Alienware m15 r1 swollen battery, can I still use it?

-m15 battery

So the battery for my m15 R1(8750+1660Ti) has swollen up so badly that the bottom cover isn't even remotely flush with the keyboard deck. Its out of warranty, I contacted Dell and they told me a replacement battery was backordered, and I'd have to wait some time for a new one. I was already kinda annoyed by having to lug around the beast, I always prefer small thin and light laptops and use a desktop for games, but I had to make an exception cause my situation at that time made a desktop a unpractical and almost impossible option. That is not true anymore and I've been wanting to build a desktop but have held back hoping for the GPU market to improve. Sorry for rambling but just wanted to give a better idea of my current situation, I had to wait to get a new OEM battery, I did have the option of buying a 3rd party non OEM battery but I decided to cut my losses with the AW, bought a thin and light for my daily driver which made my life easier, bought parts for a new desktop except the GPU(have had little luck securing one for a reasonable price, hoping it'll get slightly easier after the holidays). I figured my PS5 will satisfy the gaming itch till I finish my build.

But I've been seriously itching to play the new Halo, so my question is can I use the M15 despite the swollen battery? Per my understanding, the swollen battery will reduce performance, but can I just remove the battery and use the m15 while plugged in and get the full potential performance of the laptop? the 1660Ti isn't exactly a beast so I am gonna need as much performance as I can squeeze out of it to play a new AAA title like Halo. Or should I just pony up for a non OEM battery? I dont want to spend anything on a obsolete laptop I'm not planning to use anymore but I might have look into it if thats my only option here

 

For the sake of safety -- REMOVE the battery I would simply order a 3rd party replacement as they're just as good if not better than the OEM. Might be able to get a higher capacity as well for the same price as the OEM.

The laptop will run fine w/o it in the system. You've obviously been using it plugged in anyway.

GPU's for the desktop..... Find something that will work as the prices won't come down as long as there's this thing called Crypto. They might drop a small percentage when a new version is released but, then stock will get depleted again. About the only way to get a GPU at a decent price is to order a complete system with one included.

 

I've not been using the laptop, been using a MacBook as my daily, obviously cant game on it but it meets all my other needs.

As for the GPU I am not really expecting to buy one cheap, but just hoping to secure one through a legitimate source at current MSRP. I just dont wanna pay a scalper 2x the MSRP, . A few friends have gotten lucky with BB and Microcenter, my friend got a 3070Ti for 800 from Best Buy, while thats higher than what it would've been if not for Crypto and the chip shortage I am okay with it, the market dicates prices and not much I can do about it if I am unwilling to wait it out(and who knows how long that might be, it was the original plan but the AW ****ting the bed accelerated my timeline, I could either pay to repair a laptop I was planning on replacing or overpay for a new GPU, wasn't a hard decision since I was getting annoyed carrying around a big and heavy machine all the time). I just dont want to pay the 1200$+ resellers/scalpers are asking for it, not gonna wait out the market but am willing to wait to find one at MSRP. I am hoping it will get a little bit easier to secure one after christmas, I was able to buy 2 PS5s for MSRP last year, one for me and the other was a christmas gift for my brother, so I know its possible, just gotta be patient. In the meantime just gonna make do with my PS5, and the AW for PC/XBOX exclusives. if it works with the battery removed without losing any performance then that works for me, doesn't make sense to spend 100$+ on a new battery since I have no use for it, only gonna use it for gaming and have to plug it in for that either way. It will basically serve as my temporary desktop till I finish my build.

 

I have one locally as well and surprisingly they had the cheapest price on the 12700K when it was released @ $399 when everyone else was $420+. I rebuilt my server from the ground up with all new components and it came out to a total of ~$1500 w/o a GPU. I don't use it for gaming but more for networking / headless.

GPU prices / availability are always a precious commodity and have been higher than normal for several years. If you go for less in demand options / used you can probably snag a deal. IMO there's no need for a $1000-$2000 GPU unless you're working on it everyday / all day for projects. Probably don't' need an RTX for what's out there anyway. Then again I'm not playing high FPS games and wouldn't really notice. I've got a GTX1650 / 4GB in my laptop and it works just fine for me.

 

I already bought a 3840x1600 144hz ultrawide monitor, so if I want to take full advantage of it I need a GPU that is fairly powerful. I actually found a 6700XT for 800 at microcenter but made the mistake of not pulling the trigger, it was fairly early into my search and I thought I could hold out for a Nvidia GPU since I wanna try out RTX and my monitor has GSYNC ultimate that I wanna take advantage of, and last but not the least, DLSS is something that could benefit me greatly since I have a high res monitor. I later realized it was extremely dumb on my part to not buy the AMD card, even though I was deadset on Nvidia I could've still used it temporarily and would've had no problems selling it after I found a 3070Ti, could've also traded it for the 3070ti. At that time I thought it was the smarter decision, I was way too worried about not giving in to my impulses and convincing myself to remain patient, that I didn't really think it through and ended up making an extremely stupid decision. Definitely kicking myself for missing that chance.

 

It happens quite a bit when it comes to tech purchases. I noticed some price reductions for a couple of components $60 total for black friday sales. Of course I could have played the game to get the better price from Microcenter / Amazon by buying the new products and returning the old orders for the price reduction but, didn't feel like it. Turned out most of the stuff i bought for the rebuild a week or so before black friday went up in price on a few things.

Which is why I say find what you're looking for either by price or type and go for it. Waiting things out for a better price sometimes isn't worthwhile and if you plan on selling anything time isn't your friend because when you finally see the price you're looking for depreciation has snuck up on the existing items.

 

Careful with that, all the third party replacements I got for the old AW17 2014 model were junk. They worked fine until drained under 50% then would literally melt down a chip on the first recharge to full, in the process melting the battery casing.
Not just a one-off either, I went through three of them and they all did it.