Alienware 15 services woes

@VICKYGAMEBOY where does Mr. Raj sit? in the dell office in domlur or is he someone who is available over the phone

 

I'm not quite sure about his location, yes I talked to him through phone.. he called me actually.. u still havn't answered my question.. when did u purchase ur laptop.. exact date.. and do u still have your invoice or purchase bill ?

 

Buddy i am on 4710HQ , throttles to 1.2 ghz on base settings in bad cases And really i dunno what the hell dell is doing, trying to cover up as if except me no one has this issue while vicky even went to the same service center you know

 

Yes i have my invoice and everything ready at hand. It was purchased around march end 2015. Warranty extended on 2nd Feb 2016
For the first year i didnt get much time to game so i stuck to dota and cs go. Those games don't even stress a low end laptop so never encountered any issues , two months back when i got free time from curriculum i began my AAA games queue and encountered performance issues then monnitoring via xtu i noticed that cpu was throttling.

 

my first system it dint throttle much, just overheating, it was new mobo, I notified them in the first 15 days of my purchase, from that day case started.. august of 2015.. next month i told them i need a replacement as I'm not satisfied with the system performance gave them few thermal throttle points, so they dint even question me, straight away approved my replacement, took me 1 month to get the new system.. and my second system was running fine until i raised a complaint regarding heating issues, they arranged me a heatsink and refurb mobo, from that day the problem started, before that new mobo dint have any kinda throttle, refurb after refurb every single one had same issues.. so basically if ur lucky enough to get a same new system.. u might have better chances of getting no throttling machines, and also there is a internal policy, more than 5 retry of mobo swap and if problem still exist you will be assured a replacement.. try in that way.. and i did go to that service center just to meet up the product team manager, those service center guys have no idea about throttling..

 

Ok i will try that... lets hope this **** is resolved soon. Thanks for your help bro, appreciate it. Do you mind if i tell the new senior team( they allotted them to my case after i spread my issue on social media) about your prior case, it might help me in fast tracking mine.

 

I'm here to help, you can take my case and forward them, Naveen, Deepak, Srinidhi, Tech level 2 team.. they already know my case, but they dint agree about throttling, then they forwarded the case to someone else.. from there it went around almost 5 senior person from different team.. Just don't let it go.. ill try my best to get some help for u as well..

 

Thanks man

 

try this http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/i7-4710hq-throttling-fix.792133/

 

I tried it, initially it worked fine on the original board but then i started facing throttling again. And anyways downclocking to 3.0 ghz is not a valid solution when I've paid dell Rs18000 for extended warranty. There must be at least one r1 in India like rinneh's which doesn't throttle. They can issue me that as a replacement rather me resorting to downclock to get the device working in a stable manner. If it were my custom pc which throttled i would've accepted downclocking that too till i could get time to fix the broken PSU(in most cases a faulty PSU results in power throttle in desktops), but think about this, you pay top dollar to dell so that you don't have to do that right. They have to take responsibility for this and at least not say that "no one else is having this issue".

PS: Appreciate your work though, you've helped me many a times on this forum

 

yes you are right ... they are like stupids when you say something about throttling ... acutally they dont know a F*** about laptops ... and when someone know, he just ignore you as PORRAS do.
this is not the only problem on this models ... the USB problem is really common and after a year, they dont fix it. they just passed the sheet when R2 come.... and always do the same.




PS: i feel fine helping people, the 3Ghz is the max i can reach without throttling. if i found another Fix i will tell you

another thing ... i found a fix for the mouse / touchpad disabling function ... i will post it tomorrow i need to sleep

 

what u mean touchpad / mouse problem, I thot that was a function included in synaptics touchpad drivers, disable touch when connecting mouse.. and yeah DELL seems more like money minded these days, fix less, launch more, loose more rep..

 

Try this function on your model... In the 15 r1, 17 R2 don't work properly... You just disconnect your mouse and nothing happen, your touchpad is still disabled

 

for me it works fine, I tried with different ports as well, even on my R1 with different mobo I never encounterd this issue, may be its the synaptics driver bugged, try to reinstall them.. and for some reason the official site one doesn't work, only the dell input touchpad driver is working..

 

you know what guys......... 96 degrees is normal while gaming in windows that's what the level 3 team says........................... Porras and all other reps are ignoring my case, level 3 team is sticking with epsa as their benchmark( epsa doesn't even stress the cpu much and in that also i recall temps going to 78 degrees), i dont know what the hell i am supposed to do here. If the issue isn't resolved i swear i'll spam about the "support" they give every single nook and cranny of the internet.

I wish we had an actual tech news site which many people had viewership to who would publish such issues online so that at least dell would take proper action instead of re routing you to people who don't even give a **** about customer's problems and actually deliver on their promise of giving the "ultimate system".

@VICKYGAMEBOY do you recall the team head's name who recognized throttling and temperatures as an actual issue in the laptop?

 

another ******** story of this Level 3 team, tell them I don't mind having 100c , but I want stock speed specified on intel specs.. u have to outrun them in tech aspect, let me search my mail archieve..

 

They aren't letting me talk directly to the level 3 team at all. They are like ghosts who visit the srvice center , test my laptop; tell the phone techs that the lappy is fine and go away.
Apparently my messages are to only go through the phone tech support and no customer is allowed to talk to the level 3 team.

 

whom did u meet when u went there to service center... did they come down ?? or u met service center manager harish ? ok now I remember.. his name is madhu.. he doesn't work there, he visits there on part time basis I guess, senior product development manager.. but last time I heard from this he told me he is crossing multiple bridges inside his office just to get a refurb skylake, he is really a good guy, but seems his hands are tied to higher executives..

 

Service center manager harish. Apparently whenever i come level 3 team is away and they only come on service calls

 

enough of this **** dude, do u have the tech persons name, collect all those names, whomever ur communicating with, tell them whoever it is, just come down to service center coming Friday, and also PM me ur email id and mobile number, ill bring my laptop to DELL HQ domlur, Screw this guys..

 

Check PM

 

@Papusan @rinneh @Alienware-L_Porras So the dell guy(Mr. Madhu Senior product development team) who helped @VICKYGAMEBOY told me that 94 degrees under load is very normal and they actually tested this system to operate at 100 degrees and they knew all of this (the throttling/thermal problems) when they designed the laptop. The current/power limit throttle was by design is what he said, and said furmark,XTU and wprime are really bad benchmarks, only cinebench was legit.
So what do you do when a company scammed you by falsely advertising that their chips would run at 3.3ghz turbo.
@rinneh which r1 did you get.... Apparently the dell guy (who apparently played a major role in r1's design) says every r1 had throttling in its design at inception
So we basically bought a ticket to a beta of alienware 15 at the price of a fully functioning laptop.
R2 is basically alienware 15 release edition and r1 was just a public beta.

 

I hardly doubt that what he said is true. Since the AW series available the past years are all designed by Compal from Taiwan. 95c is the max temp Intel calls safe, over that it will throttle.

What is your ambient temp? In an ambient temp of 24c I had the system running always below 85C with overclocks on the 970M GPU on the R1. With stock paste. The R2 I have around 75C with an OC-ed 980M with IC DIamond 7.

So to begin with the paste job on your system is not good. I had a 4720HQ R1, had 2 systems and both never throttled. 1 was an exchange because the UPS guy dropped my box and thus caused a broken chassis. That is why the system was exchanged. The second R1 needed a new battery but the repairguy ruined my system. Got a new system a few weeks after which was an R2. I went from a core i7, 970M, 8gb R1 to a core i7, 980m, 16gb R2 free of charge.

To be honest I think that technician is talking out his ass. If that was truly his job he shoul dbe fired.

But I do agree furmark is not a good benchmark. It breaks down gpu's and both AMD, Nvidia had to build in safeguards for this in their drivers.

 

This is plane BS!! By design... Yeah. DELLIENWARE screwed up first models of AW Echo models. Some Aw models thermal throttled with temps about 83/84 degrees in bench. What??? Crazy!! Intels spec for thermal throttling is nearly 100 degrees. Furmark is something else... Never run this junkware. Banned by all firmvare modders. I can run XTU bench with Max temp about 71C with 4.8 GHz. Same with Cinebench 11.5
All your listed benchmarks should be piece of cake for i7, regardless which one. The AW models from early 2015 is one of the worst failure I have ever seen. Everything the Dell tech team tell you is... I can't say more!!
In normal use shouldn't a i7 run with higher temp than 83 and lower. + 94 degrees max temp over time isn't good in the long run!!!

Edit. I don't remember the highest ambient max temp Intel can guarantee that everything should work. But about +30 degrees.

 

he is quite good at technical terms, as I had conversation with him regularly when he had my system under observation, seems like his hands are forced off by higher authority and he do what they say.. that's what i would assume.. they don't want to take anymore cases, as it might hurt their internal process, they are scared that more people might showup one after another, but like rinneh's system i had a good R1 as well in the initial, it was new motherboard, after my first service everything went messy, board after another, so basically all those refurb will have those issues, may be 1 or 2 still exist without throttling, @Papusan can someone pull alienware team here ?? porras is out of question.

 

I had talk with him... he is knowledgeable but if he uses that knowledge to dodge an aware concerned customer, and pull up lies like 94 degrees is by design, then all of that becomes useless.
@rinneh The ambient temp in that room was approx 22-28 degrees Celsius(room was air conditioned). I am not sure of the precise temp. But i am not sure how and why they do these dodgy practices even though it is there fault isn't it

 

I'm sorry to hear that, i would like to see ur current XTU stress test result screenshot, and HWINFO screenshot, i have few random settings saved on my dropbox, which i tested with 5 different motherboards.. and i don't know how he knows that you would be coming to see him, this is kinda planned, their team is aware of this issue, instead of fixing it they are just obeying their sales team orders and making customers unhappy.. BS..

 

OP has my XTU screenshots

 

try these if u don't mind. flash to bios A00, uninstall Thermal Dynamic platform drivers, Intel Management Engine, make sure its not installed.. go to XTU, set multiplier to 34X, ring to 30X, set vcore to static 0.95.. i was testing with different settings on different motherboards, and one was running fine on XTU stress test.. and please get urself a AS5 or ICD7 thermal paste, do it on ur own, those dell crap are uselss, i never kept them..

 

I did do those patches , @judal57 made a detailed post on this ..... it only fixed for a month and the issue continued. And obvio i was using a00 , everyone knows with a 240watt psu a06 is absurd but to no avail, i even reinstalled windows clean :/

 

No one seems to want to touch this anymore. Everyone with problems should holding up the pressure. AW reps will come back!! Then push on further. They shouldn't go from this mess without cleaning up!!

 

this is not going to work ... you are only stressing the cpu ... if you stress the gpu and cpu with those specs it will throttle high :/
i dont know the 3Ghz is working really fine ... i dont want to try xtu anymore. i look at this **** and i want to throw my machine through the windows LOL. but i love my machine ... is beatifull and is a ****ing mess, that for a ****ing BIOS that they dont want to fix, the problem is still going

 

Yes I'm aware of both cpu and gpu load scenarios, as i've tested it separately many times,undervolting helped me stay around 3.2ghz most time even my gpu is on full load, I dint have problem like his system like after 1 month, for me either the refurb showed immediate throttling or some other issue, I guess they are lazy to figure out for a solution, atleast a temp patch with bios can def improve, but they are not worried about R1 anymore..

 

Technically, this isn't really a lie. It is, however, a half-truth.

Intel's chips will work at normal speeds until their temperature reaches 95°. Once they get 95, they'll throttle in order to try and decrease the temperature. If the temperature continues to rise, at 100° the CPU will shut down in order to avoid physical damage.

The materials used in the CPU (and the motherboard around it) can probably get to about 120° or more before there's any real risk of damage. The CPU shuts down at 100° so that there's a safety margin before damage has a chance to occur.

Because of this, the CPU could theoretically run at full speed at 94° forever. Mr. Madhu is technically correct on this point. However, you wouldn't want to run this close to the throttling limit. Something like 90° would be feasible, even if the temperature is a lot higher than is desirable.

Also, if a CPU is throttling at lower than 95°, it's probably some sort of error in the circuit that interprets the temperature sensor data. The CPU thinks that it's 95° even though it isn't. A CPU/motherboard replacement should hopefully fix the issue.

 

A lot of OEM's put in throttling temp much lower than Intels own specifications. Dell is known for this. A motherboard change can't fix this!!

 

So today i collected my laptop from dell... ran stress test and temps don't break 85 degrees on a06 with stock fan profile with my custom hwinfo fan profile temps don't break 78 degrees ......
But current limit throttle is still there and sometimes throttles to 3 ghz without any shown throttling ... will test appropriately at home
@Papusan @Prema is there any way by means of which we can increase current to the cpu , because as you know xtu's setting never works on alienware 15 as has been said multiple times. Is there anyway a modded or a community patched bios can fix current limit throttling?

 

I think you will struggle to get your Hq processors to functioning properly. In addition, your Alienware have also Firmware which is gimped by Dell. + all other problems with this laptop model. Read about Hq processors and their limits in this guide from @D2 Ultima
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/246907-how-mobile-i7-cpus-work-information-guide/

 

Hq cpus work fine. He can write all he want but those are purely assumptions without proper research.

 

@Papusan @rinneh lets wait for prema as well. He is a firmware modder of repute maybe he can shed some light as to why all this is happening and if a soft fix is possible

@Papusan I think even in case of clevo prema made a custom system bios which fixed certain issues; isn't alienware echo moddable in terms of bios?

"Also, PLEASE do not tell people that the chips can all behave that way, because they do not. YOUR chip might... but not the other 25 peoples' chips who bought the laptop"
@D2 Ultima said that right; as i am a student of engineering i know this for a fact that each chip of the same model(down to the same batch from the CPU assembly line) can behave differently
And this works both ways , the throttling people cannot say that all chips throttle the same way and non throttling people cannot say that all chips do not throttle or don't have any other issues


EDIT: Read his article completely; apparently new alienwares do not allow for custom bios flashing -_- Dell done ****ed it up. **Slow claps** If it wasn't for issues with warranty i wanted to go for clevo originally but sadly they don't provide warranty in India and if i knew alienware warranty in India was so sad then i would have gone with Clevo/Sager from xoticpc , it would've been cheaper as well

 

It is true that no sillicon of the same design performs exactly the same. But the margins are quite wide and the HQ cpus perform in 99% of the cases exactly as advertised. The problems with the R1 series is just very strange. But your might just thermal throttle from a bad paste job.

Of this wasnt the case intel would already had its class action lawsuit on its ass for it.

 

Skylake works fine. Haswell and Broadwell do not. Don't lie to people on this forum. I've done so much research on all these chips I should be paid for it.

No, Prema's sBIOS to my knowledge does not fix TDP limits on those chips. You either get lucky or you use certain techniques to trick the CPU into thinking it's drawing far less power (of course this means you need to deal with a lot of extra heat).

What you're referring to here is actually "each chip is different" as in "each chip uses different voltages" and "each chip can overclock more or less than the other" etc. Silicon lottery, as it would have it. But what I was talking about is that some Haswell chips seem to *not* have the TDP lock by default, but these are a very small percentage of the chips on the market. Think of it like this: 95% of HQ chips are designed from start to finish as HQ chips. 5% were MQ chips, and re-purposed into HQ chips after they stopped selling MQ chips. I'm being generous to the number of chips able to bypass the TDP lock based on what I've seen, however you get the gist of things.

And yes, Alienware has sunk very low. They, like the other manufacturers, want end users to have less and less control over their systems, and much of the functionality and benefits their older systems had were removed, and their cooling also took a dive. Unfortunately, owning an AW15 R1, you're plainly and simply out of luck in getting a working CPU. Dellienware know of the problem with the CPU throttling on the AW15 R1 and AW17 R2 systems, and they APPARENTLY don't know how to fix it with a BIOS update (or, more than likely, they simply didn't bother, gave a crap excuse, and pushed out the Skylake models which have no such fault).

As for buying Clevos, you may wish to ask around for any known resellers in Europe or Asia and pick the one closest to you that is willing to ship to you in the future, though I wouldn't suggest any laptops anymore unless you specifically need one. Clevo is by and large my only choice for users, but the better the machine the more I suggest a Prema mod, and make no bones about it: Clevo is not perfect, and they are simply the "least" of the evils. Their software (BIOS/EC, drivers, website & downloads) is bottom barrel, and while Prema can clear up much of their screw ups, the fact that it's necessary for him to do so should speak volumes about the state of the market when I must recommend a machine that I'd consider nearly requiring a mod as the only option to recommend to people.

 

Post the research and how you did it.

Pretty much alls HQ chips perform on advertised speeds and that isnt a lie. There are no widespread reports either. My own personal sample size have been 9 laptops in 2 years that i have tested and no laptop had throttle issues in anyway except for 2 gigabytes that simply became too hot under load.

 

Go look through all my posts then. I'm not going to go back and find every single person I ever asked. Go scrounge through the P6xxSx forums, the MSI GT72/GT80 forums, the Throttlestop thread where I asked people to check, the various posts from AW, Gigabyte, Razer, and ASUS users in the Gaming, software & graphics cards and Hardware components & aftermarket upgrades sub forums where I had them check various XTU settings, throttlestop settings, and BIOS options for them all to find it amounts to no avail.

HQ Haswell & Broadwell chips do not hold their TDP under load. They hit 57W for 2.5 minutes then throttle to 47W. You don't cross 47W, you're fine. You cross 47W you're not fine. Just because you "stress" the CPU in some game that doesn't use high TDP and you don't cross that load amount doesn't mean anything. 100% CPU load does NOT mean you're using the same amount of TDP. Otherwise TSBench pulling 47W and Linpack pulling 86W wouldn't exist.

You're one of the ONLY people on this forum that refuses to listen to what I say about these chips, even though I'm far more fair and accommodating toward them than many others.

I don't care one bit what your opinion is. I care when you spread bad facts to people. Hardware, software, I don't care; as long as it's an incorrect fact. Do it once, get corrected. Continue to do it, I will become hostile. People who don't know are going to come in here and if nobody corrects someone like you, will walk away with improper knowledge. I, and others on this forum, should not have to spend our time constantly publicly correcting you for the sake of others, yet it seems to be something I constantly have to do every time Papusan tags me in one of these threads.

As for my Skylake testing, I made a thread this time.

 

How does intel XTU's benchmark work... i mean the stress test puts 98-100% for the entire duration but xtu bench ranges from spikes of 30% to 99% utilization but it leads to current limit throttle while stress test doesn't ... which algorithm does xtu bench use?

 

Wow such research much depth. Forum posts by other people and you compiled those?!?!?! That is what you call friggin research? Sorry sir that is not research. Come with proper research before you come with this bullcrap. The only one truly knowledgeable on this forum regarding throttling and CPU's is Unclewebb and as far as I know he never made a bold statement like you did.

Saying I spread bad facts and then you come with ******** that pretty much every HQ cpu out there is flawed without backing it up is pretty much the biggest ******** on this forum.

There are a lot of laptops out there that throttle. But rarely it is because of the CPU itself, Bad VRM's designs, lack of current, lack of wattage, lack of cooling and maybe most of the time flawed bios-es is the cause for 90% of the cases out there.

When I talk full load I mean true full load. Not a game that uses 100% of the CPU in terms of the power used but not all functionality. People come to forums most of the time because they have an issue with a system. Generally users that dont have problems dont come to a forum like this because there is nothing to gain. Thus calling threads here the general state of the industry would be pretty stupid and not the reality at all.

and treating with becoming hostile is a bit childish dont you think?

 

All of these "tests" regarding the HQ series and the Alienware 15 R1 that displayed throttling were under abnormal circumstances. Basically they put the system in a situation you won't find yourself in and then claimed it's cooling solution wasn't adequate.

It's easily one of the dumbest arguments I've come across online and I couldn't even bring myself to humor it.

Unlike the, quite frankly, absurd tests that were run I've actually used my system for many months in the most real world scenarios it would be placed under and have run every single game on maximum settings at 1080p for hours at a time, with no throttling or graphical errors.

And hey, remember now, I've got the "worst" offender here with the i7, gtx980m and the 'dreaded' 180w adapter......

Everything - Battlefield 4, Total War Warhammer, Blood Bowl, the Witcher, you name it, it'll run it.

I am so sick and tired of hearing how 'backwards' these new Alienwares have gone and that they are now apparently junk. It's a clear case of hypocrisy on this site that flaming other systems is deemed trolling yet moderators now openly publish in signatures that their systems kill 'BGA' filth or junk.
Just because you don't agree with a product or company's direction does not make it bad.

 

Well I have the 970m model and mine throttles under real world scenarios dropping down to 0.8 ghz after going through 3 different motherboards (Brand New) nothing could solve it, there is clearly something wrong with the motherboard and the only component that throttles on the motherboard is the CPU, if a cpu can't function under 100% load without throttling then what's the use of buying buying an high end i7.

 

Hmmmmm - That is strange indeed.
What was the specific i7 processor?

 

AW R1 i7 4720HQ

 

That's the same i7 I'm currently running and I've experienced no issues at all.
Had it been one motherboard I'd have said that it was a faulty component but to have 3 motherboard fail on you is a different matter entirely.

What has happened since?