The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Only the upper part, over the F-keys (logic since there it is, the cpu and gpu).
Can't say I feel any heat issue, other than normal experience from my AW18(2014)
Well, I'm using the AW17 R1 right beside it, and not only is that machine dead silent, even under load, but the keyboard is cool to the touch, even under load.
The entire keyboard area of the R2 gets warm, and the centre gets hot (much like in the diagram found in my
review). The area above the keyboard gets really hot too.
Maybe you got lucky and got a great model that has no heat issues. But there is definitely heat there.
Try this test: place your hands on the palm rest. Then place your hands on the keyboard (while playing an intensive game, for example). On the AW17 R1, there is NO temperature difference between the palm rest and the keyboard under load. On this R2, there is a stark difference in temperature.
That being said, if this heat doesn't bother you, great. You've got a great laptop. But pretty much everybody has commented on the heat, so it is definitely there - maybe some aren't as bothered by it.
Putting my hand on the keyboard under load though, I can't possibly fathom how anybody could not be extremely bothered by it. It's that hot. Or maybe it's just my machine that's running hot.
Yup. In fact with the amount I have been travelling the last 6 months I am literally located all over Canada.
The AW will have to wait. I grabbed a new XPS 13 to see what all the fuss was about and the Y50 order I cancelled two weeks ago shipped from China Sunday afternoon - it will be at my home Thursday.
Just like old times when I used to be a frequent reviewer here, I'll have a stack of laptops at home to greet me at the end of this trip.
Unless you are using some crazy thermal paste, the keyboard on the R1 definitely gets hot and the fans are definitely audible under load. I can't compare it to the R2 because I don't have one but the R1 is only dead silent at idle. At load you can definitely hear it...granted in some games more than others for obvious reasons.
Notebookcheck did a heat test and while the sides of the keyboard were mildly hotter than the palmrests (31-34C vs the palmrest at 28C), the center keyboard and top part definitely got significantly hotter (center keyboard at 45C and the top bits at 40-54C). Essentially the same areas that you noticed the keyboard getting hot. Same thing goes for the fans at load the fans are 40-50db.
I think you just got lucky with your R1 lol. I use prolimatech PK-3 and my findings pretty much mirror those that notebookcheck saw.
Maybe I did get lucky, because the keyboard barely increases in warmth even during long gaming sessions. It does not get hot. If you think the R1 gets hot and loud, you want to avoid the R2 at all costs - relatively speaking, the R2 is a whole lot hotter and louder. On the other hand, have you considered the possibility you really need to re-paste and clean your fans? I re-pasted both the CPU + GPU and cleaned it all out. It is also a possibility the machine Notebookcheck got had a bad paste job.
But we'll know for a fact tomorrow, as I've ordered an infrared thermometer. Currently all of this is subjective, and soon we'll have cold (ha!) hard facts to deal with.
Oh of course, I mean its not hot or loud enough to bother me by any means but there's definitely a temperature difference.
And yup this was on an R1 that was repasted and fans / heatsink cleaned, the stock paste was 2 or so degrees hotter. That's one of the things that pisses me off about the new R2...I have no problem with opening up my laptop and doing things like that but the R1 was so easy...2 screws and bam you can do anything.
This is with the 780M gpu, 4700MQ, 16gb ram and 2 samsung 850 evos.
Yeah, the new R2 is really not user-friendly in terms of tinkering.
I will sometimes notice a mild temperature rise close to the middle of the keyboard when running benchmarks, but it usually only lasts a moment, During gaming, the keyboard itself remains mostly cool to the touch.
One thing I did do was move my single SSD to the bottom-left 2.5" bay. So I have no drive in the middle of the laptop, which may contribute to my lower temps. I've heard of people with drives in the middle 2.5" bay having temperature issues.
Possibly. I know my evo thats in the center is at about 42 degrees or so, whereas the one on the side is a cooler 34-35. SMART says the worst recorded value was 51 degrees.
So, using my new Infrared Thermometer (a SainSonic) the max surface temp recorded was 32C, and that was at the very top, close to the screen hinge (below the Alienware symbol). The max keyboard temp I recorded was 30, around the J-K keys. I ran some Unigine Valley, then played some Diablo 3.
Sorry, R1. I don't have the R2 anymore, so I can't compare unfortunately. The R2 ran much hotter, in terms of keyboard surface temps.
To put that in perspective, the max surface temp I recorded on the G751 was 31C. However, the G751 is MUCH quieter. Really, ASUS did a fantastic job with the G751 - it performs better than the new Aw17 R2, and is cooler and quieter.
Interesting. Wish you still had an R2 to compare it too haha. But I also wonder if that's because of the 980M and whether or not the 780M runs hotter.
Well one of the reasons the Asus performs cooler and quieter is the way the fans are designed. They pull air from above and then out through the back, whereas the 17 pulls air from below and then out the back.
The only thing thats keeping me from buying an(other) Asus is their warranty service is god ****ing awful. I've only owned one laptop from them and when the touchpad broke they made me send it in, so I did...then waited two weeks to get it back and it was still broken (they did nothing...), so I sent it back again after arguing with the tech on the phone while he claimed "we found no problem with it in our tests"...and then when I finally got it back a week or two later the replaced palmrest had a crack in it (a big noticeable one too) but the touchpad worked!...sent that back in AGAIN and another week or two later I got it back with the touchpad working and a non cracked palmrest... I was like holy ****, five to six weeks just to get a touch pad replaced..
Exactly. That's the sole reason I'd stayed away from ASUS so far. If you win at the ASUS lottery, you'll get a machine that runs without any problems and you're set. If you have any problem whatsoever, forget it. You'll hate your life.
This is one thing people don't understand about Alienware/Dell. While you can have a bad experience with them, overall their support is pretty good. They'll fix your problems, send a tech to your house, or even replace your entire laptop if need be.
It's possible the 780M runs hotter. I also have a brand new 100w heatsink for the 980M, maybe that makes a difference.
Overall I'm not at all saying you're lying or making this up. It's just that my machine runs about as cool under load as it does idle (in terms of surface temps). I haven't yet measured temps under a full stress test (Furmark + XTU, for example). I'll get around to that.
To give you an idea of the G751, under a Furmark + XTU stress test, while the CPU hit 93C and the GPU 76C, the max surface temp I recorded on/near the keyboard was 34C. Remarkable, really.
Oh yeah Asus' cooling system is simply superior. I wish Alienware will get around to doing the same.
I guess with the R2 we at least got a little change with the shared heatpipe design haha...though I'm not sure (according to your reports) that is worked as well as Alienware were expecting lol. In theory it sounds like a decent idea because while each component still has it's own dedicated fan, the GPU is able to use the CPU fan to help cool it down even more...but in practice it just makes certain areas of the laptop even hotter so who knows lol.
Likely the case. If you refer to my very scientific graphic in my OP, the area of they keyboard that got really hot was round the J-K keys.
Now mind you, the system actually works very well, in a sense. The CPU/GPU temps were very good in the R2. It's the chassis/keyboard temps that were troublesome.
Ah true, so basically if Alienware had added some thermal shielding to the bottom part of the keyboard it would have been perfect?
I wonder if that would be a viable mod, get some thermal pads and stick it between the keyboard and the heatsink to see if it helps dissipate the heat a little.
Potentially. If you refer to my OP, you'll see the max temps under non-stress test conditions were really very good (77 for the CPU and 63 for the GPU). The shared heatpipe means the CPU actually remains cooler under the XTU stress test than in a gaming test.
It might be a lack of shielding. The G751JY isn't any thicker than the AW17 R2 - it sits higher because of raised feet, but its actual chassis thickness isn't really much more. Yet the surface temps are so much better.
My R2 does not get hot when gaming if the fans are running. I will say that the fans don't seem to come on with firmware version A03 until the CPU hits 97C. I flashed back to A00 and called it a day. I also decided to use HWiNFO64 to flip the fans on to high manually before I do anything CPU intensive. This seems to keep my system at around 55C-65C depending on what I'm doing of course. Just browsing, mine stays in the 29-34C range with the fans rolling. With the stock fan profiles I usually see high 40C's to low 50C's. The stock fan profiles definitely suck if you're going to plop this thing on your lap. I think they were going for battery life and noise and it definitely does well in that department. Mine will run for 5 hours just browsing the internet with the brightness cranked down.
Not the owner of the 17 but rather the 15 with the same specs. This being my first gaming laptop I'm unable to compare it to other gaming laptops from the past but I'd compare it to the laptop I sold in order to get it: the hp envy 17 from late 2012 (i7 third gen, 8gb RAM, amd 7850m 1gb ddr5, 1080p screen, blu ray/dvd/cd combo, awesome speaker configuration).
Kinda odd thing I found about the 15 is that the keyboard and like 2cm below it is always warm, when gaming it doesn't get much warmer actually, so not super annoying but not great either (HP's remained cool all the time). On the topic of the macro keys, I get it, the can get in the way sometimes but I found them really helpful in the sense that it allows me to place shortcuts to some functions I use a lot on some programs like Illustrator and Photoshop and some CAD software. After using it I feel that is easy for Alienware to actually fix this: add more separation to the rest of the keyboard to it.
The alienware logo below the screen doesn't lit evenly, is somewhat brighter on the left side.
I'm not a big fan of the touchpad since it is not as wide as I'd like and is very frustrating trying to use gestures to show the charms bar or the apps bar since its not on the laptop's surface level, its a litle bit underneath. (Got a Microsoft mice with touch gestures so I guess no longer a problem).
Game performance is on another galaxy when compared to AMD's 7850m. With the Envy I've got graphics problems since day one and it was very frustrating to try a lot of beta driver releases in order to get the one that works best for your laptop. That being said, 0 problems on the 15 so far, all my games run well, my apps actually make use of the gpu power and the battery is nice for such a powerful machine.
The cooling solution while noisy under load is WAY ahead of regular laptop standards (pointing the [middle] finger at you HP...), this needs a little context though: I live in a city with tropical weather so the temps on the laptop are higher here because of it, for example, on the ENVY I bought skyrim legandary ed back in december and I played it for hours daily that month and if I'd try to play it today it wouldn't last more than an hour without the laptop turning off itself. The Alienware gets really loud under load (not that the envy was much quieter) but it keeps the temps down, that plus my sennheiser or my pioneer heaphones is a huge win for me coming from the envy.
Unlike what the reviewer of the original post says, the lid has metal on it, I don't know if it is aluminum or an alloy but it is definitely metal (unlike the grey plastic on the bottom). The Envy had analuminum unibody that felt really nice and durable but it used to get insanely hot during load so I can see the reason they keep from using metal on gaming laptops. Build quality is better on the Alienware also, it just feels more solid overall.
Extra things that annoy me:
-Only one tray for regular HDD, the Envy had 2.
-Still no word on the RAID 0 support for the Alienware 15 and it only allows 2 m2 ssd's instead of more like the competition.
-No disc tray. Now, I won't say I used it a lot on the ENVY but it was nice to just sit back and throw in "The Dark Knight" blu ray on it sometimes.
-Audio is a lot more flexible and sounds better on headphones but I'm not so sure on the laptop speakers, it was probably like HTC's speakers that even while not much better than the competition, the fact that they are facing up (x4) and in front (x2) plus the subwoofer makes the impression that they are louder, not really better but louder which comes handy sometimes.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
