September possible new Alienware launch

watch out on those memory voltage as khenglish pointed out...

 

Thread turned into a ****show, as always. I did want to clear this bit up though about the LCD panels. The light bleed is NOT a panel problem, but a MOUNTING problem. If you take the panel out and power it up, you'll see no yellowing/bleeding. However, the moment you stick it into the Dell mounting frame, BOOM. It takes screw adjustments, foam backing, and shaving of bezel clips to try to minimize all the bleed, and even then, it's not enough.

Some people are fine with BGA, and that is fine. BGA has been around for as long as PGA/MXM have been What some of us take issue with is BGA was always a mainstream/consumer thing, and PGA/MXM was an enthusiast thing. Alienware used to be an enthusiast brand, but now the cater to a different crowd, as evidenced by the stark difference in members between the m15x/m17x/m18x boards and the 2015 Alienware 13/15/17 boards.

Honestly, these threads are useless, because it always decays into such personal chaos. New guys, stick to your boards. Old guys, stick to your boards, and so be done with it.

/thread

 

Noting to watch. it's locked. And besides, this was only me testing and actual game. I already checked the voltage and it's exactly where it's suppose to be.

 

That goes for all panels in all laptops. Once mounted they often show lightbleed. It is because the mounting holes are universal and it is almost impossible to keep the lids perfectly straight with no pressure. But the current fhd models for the 13,15 and 17 range are pretty much bleed free. The panels they use their are not sensitive to screen bleed anymore. The 4k 15inch panels though are a pain. Only the glass touchpad versions are mostly free of bleed.

 

Suppose I buy the 4K touch and it has bleed, what do you suggest to fix the problem?

 

Shave the bezel clips, loosen screws in the frame, buy foam pads and apply all around the frame and mounting bracket. A lot of work.

 

same goes with the clevo ones?

 

I'm not an overclocker, But I'd love to have my GPU and CPU, misc choices left to me and Improvement is always an option (Who is not interested in OCing, still learning with the time and resources I have atm) with socketed machines, flexible basically, & that's it where Alienware/ MSI / ASUS lose to Clevo, common sense point, now that Pascal is coming what will BGA Maxwell owners do when they'll have to run a VR (775DM / 870DM and that GT80 can run with a single 980N or 980M/N SLI while Alienware looks at ground with single GPU options, pls no GA here we are talking mobile MXM cards here) ? Buy a new machine with another 3 year warranty for the best in class RMA ? While the Clevo owners atleast the 775DM / 870DM can upgrade to 1080 for sure, 1070M - 770ZM/DM on the other hand remains spectical about the MXM3.0b because of BGA flood (though the chance is still there), causing drop of Socketed standard Hardware, people are so blind to reality of the stuff and see it in one dimension, **Tunnel FOV mode activated** causing this massive BGA push hurting the Socketed / User choice factor, Irony is mobiles are embracing this atleast by a small factor while the Computers tending to steer away on both software (Win10) and hardware realms. Project Ara says Hi !

And I will never trust the Dell's noob technician to fix the stuff for me, I could do it myself with more confidence than those technicians, Eurocom on the other hand is fully dedicated to Performance and Maximum skill because they and HIDevo, Mythlogic are a few resellers that offer Prema vBIOS and sBIOS mods / Full overclocking support with Warranty, does Dell guarantee that ? Nope, So AW can go to hell for the price / performance / user maintenance / upgrades. So many compromises for the Optimus shackled machines.

@rinneh the heatsink GPU Issue that I have, I will have to check it, Thermal pads may be worn out and Alienware has good quality heatsinks, Idk how they make now, also I don't have that big thermal pad at the back of the card like many owners, I will have to check that as well, It's a tough job but way better than having a BGA mess personally, because I may have to buy a new mobo or dump or get another BGA ( better get another next time for $$$$), sorry no.

EDIT : So the ultimate message from Mr. Robot to Mr. Xyz is don't shove what we don't want, Instead give us options to deal with else we have alternatives.

 

Alienware is losing customer anyways.. Band of incompetent kid at leadership that love apple and thin garbage..


The army what they will order? If they need a server replacement? Clevo. And dtr Clevo...

How many laptop do the army in each country own high end laptop? Probably ton.


My friend worked in a company that code stuff for airplane and other thing he could not tell me since he need classification or something for them.

They had some alienware laptop and told me they where crap. If a decent offer from dell would have told them they could have xeon in a laptop they would have ordered.

Money is not an issue for lot of company when it take less space and POWER.

Even poor country would prefer a mobile version dtr with ample cooling and no throttling to save some power.

 

There goes the bashing of bga owners again. SMH...

Anyhow, to answer your question, it's simple. When the AW 1080M releases, one can sell their current AW and buy the new refresh. Pretty simple.

The one thing AW owners have going for them is the warranty. Aside to rubbish techs coming to you or having to send the laptop out to rubbish Depot (all overnighted), regardless, the point is that you're covered.

I am curious how Clevo, Sager, Eurocom etc.. warranty service is like compared to Dell? I doubt that it's as profound. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it's only depot method. How long would a repair take?

Do they over night ship you a box and over night it back once repair is completed? Hmm...I have a feeling not. Someone please confirm.

At the end of the day, one with a 4-5k dtr is more SOL than one with a 2k AW laptop with exceptional warranty.

I have no doubt that the integrity of the socketed mobo's are far superior than bga's purely from a power (watt) capacity stand point, however, with heat being our worst enemy and with the tight dtr form factor, unless there is ample cooling, the mobo is getting a pretty hard beating. So in the long run, I'll take a new fresh mobo any day over putting new expensive components into an aged mobo.

The point is...An excellent warranty is hard to beat. Yea sucks for Dell to eat the cost, but let them eat it.

How much do you think a 1080 MXM will cost?

How much is a brand new Clevo (Skylake) mobo?

It'd be also wise not to classify all bga owners into one category, because there are a ton of bga owners that'll walk circles around your computer knowledge. Most of us are fully aware of the limitations, however, that doesn't mean we accept or agree with the direction AW went with going bga.

The sad truth is that this shady marketing strategy is common in the electronic world in general.

And wait...you don't even OC? Hmm mm....

Powered by: Quad Core Exynos + 6820HK

 

All I'm hearing here is BGA sympathising. For someone who doesn't agree with Alienware going BGA you've sure made a long* list of why you think it's a good deal..

I don't see why others have to pretend BGA isn't a sucky deal to cater to your feelings though. Let's call a spade a spade yeah. BGA sucks from a consumers perspective for anything other than a ultra thin business device.

From my experience Dell warranty is far superior to anything Clevo have on offer. No competition here.

 

What makes the warranty as great as it is...is... All those who BREAK these machines and come up with these lame ass excuse's to get it replaced under warranty and for free and with free shipping and free boxes. Once they cut this nonsense out, the warranty will turn out just like everyone else. Msi/Asus/clevo/Acer/Hp/ and so on. Where each cases is scrutinized under a microscope. And you need a credit card on file for cross shipping And if you're found negligent your warranty is void.

 

It's good DEll is good at something. Everything else is a no no!! The train went 2013/14
Now the crucial question... Will Dell use the fully GTX 1080 in their next Aw machines or will they stand with 1070? Because 1070 is the successor to 980m but with higher TDP. I can not imagine that they will increase the thickness of their next BGA machines for the big boy. Rather the opposite. And what graphics will they put into next AW15R3?

 

Yeah I see alot of people enjoying freebie upgrades. As you said, wait till that well runs dry.
The part I liked was when Alienware had modular machines and they would simply ship out a replacement part and let work on it ourselves if we so desired.

 

It may help of you read the content, rather than making assumptions which are not accurate. You're wrong. No one's bga sympathizing, rather just making a point of why it's even being tolerated to a limited degree in respect to the practicality of what the AW is being used for.

To help you better understand, my feelings are as follows. It's quite simple actually.

"IF, Dell didn't have such an amazing warranty program, I would not feel comfortable buying an AW knowing that I don't have coverage. However, it would be unreasonable to think that there would never be a warranty coverage, so to think otherwise in an unrealistic scenario like you're implying means that you're failing to understand the point here. ie...warranty coverage isn't going away any time soon in general, not just Dell. Another fact is, not all warranty coverage is created equal."

Spade a spade? Well kind of. Our current bga AW's are running just fine with gaming and other tasks.

You have to also realized that us enthusiast make up a very small percentage of the total sales. I agree that Dell should bring back the AW18 like variant for hard core enthusiasts and instead of barking up the wrong tree, perhaps it'd be more proactive to create a petition of some kind to push for another AW18 like machine.

Please read and get your facts straight and understand the content before making further assumptions.

Thanks.

 

Well they still do that under some circumstances. Even if a rubbish tech comes out to you for repair, at least you're there to be able to scrutinize. Worst case scenario, if you had to ship it out to the rubbish depot, do what you have to do to make it right. Regardless, in the end you have a new mobo etc...and most importantly you're covered. That's the point.

 

I'm a tech and far from being rubbish. I have done plenty of jobs for dell and a few members from this forum. Getting a little tired of that bad mouthing techs. Just like you and this bad mouthing bga stuff.

 

Here's a question...

What real benefits would one achieve of even having a 6700K with a TDP of 91W vs a 6820HK with a TDP of 45W, that can run clock for clock to the 6700K at half the TDP?

No game that I play taxes the CPU to a point where I feel the need for an upgrade.

So bga or not, wouldn't you say the 6820HK running at half the TDP is getting better gas mileage while producing the same speed? Well obviously and sure you can under volt the 6700K as well, but the point here is...well, if you really don't see it I'll explain again later

• 6700K (91W) running at 4.1GHz
• 6820HK (45W) running at 4.1GHz

More heat vs less heat.

 

What good is to create a petition to push for another AW18 like machine? Mr.Azor and Dellienware was not particularly interested in making something real for the hardcore enthusiasts under AWA!! Dell has chosen its own path. Everyone knows where!! Right into the -

Spoiler: TRASH CAN

 

Former Aw laptops handled 330w very well. Also my Aw 17 use the 330w without problems. Maybe newer Aw Echo models use low end parts, because 330W can fry the whole machine?

Spoiler: The 330w psu might cause problems with the power delivery inside of the machine

 

What I hightlighted in bold red is where we have a disconnect. Almost any game you want to play (notice I said almost) can play with a really lame dual core CPU at 2.5-3.0GHz because most games are made to be playable on pathetic consoles and antique computers. If all you want to do is play games then you're correct. You don't need a CPU upgrade. The disconnect is the fact that some of us want to do more than play games. This is one of the reasons why the new Alienware product line is unacceptable to us and cannot meet our expectations. We are more than gamers.

Alienware has even taken their gimping tactics to desktops and they are crippling them now. Have a look at this mess with the new Aurora R5 deskflop PC.

http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19987400

Why should he leave? Just because he called BS on some of what you posted? Is that always the solution, for people that don't agree with everything you believe to be called immature and asked to leave? LOL... c'mon, dude... you need to have thicker skin and not take everything so personal. That's why Brother @johnksss is clowning you, dawg. You set yourself up for clowning.

 

@iunlock - I've been enjoying Brother @johnksss and his marvelous sense of humor for many years. Great friend to me and many others, in this community and abroad. He could be your friend too, if you let him. All of us could be, if you'll let us. Lighten up, bro. Don't take everything personal. You've made some good points, some not so good, but there is plenty of room for debate and diverse opinions.

Edit: And, he has called me out for posting BS before, too. But, that's OK... that's what friends are for. None of us can be right 100% of the time... if we are, then we're a legend in our own mind and not going to learn anything.

 

Anyway....So lets hope Aw gets with the program with whether it's bga ro socketed. My thing is that casting limits on one's system and telling us it's gpu and cpu boost when in fact it's not. It's more about manufacturer error. Many mistakes have been made and we have been beta testers for new products way too long....

 

Right on... let's hope. Hope is all we have left at this point, and not many good reasons left to hang onto it. But, hope is good if it keeps away despair, even when despair is justifiable.

The Aurora R5 deskflop isn't giving me any warm fuzzies though... seems like the same retards making business decisions have influenced that product line now as well. They used to be separate departments, but it looks like the same BIOS crippling clock-blocking shenanigans are going on in the desktop division for some goofy reason. Maybe they're sadists.

 

Well. I have it for flashing bricked MXM cards.
And my niece has the M18XR2/3940XM/780M/12gb Ram/250 msata ssd and 750GB drive for her game recordings. ...She is 12 and loves minecraft!

 

My son will be born rather soon, so I don't have time to clean up silly fights! Play nice boys! No need to get into name calling and personal fights over these notebooks or crappy BGA CPUs. Keep it a bit more respectful. You can all debate and agree/disagree without disrespecting others.

 

Congrats, Dad! I hope you are blessed with a health beautiful baby.

 

You know...You get a demerit for taking so long, right?

Congrats on the new born!

 

Indeed. Congratulations on the new comer. Best wishes..

 

Thanks It's actually a bit difficult at the moment, high risk and all, but everything is working on our favor currently. Except the weather, damm is this place hot. My CPU gets insanely hot with these ambient temps... I wish more manufacturers would place more attention to CPU cooling. It's so "fake" to call cpus as having low TDP when their turbo messes things up, specially BGA and silly voltages.

Thanks man! And I just returned from work to find all the bickering! Next time I will send your posts to the permanent record, so behave.

Just kidding. Everything already goes to the permanent record.

 

Thanks thanks, and sorry to be derailing the thread even further...

Now shake your virtual hands and play nice. It's fine to disagree. The whole point of the forums is to enrich everyone's knowledge. It doesn't matter if parties don't agree, for other external readers might get important information from exchanges.

But name calling and devolving the debate is not beneficial to anyone!

 

Well, we will keep those touch and go issues in our prayers for you and your family, Brother @ryzeki -- can't help with the weather or the poor cooling, though.

 

I agree and am all game. Debating is fun and can be healthy and enjoyable. I also figured that he was a long time friend of yours. All good and well. But to come out of no where and fire bb's, of course I'll fire back. Fun paint ball match, but it doesn't belong here.

So how about a cease fire, shall we?

Couldn't agree more. Thanks for the reply and attention to the paint ball match.

Note: Post #13. The start of it all. No need for name calling

 

Nope! No cease fires... that's for sissy-boys. Thunderdome! Ha ha!

Seriously... debate is good. OK to call my monsterbook icky names if you want to... that's fair since you've got what I call a turdbook. But, yeah... we don't need to call each other names... I will agree to a ceasefire on that.

 

How likely do you think the AW refresh will have a bottom removable cover? That would make things a little more convenient...But with bga I can see why there wasn't any emphasis on any easy access to the bottom...though with AW's toothpaste thermal paste, a repaste is mandatory.

 

I'm not sure. They need to do something. The 17 R2 and 15 R1 that I was able to borrow for a while when the BGA models were first launched seemed unreasonably difficult to service.

All configuration debates set aside, they should at least make it easy to do simple maintenance. That would be good for Alienware and their customers. It doesn't do anyone any favors to make it a chore.

 

Last off topic. Don't worry, I'll be over there to start back up on Brother striker later. With his latest new pre order! j/k

 

How is the current state of affairs when it comes to opening up your machine? The current worst I've seen are Asus, though surprisingly their older N550 model was simply... a single back cover. Though being thin and light everything was cramped together.

Having access to your hardware should be an essential feature for high end machines, in my opinion. Limiting access only to get to HDDs or RAM is silly, when you need to repaste or clean at the very very least. Though with the advent of BGA, it was kind of bound to happen. Lately boutiques have been more worried about marketing than actually designing user friendly machines.

 

Haha, see I don't take offense to that at all And no, my only icky reference to the dtr was toward the design language, not the hardware. Just personal preference. I just happen to like the P775DM/Sky DLX7 etc more...that's all.

For anyone needing dtr power, it's obviously not a fashion show, but it doesn't hurt for a company to put some emphasis on the design as well. I'm all about function over form, but making something pleasing to the eye is not a difficult task. It's all subjective of course.

So with this being an Alienware thread and not a dtr thread, lets keep it on topic shall we?

Gosh I feel sorry for the noob coming here ROFL...what a nightmare for them to see all this haha...

 

You know i am very interested in the GT83 myself. I am not going to buy it, mind you, but everything suggest I could accommodate the new cooling in my old GT80. I need pics! Otherwise I will be left to self mod my own third fan for the CPU. Got the idea, just not the time.

You should see a new owners thread. It gets hectic with all sorts of posts all out of place.

Design is important as long as function remains priority. Since in the end beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Alienware has had very solid machines before. They can definitely improve.

 

Noobs will figure it out. A little bit of scrapping like this is good for them. Look at it this way... some may not even know what BGA is or why some of us despise it so much. If it causes them to look for answers to find out what the debate and ruckus is all about, then they will (potentially) make more of an informed decision instead of a shot in the dark with no good basis for their buying decision.

 

Unfortunately true. Going the bga route strips away any desire for AW to make it easy for the end user to access the bottom like before.

Accessing the 15R2 and 17R3 isn't difficult at all, however, for the novice it may be a bit frightening if it is their first attempt. I've done a lot of repasting in the latest AW's so it's a walk in the park as it would be for anyone who's taken these things a part many times over.

For a noob, I'd say to set aside a good few hours for a complete disassembly, cleaning, repaste, thermal pad replacement, and reassembly. For anyone who's taken it apart a few times and has it down, a repaste and rethermaling shouldn't take no more than an hour tops. The longest part is cleaning off the liquid metal and taking the time to get that thing spotless. Cutting the thermal pads comes second, time wise, but as for everything else it's pretty simple.

I forgot to add...maybe we did a noob a favor in scaring them away from AW LOL...

I agree and well said...lets hope they wake up and smell the coffee. Is another AW18 predecessor too much to ask for?

 

@ryzeki Indeed. Now that would be nice if it can be done with little to no effort. And I'm over there watching as well, just more on the quiet side of things. Hoping they don't do like AW is doing and clamp down on the power output. (Meaning. Stock runs as stock is truly suppose to run. Not. We find out a month later how it is)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)
It runs at 3.6 single / 3.4 dual / 3.2 quad if turbo enabled

Ark.intel disagrees with the 45W at 4.1ghz.
http://ark.intel.com/products/88969/Intel-Core-i7-6820HK-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz
Click on "TDP" in the link above

"TDP
Thermal Design Power (TDP) represents the average power, in watts, the processor dissipates when operating at Base Frequency with all cores active under an Intel-defined, high-complexity workload. Refer to Datasheet for thermal solution requirements."

That means it's 45W at 2.7ghz ( on all cores ) on a 4C/8T Skylake processor.
http://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz
6700K base clock is 4.0 not 4.1

It's 91W at 4.0 base at 1.20v and the 45W 6820HK is running at 2.7 base at ~1.03v
The 6820HK would run at 4.0/2.7x 45W ( assuming volts don't increase from 1.03 to 1.20, but they definitely will to go from 2.7 to 4.0 )
Since power = frequency * voltage * voltage * C, you'd more or less get the same power

 

What I have never been able to understand is why Dellienware decided to go the route of only offering 3 variants of their laptops, (Alienware 13/15/17) and that's it. If they truly changed their product line to reflect a change in business strategy geared towards what in their minds was capturing a larger market (thin and light), why only offer only three machines? I don't know of any other vendor that has that narrow of a product line.

Why not do what Clevo does? Why not have the 13/15/17 in its current BGA form, then also have another 13/15/17 variant geared towards sockets and MXM? What can't they have both? That's what I don't get. They could have their pie and eat it too, so to speak. They could expand their portfolio, and increase marketshare at the same time. It would be a win, win for them.

 

Great explanation, thanks!

Powered by: Quad Core Exynos + 6820HK

 

Or they can just keep it very simple and release a refreshed DTR AW18 geared towards enthusiast, that will be more than enough to keep everyone happy.

 

Remember there was a reason Dell created the motherboard equal for Aw15 and 17!! It's about the costs and easy access to spare parts. Tech support is also a cost. + AW is small in this segment.

 

the 17 doesn't really have an advantage over the 15, probably just the numpad and better screen

 

Project Ara has been killed, a semi modular phone is only left now. So no swapping the display, soc, memory etc anymore.

Anyway. Bga is great if you want portability. That is all there is to it.

Being able to use desktop hardwarw in a laptop comes with big machines. And the clevo that one of the guys here pointed out as being only slightly bigger than the AW17 has thermal issies after reading the reviews. I actually almost bought it for testing yesterday.

Mxm boards are expensive though and it rubs me the wrong way. A 980 board costs the same as a 1080 desktop card which is twice as fast.

I have the money but i dont want to fund those mal practices.


Also i still want to carry my machine everyday. A DTR is just not great for that. Now i have the perfect compromis. A not too big, not too heavy, long battery life and decent 980M performance for only 1800euros. I gladly lose upgrade options for that. Also2 years NBD support which I can use worldwide. I am away half the year from home so thats great to have too.