The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Unless you want to put a lot of time or extra money into fixing the potential cooling issues with the heatplate / thermal pads / paste that many find out of the box with AW laptops these days, I'd go with the GT73 or GT75.
@iunlock offers a service (or did) to tune the AW laptops for best performance, maybe he even does MSI laptops too?
Alienware 17 R4 vs MSI GT73VR Titan Pro Comparison Smackdown
The AW really has too many problems, look in the owners threads and see, I can post some if you can find them yourself...it not just a "paste problem", it's a design and implementation issue that requires repadding, bending metal, and re-pasting.
Yup repaste is most likely a must for the 17 r4 but if you can get that cleared away its a beast of a laptop and looks amazing. The metal just feels so good in hand.
Well at that price point you might wanna look at Hidevolution.com that offers LM paste for CPU and Traditional paste for GPU w/ thermal pads and all fixes. All depends on your choice.
Not many have reported here yet about their GT75 experience, no reviews with tuning / OC benchmark results, please do come back and fill us in the good and bad stuff you find
I'll see if I can do a very simple review in regards to it. I'm not too fussed about 3ms vs 5ms kind of stuff. I'm like if I can't tell the difference and I'm happy with it, then I am happy with it.
Yes I have just purchased mine from
SG. It is also available in
AU. (In a different configuration/ variant)
- Update the SG website is now shown as SOLD OUT and my order has been confirmed so I believe I got the only one left/ available.
Forget Alienware. Brand has gone down the dumpster last couple years. Looks at the below slick deal. This was last week and will probably come back at that price point in the near future. Much better specs, much much much cheaper and will not be a hot plate / thermal throttling burner laptop.
Asus Rog 17.3" Laptop: i7-6820HK, 2 x 512GB SSD, 64GB Ram, GTX 1080 $2120 + Free S&H
All gaming notebooks, no matter what brand they are will have temperature / throttling issues out of the box if they are pushed beyond their stock clocks. They cannot manufacture a heatsink and pad configuration to suit every laptop when every laptop is very slightly different. Alienware laptops are no different and neither will the Asus be...
Good choice, you will enjoy it but thank goodness you did not go for the problematic Dellienware, sure all gaming laptops has its own issues and downsides but Dellienware's issues is rather phenomenal.
All brands have this problem, they all went with a tri design on the heat sink. Alienware has fixed most of their problems. I reccomend them, cheaper and better warranty.
I vote Alienware 17, I have one (see my sig) and never had any issues with performance or thermals. Never had to do a repaste or anything. There are some good units, it’s all luck.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
