*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

Can anyone confirm changing screen refresh to 120hz? Or even 60 hz for battery saving?

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Yeah maybe not, the bezel is my least favorite bezel of the $1500+ laptops right now. But man, 15% off, plus dell rewards, plus $50. They probably felt like I was stealing it. Oh well. My wife brought up a good point - maybe just wait until Feb/March.

 

Just got my m15. Have you guys figured out how to install the latest Nvidia drivers? The drivers pre-installed are quite old.

 

Download GeForce Experience app, sign in and install the latest driver through that. Optimus laptops usually have to work this way now.

 

Got through my first full day of use with my m15 today. A few minor hitches but nothing major.

Applied a -150mv undervolt, seems stable so far and brings temps down under 90 and eliminates throttling in XTU
If anyone has the issue I did where your power button stops lighting up no matter what you do, reflash your BIOS. It's the same version (1.1.0) but it fixed the issue for whatever reason, at least for me.
Speakers are so so, but I'm not too concerned with it. They're loud enough and clear, just lacking in bass/midbass. They do have very good stereo separation I think.

So far, I really like the laptop for what it is. I knew when I got something this thin and light heat would be a concern, and it can be especially without the undervolt, but I think it's a good compromise, at least for my use case. This wasn't meant to replace my desktop, even though for a lot of people I think it very well could.

 

I got to play around with it a little more this evening. I am still running with a -150mv undervolt and I also set speed shift to 140 in throttlestop. This caps the CPU boost to about roughly 3ghz. also for testing set the Alienware Command Center to performance mode so the fans ran at max.

3dmark Timespy fresh out of the box with no tweaks was 4770 : https://www.3dmark.com/spy/5130542

And now with the undervolt and speed shift adjustment I ran 3dmark Timespy again and got a score of 5132 : https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/30754903

Then I ran Prime 95 for about 30 minutes and HWiNFO shows the average CPU temp was 82 deg C with max temp spikes to 100 deg C
its about 24 deg C in the room I am testing in so not in a freezer or anthing.

Looking around the score seems pretty good and I think the temps are where I expected. And no throttling

 

So I installed the m.2 heatsink. No more stuttering. Now a new thing has come up. When playing Forza Horizon 4 Team Adventure the battery will discharge a little and lots of power limit throttles. The 180 watt power brick is super hot. I'm thinking of trying the 180 watt power brick from my 17r3.

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That won't make a difference. They probably use the same power adapter. You should use a 240 or 330watt to remove the powerlimit.

 

Day 2... did an undervolt and some gaming tonight.

First, during work on battery. I plugged it in around 45%. This was watching a 10 hour youtube video in the background for about 2 hours, and about 1-2 hours of web browsing through the day. Not scientific or exact by any means, but like knowing I can use it for a few hours and still have about half my battery. This is with screen at 40% and power setting to balanced.

Undervolted at first to -.160 and played without a hitch for about 30 minutes and then BSOD. Changed it to -.150 and played awhile, then -.125. Very little difference between the two. Kept it at -.125 due to the BSOD at -.160. Also have speed shift to 140. Speed shift in FFXIV was about a 10c difference and Intel Extreme Utility well over 20c.

FFXIV for 1-2 hours (at -.125 undervolt and 140 speed shift) - stable temps around 75-77.
FFXV for 5 minutes (at -.125 undervolt and 140 speed shift) - stable temps in the low 80s.

I have not repasted and honestly the temps are to the point where I doubt a repaste will make enough of a difference. The keyboard deck still gets very, very hot. The palm area isn't bad, but do feel it on the keys themselves. I was running Discord and chatting with a friend and had the game volume at around 30%. I barely heard the fans, if at all with those temps. I can hear my wifes desktops (about 6ft away) fans more than I can this PC. This was all on "balance" mode in ACC.

Another odd issue, though. Steam randomly lost all its settings. I had to reboot, launch as admin, change all the settings back (FPS top-left, no overlay, no news popup, minimize friends) and reboot again to get them to stick. Very strange, but hey its Windows so who knows.

Pretty happy with these results.

 

It is the same reason I will be returning my Blade 15 which is a lovely machine build quality wise and ran my games perfectly - my issue is that I wanted to be able to use it for productivity too..

I had to undervolt and fiddle all sorts of settings just to get it to idle at 30 degrees (celsius) and show >10 hours of battery life (with 144hz screen on and "Better battery"), with average idle power of under 2W. However, even when I am doing productivity/downloading stuff/watching a video, it heats up enough for it not be comfortable on my lap.

I don't want to fiddle with things further, such as changing turbo multipliers or disabling turbo while on battery etc - kind of defeats the purpose of having these machines.

This seems to a be a problem not just on your laptop, but the Blade 15, Aero 15x, MacBook Pro 15, XPS 9570, MSI GS65 etc - notice a pattern? All on the new i7-8XXXH CPU's with a thin chassis. This CPU is far hotter than it's predecessor and it is just unreasonable to try get it to run cooler due to how powerful it is.

I decided to call it a day and buy a new XPS 13 9370 instead because, I can game using that connected to my external + eGPU at 60+ FPS, while if I am doing productivity I don't have to burn my lap or worry about the battery dying quickly.

I think these machines are fine if you're mainly planning to use them on desks and with a charger about, but forget comfortably portable use.