess of comments on facebook cautioning me against them. Sigh.

 

I was wondering if someone had unlocked 1070 on Alienware 18 and scored, and I was going to do that, and I wanted advice.