Hello and my AW 13r3, naked pics inside, NSFG

(This is a part copy of my Reddit post)
Been wanting to join this forum for a bit.

Bought this little guy after a ton of research and wanting. My last laptop with 3317u i5 was getting pretty 'long in the tooth' so I ordered an Alienware 13r3 with kaby lake and OLED. So far this thing is amazing. The OLED is awe-inspiring to view and is relief for my tired and aging eyes.

I'm not an expert by any means, I read here and other places to learn so rather than post any solution threads, I'll just post my experiences and what I've found.

So as ordered:

AW13r3

• i7 7700HQ
• gtx 1060
• 8GB RAM
• OLED
• Killer 1550
• 512GB (came with Samsung PM981, nice freebie!)

Temps:

I decided to repaste with Conductonaut and make the panasonic PGS heatpipe for the PCH (following notebookreview user LM64792's instructions, thx wherever you are) because...well why would anyone not want to do this? As long as your thumbs aren't coconuts and you've been trained on the old screwdriver properly...I am accustomed to working on cars and I'm known to take a lot of stuff apart to figure it out so I guess this kind of stuff doesn't bother me.

I ran a benchmark, I think it was FireStrike or TimeSpy before the Surgery and after-the same test and recorded the temps and data with HWINFO64 (graphs below). Honestly, I don't think from what I've seen yet, that the repaste was absolutely necessary. The highest temp spikes that are concerning, are in the CPU and they're only momentary spikes that correspond to higher frequency and use. No worries, like I said, I live to tear things apart and figure out what makes them tick. None-the-less, temps are way better with the Conductonaut and PGS, as expected. You'll note the core differential (between the cores) is noticeably more 'tight' and that's probably a very good result. and overall the temps are about 10-15 Celsius lower on average. Not much of a gamer-there's a lot more you can do with this type of machine, so not sure if I'd see more consistent and extreme temps during several hour gaming sessions.

Color:

I decided to mod my colors a bit. Not into the 'rainbow' look. I'm a proud 'Redneck Geek' and where I come from...well let's just say 'Rainbow' has long been out of style, LOL.

Camo colors, I love. I suspect the FPS gamers here might like that kind of color scheme as well, so First I tried to do FDE -flat dark earth. After hours of messing with the RGB hex codes, it's either a sickening shade of lavander or looks like a baby sh** apples. So my search continued. Finally, I figured out an awesome, sort of, 'electric ODG (olive drab green)' that looks great with the Windows 10 black and camo color scheme. So I'll share the code here: Replace all applicable zones in the file with:

FF193300 (alienwareFX ODG)

edit-almost forgot Battery:

At first couple of away from home sessions I was getting about 2-3hours of battery life even after adjusting all the power setting in control panel. Then I discovered the issue. The major drain on battery life is the 3d settings in the nVidia control panel. Probably everyone else has figure this out but the auto-select option is the one you want to use. Then Configuring the individual applications, benchmarks and other programs to use only the 1060 AND the ones that don't need it to use the integrated GPU is a must. Then change all the settings in Power options in Control Panel and in the AW Command Center. And in the options> battery menu. Now Windows Batt. meter reads any where from 7:50 to over 10 hrs on a full charge. Realistically that's probably about 7.5 hrs at moderate productivity use. But if your use is low enough I can confidently say I've made it to almost 9 hrs.

RAM:

I wanted some higher speed lower latency memory so I cheaped out when I ordered the 13 and just got 8GB. I ordered Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 2666 BLS2K8G4S26BFSD but it did not run at the advertised speed. So back it went. In comes Kingston, Hyperx 16GB(2x8) 2667 which DOES run at 2667. Further reading suggests it's a jedec profile-- NOT xmp --(since the 7700hq doesn't support xmp) that's the key to RAM running at 2667. (if I understand that right)

OC'ing the 1060:

Probably should start a separate thread for this one.
After several hours of messing around...I did make it to an approximate +233MHz on the core clock and it was flying and I was winning...until I wasn't and the whole machine crashed pretty hard! Then every setting above +175MHz crashed the benchmark or the machine.
I Was unable to adjust voltage level or power and not sure I should--the voltage make's it to what I believe is the limit on this machine (1.050 V). The EVGA Precision XOC did allow me to type in the power limit percentage and Temp limit, though they appear to have little effect.

I've settled in at a comfortable +175MHz on the Core clock and +525MHz on the Memory, leaving me at about 2038MHz on the Core at boost and 2266MHz (4532MHz) on the Memory clock. Much more and it starts to crash the benchmarks. After running Heaven, Superposition, Firestrike and Timespy, all run and score from 10-15% better than my best scores.

*Heaven(max settings, 1440p (879->965)), *Time Spy ( 3572->4040), *Firestrike(9781->10244), *Superposition 1080 High (5549->6129),

So for any searchers out there this is what I got so far: AW13r3:

• 7700HQ
• GTX 1060 6GB, 397.64 driver
• 16 GB 2666 Kingston HyperX
• Samsung PM981
• Conductonaut on CPU, GPU
• PGS heatpipe on PCH
• +175MHz on GPU Core Clock
• +525MHz on GPU Memory Clock

Anyway that's all I can think of for now. Dissappointed AW is discontinuing this model, glad I got one while I'm able. Pics and graphs in the imgur link.

https://imgur.com/a/Pc3dEae

 

Be careful with precision, it wasnt long ago when that application was corrupting EDID rending the LCD display useless

 

i dont understand what are you meaning with "color" ... is about aliware fx ? or changing the display color gamma or what ?

 

The hex code FF193300 to get the color scheme OP used.

 

and where i put that code ?

 

The "themes" file under AlienFX>themes should contain the themes you have created in AlienFX which have the HTML code (guess it's HTML, anyway) for the different lighting zones.
I created a 'dummy' file by making a theme in AlienFX with all the same colors (that way you don't have to change each and every one, you can just cntrl-F and type the hex code already found and input a different one to experiment, that is if you want all on color). ie. create a theme in AlienFX titled "mytheme" then find the file and open with a text editor. Find the first entry where it says something like zone1 etc. FF123456 and change to the color you want.
You can find the RGB color on a chart by googling. The color might not be what you think it will due to the hardware (the lighting zone) being unable to reproduce accurately every iteration of color, so you have to play with it for a while to find something you like. After you are done, save the file and select in AlienFX.

 

Thanks for the headsup! I was unaware Precision had issues like that. Should I use MSI Afterburner instead?

 

yes, msi is a lot better and with a little mod on the config file you can unlock voltages

 

Are you running an undervolt on your CPU at all? I'm getting similar temps with a GC-Extreme repaste and -150mV undervolt. I think you can drop the temps even a bit more with an undervolt.

 

At first I dismissed that idea since I had the temps under control with Conductonaut and I didn't want to give up any performance, but perhaps I'm not understanding the idea of undervolting quite right.

 

Ok, I will try to explain it so it makes sense.

Intel makes cpu’s. These cpu’s are made on a wafer (a silicon circle). They can produce many cpus on this one wafer, but the chips won’t all be the same because of technological limits. The chips on the outside of the wafer will be of lower quality. They will still work and produce good results, but need more power to reach them. It’s impossible for intel to test every cpu and apply the core voltage to it which is the lowest stable voltage, so instead they find a voltage that works for ALL CPUs no matter the quality.

This means that if you have a chip with a better quality, you can run at the same speeds with lower core voltages. This in turn will lower your temperatures and increase the lifespan of your CPU as well as give you more battery time (because you use less power).

You can’t break your system by undervolting and it won’t void any warranties. Basically, only advantages. You can use a tool like throttlestop or intel xtu to undervolt your CPU pretty easily.


I hope that makes a bit of sense.

 

I appreciate the explanation. I'll probably give it a try then. I already used MSI to implement the overclocking settings and it seems to run smoother or rather transition from scene to scene in Unigine Heaven better than before. Not sure if this has something to do with the OC software or simply the OLED display. I was seeing at times a sort of stutter as the scenes transitioned from one to another when the screen was black. Not seeing that now. I followed the instructions given by @Mr. Fox in his youtube video. The voltage adjustment seemed out of reach though. Probably the lockdown by 'Chairman' Nvidia so the offset seems like the most successful for me so far, not sure the Voltage slider is accomplishing anything other than the mod makes the GUI slider functional. I ran another Firestrike which topped out at 10,286. I wonder if that's a record for this tiny little machine?

 

So I decided to use the PGS Panasonic tape to make a heat sink for my Samsung PM981 since I've seen the temps surge consistently into the 89-90C range (these things get hot)

Don't knock the sloppiness, I'm usually much neater than this but it was 2am and well I wanted a proof of concept more than perfection. I'm buying another Samsung PM981 soon anyway and I'll clean it up and possibly double layer. Good news is it works. 20 tabs open in Chrome, Excel files open, MSI Afterburner open, HWinfo64 open, explorer open and temps don't rise above 72C! I removed the sticker cleaned the surface of the controller and components with microfiber dampened with rubbing alcohol and then fit a piece to the drive top and then to the copper sheet heat sink below. This PGS stuff is pretty amazing.

https://imgur.com/XQuJRJ5
https://imgur.com/KcsRCQ9

(side note: how do you attach an image to your post?, the normal forum buttons don't seem to work for me)