New Alienware 15 R2 owner here - how did I do?

So I was flipping between a Razer refurb and the Alienware refurb but I really wanted a 980m for longevity reasons, so I went with the 15 R2. I am coming for 4 years with a Macbook Pro (early 2011 model). I decided to make the switch back to a gaming laptop mostly because of all the humblebundle.com deals I have snagged in the past few years on games (my steam library is hovering around 300 games now). About half of my games are not compatible with my Mac. It will be tough ditching the thinness of the Macbook Pro for a heavy system but my back is ready.

For about $150 more I could of got the same system but with the UHD 4k screen, but after reading about blurryness and game issues with resolution on this forum, I decided to go with the 1080p screen with the crappy brightness issues. The rep said I have 21 days to decide If I don't want the system for a full refund.

Here is the system I purchased:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-6820HK (Quad-Core, 8MB Cache, Dynamically Overclocked up to 4.1GHz)
• Windows 10 Home 64bit English
• 1 TB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
• 256 GB Solid State drive
• 16GB (2x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 Memory
• 15.6inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS Anti-Glare 220-nits Display
• Intel HD Graphics
• Epic Silver
• Dell Outlet Alienware 15R2 Laptop

I used the current $500 off coupon to bring it from $1989 to $1489, then I opened up chat with a rep and he knocked an extra 2% off after I asked him if he could beat the price of the system I had in my cart (2% covered half the tax cost, so that will work).

As you can see their was no video card in the description (Dell, why are you lazy when it comes to this...), but some smart folks on this forum noticed that if you see the following when you click "Click here for available options and upgrades" screen, you are pretty much guaranteed to get a 980m:

Hardware Upgrade

• 125V Power Cord

• 240W AC Adapter (** LOOK FOR THIS FOR THE 980M)

• Alienware 6 programmable Macro module keys

• Xbox 360 Wireless Controller / Black

I asked the rep in chat about this and he said the following:

ME - "i realize that it doesnt state the video card for some reason"
01/27/2016 05:43:18PM ME: "i want the 980m"
01/27/2016 05:43:42PM Agent (Sneha_Paul): "Let me check"
01/27/2016 05:49:29PM ME "ok"
01/27/2016 05:50:53PM Agent (Sneha_Paul): "Due to some technical issue card details not updated online ."
01/27/2016 05:51:06PM Agent (Sneha_Paul): "However in internal tool NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 980M with 4GB GDDR5"
01/27/2016 05:51:11PM Agent (Sneha_Paul): "Thsi should be teh card ."
01/27/2016 05:51:22PM ME: "ok"

So $1540 shipped was the total of my system. I am sure people snagged better in the past, but is this a good price or should I have waited it out a bit longer and hoped for a more reduced price?

Also, anything I should be aware of upon my first boot with this system? Any bloatware I should immediately remove? Should I just go ahead and reformat the hard drive and start fresh?

 

id leave the HDD well alone mate....... youll loose all the Alienware software if you format the system.

nice spec!!

 

you can redownload the alienware software....

 

Jeez, you guys over there get some good deals huh. No such deals for us on the other side of the pond. I get that Dell systems must be cheaper in their home country but wow!

Your $1540 = £1077 (GBP)

There's nothing in the Outlet here so I'm looking at new AW15 systems and I'm currently tied between 2 found on the UK "Gaming Deals" page:

Option 1 - i7 6820HK, 8GB RAM, GTX 980m 8GB, 1080 Screen 1TB HD, no SSD. This actually is specced with an R9 M395X (@ £1298.99) but I don't want that so with the GTX 980m option this goes up to £1498.99.

Option 2 - i7 6700HQ, 16GB RAM, GTX 980M 8GB, 1080 Screen, 1TB, no SSD @ £1448.99.

Either way I'll be wanting 16GB RAM so with option 1, I would replace the RAM with HyperX Impact with CL13 timings but this would be an additional cost. I also have my own Samsung NVME drive to install so this is why I'm not fussed about getting an SSD.

Both prices will be subject to a 10% discount due to a load of messing around Dell have put me through with a wrongly specced unit that I've returned so the final prices would be:

Option 1 = £1349.09
Option 2 = £1304.09

Do you guys think that the 6820HK is worth getting, even with the additional cost of the unit and memory? (I will probably be replacing the LCD too but that would be the case for either option)

 

That's an awesome deal! If you plan to reinstall the OS or so, you may follow our guides online.

Windows 7


Windows 8

 

That's a pretty great price for the specs!

 

Hows you get the 500$ off?will bepurchasing a laptop when i visit the us on march. Any tips too on how i could get a sweet deal?thanks, joe

Sent from my SM-N910S using Tapatalk

 

I got the same 1989$ deal as you did and paid 1500$ all in with tax so came out to about 1400$ with haggling. I didn't get the xbox controller but they did send me an all in one Inspiron pc worth about 400$ with a keyboard and optical mouse, 4gb ram and 500gb hdd (??) so I'm not complaining about the deal. I spent another bunch of cash on new 500gb and 2tb SSD new fhd screen and a graphics amplifier separately so total cost for me came at 2300$ for a pc with 2.75tb of flash memory and the AGA. Can't complain and yes this is compared to 1900£ on the same machine with UHD screen from Dell UK total rip off in the uk

 

Did you use the Dell $500 off coupon or just haggle to begin?

 

keep your eye on techbargains outlet coupon site

http://www.techbargains.com/vendor_detail.cfm/366/Dell-Outlet-coupon-code

 

I got 30% off at the time

 

Mate you need to ask them for MORE discount. Im getting 10% extra on those dell deals and Im a new customer. If you are getting that discount for problems you had it needs to be on top of whatever anyone else can get normally. Grr, bloody Dell.

Also, Ive been told that the extra power of the 6820 is barely worth spending money on.

 

I hear you, they will feel my wrath when I get them on the blower!!

My refund was supposed to be in my account last Monday, I called only to find out they had not bothered to process it until this week......

 

My R1 will be replaced by an R2 and I cant wait to receive it. Top support from Dell. a technician botched my system.

Curious how it will be. I will receive a 6700HQ version with a Geforce 980M.

 

Damn I got stitched big time by these standards.

Mine was £1553 for -

i7 6820HK
980M 8GB
8GB RAM
FHD
1TB HDD

Bit cheeky I spent a while talking to the Dell rep and she told me this was the lowest price possible.

Sadly it's already paid for so it's a done deal now.

 

Ah man that sucks, I just picked this up in the outlet (UK)

• Alienware 15 - R2
• Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-6820HK (8M Cache,up to 4.1GHz, 4C)
• Windows 10 Pro (64bit)
• 16GB (2x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 Non-ECC
• 1 TB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
• 256GB PCIe Solid State Drive
• No Optical Device
• 4 GB GDDR5 Nvidia® GeForce® GTX 980M
• Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1
• LCD Cover
• 8 Cell 92W Hour Battery
• 15.6 inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS-Panel Anti-Glare 220-nits Display
• Internal Backlit Keyboard
• Internal English Keyboard
• Price Incl. VAT:
  £1,234.73

I'm getting a further 10% of that price too so it brings it in at £1111.25

Edit: I suppose I better factor in the cost of the new 300nit panel I have to replace as soon as the machine turns up. That would bring the total cost to £1165

 

Yeah I'm going to send them an email if they can't issue me with a credit or something. Then I may just cancel and re order, I don't like being to lied to leaves a salty taste in the mouth.

The featured gaming deals model with a 10% discount comes in at £1350ish. Which is like over £200 less than I paid not very impressive to say the least.

I should have checked myself before hand rather than just calling them I guess, shame.

 

Yeah that was the deal I was gonna get until I noticed they uploaded a whole load of stuff into the Outlet last night. Worked out pretty well.

 

I've emailed the sales person and their manager see if that gets me anywhere in the way of a credit or some sort of "sweetner" to make up for it.

Bearing in mind this is after they sent me x2 faulty XPS 15's. Bit of a joke.

 

Get on their case and don't give up man!

 

Wow good spot man tons of machines in outlet UK site! Great deals on alienware 17r3s especially. Great to see UK get some outlet love finally! Makes me want to buy one hahaha even though that makes no sense.. My good deal senses are tingling looking at the 512gb / 980m unit for 1200£ Inc vat

 

Yeah I'm a little excited now! And I can overclock!!

 

Just got off the phone with them they've offered me a £100 credit once the laptop is delivered.

I still have the email I sent to the sales manager as well see if he comes back with anything lol.

 

£100? That's odd, I know that they can give you 10% which would be more than £100, if all else fails then send it back and get a better deal that way. Long I know but worth the saving I reckon...

 

Yeah 10% would have been around £150.

I'll wait and see if this other guy replies to my email and go from there.

 

what did the tech guy do? is it in the UK? unisys tech?

 

you got the exact same machine and deal that I got from the USA outlet. Well done! I paid 1530$ - you're 60£ off and not 900£ off

 

Technically its not necessarily a done deal. If you have a: not received it yet or b: had it for less than 14 days, you are allowed to return it for a full refund. You can then buy one at a better deal. Depends if you want the hassle. There are two discount deals on the Dell main selling site at the moment. You can access them by going to alienware.co.uk >product >alienware 15 then click the SHOP link at the top left to go to main selling site. Then click Dell Deals, then Gaming Deals. There are two AW15 options with money off. The £180 off deal is by far the better one as it comes with 16GB ram and the GTX980M already. Only thing you really need to upgrade is HDD. Be careful, because I am not sure if the SSDs are decent fast ones or not. You may be better off taking that option then adding your own SSD if you are competent. So the offer price for that is about £1448 I believe. You Should get close to 10% off extra.

 

Just as well you put that one in your shopping basket or someone might have bought it from under you hahaha

 

Hahahaha! Its funny you say that, I tried several times to add it to my basket and it kept throwing up an error. I thought someone had indeed sneaked in but it turns out you have to tick the box for the standard 1 year warranty, even though it's "included in the price".. The last time I looked there were still some pretty good deals, did you have a look?

 

there's 1 left of the model you got. 1111£, who will be the lucky buyer

 

Yes mate but i want brand new lol. Im stupid like that even if it costs more.

 

Fair enough.... My status has just gone to "Shipped"

 

Cool, might it be there tomoro ?

 

you'll discover that Dell outlet is the winner. New means nothing Vs 900£ savings especially when new becomes used anyway after a few slips here and there. Plus the fact that refurbished comes with no marks or signs of use anyway and has same warranty as new = massive win = no other way to buy a Dell

 

I highly doubt it, the last one from the outlet took 3 days to get to me once it went to "shipped". The tracking has not yet updated with an ETA so I'll keep an eye on it.

 

Yeah, I'm no stranger to the outlet but up until last night, there was nothing there. In fact the last good machine that was in there is what I bought and triggered this whole saga. I'm glad the original was the wrong spec now, I would have been pi$$ed to look at the outlet now if I had that machine..

 

I will send you a PM about it. Dell handled it perfect after the error though. No flaws there.

 

Just wanted to reply here and let you know how it went. So i received my system (the one with the $500 discount) and wouldn't you know it a week later the 30% off coupon comes out and the same system was $150 cheaper! I called Dell and they refunded me the $150, plus the system did not come with the Xbox 360 controller (even though it said it was supposed to). They gave me $50 for that as well, so overall, I paid around $1370 for the system, and it was in my eyes brand new looking. As a super bonus, i loaded GPU-Z and it has the 8gb 980m in it.

 

Niiiiice! Can't argue with that!

 

I recently bagged a AW15 R2 and i'm loving it , i used to have a Hp Dv9295 EA which was decent for its age but it died so i needed a upgrade and this was the best option.
CPU - i7 6820HK @ 4.1GHz
16 GB DDR4
GTX 980M 8GB
512GB PCIe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 72 00RPM SATA 6Gb/s
FHD (1920 x 1080) IP S Anti-Glare 220-nits Display (it seems bright enough for me) I got this for £1,578.36 which i thought was resonable at the time.
It is a monster, I was looking to add another PCIe for raid and eventually replace the 1 TB hdd with a similar size SSD.
How is everyone else finding there machines?

 

Welcome to the club!!!

You're right, the system is a beast. I have pretty much the same spec as you except my 980M is 4GB rather than 8GB.... No big deal though, especially at 1080....

However, that 220 nit screen might seem ok but trust me, it really isn't. have a read through this thread - http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-15-r2-display-panel-mystery.783055/page-23

In short, the stock screen is crap and I would really recommend replacing it. The screen I have replaced mine with is awesome and a million times better than the stock panel it came with.

Good work on 4.1GHz, how did you get there and what sort of temps do you get? Please don't say you are using the preset options, Dell has no idea what they are doing with regards to overclocking and those presets run stupid voltage through the system. If you have not already seen it, please read through this thread - http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-settings-for-4-0ghz-to-4-3ghz-stable.787791/

I would fully recommend re-pasting your machine too, many of us here have gained up to 10c decrease in temps just by doing a proper paste job.... again, Dell does a crap job here.....

What SSD do you have?

 

Oh cool, ill have a look at the screen but i cant afford anything major now

yeah i did use the preset ones as im new to over clocking and i dont want to do aything to break the laptop. I was getting an average of 66-64C on the CPU/GPU on gta v on almost ultra with 45-60 FPS. (EDIT: i tried over clocking with the values on the website but i just got BSODs on start up, ive kept it on the OC level 1 pre-set which is getting me 3.8-9 and is really stable, ive got it to 4.1 in the past but it ran hotter then what i was comfortable with and 3.8-9 is quick enough )

The SSD is the PCIe 512GB (the one DELL sells with the laptop)

 

And what screen did you get? and is it hard to replace the screen (im moderately techsavy, ive replace a screen on my old laptop but that was a fairly simple job)

 

The best screen currently available to fit our laptop is the LP156WF6 SPB1 or the SPA1. The only difference between the two is that the B1 is Matte and the A1 is Glossy...... I have the A1.

There is an elusive 8bit Samsung model, but it is just that. Elusive. I have searched worldwide for one and have not found one, it is no longer in production and when it was, the numbers were limited. It was the LTN156HL06 C01 but good luck trying to find one of those.....

The panel is really easy to swap out, see this page - http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-alienware-15-r1-r2-owners-lounge.770311/page-295

It is literally pop the bezel (be careful of the adhesive around the Alienware logo), unscrew 4 screws, unclip the eDP cable, remove the panel then reverse to fit the new panel...

 

Could i put in the UHD display and would it be touch screen if i get the touch-screen one? And would the LED work, this says i have a lcd

 

Oh and what software would you use to monitor GPU temps

 

The UHD screen swap would require the panel and the entire screen assembly including the lid and bezel as the screen mounts are different. You would also need the 40pin eDP cable as the 1080 model has the 30pin. Unless you happen to have a dead UHD model with an intact screen, this is a pretty expensive way to go... Assuming the parts can be found.

All current screens are LCD, led is a backlight method.

 

I personally use HWiNFO64

 

I saw once a screen assembly at www.parts-people.com but it was fairly expensive. 270 bucks.