Future AW Laptop Feedback Thread.

I know I'm posting this late, I really thought of creating it earlier.
I don't know if Dell/Alienware see this and improve their future line-ups. This is more of a happy feeling post for current and future owners to make them happy again.
Some points I would like to stress are below:

1. Change the current temp. controlled labs from 20C to 30C so that most heat issues can be identified quickly and fixed ASAP w/o needing to waste/build another QC facility to test AWs.
   
2. Use IC diamond/Gelid extreme as thermal paste
3. Cooling PCH using Aluminium or Copper heastink
4. Dual BIOS chip to help people who bricked their PC during BIOS flash.
   
5. Prefer thicker chassis and raw cooling performance via AWCC for custom fan profile like Silent, Performance mode and Max fan speed.
6. Full unlocked BIOS for max performance.
7. More USB ports.

I can think of only so much. Anybody can feel free to suggest any point to be added/removed.
@Papusan @rinneh @judal57 @VICKYGAMEBOY @Pete Light @iunlock @DeeX @Mobius 1 @Mr. Fox @MogRules @0lok and everybody who are current/future AW owners.
If Dell/Alienware felt this thread was offensive and are tarnishing their rep in the industry, they're free to ask mods to remove it.

 

You forgot the most important outside the unlocked Bios and Heatsink in your poll.

Back to socketed hardware (LGA+MXM).
Back to normal thickness of chassis.​

 

Frankly Frank posted LGA was a lost cause, I'll add them. I thought of adding it since most actually prefer BGAs.

 

Fan profiles are terrible and to loud just idle

Fan control to the Alienware suite or standalone app

More Usb ports

Definitely DON'T make it thicker or go back to LGA...

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i have 2 designs which i did long back, a thicker bottom is what ive designed, with all components facing backside, MXM , swappable CPU, RAM, NVME, Battery on bottom, whats on top side, is keyboard + trackpad + speakers facing on sides, all Ports on Backside, except 1 type c and USB 3 on both side.. the biggest design thing where we can reduce thickness is LCD assembly, may be a thinner slim panel with solid materail with almost no flex, its fine ik some may say we need flex, so basically no compromise on performance, but still not that thick.. i would like to see a good PCB design, i mean layout, and same goes to heatsink design.. heatsink should be separated from the fan, like the R1 models.. moreover i need a unlocked BIOS with stock intel firmwares / if intel is the choice.. and we should defntly get rid of optimus and nvidia should work on a ultra low power state for their 125W GPU, basically equivalent to intel HD graphics, so that battery doesnt take hit, all these sounds nice, but for me i feel it will take another 3-4 solid years for them to implement, as they are behind money and big companies who buys in bullk, not for gamers anymore..

 

That is major re-design and will take their 3-4 planned roadmaps to be thrown away.

 

Just better QC and solid state batteries. The rest is perfectly fine for me. I am a happy user. Had some issues with the aw15r2 but AW rectified it. Service i cant expect and get from any other brand. Keep in mind that i use my laptop very heavily. They will get my money many more times probably if they keep this up. I tried a lot of brands. But only alienwares feel sturdy enough to be actually used away from home.

 

I don't want a thicker chassis. I like the new thinner chassis compared to the previous one. I don't mind the extra space at the back. Thinner looks more sleek. We have enough other brands who have thick bulky machines. I would only be okay if they did an alienware 17 extra thick for the over enthusiast who wants EVERYTHING + overclocked. As I don't want that.
I'm currently waiting for the next gpu lineup, and will most likely get an alienware 13 with the oled screen (man I hope they won't ditch the oled screen for whatever reason). If the oled were to come on the alienware 15 with a significantly better gpu, then I'd go for the alienware 15.
But like I said. I prefer them thin.

About the thermal paste. Sure having better quality thermal past is of course better, but they will never do that. Simply the convenience of the ready to go thermal past that are delivered all the same exact size and thickness is for the production soo much easier for them, especially sicne they have to apply two thermal pasts on a single heatsink where the spread should be ideally at the same height.

About LGA and MXM, sure they sound good, but they require more space and both are more expensive solutions for the manufacturing. Also they require more space, and have a fixed size (especially the mxm), which limits the flexibility they have when they manufacture their motherboards. Again could cause inconvenience.

About more USB ports I can see that this can be an issue for people with extra peripherals, and more is always handy, and I don't think it would cause a huge compromise so that I'm all for it.

2 bios chips are interesting indeed. But I wonder how many people have bricked their pc with bios in percentage of all the alienware laptop buyers. Is it worth putting 2 chips on ALL systems to potentially lower the chances for a specific affected people. Don't know the extra manufacturing cost of an extra bios chip so can't say much about this, but just telling this to give you another perspective. Keep in mind. This could also mean for them to sell more warranty as a company. I personally buy an laptop every 2nd new gpu cycle. so skipping one, getting the next one, skipping one getting the next one. Sound expensive, but alienware laptops have a great resell value, and have been able to do that with minimal expenses. This only works if you don't exaggerate with the options on the laptop. e.g. going for a 3500€ laptop or something.

unlocked bios could mean more bios failures, and then your other suggestion of 2 having 2 bios chips is interesting. I don't care about this, but I can definitely see why certain people want this. so why not.

About the pch, I'm curios. How many people had physical damage on their pc, or system failure because of overheated pch? Did it happen a lot? Not on topic about that.

 

Thermal Paste.

I feel like this is more of an Application problem at the factory level honestly. While I don't think that Dell's stock paste is going to hold up against Grizzly or IC Diamond or any other high performance paste, I feel like it would be ( and is ) adequate for a lot of people. The enthusiast crowd is always going to be pushing their hardware to the bleeding edge so they are always going to need the best of the best. Even if they changed the paste right now to Kryonaught or IC you would have it applied by a monkey and it would still overheat the system.

Heatsink.

This needs to be improved. There are so many people with warped heatsinks that don't make proper contact that it's ridiculous. I know they changed the manufacturer at least once, possibly twice from rumours I have heard recently so there is obviously a QC problem with the heatsinks that needs to be fixed. This needs to be addressed in the next generation or their reputation is going to nose dive if we get two generations with the same heat problems.

This was how well the first R4 I had fit with it's heatsink....




PCH/SSD cooling.

Honestly I don't see the problem with the PCH. Are that many people seeing PCH overheating problems? I don't spend as much time here anymore as I am busy moderating on Reddit but the only people I see with PCH concerns on Reddit usually came from here and read someone someone else said. I feel like the PCH cooling mods were done mostly to get the temps down where someone else wanted them, not because they were causing problems where they were at. The PCH in this laptops runs cooler then the PCH in my R1 ever did....but I repasted the CPU/GPU as well. Maybe if my CPU/GPU were hitting thermal throttling the PCH would be as well, I never got there so I don't know.

SSD cooling I feel is on the manufacturer a lot. Every drive seems to perform differently in terms of temps. Maybe Alienware should look at adding heatsinks to all nVME drives simply to alleviate any potential problems but I don't feel like the laptop design itself is the cause of the SSD temps. My Hynix drive is usually pretty cool, but it only runs the OS so maybe that's why. I don't run benchmarks on my SSD...because I have no reason to...it works and that's all that matters to me. I have had it for almost a year and JUST dropped to 99% drive life left so I can live with that.

Unlocked BIOS.

I don't have much of an opinion here....I am not into the tinkering that a lot of you are. My laptop works and I don't OC heavily or at all really because it's already overkill for what I do. I feel like this has been going on for long enough , since the R1 anyways that I can think of that Dell/Alienware isn't going to back down so the battle seems over.

Dual Bios chips

This is an interesting suggestion, has this been done on any laptop thus far? It would definitely help those that had bad bios flashes, but I don't know what the percentage of systems or people that experience this is so in the long run are they going to do it if only say 20 of every 10,000 units need it. Again, it is a neat idea and I would be behind it, but I don't know how practical it is with space at a premium on the MB already. I think clear cut procedure on how to save a failed flash would be better here. We have a few people that say they have recovered a bad flash but Alienware has never released a set of instruction for these machines which is very much needed. While a new motherboard will solve it, those people out of warranty are hooped and the techs that come to replace the MB can cause more damage then what they are fixing at times.

Prefer thicker chassis and raw cooling performance via AWCC for custom fan profile like Silent, Performance mode and Max fan speed.

I don't think were going to go thicker again...I just don't think the industry and or the consumer base wants it. I get the argument and the endless examples that thicker machines tend to run cooler, it's impossible to argue with that, but people want thinner laptops and I hate to say it but Dell/Alienware is going to go off what the overall feel from consumers wants and the enthusiasts make up a very small percentage of that. We want thick machines that run like a freezer and are super configurable but overall they are selling machines to people that want thinner machines because they want it to look like a macbook but still play games. I know this isn't a popular opinion but I am looking at both sides. The chip designers are pushing things thinner and thinner as well so I don't even feel like Alienware carries all the blame here. I feel like they are designing a system that works for the general gamer that isn't interested in taking their laptop apart because it could lower temps by 4c if they use a different paste, they want to prevent people that don't know what they are doing from screwing up setting and needing support to fix their bios options because they changed something they should not have and now their laptop won't boot.

I feel like fan control has been being begged for by this community especially for a long time and the fact we still don't have it tells me we probably never will. I do agree the fan tables are a little messed though. They are slow to respond and the CPU can spike pretty high before the fans have a change to respond, but this has also been a problem for a very long time. I won't pretend to understand even slightly what goes into programming that so maybe it's a lot harder then we think. Also giving people full fan controls introduces the risk that you get people that have NO idea what they are doing and cook their systems because they didn't want to hear the fans while they played games so they shut them off, or set them to low.

In some regards we have some of what your asking for. We have max fan speed in the bios now, as well as Performance mode which will leave the fans on all the time and seems to spin them up a little quicker but still not fast enough IMO. Also silent mode can be activated through Nvidia but that just gimps your graphics so everything looks like a potato so it probably isn't what anyone wants. I played with it for 10 minutes, turned it off and tried to forget that it ever existed.

More USB Ports

Yes and no. I do agree they should have more USB ports, but I also realise that I can add 8 more USB ports but simply using Type C hubs as well so depending on what you need them for I guess. The motherboard in this thing is tiny when you take into consideration how much space the GPU/CPU take up and compare it to what was in my R1, I was quite shocked just how little it is, but they need all the space they can get in there I guess, although how we couldn't get one more USB slot on that daughter board is beyond me. There are times when I despise having to use my hub for more USB ports as my mouse takes up one and my cooling pad plugs into the other leaving me with nothing for my headset or extra ports to charge my headset/mouse but I feel like this is kind of one of those things where some people want it and others don't as there are workaround.




Summary

I feel like the biggest hurdles facing Alienware tight now are:

1. QC
2. Thermal Management
3. Customer Support Inconsistencies

The QC needs to improve...no one should ever get multiple units from the factory with the same issue/multiple issues. They need to have each and every system tested and bench marked before it get's packaged up to make sure that someone does not open up a brand new unit and it won't boot, or it flashes a CPU failed error. If one does make it through there should be a record of who signed off on it and how it made it through QC like that. If it does get through QC then the next unit the customer gets should be double /triple checked to make damn sure it does not happen again because if it does you probably just lost a customer, or at the very least you have a customer that is afraid to order again because they think they will get a broken unit.

I know Alienware has been trying to make headway on the QC but it fell far to low for awhile and needs to come back up. We saw far to many problem posts when Cassini launched and were still seeing repeat failures to the same people over and over, and it shouldn't happen. I am not naive enough to think that failures don't happen , but machines that are incompetently assembled with missing pads/improperly assembled parts should never happen with the frequency that it is happening now and has in the recent past.


Thermal management needs to improve in the regards that all the core differential problems, all the overheating / that is normal temps crap problems needs to reduce dramatically or completely if possible. I am not going to say overheating is NEVER going to happen because once the machine is in the customers hands any number of circumstances can cause that and it will be completely out of Dell's control. But they need to be doing everything they can to make sure that when that machine leaves the factory that all cores are in line temp wise and the temps are WELL within an acceptable margin under load. They also need to make damn sure the cooling system can handle advertised OC speeds without modifying anything to keep it from overheating. This cooling system really can work wonders, but stock paste out of the box set to their advertised OC levels is going to equal a bad time. I don't know if I have ever seen a stock system go to max OC levels and not overheat. We know what the system is capable of if you want to put in the time , but most people don't have that time OR that knowledge/faith in their abilities to perform that kind of work.


The customer support can be atrocious.....how many people did we see when temps were 100c+ come back and support said this is fine, even with heavy CPU throttling, and if you CPU is that high your GPU isn't far behind it.

Lots of inconsistent information between techs, one says on thing and another something completely different. Techs that don't know what they are talking about/doing/saying.

Again I don't know what the answer is here short of hiring all your own tech support staff and training them heavily on your products but if that is what needs to be done then so be it. No more calling in and the tech does not know anything about your machine expect what the screen in front of him is saying. Hire some tech savoy people, train them up and tech them so that they actually know about the product, not just what a prompt is telling them.


My whole rant probably comes off a little tame for some . I tend to look at the overall picture nowadays vs what just I want . I try to be more objective when I look at things.

 

Dude did you apply those pads yourself? they don't look like stock pads
Man that paste job sucks on the couch but I'm sure I know why...


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I want everything and overclocked and I still have a 17 R4!

There's no compromises anymore!


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Negative that was completely stock from the factory. It was fairly early on the Cassini lineup, before the CPU fix was even implemented. The laptop quit a few days after that and was replaced with my current one.

 

Thank you everybody who shared their views/opinions.