Alienware 2015 - your views on BGA vs. upgradeable CPU sockets and MXM slots

So, I believe I qualify as one of the mainstream consumers that dell has been targeting. I can say that I do not mind the lack of socketed cpu/gpu as long as the price is not too high. I can also say that not everyone (me especially) will fork out money every year to upgrade the cards, as I understand that they are very costly. Furthermore, I'm sure that a quad core i7 and a gtx gpu will not become obsolete or underpowered for a few years at least for casual users like me. And the GA could take care of things after a few years down the line (hopefully they improve the GA by then). In conclusion: for the average consumer, as long as the system is cheap enough and can hold it's own for at least 3 years, the lack of sockets is worth it.

Although in retrospect, dell could keep a socketed version of the laptops for the enthusiasts. But that would likely drive up the cost and defeat the purpose.

I also can't understand the fact that everyone keeps picking on alienware for the lack of sockets when there are a lot of manufacturers like asus, msi, razer having soldered chips

 

I think that one of the biggest downsides to BGA is that at the outset of buying, if your budget cannot stretch to one of the 'top end' machines, you are left with the choice of being stuck with a lower powered machine that is not changeable in any way, regarding gpu/cpu.

Over the years, I've seen many questions about configuring new Alienware machines by members seeking advice on these forums. Some are not restricted by budget, but some are. The beauty of earlier machines was that one could buy a base configuration, and at a time that suited them better, they could buy a better gpu or cpu. Right now, if all one can afford is a base 17 (for example) with a I5 4210m & 970m, then that is not upgradeable at all. Some might then say that the GA is the answer to that, but if all you could go for was a base model, that cpu is not going to play nice with something like a GTX980 (or Titan) desktop card.

To me, the whole point of a gaming laptop is that it is mobile. Okay, most of these machines require being hooked up to a wall for best performance, but when I say mobile, I mean mobile in the context that one can chuck it in a backpack and go. I can't see many people wanting to lug around their GA as well as their notebook.

As for those people who could afford a top flight non-BGA machine, sockets and slots are pretty much a redundant benefit. Of course, we have seen MXM cards that have not been validated by Dell to run on a specific platform actually working on said platform. An example would be the M18x R1 in which the top gpu was the 580m sli, officially. Now there are people out there enjoying performance increases from the likes of 680m sli and 780m sli in the same machine. Some people may have an older 18 with one gpu that they can simply add another to improve performance and lifespan.

As for mobile gpu lifespan, I'm sure that 3 year old card/s performance would still be acceptable to many, but if you like to keep up, it's not unheard of for gpu's to be superseded in a matter of months, not years....and where does that leave people? - reliant upon a GA or facing a new machine. This is where some people would prefer an outlay of maybe $5-600 than a couple of thousand for a new machine.

So, when it does come time to sell that BGA machine that is not keeping up, you gotta ask yourself the questions of 'who's gonna want to buy it from you?' and 'what residual value will it have?'

I'm not completely against BGA, as for some, I can see the attraction. Some people will want something that will last 2 years and then change again. Some people aren't remotely interested in updating a machine and may not even have the technical skill or ability to do such upgrades. What you can't do is simply class everyone in that same boat and make BGA standardised across the board.

 

I think you mean base 15. The base 17 comes with an i7-4710HQ, but the base 15 comes with an i5-4210H.

 

I deleted 13 posts due to senseless bickering/arguing. Keep to the facts - please.

 

I'd also like to add that there is no need for continual swearing or ridiculing of other peoples opinions - those opinions are what they are...opinions. I mentioned at the start of the thread to be civil....

 

The hard differences are lack of ability to upgrade/repair and the lack of tdp tweaking the HQ series vs the thinness that soldered parts allow.

Future soldered parts may allow TDP tweaking.

 

I'm surprised they didn't at least use the i7-5650U. It has a higher clock speed, supports a higher graphics frequency clock with iGPU, and has Intel HD graphics 6000. The 960M would benefit for from this.

Alienware is so CHEAP now.

 

Uhh... wouldn't it be better to use the i7-5600U? It does have a higher base clock speed, and if I remember from the AMA, Frank said (paraphrasing here) the team really didn't need a better iGPU as the 13 was meant to game on the 860m/960m. It actually would have been better to use the i7-5557U, but Frank said battery life was of importance for the 13. So no 28w CPU.
Aren't the i5-53xxU and i7-56xxU meant for business laptops?

 

Yes they are! If I had gotten a 3940XM with my 18 R2 it would have been +800EUROS , now I got a used 3940XM CPU for just about 250EUROS.
And I can still sell my old CPU for about 100EUROS.

 

If a gaming laptop is intended for an extreme processor, then it would most likely have been better cooling on the laptop. All cooling is adapted to a the wattage from the hardware used in a laptop.

 

If Alienware isn't going to make their laptops as think and portable as the retina macbook pro or razer blade, then the sockets need to come back. They are just chunky and gimped now. I am also with the school of thought that Intel and the rest of the OEMs are aiming to make the PC market disposable, just like the mobile phone market so that people can't simply replace existing parts and keep machines going. With terrible reliability of the GTX 580M, the 6990M/7970M, and the piss poor failure that was the 880M, it is just a ploy to keep the market disposable and at the whims of OEMs.

 

If Intel now only produce BGA "M" processors, then Dell will also choose soldered graphics so that the laptops will be as thin as possible. Do not be surprised if new Alienware 15 and 17 laptops might become even thinner with even weaker cooling when later models being developed ... Dell should be able to develop a proper Aw18 as desktop replacement with mmx sli graphics and desktop processors (extreme as a choice) . This should not be so very difficult, then other brand do this already.

 

There's no point.

Intel is moving to BGA, across all their processor line. They've already said that. Sure they pushed it back a little bit, but I'm willing to bet that Skylake will be the last processor generation from Intel that has LGA sockets. Broadwell may not even come out with a quad core desktop chip (due to how close Skylake is) and Skylake quad core most likely won't be released until 2016. Skylake Extreme isn't due to be released until 2017.

Nvidia may possibly move to BGA mobile chips only too if they don't decide to make their own socketed interface . It doesn't make sense for them to run two different sockets when most of their customers won't really care.

So really if you want a refreshed alienware 18, you might have to wait until 2016/2017. If they even decide to do one.

 

So sad to see such potential wasted.

 

I understand that most people are not going to take their laptop apart and upgrade the CPU or other parts (aside from maybe the hard drives and ram).

But I also understand the importance of filling our landfills with laptop's that are used for 1 year and tossed in the garbage. Everything is cheap and disposable. We already have islands of trash floating in the middle of the ocean.

(Not many people recycle laptops, lets face it).

It is also 2015, not 1985 where a laptop was the size of a suitcase. Make it easier to upgrade laptop's like desktops. More people are using laptop's and that number will only go up.

 

Does it even matter it is now BGA, the new laptops are cheaper with less features, who cares that much anyway with reduced prices for the actual laptop, these will disposable to most people rather than upgrade worthy with their current design. Haswell has already done a 2 year life cycle, and is about to superseded in a couple of months.
Just have to see what Skylake brings in, maybe change then and then maybe not. It was known a long time ago that Intel was planning to move their products to BGA, there was even talk about vendors of desktop motherboards buying Intel desktop BGA and mounting directly to desktop motherboards and selling them. I don't think Dell are making this decision ultimately, more so just picking from available stock from Intel at this stage.
If you look at just laptops which have sockets, over time that has gone by, what are the chances that 99% of those in which the CPU are never changed/upgraded, highly likely if not a higher percentage. More likely the only reason the socket was there in the first place is so vendors could offer CPU options on products at different prices points while keeping single motherboard design, for designated product.

 

I still can't believe they removed the ODD on the 17" model. People still burn music CDs and DVDs you know.

 

Keep in mind the freedom of choice for people... Some want to upgrade while others do not care. If the processor are soldered, do the laptop manufacturers also the same with the graphics card. Twice as bad. With all hardware soldered, laptop manufacturers make the machines much thinner. With accompanying worse cooling. Poorer cooling = less opportunity for overclocking. This becomes a vicious circle ... Next laptop model might be even thinner with even worse cooling ... Forget overclocking as it was before.

 

Ah, I don't even want to begin to discuss the cheap ODD that Dell puts in Alienware. Since my laptop is USB 3.0, I just went with an internal 5 .25 Pioneer blu ray burner (16x write speed) in a USB 3.0 enclosure..... Much better performance than what ever Dell bundled in the laptops.

I find in emergencies I am installing windows or linux off of USB 3.0 thumb drives. It beats the DVD's.

 

To me, the sockets (or lack thereof) aren't really a big deal. I'd rather have them, but since I rarely, if ever, upgrade my components, it isn't a major selling feature. Nice to have, but that's about it.

In terms of this new AW lineup though, the cooling system is where they REALLY screwed up. My Clevo P650SE keeps both the component temps and surface temps at the same or better levels. And this is achieved with smaller heatsinks and thinner fan blades, not to mention a thinner and smaller chassis.

Have a look at the AW design below.


Since the heat pipes are so long, they disperse heat across the entire laptop before getting to the heat sinks. Ideally, you want very short heat pipes. The sooner/quicker the pipes get to the heat sinks, the better.

To add insult to injury, even with this set up (meaning two heatsinks/fans working to cool the CPU when it alone is under load) the temps are still too high. The Clevo, with its single heatsink and small fan, manages equal or better temps.

/end rant.

So yeah, sockets anybody? If I could find a quality IPS display for my AW17 R1, I'd just stick with that. Unfortunately, I just can't stand the colour-shifting that occurs on TN panels in any kind of dark image.

 

The strange thing is that the cpu heatsink with only two heat pipes-Liquid Ultra on Aw17R1 manage to get rid of + 100w heat, while the new heatsink design in AW17R2 have problems with only 55w. It is clear that the new design is much worse ... Even if you apply Liquid Ultra on the processor in AW17R2 will probably the heatsink/fan fail to remove as much heat as in the old design. This is thanks to a worse design of the heatsink and thinner laptop.

 

I can see BGA and lack of sockets being a cost reduction move by Dell on Alienware laptop's but I want to see the big picture..... Infact I can use this website as an example: BGA for Alienware is dumb. If you want BGA go buy a laptop you can afford....

Go to the main forum page.... look at the list of notebook manufacturers. Out of 30 manufacturers, only 3 use non BPA parts.

So if you absolutely need BGA for some odd reason, you have 95% of choices on the market. Stop cutting the balls off the 5% that want the replaceable parts.

Alienware is not one of those crappy manufacturers but Dell is turning Alienware into one of them.

 

Really, this argument sums up the situation not only in regards to the AW18, but Dell's new AW lineup. I know Dell said something about the difficulty in obtaining supplies of quality 18" display panels, but that could just be a way of sugar-coating the fact the AW18 was a niche product that couldn't justify its R&D, warranty and marketing costs.

Well, that and the fact Intel (and NVIDIA?) are apparently no longer making socketed chips. I'm sure that if Dell had pushed hard enough, maybe Intel would have given in. But Dell would only have done that if their sales volumes on AW machines (with sockets) justified the expense/effort. The fact they didn't probably means that there wasn't enough money being made by AW off of enthusiasts to justify going down that route. I'm sure the majority of AW purchases were made by people wanting a top-end product, and enthusiasts were just along for the ride. The fact they had sockets probably had more to do with reducing configuration and warranty costs - that enthusiasts liked sockets was likely a side benefit that AW took advantage of to get a bit more sales in.

Seriously, think about it. How much support has Dell provided for older AW machines, in terms of BIOS/VBIOS/drivers? How easy is it to install and get newer cards working on older machines? Are AW machines running on locked or unlocked BIOS's? Does Dell readily make available (for purchase) new CPU/GPUs to put in those older machines? If AW machines of the past truly were "enthusiast" machines, it would be easy to buy new cards (from Dell), drop them in and have them work without breaking a sweat. You'd have an unlocked BIOS allowing you complete freedom to tinker with your machine. But this is not the case. All evidence points to the sockets being there for Dell's benefit, not for consumers.

Sucks, but AW is now part of Dell, and like ASUS/MSI/etc., they chase the $. If there was more money to be made with sockets than BGA, they'd be selling sockets. The fact they aren't speaks volumes about the economics of the market.

In the end, these discussions are somewhat pointless. The market will only produce "enthusiast" laptops if there's enough demand for it. Companies respond to economic incentives, they aren't charities.

 

Companies exist to make money.

If 95% of the market exists, they're going to target that market...not the <5%. It just doesn't make financial sense to do so and especially not in the current market where PC sales dropped again.

You also cannot compare Dell to Clevo. They are very different companies that make their money in very different ways.

Dell makes their money by selling a computer directly to you. Clevo, on the other hand, makes most of their money selling to OEMs. They are in a far more stable, far less competitive spot that allows them to have such a diversified portfolio.

Think of it like this. When Alienware sells you a laptop they are competing directly with Clevo, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte / Auros, the 50 clevo resellers etc.

When Clevo sells a laptop chassis, they aren't really competing with anyone. If you buy a laptop from Sager, clevo makes money. If you buy a laptop from XMG, clevo makes money. It doesn't matter which clevo reseller you buy your laptop from, clevo still makes money. The resellers compete between themselves and everyone else, Clevo doesn't.

That's why they can offer a billion different laptop form factors, layouts, specs, sockets, non sockets etc. The risk to them is minimal, the only time they'd start to hurt is if nobody wants a laptop anymore.

 

The reason Dell have done away with the 18 was down to sourcing 18.4" panels, nothing to do with it not selling well enough......

 

Do we know this for a fact, or are we simply taking their word for it?

And again, if there was a large enough demand for 18.4" panels, more manufacturers would be producing it/willing to produce it. So in a roundabout way, it is pretty much the same thing - not enough demand. Because I'm pretty sure that if Dell put out an RFP for 20 million panels, somebody somewhere would bid on it. If they only need a few thousand...not so much.

 

No, we don't know it for a fact, but if you try and source an 18.4" panel you'll come unstuck pretty soon - just try searching the Dell part no. for the 18.4" panel and you'll soon find that even aftermarket places do not have any in stock. There was a thread I caught recently where a guy was trying to get a replacement screen with very little success.

Of course, you can argue that lack of demand has led to lack of production and vice-versa. I agree that the 18.4" DTR market is a niche market. Maybe Dell felt that that niche was not worth catering to any longer, which is sad. What they could have done instead would have been to have a 17" version of the 18 with dual cards and extreme cpu - I think that would have pleased many as that might have placated those who wanted extreme performance and at the same time pleased those that felt an 18.4" machine was maybe just too big.

Apart from the GA, going from a dual carded, exteme cpu toting monster to what is the new 17 is a gulf of a difference in performance. Take away the GA completely and the outgoing 18 would easily outperform a 17 with 4980hq and 980m.

From that perspective, the whole line-up has gone backwards, not forwards. The only way to improve performance is to buy a GA and desktop card, which in itself defeats the idea of a notebook.

 

As was mentioned, it was probably more a question of profits/economics than a simple decision to stop. I doubt somebody at Dell decided to drop the product line simply to piss people off.

Agreed. Take the AW17 R1, drop the optical drive to make space for a second GPU and you're set.

 

I imagine that would have even been quite feasible in the 17 R2 - it's not exactly that much thinner than the 17 of 2013/14. Basically, a bit of a cop out from Dell dropping dual gpu configuration options in favour of a line up which relies upon a GA to achieve what was once possible in a totally mobile form factor - a notebook capable of desktop performance.

 

The R2 is indeed not that much thinner than the R1. But it is significantly wider.

 

Added benefit of less noise, heat in the chassis and extreme ease of upgrade and cheaper to upgrade

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Jeez, sounds like a product that I would buy.

I think part of the R2's problems stem from the fact it is nothing more than a slightly larger AW15. Same motherboard, components, etc. They completely failed to optimize the extra chassis space.

 

Ramzay you say; Well, that and the fact Intel (and NVIDIA?) Are apparently no longer making socketed chips.
Why manage MSI and Clevo to deliver socketed Nvidia chips to their gaming laptops?

 

The ? after nvidia says that he isn't sure about that.

But pascal looks quite different to the current mxm cards so who knows whether or not nvidia will make it compatible.

 

Maybe Alienware is doing this because the industry is progressing that way and they don't want to be the last to fully convert?

 

Do not think this is the reason .. Dell wanted to create a thin laptop. Dell also wanted to prevent some owners upgraded the graphics card after a time ...

 

You don't think they want to get with the way things are going? Making a thin laptop is PART of the reason, that's the way things are going, THINNER so they went with BGA because that's the way it was going. I don't think it has anything with dell trying to be devious to stop people from upgrading. It's just not cost effective any more. Take off your tin foil hat.

 

So Dell wants to prevent people from upgrading their graphics card after a while...by allowing them to upgrade to a desktop graphics card.

Wat?

 

You know what I meant ...

Explore the processor throttle problem in the new Aw. Dell wants to prevent heat problems in the new laptops. Everything can be done in bios ... This is a result of the direction Dell has chosen. A thin design. Thin laptop = poor cooling. Run a processor load at 70-100w with the AW17R2 and see what happens... Maybe also overclock the graphics card with a mod bios and increased volt (if this is possible) and run Furmark...

 

Thin doesn't always mean poor cooling. I think the issue with poor cooling in this laptop is a result of the fan profile because of people complaining about noise or it coming on too strong.

 

Intel processors should not throttled at 78-92 degrees anyway ... Dell wants to prevent heat problem in the new thin laptops. They make all the trottling of the processor with a crippled bios... All laptop manufacturers who can not make a good cooling solutions throttle the processor with a crippled bios. Aka Acer/packardbell.

 

It's not just Dell. I told you a million times in other threads, it's been proven to exist in other companies' laptops. You never listen. Before you spout the same incorrect information constantly LEARN to read what people say. It's an INTEL problem, NOT SPECIFICALLY a DELL problem.

 

Ask UncleWebb (Throttlestop guide) or Dufus, whether it is Intel that made throttle point at 78-85 degrees on a Hq processors or if it is the manufacturers of the laptop with their bios ...

 

The Clevo P650SE with the same specs is thinner, smaller and lighter yet manages to cool just as well or better.

So it isn't just about how thick it is.

Actually, only a very few of the new Clevo (and only 1-2 MSI) machines have MXM NVIDIA chips. EVERYTHING else is just BGA. These new machines also all have BGA CPUs. Even the MSI GT80, with its dual MXM GPUs, has a BGA CPU.

Also, unless I'm mistaken, NVIDIA doesn't actually manufacture the MXM chips. OEMs are the ones responsible for that. So while the BGA CPU can be blamed on Intel, BGA GPU rest mostly with the OEMs.

 

Yep. Hence why we see MSI mxm cards without a sli connector, clevo and Dell versions with different amounts of vRam etc etc.....this is down to the OEM's, not Nvidia. Makes it even more of a shame as Dell could have produced a machine with mxm cards, just chose not to.

 

Probably still has to do with cost. If it was profitable to do so, I'm sure they would do it. Or at least, profitable enough to justify the effort.

If their internal research suggests only 10% of people who buy an AW ever upgrade the MXM GPU, maybe they felt it wasn't worth the effort. All hypothetical of course, since I have no idea what the numbers actually are.

 

Probably still has to do with cost. If it was profitable to do so, I'm sure they would do it. Or at least, profitable enough to justify the effort.

What will Dell remove of facilities on the motherboard if the next generation AW laptops come with a graphics card and 8GB VRAM? Remove one of the M.2 ssd or a memory slot ? Perhaps Dell will earn a little more $ on less?

 

MXM adds a lot of vertical height to the machine. By moving away you can make a much thinner machine.

 

I'd be willing to bet it's more like .5 percent.

 

Shame Dell didn't do that then, isn't it? - lets face it, they also removed the ODD and the new 17 R2 is still only around 20% thinner than the older 17. It's neither here nor there in terms of 'thick vs thin'.