I finally Bought an Alien (13R3 OLED)

I spent from 2009 to 2017 with Sager / Clevo, all 3 were bought from PowerNotebooks with Donald helping me out with each build. Donald was a class act with PNB and when they went under and he announced that he was going to join HIDevolution, I wanted to give HIDev first dibs on my next laptop. My configuration revolved largely around a portable gamer that can still haul at 2k, but is somewhat economical on battery (3 hrs was my minimum). I thought about the MSI GS43VR, GS63VR, and the Clevo P950, but wound up going back to DELL/Alienware due to the quality of the computer itself. Whereas my Sagers were largely library or home only, this rig has to be properly portable while being capable of 1440p high (NOT Ultra, I'm realistic here) at 60fps gaming, photo editing from my Canon 80D, and light video editing. THe 15 and 17 were too big, and the msi / clevo options I find the build quality (ie: screenflex, keyboard flex, became issues... my latest sager's keyboard nearly dying due to my MA Thesis being written on it)

Anywho, cheers to @Donald@HIDevolution for 8 years of helping me, and for helping me configure my latest creation!

Custom Built Alienware 13 R3-HID63 - 3K QHD - nVIDIA GTX 1060 - i7-7700HQ
Laser Engraving
Property of - Your Name and Phone Number and/or email address on the Bottom for Safety - $29.00
Text for Underside Engraving
<redacted for privacy>
Processor
7th Generation Intel Core i7-7700HQ Quad Core Processor, 2.8 GHz (Max Turbo Frequency 3.8GHz), 6MB Smart Cache
Video Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5
Thermal Paste
Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra 100% Metal Thermal Interface on CPU, IC Diamond on GPU / Optimal readjustment of thermal pads - BEST PERFORMANCE - installed by HIDevolution - $50.00
Alienware Graphics Amplifier
None
LCD Panel
13.3 inch QHD (2560 x 1440) OLED Anti-Glare 400-nits Display with Touch Technology
Display Calibration
Yes, display professionally calibrated w/ profile saved to USB drive - $50.00
Display Warranty
30 Days Zero Defective Pixel Warranty (perfect panel guarantee) - $35.00
System Memory (RAM)
16GB (2 x 8GB) Dual Channel DDR4/2400MHz
RAID Options
no RAID (1st drive as primary boot drive, 2nd drive as storage drive) - Choose for PCIe SSD options
M.2 SSD Slot 1 (supports PCIe or SATA)
Alienware Specified 256GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD
M.2 SSD Slot 2 (supports PCIe or SATA)
None
Wireless Cards
Intel® Wireless-AC 8265 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n 2x2 NGFF w/ Bluetooth 4.2 - installed by HIDevolution - $20.00
Operating System
Windows 10 Home, 64bit, English, with Multi Language Support
Operating System Clean Install
Yes, Clean Install of Windows 10 including 32GB Clean Install Flash Drive - $40.00
Office Software
None
Power Adapter
180 Watt 3 Prong AC Adapter with 6 ft Power Cord (will work worldwide, includes FREE plug adapter for those without "U.S. style" outlets)
Internal Battery
Lithium Ion (76 Wh) Battery
Warranty and Service
1 Year Standard Support + 1 Year HIDevolution US Warranty + LIFETIME HIDevolution Technical Support
HIDevolution Global Warranty
None
Accidental Damage Protection
None
My plans are to do the following:
I have a 1TB 960 Pro at home waiting. I would have put it in my desktop, but to get the 960 pro in there would require a massive project of removing gpu and possibly other bits from my motherboard. After that, possibly a 2nd 960 PRO (or i may just grin and bear it, install the 1TB in desktop, and just get a 2TB 960 PRO). There is the outside possibility as well of putting in kingston 2667 CAS HyperX RAM as well for more RAM and better timings / latency / speed.

What think?

Jason

 

The OLED screen is the best, you won't be disappointed. Been playing PREY 2017 (on steam sale now) 1440p on Ultra @ 65 FPS average. Looks amazing. Especially because of all the blacks (black oily monsters and deep space look incredible on OLED).

You should be able to play most 2016 games on Ultra @ 1440p. A few demanding AAA titles you can't though.

Edit: Don't waste money on "better RAM" no real world difference whatsoever to go Kingston Hyper whatever.

 

My last rig had 32GB RAM in it. I don't like going "down" in RAM. I also do game testing so I need the space for doing videos to find bugs. Now I can do 2k videos on laptop and 4k on desktop! I do wonder though what speed the RAM maxes out at that I could put into this thing. I know DELL specs 2667MHz

 

Wasn't really speaking about amount. People need different amounts for different reasons. Was talking about branding and 2400 vs 2666. Really no difference especially when CS timings are usually lower on lower MHz ram

 

Ask @Donald@HIDevolution if there is an option for faster RAM and can 13 r3 take it and provide max performance with 24 x 7 stability, they do their own testing to get realistic data.

 

@ThatOldGuy is correct. Since the CAS Latency is higher on DDR4/2666MHz than DDR4/2400MHz, there is virtually no difference between their performance.

 

Let's see how the little martian performs with a clean (no Dell stuff) install and HIDev giving the CPU and GPU a bit of the "cooldown" treatment.

eager to see what happens!

 

So the little monster has entered pre-production, which i think means that HIDev's sourcing the laptop!

For those of you wondering why in the world I'm gawking at whether DDR4-2800 or DDR4-3000 would work in a laptop (or other silly speeds), I do RAMCache testing from time to time to see how it affects my gaming and beta testing. I like to take 12 to 16GB of RAM and use that as a cache to see how games fare when soem of the more commonly loaded stuff is stored in RAM. (Think Optane is to Hard Drives as this idea is to NVMe SSDs) .

(Yeah, I need my head checked).

I do wonder if the BIOS has xmp in it like my desktop so i can go in, hit XMP1 and get silly speed for my RAMCACHE tests

 

I'm almost positive 2666 is the max in the AW 13 R3. That is what has been reported months ago in the AW 13 R3 thread

This is pretty good because technically it shouldn't get above 2400 according to Intel
https://ark.intel.com/products/97185/Intel-Core-i7-7700HQ-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz

 

I initially was thinking about getting another sager, but the problem was that the last sager (sager 3) i had wasn't as strong as sager 1 or sager 2. It seems that unless you want a rig with a desktop CPU in it, everything is pretty much going "thin and light." (my girlfriend just got a HP Spectre x360 with an i7-7500U, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB Toshiba NVMe PCI-E 3.0x4 SSD and it's incredibly quick). Also I tried out some MSIs and the flex was what @iunlock witnessed with his GT73VR Titan. So I was left with going for the AW as a matter of needing something built well. So the reason I went 13 instead of 15 or 17 is that I need something that's more than just "gaming rig" and is properly portable while being able to game fairly hard. I do like the AW 17 with a 1080, but again too big (but it would bring back fond memories of my XPS M1710 which was a 17" laptop with a GeForce GO 7950 GTX in it).

So now we wait to see what HIDEV mods such as color calibration and CLU (CPU) and ICD7 (GPU) will do. WISH ME LUCK!