New to Alienware

Looking to buy an Alienware 15 R3 and im hearing about the thermal issues. Has this been fixed? is it worth buying the computer and just repasting?

 

GTX 1060/1070 + i7 6700/6820??, hell yeah it's worth buying.

Say what you will about alienware, but their chassis and build quality is awesome, excluding the ****ty thermal paste jobs they do.

Don't repaste yourself if you don't have experience doing it.

 

Just to play devil's advocate on that sec...

How will you ever get experience doing a repaste, if you don't repaste until you have experience? ;-)

Deciding whether to repaste should be based on:

- having a good set of instructions to follow
http://www.dell.com/support/manuals...D51A07-0CDC-41E4-9F46-FEBE989A15ED&lang=en-us

- being prepared with the tools and materials you need (see second image)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...5r3-disassembly-repaste-guide-results.797373/

- accepting that if things go badly, you might have to pay to get it fixed

- a general confidence in taking stuff apart, keep parts separate, label where they came from, take pictures if necessary

If you score 4/4 on the above, do a repaste. Otherwise don't.

 

i've repasted a few times before, but doing so on a very expensive machine that you will have to basically disassemble to repaste is a task i would only leave to more experienced hands, especially when it's brand new and within warranty.

i'd try to get a dell service center to do the repasting.

 

All 15R3s come with premium onsite support now. If you're afraid to do the repaste yourself and your laptop temps are high, you can call Dell up and have them send an onsite technician to your place to do the repaste.

 

Premium warranty doesn't mean that Dell will come and repaste everyone's laptop whenever they ask...

They only do it when they consider the machine to be defective.

We can have a debate about what WE think a defective machine is... But they just recently gone on record as saying a single core in the high 90s is ok. So I wouldn't get your hopes up.

And I hate to break it to ya but the Dell tech isn't gonna use Liquid Metal or some such. He's gonna use the same crap they use in the factory.

So if you want temps in the 60s under load... you either gotta do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for ya and there goes the warranty...

 

Yea, what Peter said. The technicians are just there as their job. Dell isn't sending out enthusiasts to get your temps down. There's a lot of very useful guides here. Can follow that step by step. But if you feel queasy about it, no shame in having someone else do it for you. You could watch some youtube videos on other people repasting, but depends how much you want to get those temps lowered.

As for buying the 15 R3, you totally should. I personally haven't used the 15" models, but going from a 17 R3 to a 17 R4, I can immediately feel the build quality is much higher than previous generation upon taking it out of the box and just lifting the lid up. Just make a list of things you want out of a gaming laptop and see if the other companies can match. If you want ultra slim, then Aorus and Razer are your best bet. But if you want reasonably thin without going into the MSI super chunky territory, then Alienware is a great middle ground.

Kind of didn't answer your original question but temps are well within functional operating range. Alienware has made slight adjustments to help with cooling since its release. Unless you're gaming on carpet or on bed, if you're on a desk, you won't need to worry about temps hitting critical mass and melting on you.