About to bite the bullet on a refurb Alienware 15 R3 7700hq w/ 120hz need advice

Any custom vBIOS to remove any possible thermal limits?
Any custom BIOS to remove any possible thermal limits?
Anything I should know about it? Going to repaste upon receiving it.
Battery life without gaming?

I can get a refurb w/ 256GB NVMe for $1600 or a 512GB for about $1820, I'm leaning towards the 256GB to sell the stick and get a 512GB and pay less out of pocket.

Anything else I should know? Upgrading from the Aorus I currently have.

 

So many of the 15 R3's either have bad thermal paste, a bad heatsink arm that you have to bend to get full contact with the die or both. I hope you get one without issues, build quality is ultimate, just know that these two are very prevalent in the 15's.

 

Any info on that? Not too worried about some DIY fixes personally.

EDIT: Found a thread about it but it only referenced the 6th gen i-series. Is it affecting the 7th as well?

 

i dont think the 7 generation have that problem. also if you have the skills and like the performance is a (have to) repaste a new gaming laptop. so if is good or not, you should do it. get the 1600 and upgrade the ssd later with a sata m.2 SSD
you can buy the 256gb option and add 500 gb more for 190 dolars https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-...id=1496878060&sr=8-4&keywords=samsung+m.2+ssd

 

Yea I was going to order an NVMe instead of M.2 Sata though. NVMe is much faster

Thanks though. I'll be ordering the stuff from the repaste thread. I'm very familiar with repasting so not worried about it.

 

you are a gamer or a content producer ? because nvme is not going to give you any advantage on gaming

 

I do need the r/w for encoding

 

that is a good reason, you didn't mention that

 

Yea...Ended up getting the 256GB. Should be able to sell it for about $100 and get a larger one

 

the good thing about sata m2 is that you can use it as external usb drive when you upgrade, currently nvme requires a tunderbolt 3 to pcie case

 

You already plan on repasting, so no need to visit that, but LM worked for me on my 17 R4.

I just want to spread the message to make sure you enable CPU Performance mode in the BIOS, even if you have a locked CPU. Otherwise, you are likely to get power limit throttling.

 

Thanks.