*OFFICIAL* Alienware 13 R3 Owner's Lounge

This thread is a place to discuss all things related to your new Alienware 13 and share information your experience with fellow owners, or a place that prospective owners can read and ask quick questions.

 

Well, this notebook has been released already, and orders are coming through... And we still haven't gotten an official owner's lounge yet. Thought I'd start this, even if I won't be buying one, so that we small notebook enthusiasts can discuss this tiny powerhouse. Hope the mods sticky this.

 

Nice reviews so far.

 

Here's a review: http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/alienware-13-r3-oled

Sounds like it gets very hot after 15 minutes of gaming.. 107F middle of the keyboard.. yikes.

 

That's mildly hot. Average Arizona Summer. Real question is how many Celsius the CPU is getting.

 

Soon to be AW13 R3 owner - although I remain reserved about a few aspects.

Questions for long-time Alienware laptop owners.

Can these laptops run in clamshell mode?

How seriously "loud" do they get?

If this thing is truly "loud" - how well does the Alienware Graphics AMP help offset that? If I buy the AMP, since it's a steal at 160 (and already own a desktop GPU) - will it significantly reduce fan noise (I'm guessing this question is more nuanced).

Is it feasible to "game on your lap" - or do the vents/thermals/heat get too uncomfortable to do this?

Context - I previously owned a Dell XPS15 - and playing games on the 960M produced around 46dB of sound on average (I use the same dB meter Dave2D uses in the review linked above). 46dB was pretty bad - ultimately I really disliked it. D2D's review above showed this thing running around 42-43dB in the video review, but other reviewers mentioned "it gets loud" without a ton of specificity. 3dB increase in sound is a doubling of power output, so if this thing runs at 42-43 dB, it should be tolerable (and the tonality of the sound matters - i.e., no whining or high pitched sound).

I felt like my XPS15 always elevated one click above just "loud" to - gratingly loud after 10 minutes of a game. I would prefer cool and quiet, but I know it's a laptop with a desktop class GPU - so I'm trying to check my expectations and know their will be louder fan noise. Sorry for all those detailed questions, but I've been somewhat of a "silent PC" guy on my desktop so I'm gauging if I can adjust.

 

107...F?? It might be just me, but that doesn't seem hot at all.

 

I am very interested in this as my next laptop. I am not completely unhappy with my Razer Blade however, god that thing heats up fast. I feel they just tried to put TOO much hardware into that slim of a package. It overheats (to the point of CPU throttling) almost immediately in basic games like Diablo 3. My regular setup is to downclock the CPU to 2 Ghz and 19W and turn all settings to minimum to try to keep the GPU from going full tilt and it still send the CPU over 80c instantly- no throttling but not the full intended performance. it is much quieter this way as well as it is not bouncing off 100c like the stock clocks will. If I do not downclock, CPU throttling and very sporadic game performance follow.

For me, the big deciding factor will be if the cooling keeps up in this thing. Note that the internals (6700HQ and GTX 1060M) are the same as the new Razer Blade so it really is all about thermals for me. Waiting for the new service manual to get put online where I will have good quality pictures of the internals and can make my own assessment of the cooling design. Hopefully we will get some users here who are willing to do a thorough teardown as well and will post pics.

I do not need this to be super powered as it is not my main machine, have a 4770k/GTX 980 Ti SLI desktop for this. The laptop is for travel and Diablo 3 on the sofa or in bed I may get the GPU Dock since it is low priced but really may not use it much if at all - really like the idea though

Looking forwards to the first user impressions here on NBR.

 

So although I can't comment on the aw13, I can on the amp as I own that. The amp is LOUD but it can be modified to be much quieter. I replaced the PSU in mine and unplugged the case fan and its virtually silent now. I will be replacing the fan but the fan connector is a pita so the fan I ordered for it didn't work.

 

Found his link posted in the pre-release discussion thread:

http://www.dell.com/support/manuals...3B1051-9384-409A-8D5B-9B53BD496DE8&lang=en-us

 

Most interesting fact I see from Dell's official spec sheets for the new AW13 is that the touch version is actually thinner than the non-touch. 22mm vs 24mm!

 

Great find My googling failed me. Thanks!

 

So my initial analysis is....hard to say what the cooling will look like. The size of the fins looks decent but hard to tell in the only good picture if they are shallow or tall which would mean more surface area. I would like to think that the new design with offset hinge allows for taller fins leading to better cooling. Though it is an odd choice to not extend the 3rd heatpipe across the GPU to the fins on the left. They seem to load up more the fins more on the side that will be primary to the CPU which has me concerned, since the CPU always seems to run hotter than GPUs in my experience (despite the GPU being about 2x the TDP at least). The cooling will definitely be superior to the M14x R2 and Razer Blade though I think.

I miss discrete cooling for each heat producing element. Maybe I will look at the 15 as well to see how I feel before making any decision. At this point I care more about adequate cooling vs being super slim, I am a pretty strong guy, 1.5 more pounds of laptop wont make my back hurt.

Update: And upon further inspection of the 15 manual (just changed the 3 to a 5 in the above URL) it looks like just about identical cooling design and capacity so I guess a 6700HQ and 1060 are better than a 6820HK and 1070 on comparable cooling design - Since I tend to end up with maxed out laptops. And it will be smaller which is a bonus.

 

I think in the end you will have a small increase to cooling surface area over the R2 version of the AW13, but the real focus is likely on shifting heat "away from the user" thus the forward based hinge design.

It seems that, in my reviews, the older 960/965M variant of the AW15 is a quieter thermal design, and the new 1060 based design will tend to be a near doubling of acoustic output, while still keeping thermals in check. I hope this isn't the case, as I know the older, lower TDP AW13 was relatively "quiet" compared to other gaming laptops.

But we can't ask for that in a new design that packs a quad core CPU and double the power GPU (despite the generational leap from Maxwell to Pascal). I know many cooling designs focus on longevity, thus they ramp up fans to keep GPU in the mid 70s.

Honestly I would prefer a more quiet design, so my hope is that somehow I can tune the fans down a notch and allow the GPU to creep up to the low 80s. For those that freak out about this, with a TDP limit around 94, letting a GPU run in the low 80s is perfectly fine - even for years. It's just that Dell will likely be aggressive with fans to help them out in meeting reliability predictions.

 

I am fine with things running as hot as thermal equilibrium allows for given a) the noise is not insane and b) there is no throttling so the performance is consistent. My Razer Blade ramps the fans to max (100c on CPU with thermal throttling) when I open Chrome.....

 

Well, I pulled the trigger...

Alienware 13 R3
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5
Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ (Quad-Core, 6MB Cache, up to 3.5GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
Windows 10 Home 64bit English
13.3 inch QHD (2560 x 1440) OLED Anti-Glare 400-nits Display with Touch Technology
16GB DDR4 at 2400MHz (2x8GB)
512GB PCIe SSD (Boot)

I will add a Samsung 960 Pro M.2 1TB once they come out.

 

Nice config izz0218 Grats!

 

Will hopefully be ordering this week if dell uk release prices

Depends on price might change and go for a 15 r3 if he 13 is a lot

 

Given that this laptop only uses 2 pice slots only. Buying the right one is key. Is buying a nvme a better purchase than the Sata version? Read/write speeds is 550 vs about up to 3200/1800. Is this worth paying the extra for? (Disregard brand. But say sandisk x400 vs sm961. Price difference could be about 200+ more)


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No, not worth the money for fast SSD's. Unless you are data mining, or constantly moving very large files, you will observe no real world difference.

 

Mine was delayed a week. Over a month wait for delivery? Kind of ridiculous. They didn't tell me why. I'm assuming it's because of the screen. May consider canceling... Kind of want the 1080Ti.

EDIT: Kaby Lake quad-core is expected by CES in January.

 

Well personally id say dont cancel. But I've no laptop. But if you buy a 1080ti. You still won't have on either and then you see us with shiny oled monitors telling you it's the real deal. You will send back the 1080ti and wait prob another month to get one


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I really cannot wait to see the battery life (non gaming). I have read the reviews and they are all over the place. One even compared to the new Razer Blade 14, and said the AW 13R3 hit just under 4hrs while the Blade was just under 6hrs. Not sure how that is possible considering the battery is larger on the AW (although not by much).


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it's cuz of the oled screen

kaby lake quad-core "expected by CES" means we won't see it on alienware until may/june

 

I would guess the OLED screen can draw some power - it is pretty bright from what I have seen. Also the higher power cooling fans are something...although maybe not much. There is also some OEM flexibility with TDPup and TDPdown on the CPU that can impact battery life.

 

The OLED screen averages to draw the same power as an average IPS.

 

I was kind of grasping at straws and just spitballing possible measurable difference in power draw.

Watched D2D reviews of several laptops and he found the AW 13 R3 gets up to 44-45 dBA under load where the blade 2016 (with better cooling than my 2015) maxes around 60 dBA so it should be quieter. He also noted no detected throttling where the 2016 Blade throttled often. That is pretty encouraging for me assuming other reviews arrive at the same conclusion.

Further visual inspection also leads me to believe that the AW will have better capacity for cooling as well as better heat conduction between the heat source (GPU and CPU) and heat sink (the cooling fins). A lot of things lining up for me here

 

From what I understand, @scook9 is actually correct, it does use more. I remember seeing a detailed analysis where they showed that OLED power consumption varies very strongly depending on the color, i.e. % of black on the screen, and you needed something high like two thirds black to make it as power efficient as normal TN/IPS. Also, Anandtech had an article that covered the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga, in both the OLED and non-OLED variants and the OLED one had 219 mins of battery life versus 371 on non-OLED:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10697/the-lenovo-thinkpad-x1-yoga-review/9

I'm guessing there is a good chance that Dell is using a very similar panel as can be found in the Lenovo X1, but I'm just guessing.

 

The laptop panel market is already pretty small, the OLED market is even smaller. Pretty good chance they are the same panels I would think (Obviously not the exact same as different sizes, but likely same model line and manufacturer)

 

Video playback and gaming will see roughly the same Battery. Depending on film and game of course, but it usually averages out.

Web is where OLED suffers, because just about every web page is mostly white. But if you want to extend battery (and reverse the statistic seen in the yoga's review) you can actually get much more battery life then the IPS screen by installing a "invert color" app on your browser.

Something like this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/high-contrast/djcfdncoelnlbldjfhinnjlhdjlikmph?hl=en

Gives web pages black backgrounds and white text.

 

Yup, I know all that in theory and can't wait to try it out and report here =) I believe you though, you've been living with that OLED for a while I'm guessing!

 

A little over 3 months. Its going to be hard to go back to something else.

 

What configuration did you get?

And if you cancel it will just move me one quote up

 

I ordered the same as everyone else (or so it seems): QHD OLED.

It's delayed until December 12th now. Not sure I want to wait that long.

 

My order status still holding to Nov 28th-Dec 06 estimate as of this morning. I did get an order in pretty quickly after the page went live though so I guess I'm holding a good place in the queue!

It is tough to wait 3-4 weeks though. I happened to lock in 10% cash back from eBates for this order, an offer that quickly went back down to 2% the day after the AW13 R3 released (not saying there was any corrolation). Without that cashback, i would consider picking up the R2 with OLED and the 965M, even though that GPU is half as powerful (as well as other components). Having read that the R2's fan noise is pretty tame and perhaps less than the new R3, I would consider the tradeoff of performance for acoustics. However, I would end up spending more money out of pocket for the older model. If they offer any better deals on the OLED and shave a couple hundred off, I might pick one up.

Is this for real, the new Blade with 1060 gets 60dB under load?? That's nuts - why would any gamer want something so loud? 45dB is likely the max comfortable fan noise under load for me.

EDIT: Just watched D2D's Stealth review - he was reviewing the slightly older GTX970M version, but yeah, 60dB fans are insane. Although, perhaps th 1060 version tempers this a bit? I can't imagine they approach the 45dB he recorded in the new AW13 R3 though, even with a GTX1060 having less demanding thermal needs than the older 970M.

Acoustic performance is my #1 concern, and like you scook9, the evidence seems that AW13 is better (and it should be considering the size/thickness).

 

I have seen people saying the 1060 is quieter than the 970m it is often replacing but I am not sure the TDPs are actually that far apart. I think a lot of the new gen designs just have better cooling implemented. The mobile 1060 is a slightly underclocked version of a 120W desktop part - so pretty much a 100W part at least which has been top tier GPU TDP space in the past and similar to the outgoing 970m.

 

I haven't picked up any indication the "new Blade" with the 1060 changes much on fans/cooling. Not that it matters for me as the Blade is priced out of consideration and offers none of the incentives that Dell can (being a smaller company). I'm not trying to act the part of paid schill here as I've had my share of problems with Dell in the past (more on customer service than actual hardware issues) - it's just that the AW13 R3 offers more for the dollar in my comparison and seems to be the "more appropriate" design (i.e., thicker, better cooling and acoustics).

Biggest problem is I'm eager to see more reviews - and the 3 week wait is going to seem like forever so I'm left biting at any little nugget of info.

 

Agreed about the "more appropriate" design part for sure! I go with whatever fits my needs best at the time but as you see in my sig, pretty happy long time Dell/Alienware customer on the whole

Really want to see the reviews, these need to ship faster.

 

Did you already see all of these?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/posts/10379554

I'm not sure who has been saying that. The 1060 is marginally hotter than the 970M, and has a higher TDP by all accounts I've seen. Take any system that saw no changes except for a GPU refresh, and as far as I can tell all of them run hotter.

 

Have you done any comparison between the new AW15 and AW13 R3? They seem like similar designs, with more room for battery/extra drives in the 15". I'm wondering if cooling size/performance is a match for the 13". Folks have been complaining about thremals in the AW15 (can't find acoustics easily) - but that seems to be more on some weird incorrect firmware/reading of the actual CPU temps, not actual problems with thermals? It's weird to figure out, but I imagine a lot of insight can be found in the 15" design. People in that thread report GPU under load is cool, but CPU is through the roof, which makes no sense in a shared thermal system like this.

 

Saw most of those reviews, but thanks for the link - the computershopper one I haven't read until just now. One of those links wasn't a review at all. I'm waiting to read hothardware's actual review - hope they get that online shortly.

I've seen both D2D's and others reviews on acoustics and can't quite get an understanding of where these fans really sit though. Computershopper says "they roar" under load, while D2D's actually used a dB meter and quantified it around 45dB. I've seen other reviews though tip the scales towards "fans get loud" - but none of them provided any quantification. What I'd really like is Notebookcheck's review since they provide objective data on every laptop under the sun. Since I've never owned a gaming laptop before - it will be interesting for me.

Does limiting FPS help keep acoustics in check? I don't carea bout anything above 60 - so no need for the GPU to keep pumping out more frames than the display needs. Perhaps Rivatuner?

 

I had not seen a couple of those. Thanks!

I really want to see a detailed teardown that puts a lot of focus on the cooling - only an owner will do that as no site will tear apart a review unit that was sent to them

The problem with a lot of reviews where people say it ROARS, is they are used to reviewing MacBooks or other consumer laptops that don't really get hot normally. 45 dBA in the gaming world is quiet haha. That is part of why I watched several of D2Ds videos (Blade which I am familiar with vs AW 13), similar setup for some consistency. About the noise levels, there is much more to what your ears will experience than just power/volume (what dBA measures). The tonal makeup of the sound also plays a big part in how harsh it seems to your ears.

Limiting FPS can lower the load on the GPU which would contribute to lower power draw and less heat generated/needed to be managed. Nvidia actually built this into their drivers for power saving on battery I believe where the system will target like 40 FPS and save power rather than give a maximum effort. Think the feature is called Battery Boost.

I looked through the service manuals for the 2 laptops and from what I could tell the cooling designs are just about identical. That tells me that the 13 with a 6700HQ and 1060 should run cooler than the 15 with a 6820HK and 1070 (although the lower config is an option on the 15 as well). You really just gain the 2.5" drive bay and some IO from what I could tell (and obviously the larger screen with its options)

 

to anyone in the uk

alienware have a 10% off running until the 9th i bet the new 13 will be priced from the 10th then

 

I'm tracking - and agree; that's why I want measurements across time. I like Notebookcheck.net for this type of comparison.

I also know most reviewers only have a few days to generate reviews - and largely never get the time to do any sort of tweaking, so I'm guessing I could use all sorts of tools like the battery boost you mention, XTU, or even Afterburner to downclock the CPU and accept performance penalties for the sake of reducing emissions output?

 

Coincidence cos it's actually released on the 10th to Europe


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that sucks might have to look into a 15 r3 with a 1070 + 4k panel with the discount not sure as i want the 13 r3 with the oled panel

 

Not exactly directly related, but pretty close - Lisa's MobileTechReivew reviewed the AW15 R3 yesterday. Comparing internals, it's clear the 13 and 15 are pretty similar. Same triple heat pipe design (slightly different packaging) with dual fans. My expectation is any review of the AW15's performance and thermal/acoustics will be VERY similar and comprable to what we'll hear over time for the 13.

Lisa's bottom line comment is that the AW15 acoustics are just shy of the ASUS ROG GL502 and significantly better tempered than the Razer Blade or competing MSI product. I'm waiting for her written review as all I have is the YouTube video, but she mentions that you will definitely hear the fans, but that they aren't so crazy as to dominate audio coming through the speakers or require headphones to drown them out. So this is great news! Her review also was for the 1070, so I expect the 1060 to be slightly less demanding.

Overall - across the few reviews/youtube videos on the new AW lineup for 2016 is extremely positive. I watched a podcast by Dave Altavilla at HOThardware yesterday as well and that guy wouldn't stop raving about the AW13's overall design, fit/finish, and performance. They all were saying that this ithe first time Alienware is likely really tapping into the supply line prowess that Dell offers to create a vastly superior product to the competition. Dave said that as long as battery life holds up (and he said he thought it will) - he would be picking an AW13 up to bring on the road with him.

 

Ordered on November 2nd my delivery date moved back to Dec 6th. Such a long wait, I know it'll be worth it but I can't help but wonder why it would take so long?

 

If you not hard done. Order the 15 + 4K and get the discount. It will prob take a while especially if you make changes to the config. And then look at the AW13 and spec up what you want and price it. If you like it. Cancel the AW15. If not at least you haven't wasted the 10% waiting before making a choice.
Also I'd suggest people order sooner than later on the 13. I've noticed when -"1st launched the same configured AW15 I cancelled with 1070 and 4K plus 10% came at £1500 whilst now the same offer makes the price £1649 so about £150. When 13 arrives it might be its set price since it's arrived late, but then again it might too also rise...


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I'm a little concerned that the 13R3 suffers from the same uneven heatsink pressure issue as the 15R3 as discussed in http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ven-core-temps-due-to-uneven-heatsink.797477/
The 13R3 looks to have very similar internals to the 15R3.
No one has done a full tear down yet but this video shows some of the internals of the 13R3: