Have you got your 240w PSU from Dell?

I had to start this thread after a total of 4 hours of phone calls at Premium Service, let me briefly tell you my story:

I got my AW17R2 the 4th of march, my first tests with the machine where about actual known issues: fan noises, screen bleeding, ghosting and the quite common speakers issue, everything seemed fine until I watched this audio channel test video:



(there is also a tester at SoundBlaster control panel)

I chose technical intervention instead of replacement because a new machine could bring new issues and there is an easy fix for my problem but requires the full teardown of the system because the speakers are located under the palm rest.

After realizing that I chose to pretend my 240w PSU since everyone on this forum is having that from Dell, we were also promised by Frank Azor, @AW Khan, @Alienware-L_Porras and other company representatives, actually I called Premium Service 2 times and after 4 hours of conversation the only thing I got was a forced BIOS update by remote desktop.

I'm totally disappointed about how much they are scrambling and telling me the most unbelievable things like that they would like to sending me the 240w but that could damage my system... But they told me that if I want I can buy myself a 240w PSU from Dell and everything for me will be fixed and also under warranty terms, seriously guys, THIS IS TOTALLY INCONSISTENT.

So the idea of this thread is:

1) Ask your help guys for having this PSU as little compensation of receiving a defective laptop that requires a total system teardown after less than a week of life
2) Write up a list of users who already received/denied their PSU

example.
USER: Mark, I got my 240w PSU Feb 29

or
USER: John, the 1th of March they told me that I can't receive a 240w PSU.

Thank you in advance for your help guys

 

They said a larger PSU would damage your system? Sometimes I wonder how these guys get hired.

NOTICE!
Click here to request a free 240W Power Adapter for GTX 980M owners (both 15 & 17R2).

 

I got the larger PSU, I had no issues at all.

 

I actually got two 240w PSU units fulfilled...

The first Order Date was on 2/26, arrived on 3/3 was shipped Overnight but was backordered.. I actually got a used unit, A USED UNIT!!! it was packaged horrible and instead of those ties every new electronic cord comes with, it was wrapped with a rubber band. It also had cosmetic defects(sticker peeled from use on floor?) and didn't come with the Power Cord, so no way for me to use it. I'm not a patient man so I chose to visit BEST BUY and bought the Power Cord(after placing second order).. It didn't Power, PSU unit was dead.

Item Number: FWCRC

I called to complain and explain how I had receive an incomplete order, explaining how I had only receive the brick without the power cord. He inform me that is the way they ship them, since I should already have a power cord ... I explain my 180w PSU came with a three prong power cord and he followed with an apology and sent me the Power Cord and another 240w PSU unit. This unit you could tell it was NEW, came in plastic bags and its respective ties.

Order Dater 3/3 Arrival 3/6
Item Number: 5120P, FWCRC


After I received my second PSU I used the power cord that came with it on the other.. It power after about 15 seconds(Light on Power End) but turned off shortly after. In the End everything as worked out but Costumer Service has been horrible in my particular case.

 

I got my brand new 240W PSU on March 4th with no hassle.

Don't pay them anything for the 240W PSU. If you have the 980M, you should be getting it for free as stated by this support article:

http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN295814

Contact [email protected] and mention that you need the 240W PSU. Reference the support article and be stern in telling them that you will only accept the 240W PSU as a solution. Have the fields below filled in the header of your email to speed up the process.

Service Tag:
Full Name:
Phone Number:
Address Line 1:
City:
State:
Zip Code:

They may recommend the A02 BIOS but as per some users on this forum, the new BIOS has the potential to brick your system. Again, be stern and let them know that you will absolutely not agree with taking any risks on your new laptop.

I gave them no option for compromise and the tech quickly sent the PSU. I got it in my hands within 5 days from initial point of contact.

 

I just find it sad that even though it's clearly in a support article, they still try to make an excuse to not give you one. They should shut up and do it.

 

I had the AW17 R2 with the GTX 970M, and I still managed to snag a free 240w PSU, and still keep the default 180w.

 

Received mine a few days ago

 

I also got a 240W PSU for free.
I´m from Germany.
Called and asked for it on Monday (16th Feb.) and received it on Monday (23rd Feb.)

 

All it took for me was a 5 minute phone call to technical support to get the psu. Was very easy, just a shame the laptop it self doesn't turn on (hasn't since day one) Will probably be touching 2 months before i actually get to play with a working one!

 

Yea, overnighted several weeks ago. I bought a second one, as well.

 

just got mine, doesn't make a difference though, CPU still throttles to 2.5ghz when stressing out the entire laptop in a graphics heavy game, very disappointing, on my second replacement too so i know its a bios thing.

 

You know you have to reboot the laptop with the 240w PSU plugged in right? Otherwise the BIOS will still think it's using a 180w and will throttle.

Just checking to make sure this isn't the issue. I noticed a vast performance jump using the 240w vs 180w.

 

Yeah I had to re-install windows to another SSD with this PSU plugged in so ive reboot plenty of times and the bios is reporting 240w. The graphics performance is amazing, just not sure why the cpu likes to stick to base clocks. Ive tested a couple other laptops with the 970/980m and they do not have the same issue.

 

Ah I see, for some reason I thought you were having GPU issues with the power supply.

Definitely weird, and not sure what's going on.

I'm assuming your thermals are acceptable? No throttling due to a bad paste job/broken fan?

 

I used throttlestop and now the cpu seems to stay clocked higher during gaming. My max temps are upper in the 80's, so im a good distance away from the 100C throttle limit.

 

What program are you using to stress the CPU? Using Intel XTU's stress test, I got max CPU temps of around 70 in my R2.

 

Haven't got mine. In Belgium they didn't know anything about this issue. they were going to look into it. it's been a week or two still have to hear from them.


I also have bad costumer service experiences. they have mails getting replied VERY late. No chat option available as tech support, phone costs a lot and they tend to keep you waiting on the line too.
Sometimes stating "not available at this moment" even though it's during working hours.

Couldn't even choose for a international eng qwerty keyboard back at my order placement. The 5.1 analog surround sound ended up being a lie. My screen is ghosting, even though the ghosting dropped significantly it's still present.

This shouldn't happen after paying so much for a product.

 

Just in gaming i get high 80's, this has been the case with both R2's I had. Dell did a bad job on the cpu cooling/paste. My cpu idles in the 50's and 60's

 

I heard you mention you did a system replacement also what did the first one go in for?

 

How did you manage that, I got throttlestop it has an option to turn on or off, but the results seems to stay the same, still cpu clock at 2.5GHz

 

just played dragon age for about an hour and it DID go back to 2.5ghz, doesn't have any effect on frame rate but still concerning. I think dell does this on purpose, especially since they shipped with the 180watt psu. They still have to change this in the bios. Lenovo does the same thing

 

That would concern me. Very high temps considering what I got.

 

yeah its what the first R2 i had also reported. Actually, many users report high tems for the cpu in this system. The GPU on the other hand never breaks 70C

 

I'm thinking there may be some poor QC on Dell's part, maybe some bad paste jobs. Here were my recorded max temps.

3DMARK
CPU: 77
GPU: 63

IDLE
CPU: 54

Diablo 3
CPU: 76
GPU: 63

XTU Stress Test
CPU: 70

Pretty much the only time the CPU breached 70 was when the entire system was being stressed. Mind you, this was with a GTX 970M.

 

Dell has been poor at everything lately, I would love to re-paste the cpu but its just too much of a hassle to get to it on this model. Miss the good old days of Alienware where you could pop the bottom off and see everything

 

My 4980 gets to about 85 degrees max. I am getting a replacement system though.

 

I see some of you guys are getting a free PSU for your laptops. Is this something any Alienware owner can do or just if you ordered it from Dell? If its an Alienware owner thing, what is the process that you guys used to get the free part?

 

Any owner can request it. You have to contact a rep and tell them your info and that you demand the 240W. If you did some more reading or searching, you can find links to the online document on alienware's site about the PSU thing.

 

I recently purchased a 17 R2 and contacted dell about gettin ga 240W PSU and this is the reply they sent me:

So it looks like Dell is aware that most of us want the 240W PSU and they are changing out some of the orders so we may end up getting the 240W PSU from the very beginning now.

 

I don't believe that for a second. Why would they change from the default adapter before people request it? Let me remind you the laptop isn't actually totally certified to run off the 240W, while the 180W is.

@MickyD1234 Give them your spiel about certifications & standards

 

Because it probably costs them more? If they ship 180W PSUs and people call in asking for a 240W, that's two PSUs they're out off.

I highly doubt the 240W costs anymore for them to make than the 180W one. So if they end up having to ship out two PSUs thats more costly because its two units + shipping.

 

Yes, but the units by law have to be certified for the certain PSU if I understand correctly what MickyD1234 told me. It would be expensive to have to recertify the 240W just to please a the relatively small group of people who want a 240W supply. So the way around this by law is get the customer to request the 240W supply instead of supplying it to them originally as the functioning power device.

 

I'm not so sure about that tbh. The PSU has to be certified as being safe and meeting regulation but it makes absolutely no sense to certify an entire computer to require a certain power supply. Especially when you consider that the wattage of a power supply has absolutely nothing to do with safety. An electronics device will only pull the required amount of amps it needs. It's not a fire hazard, it's not a safety risk, it won't cause any damage whatsoever (as long as the voltage is the same). The only thing different about a lower watt power supply and a larger one is how much it weighs.

But I'm not a lawyer so I could very well be wrong. But the way I see it is people build their own computers all the time with PSUs varying from 100W all the upto +1000W. If the entire computer needed to be certified, how would that be legal?

Even if you did end up needing recertification it's probably still in Dells best interest. The vast majority of people who buy Alienware are going to be gamers who will immediately realize that their laptop isn't performing as well as it should. It's not like they're stupid and will think low fps with a 980m is normal. So they'll google it and then they'll find this and then they'll complain to Dell and request another power supply. Then they'll go on various forums are make a note about it which can ruin potential future sales for Dell.

Either way you look at it, it's in Dells best interest to start swapping out the 180W for the 240W one. Either way my order is still showing an 180W PSU so when it comes I will let you guys know if I got a 240W one or not.

Edit: Ok after a little bit of digging around I found this: http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/solutions/en/Documents/alienware_17_r2_p43f001.pdf

A list of all the regulations the new alienware 17 complies with. Now if you scroll down to Appendix A you can see the power certification which deals with the PSUs. Now the original alienware 17 listed both the 180W and 240W ones while the new one lists only the 180W. The other difference is that the alienware 17 R1 lists multiple configurations while the r2 only lists one (the cheapest one).

Now what I understand is this information only has to be provided by the manufacturer to the consumer with the applicable testing information. There is no certification requirement. Yet again , though, I'm not a lawyer.

 

I've e-mail their social media unit to ask to change the PSU for my in production system if possible, but they told me to e-mail them my system number when I received it and they will ship it to me.

 

Ok, time for me to add to the confusion. I worked in 'Standards' for 20 years, the last 10 providing EU/ISO certification services to US manufactures and businesses.

A laptop is sold as a complete, functional unit. There may be many components that require independent certification, but for the device to get certification on it's own merits data is supplied to prove it meets all the requirements throughout.

The idea is that once a device obtains country specific certification it gets a logo and is legal for sale. European countries have all harmonized on the CE mark, one size fits all. The US requires the UL mark. You will see many logos on your machine covering most of the world.

In this case the data supplied would have been with a 180w PSU and to change this would effect the data to the point it would be invalid. Even a simple statement like the maximum power draw (at the outlet) would change.

UL may be OK with a customer request to vary the machine without effecting the cert. CE may interpret it differently. You may have noticed that the reps will not quote you for parts that are not listed for your machine? Although it still has to be tested in law, there is an assumption that an OEM supplying parts will only supply parts authorized for it. To avoid an out-of-spec piece of equipment.

If they change the documentation and resubmit (as an OEM would do during a refresh) then it may well be supplied at some future stage with the 240w PSU.

 

For the US UL listing isn't even required it just means that without it some organizations may not allow it on the premises because it'll affect their insurance risk. There's no legal requirement for getting a UL listing at all.

Also in the US the UL doesn't apply to the laptop, it only applies to the power supply. The power supply is connected to the mains and so it should be UL listed but since the laptop is fed by the power supply it is considered low voltage (under 24V) and so does not need a UL listing. Flip over your laptop you'll notice that there's no UL mark on it at all. There's a CE, FCC, Nemko etc but no UL.

The laptop does need FCC certification in the US but that's under a $1000 and doesn't apply to power supplies.

---

Now in the EU you are correct the entire unit needs to be certified under the CE mark. But what Dell could be doing is laptops that are destined for the US or anywhere outside the EU could be getting 240W PSUs while they resubmit the laptop for CE certification. Even if its expensive it might end up being cheaper in the long run for Dell because that's less support hours spend on the request, less shipping and less multiple power units being sold.

 

Yup, I had made assumptions based on devices I had worked with all having UL in totality. Corrected .

US consumers don't appear have as many regulations regarding household goods but Dell are selling worldwide and want to have a one-size-fits-all product from the factory. It does answer the question as to the ease of US customers getting the 240w PSU whereas in the EU people are having difficulties?

In the EU from Jan 1 if a vacuum cleaner draws more current than regulated it is banned. No more cheap big engines. A coffee maker must fully shut down after 40 mins. Nanny state or ? Probably a whole bunch more in that edict, I haven't read it. All heading towards power limits set in statute .

Understood the FCC stuff, that's another worldwide requirement and many countries (outside the EU) just accept FCC certification for interference.

I think they are going to resubmit as well, but only IF the machine does not perform as it should now the battery is supplementing the power. In the interim, supply on request until they can say it's really not needed. Shouldn't hurt sales too much at that point, and I haven't seen any data yet saying that a 'fixed' machine is outperformed by simply connecting the 240w - but I haven't been watching that closely lately .

 

If I am buying an AW15 with 980M should that machine require a 240W power supply or is it fine on the 180W power supply? The AW17 and AW15 are almost the same, shouldn't the 240W apply to both?
I have a quote for AW15 and it says 180W power supply in the quotation details. I asked for 240W sales reps said no, come with 180W only and that what it is.
Should I even care about it being 180W?

 

This. We pretty much get to keep the 180w + 240w PSU if they send it to you. Which is much more expensive than shipping the 240w PSU with all new orders.

 

I wasn't allowed to keep my 180W PSU but I did get my 240

 

Well,
Alienware hooked me up with a brand new PSU quickly....and as per my usual luck, they went me the wrong parts. I got the correct PSU, but the power cord they sent with it is identical to the 180 PSU plug, so it wont connect to the PSU...lets see how they handle this one.

 

Lol same exact thing happened to me. I called in and explained the situation to tech support. They sent me another plug (only plug and not PSU). Had it in hand either the next day or the day after that...it was quick.

 

Anyone else notice with the 240W connected that desktop battery mode no longer works? Since converting to the 240W, my battery constantly stays charged to 100% and doesn't appear to ever stop charging.

 

Is the battery warm?

 

Well i wrote them about the order i just purchased, as i am going to be doing heavy gaming on my unit i am definitely going to require the 240w, so we will see how painful this will be, haha.

As there is a 50-156w range for the 980m and 47w for the 4980hq, doesn't look like a new bios is going to fix the problem haha, my guess is the reason why the do not offer raid support aswell, not enough power.


F%#K THEY ARE DUMB!

What credible business practice always trying to pull a fast one on you!

 

I wanna thank you all for posting guys, especially @Betoguar for the photos and @kingtiger888 for giving me the official AW Support email wich probably helped me the most because they initially didn't want to send me the PSU.

Finally when receiving technical intervention from Dell the technician gave me also the PSU, I received a Flextronics PA-9E (without cable obviously), did you get the same model?

 

980M TDP is 125W, the 4980HQ is 47W.

Bnosam did some testing with a Clevo and found that even though the Clevo had the exact same specs as the alienware 47W TDP CPU and 980M 4gb, the clevo worked fine with a 180W PSU and got the same firestrike results that the AW17R2 gets with a 240W PSU.

That seems more like a BIOS issue on the alienware systems than a power issue. The thing about them not offering raid because there isn't enough power doesn't make sense lol, if you have 4 drives that are raided vs four drives that aren't the power draw should be similar across the board because its still 4 drives. SSDs draw significantly less power than HDDs so I don't think that's a power issue and it's just Dells crappy BIOS.

They did say they'll be releasing a new BIOS around end of March, early April that was going to fix this issue...but we'll see if they do haha.

 

The testing was Ramzay, I believe, not myself.

 

Consumers in eu ahould file complaint to each and every single consumer agency there is. We have a lot of those. Seeing as Dell is in fact selling a flawed system which is not hard to prove since they are offering pau replacement in usa, a wellnwriten complaint to few regulatory agencies should so the trick...