Alienware M15 (Brand New Slim Model) - Gamescom 2018

do you have to be kidding me, they fix the 3 screw desing on cpu and put the problem on gpu lol

 

also it looks cheap as ****.... that touchpad is awful, that inspiron keyboard. those materials looks fragile like a msi laptop nononono... alienware is becoming worse and worse

 

i think the only brand going on a good direction is Asus ( performance / quality materials) ratio

 

i agree bro.. this design sucks.. finally ur back

 

Looks like this is positioned to succeed the 13 R3. And by that, I don't mean screen size, but by portability.

 

Of you would've googled, you Would've vind plenty of results:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/330...ailability.amp.html?__twitter_impression=true

 

Those where some great times

 

You sure? For me it looks like TRIPOD for both

 

I post from an phone but from what I can see the left back isn’t a screw

 

Please dont keep repeating false information. the problem was never the 3 screws but it always have been too thick thermal pads.4 or 4 screws dont matter if the pads are too thick. The R1 and R2 could have the same issues with 4 screws because, yes you guess it. Too thick thermal pads.

 

are you serious ? i am 100% sure that you have not make so many repaste processes like me.
from my perspective, you CANT apply liquid metal on a 3 screw design. and if you do, you shouldn't do it. the surface wouldnt be perfectly flat.
give me one example of a 3 screw desing laptop that performe better than a 4 and i will give you the reason.
only cheap made razer laptops have used 3 screw desing and they have learn that it sucks and changed that

 

First of all i own this laptop and as far as I know you do not and next to that most that spoke about the whole tripod designs didnt either. On first sight it might look like a problem but I can assure you after carefully testing my unit, some other units of the same type. Doing more than 10 repastes on my unit alone to find out the best paste and pads etc I can say for 100% certainty that the tripod itself (with a later revision heatsink with those 0.1mm pads on the CPU side) are not the culprit for tempertature differences. Its the GPU pads which are hard to compress on the GPU side. How I found out? I ran the GPU side without any pads and the problem was gone in an instant. 1 screw more makes the pressure bigger yes. But with my previous AW15R2 I had a core temp difference of 6c and more over time. Why? Again too thick thermal pads.

There are a lot of 3 screw mounted heatsink laptops now, just browse through Notebookcheck. the Aero 15 and GS65 comes to mind for example which have excellent pressure considering the ultra thin footprint.

No offense to anyone, but a lot do follow remarks from other people which also never owned these models.

See screenshot for results after repadding with very soft gelid pads. a core temp difference of barely 2c. You cant get much better than this. This was in ambient temps of 26c.

Check the second screenshot for the temps when the temperature dropped to 22c and after the heatsinks became a bit dusty. Temp difference of 3c. Those results are in line with any other well pasted laptop out there. Load while gaming.

 

I care about testing more than a computer generated blow up image of the cooling. Not going to be a beta user on this but will be following Curious to see what/if the 17 gets the same treatment.

 

Never mind the precedent here this is the first 15.6 inch laptop from alienware where there is no option for cpu overclock.

First they go thinner in exchange for a larger footprint. Then they go smaller again with significantly less footprint.

Again I have no problem with the model in itself there is a definite market for it but without a high performance model Alienware is cashing out its brand recognition. I like that it exists, I could see myself owning one but only as a secondary laptop never as a primary machine. With that being said I would've preferred a 1050Ti, more balanced configuration.

 

I have a 15% off coupon I need to use by the end of the year so I do not mind being the canary in the coal mine.

 

hahahaha and do you think that laptops like aero 15 and GS65 have a good cooling system ? i repasted a GS65 with conductonaut last week, 0 core differential but it sucks, it keeps reaching 90°C spikes that is what i am talking about. give me 1 laptop with 3 screws desing and good colling. not core differential, i never talked about core differential, do you have to read better before argue

 

@rinneh i am talking from experience, you disassembled the same laptop 10 times and do you think 3 screw desing is good ?
then why do you think that do you had to disassembly 10 times ? good desing ? lol 4 screws on each corner ensure more pressure and flatness, so its not too influenced by thermal pads tickness (as much as 3) and can compress the thermal pad if is too tick

 

You misread my comment/misunderstood. I said the pressure was good for its size. Ofcourse the temps are high, those radiators at the end of those heatpipes are small. But the pressure is even and decent and thats my point. No one ever questioned the radiator capacity of the Alienwares. The so called "tripod" problem which is actually too thick thermal pads always pushed the heatsink slightly up that the actual radiators never could reach their full potential. Check my screenshots. Thats with the CPU and GPU under load after an hours of Destiny 2 and Firestrike looping when they make good contact. Traditional paste, not liquid metal. The only mod that I have done are the pads and without pads there is a zero core difference proving that the thermal pads where the culprit.

(I would recheck the repaste you did though, at stock the CPU is around 90C already, LM should do better. My younger brother by the way owns a GS65.

 

Maybe you should double read my posts. The reason why I disassembled it around 10 times was to test the most optimal setup and which pads would be the best ones. So I checked with Kryonaut, with Nanogrease, With Mastergelmaker nano etc. Tested it with Minus pads, Arctic pads, Gelid pads etc. To find a true solution to a "problem" you have to check and measure everthing, eliminate variables etc to get a well founded conclusion. Because initially I followed iUnlock his guide for pad measurements, I found out I had no contact at all with the GPU memory and pads. But the temps where perfectly even. This made me test for the ideal pad thickness and type.

This is what I call experience and that is only my own machine. I have repasted/repadded Alienwares with very good (equal to mine) results every single time and all without using LM.

Like I said my FCN and CCI heatsink in my previous AW15R2 had a far larger core difference than I ever had on my AW15R3 and as you know those utilize 4 screws around each chip die. Had to repad those as well. My AW15R1 had a 10c temp difference as well.

 

the only think you proved is that thermal grizzly kryonaut is so dense that can compensate the unevenness of 3 screw design
so why people dont use liquid metal on those models ? why they have to bend the third screw ? do you think the pressure sheet test are ******** ? dont be so blind

 

First to admit I was wrong, and happy that I was. I quite like the looks of this.

That said, to be fair, my comment was made months ago and the article you shared was from this morning. At the time, the only article we had was from a French blog post or something.

Cheers!

 

my 15 R1 have 0 core differential, maybe is not a heatsink problem you had, is the technique. anyone can apply LM, but not anyone in a good way. for other side you are not going to have high temps with a 7700hq, that cpu throttle a lot more than my hotwell cpu

 

@rinneh there is a huge gap between normal paste and LM, if you dont understand that, there is not too much to talk about. i am not a fan of stock clocks, if i have some tech, i want the last dot of performancet that i can get. also the temperature difference from your paste and conductonaut is at worst 13°C. so i understand that you are happy of what you have, but i dont

 

Im not sure about this...but yeah may be ur right.. its just the thermal pads, but even 0.5 thermal pads on R2 over time.. makes differnce..R2 temps are much better and stays normal over time, because of the mounting pressure from 4 screws.. even thats not perfect.. over time i travelled a lot on my motorcycle.. on potholes and what not.. trust me.. the gap comes back if the pressure is not there even on one screw.. may be the bracket is not strong.. have u seen razer blades new thermal system ??

 

the repaste of the GS65 i made is perfect. the laptop dont feel hot anymore but the heatsink is simply unable to keep the hight TDP spikes. not with those tiny copper pipes

 

Bending the arm barely if not doesnt so anything at all. It bebts right back after mounting. Its too "springy" for that. The benefits that people had was from the better paste but rhat quickly dries up if people dont remedy the pad problem. No one used pressure paper on fully nakes heatsinks. So yeah of course with bad pads you have uneven pressure. The pads between the power delivery section of the gpu are by far the most problematic and those are exactly at the top side where it affects the first and third core.

The reason why i did not opt for LM because i am still not convinced tgat even with foam. Barriers etc it is 100% safe. Mind you that my laptop gets tossed into a bad everyday of the week and is flown multiple times all over the globe a year. If that wasnt the case i would used LM as well. Ofcourse the 7700hq is a tad more efficient as the haswell series. But that basically only affects in my case the fan noise. My fans only kick in on very low rpms because it is kept for the majority of the time under 80c. It doesnt need to work hard to keep the temperatures good.


Anyway my point is. That the people here which did proper repads with very soft and compressible pads (no not fujipoly pads) suddenly dont have these issues. The people that just did a repaste for the majority still have. Even when using LM.

 

That's true. So I'm also wrong sir ! It looks like a nice laptop, but just too good to be true. Especially with AW it's track record from when they stayed the R line (excluding the R5 Ranger)

 

I don't see why they would do this with the 17 - this is intended as a thin replacement for the AW13 so it serves a specific purpose to fit into a specific market space.

 

Don't like chiclet, the older alienware keyboard is just fine imo.


I think at this point, for mass production consumer/prosumer model, alienware used non chiclet keyboard type the longest.

 

Idk...looks kinda cheap. It's been going that direction since the 2013 models. There's more bottom bezel there than my M18x LOL.

 

I'm so glad I didn't wait and went with the alienware 13 oled for my professional machine. That one looks bad.
Agree with ssj92 on this. Looks kinda cheap with all the compromises they did to make it thinner and lighter

 

Sorry to hijack this thread but the AW 17 configs with GTX 1080 GPU are gone from Dell website. Do you think they are cooking another new model as well?

 

Yes.

 

M17 it is then lol

 

Chiclet is also much thinner, so it needs to be done if you're making a thin and light machine

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

Could be a supply issue.
Although, I was able to config a 17 R5 witha GTX 1080 on the US site.

 

reading hundreds of pages of the r4 anf r5 threads i would not "Yet" trust dell with a thin and light gaming computer for temps

 

Not yet. At least not a new design. They would have announced them at the same event otherwise. Press events are expensive to put on.

 

I'd like to see this laptop with 1170 or whenever the new GPUs are released. Then I'll see if I wanna give it a shot.

 

Since Dell took over in 2009, Alienware has kept a uniform look up and down their lineups with their laptops across each generation. Based on the 15", I would say that a 17" version is inevitable.

 

There is several different TRIPOD heatsink design and some worse than the others. More flimsy than the AW 3rd TRIPOD leg isn't possible to find.

Current model left and previous model right.



And both the last years + 2018 AW models have massive temperature problems (even after decent paste and pads job). And don't forget that you have the fully locked down 45w chips+1070. A huge difference vs. current and last years unlocked chips and the 1080 graphics.

I'm sure they have them on the drawing table. Maybe not fully finished for production. I think the m15 is the Guinea pig. What is better than a new announcement later this year/early spring? The more talk the more they is able to drag eyes.

 

You know I have the one on the right. But its quite stiff in real. Or more like, the 2 on the bottom have "less play" and are just screw holes already almost at the right height. SO they dont give that much pressure. The one on the top gives a similar amount of pressure on its own. But if there is too much pressure from the pads on the GPU side, then it cannot counteract that pressure.

YOu have seen my results and repads.

The 7700HQ is barely a factor. Because higher temperatures means higher fan noise trying to keep it down. Sub 80c temps with not even liquid metal and I have repasted/repadded non locked chips.

ON the new models I cannot comment, I havent touched those yet. But I am careful to make an opinion based on other peoples repasting results. Because I have the feeling a lot arent doing it right.

 

sometimes i have to agree when it comes to comments, but at same time i had to look at past and the current lineup designs.. i know every model had some kinda issue, my R1 R2 both had different issues, but never once a bad heatsink contact issue, it was all the firmware / throttle issues, but even few guys from india who owns 15 r3 contacted me in india, saying if i can do the repaste for them, i did try with few methods.. inititally the presssure was good, but to be honest within a month they told me the core difference came back, since they all travel daily to office with laptops.. i did try few methods when it comes to tightening the screw pattern on heatsink. but more or less its the same. i used 0.5mm artic and 1mm which iunlock posted.. and kryonaut.. as i dont want to risk using LM for these guys and later i get the blame if things get screwd up..

 

My experiences with kryonaut where quite bad (on all laptops for that matter) I guess its just not viscose enough to keep it running well for a longer period. Not only on the CPU side but also on the GPU side wherre the pressure is higher.

ICD7 and Mastergel maker nano gave me the results I was looking for and it has been solid ever since. I agree there is always some quirk though that users often have to fix themselves. Apart from that I still prefer the AW laptops for all other reasons. The DC in cable problem was the worst I came across with Alienware laptops.

 

Yes ICD7 and Mastergel is better alternate, but not in technical specs.. im not sure @judal57 knows more about mounting pressures more thn i do, but i just had a chance to open one of my frinds razer 2018.. it was beautiful.. the heatsink lays flat on dies.. and even they have HS plates extended to PCH.. i dont see core different on razer, but i did notice even that heatsink couldnt keep up with the amount of heat this 8th gen CPU's and 1070 puts up on a small chasis.. but overall i still would give credits to razer for trying something nice, specially the panel, layouts etc..

 

I had hell with uneven CPU cores and bad CPU and GPU contact right after re-paste, and by time it got only worse.

I re-pasted 10x within last 10 months (since purchase), last time 3 months ago, because I got it finally right.

The reason was always the pads. Dell silicone stock pads soften when heated-up and get harder when cold. As the mounting pressure of heat-sink is very low, it goes up and down (even by 1nm) resulting in pump-out and paste gets dry and dies loose contact with heat-sink.

After some time temperatures rise or cores get more uneven temperatures. This is more or less guaranteed to happen with DELL stock pads. I tried them with LM and got the same: after 3 weeks temperatures were only rising and I found that half of my CPU die had dry LM.

Only Gelid pads (hopefully there is also some other brand with similar composition) are like sheet of thermal paste, once compressed, they do not push back. When I take heat-sink off, there are perfect imprints. Gelids are also very cheap compared to Fuji or Alphacool and the 12 Wm/k is no joke too.

Since I used Gelids and LM together I realised that 3 arms are 'okey' as long as heat-sink is not pushed up by pads at all.

Isn't it a dream of every person who wants to re-pad to have basically 'soft solid sheet of 12 Wm/k thermal paste' for cheap? Silicon based pads are IMO good especially/only for high mounting pressure.

I would compare Gelid pads to K5 Pro (the cream 'magic of Olymp Gods' from Greece lol). Gelids adjust 'one way' by heat, they do not run away or dry-up and if you need 0.5 mm pad and have only 1mm, after manual compressing, the pad will get bigger on the sides, and not 'temporarily' harder as with sillycone pads=push ups.

Thanx goes to @propeldragon and @rinneh for re-confirming the results of Gelids.

 

im not sure, ive used gelid pads, which comes in black color i believe, it breaks up pretty easily imo.. you have to be careful when cutting it.. but yeah its cheaper comparing other two options.. i will get a new set of gelid soon from aliexpress. but its good to hear ur tripod contact issue is fixed..

 

I had no problem when cutting lol, only when I disassembled heat-sink, some would break, but this can be avoided if laptop is completely cool (thenks @rinneh) on heat-sink removal. Anyway, everytime I re-paste I will change for fresh pads as it is cheap joke.

1 pack of 1mm and half pack of 0.5 mm is enough for 1 full repad of 13 R3. That is 12-15 EUR per re-pad in Europe.

EDIT: Fuji and Alphas are WAY too hard
EDIT 2: Good decision !!!!

EDIT: Correction: I don't know why are wrote that Alphas are too hard. I meant they are silicone based and push up heat-sink. Sorry.

 

Yeah Gelid pads can only be handled when it is not warmed up. They will become very very soft when warm. Even removing the heatsink would break half of them if not cooled down. I just did the repads in the morning before turning on my laptop. Never ruined one of those pads after ever again.