*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 R3 / m17 R3 Owner's Lounge

Yes, undervolting seems to be working. But is it really worth it though? They charge exorbitant for a model that's as hot as it can get and anything higher than that - God Bless the user. Soldered Ram?? Like really. Thinner laptops have solved this problem. And then fan noise. They charge so much for the extended warranty. And good luck running your laptop at100c with soldered RAM and no support.
I was so much looking forward to the m15 model. Also, if you look at the pricing, the 32g model is priced so hig hand is available with higher specs only. WTF Alienware..you give soldered RAM and not provide 32g model with $1800 variant. What a joke! I am just attached to the brand because it was my first gaming laptop ever. But clearly they don't care enough

 

I have different question - can I put drives in RAID 1 mode or disable it or I am forced to use it when I purchase? Anyone have a screen of configuration?

 

Just some things to think about. Assuming you have truly a wish for this model type, you may well wish to think about this model or a refresh, because the change cycle is very short on the following:

CPU
Sep-Oct you will have Tiger Lake, which "probably" won't add much to performance but will consume less power and generate less heat
This will also change to PCI-e 4.0 which doubles your bandwidth. That also improves external boxes for eGPU solutions.

GPU
Ampere is likely to add 40-50% to each current gen GPU tier. Even if you tame that to 30% it's not peanuts and the ray tracing is expected to double, for the same or lesser power consumption.
Time frame is unknown - but it is something measured in months not years
Expected to add HDMI 2.1 - but targets for that output are right now just OLED TV's. More monitor/TV's down the road will get 2.1 however.

Wireless
Yes - in the past this was a who cares. But now it's soldered. Ok no big deal right? Except that Wifi 6e just got approved. Broadcom and Qualcomm both have router and client chip releases supporting it. It is not something that can be added to current Wifi 6 modules via firmware. And it more than triples the amount of available high speed frequencies available to Wifi 6. Routers based on it are coming in the Fall. Intel has "been working on 6e for a long time" so not long until they follow with a client chip. But, that chip in the R3 models is soldered. It's soldered on the Intel Extreme NUC too - so you can thank Intel for being such a nice player and Dell for playing along because they are ever so "innovative".

So in 6 months roughly you will lower your chip heat, double your GPU to CPU connection speed (possibly SSD as well), and have 4x the amount of high speed wireless channels available to you as today. Just FYI.

 

Yeah, the temps are pretty ridiculous. Was painful reading HWinfo compared to my outgoing 2014 Malibal which ran substantially cooler.

The biggest issue here for me is that the front face of the laptop becomes absolutely nuclear. They put an exhaust vent above the F keys and below the display hinge, and it's literally shooting off superheated air and is extremely hot to the touch, like hot enough to burn you.

Not sure they really thought that through, because it's nonsensical and way too close to the user's hands. Maybe if it actually resulted in lower internals, but as has already been shown, it's not to be.

Shame because the laptop is otherwise completely awesome, and I love the 4k OLED.

Honestly no idea if I'm going to be keeping this. Years ago I forced Dell to refund me on an M14x because the thermals were atrocious out of the box. I had to escalate it because they kept trying to tell me it was "normal," but they eventually took it back and refunded me (which then I went to Malibal and got a much better laptop anyway).

Decided to give AW another shot and found myself allured by the OLED (which really is incredible, can't overstate it). Now I'm feeling like I made a mistake, because the CPU is getting ludicrously hot even under otherwise light workloads. Their new "vapor whatever" cooling is DOA.

 

Maybe you are right, but in 6 months is not possible that Dell will launch it on their notebooks... after premiere you have to wait another 4-5 months... so you have another year and another model

 

With how expensive it gets when you start upgrading it I believe it.

 

My AW17 is pretty outdated and I need to upgrade so I was looking at the m17r3. My primary need is for work. Im a video editor working usually in premiere pro and Davinci resolve. Long hours editing and rendering. And I love gaming as well of course. I travel a bunch so I gotta be able to edit raw 4k footage on the go. Been using AW for years with few issues. I just can't stand the size and weight any more. Traveling as much as I do it's really getting annoying. So I was looking at some of the thinner options available now like the Dell xps17. Only issue is people are telling me thin workhorse laptops don't do well with long hours of intense workouts cause of heat and cause a lot of issues. I see all the complaints with the aw m17r3 like soldered ram and temps etc. But I'm getting close to pulling the trigger and buying one but I'm curious dyou guys think even with the downsides this is still the best option for my needs and price-wise? Or is there something else out there that will work better for me?

 

Thank for your post. Do you have an M15 or M17 R3 ? I am really interested in what you said about the heat coming out the back. Are you saying it heats up the laptop lid rather than expelling the air cleanly?

 

So the honey comb pattern above the F keys is actually an exhaust vent, before I purchased the laptop I actually thought they were the speakers - they aren't. The amount of hot exhaust air coming out of the top of the laptop is pretty substantial, it's in addition to the exhaust on the sides.

With the stock cooling profiles courtesy of AlienCC, I was hitting 98/98C as a Max temperature in HWInfo during gaming, averages around mid 80's C, essentially regardless of the cooling profile. With these, the WASD keys were getting almost uncomfortably hot and made continual forward movement (like in an MMO) difficult. I was very close to already pulling the plug and shipping this laptop back (the reason I went with it anyway was the OLED screen and beautiful chassis), but I realized I could set my own custom fan profile in AlienCC.

Make no mistake, ALL of the stock profiles in AlienCC are too timid with the fans, INCLUDING 'Full Performance.'

I set a fan curve that sets the fan at 80% @ 75C, then 90% @ 85C and saw a 10C drop in max temperatures (no core exceeded 90C), and mid 70's average temp on all cores. In addition, it removed the nuclear keyboard heating that had me ready to return the laptop.

So without repasting or undervolting, I feel I've successfully negotiated the overheating issue with this laptop. I think Alienware are out of their minds with the stock profiles, all of which I consider worthless for keeping the laptop acceptably cool. Make your own fan curve and be aggressive with it, and the temps will be acceptable unless your factory paste job was garbage or there's some sort of defect that needs to be warrantied out.

I'm using an M15 R3 with the i7 10750H and a RTX 2070 Super max performance (not Q), with the absolutely bonkers beautiful 4K OLED. Despite using this as a gaming laptop, I'm eschewing a high hz screen because of how incredible this OLED is. The DCI-P3 gamut coverage and overall vibrancy is the best I've seen since my M17x R2 and its RGB LED wide gamut panel.

People are hardcore sleeping on this OLED; high hz screens are IMHO overrated when you have a barely 100% sRGB panel (which is boring). Of course though, I understand if you’re predominantly a competitive FPS gamer that essentially requires gaming above 60hz, so I totally get that caveat. For everyone else, you need to consider this OLED because it will boggle your mind. And for games that are too demanding to run at 4K, 1080p looks fantastic on this panel. Zero blurriness or loss of sharpness, looks similar to my Malibal’s stock 1080p screen. And we're talking 1ms response time! Could be the best laptop screen I've ever seen; no wait, scratch that, it definitely is the best laptop screen I've ever seen. Never thought I'd say that after owning the RGB LED way back when on the M17x R2.

To summarize; I'll be keeping my R3 after setting my custom fan profile and being happy with the results. If I repasted or undervolted, it'll only get better. Alienware's stock cooling profiles are garbage, ignore them and set your own. Personally I'll never use the stock overclock profiles, the laptop can hardly handle stock speeds without disintegrating. I just don’t understand this brand - they consistently offer some of the best screens and chassis in the industry, but continually treat cooling as if it’s an inconvenience to their power goals. If they actually took cooling seriously and provided competent stock thermals, these would be the best laptops on the market by a wide margin.

 

That's a great post SaosinEngaged, it will help a lot of people out I'm sure.
It is surprizing they thought venting through the honeycomb grill was a good idea. Not sure what the impact on the life of the screen would be.
And I know what you mean about the OLED screens, I have one on my 13R3 and it is pretty amazing for gaming.