*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R2/R3 Owner's Lounge

Yeah at this point I would push for a replacement and something more. I would be going insane with issues like that.
Based on my experience though, Alienware's replacement team aren't "allowed" to replace a machine with an upgrade, all replacements have to be spec for spec, or the factory denies it. (This is what I was told by a few upper Dell/Alienware people). But your experience may vary due to your region, there may be exceptions since upgrading RAM is easier than other things.

 

The components they replaced were all new and sealed, I checked by myself and the motherboard was clearly new.

The process for having a new AW17 will take about 1 month for my country so I chose for technical intervention wich was very professional with no scratches at all, btw I'm collecting more info about this issue and trying with a clean Windows installation.

 

Does the 17 come with raid support?

 

As of currently, no.

 

Just installed my SSD, I had a spare msata drive, 840 Evo 500GB. Picked up an adapter on the way home and threw it in there.

I always forget how awesome SSDs are. Until I use a traditional drive. Talk about night and day

 

I honestly have no idea what they were thinking when they decided to put a 5400RPM drive in a gaming/"performance" laptop. They could have at least stuck with a standard 7200 RPM at least. But I suspect they figured people would just end up replacing it so they chose a cheap option since you can get SSDs?

 

yeah, that makes sense. No way I was purchasing the unit with the SSD installed for me. Brutal pricing. Next week I'm ordering my first m.2 drive and I honestly have no idea what to look for. I know the slot isn't PCI-e so I can't use the Samsung drives, because I don't think the drives are backwards compatible with SATA but I honestly wouldn't know.

 

I have one too on this system that I'm replacing, red on a white background, but you notice when you change the background to green it will turn black, which means it is actually a dead green subpixel.

 

Dell know that a 7200 rpm hdd use more wattage than a 5400 rpm hdd. You know that the 180w power supply can't deal with hardware that use to much wattage. But I suspect Dell figured out that a 180w is too weak to run hardware that use to much wattage... HaHa

 

You'll want an m.2 Sata III drive for the m.2 slots like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-MTS...&qid=1426934899&sr=8-1&keywords=transcend+m.2

I replaced the 5400 rpm 2.5" drive with a Samsung 850 Pro and actually have been running my OS off of it. My m.2 drives are my storage drives.

 

I feel this is the reasoning as well.
I imagine the intended buyer was likely expected to run operations off an SSD, not an HDD.
In which case the 5400 rpm HDD will be removed, tossed, or delegated to storage.
If that is the assumption, then it would be reasonable to opt for the standard notebook rpm HDD to minimize costs to company and buyer.
More importantly, as I assume everyone suspects, is that a low rpm hdd would add an incentive to the buyer to upgrade to an SSD.
And of those looking to upgrade, there would be some willing to pay alienware to perform the upgrade.
This seems standard fare for gaming notebook companies as it makes logical sense for costs.

I imagine power 180w vs 240w to have little to no relevance on their choice in standard hdd option.
Planning your standard hdd option around minimizing requests for 240w adapters PRIOR to initial release of the product just seems unreasonable.
Of course, someone can always quip, "oh! but alienware is unreasonable!" but the power issues seem to be more of a lack of planning than an overabundance of thought.
If they really wanted to minimize power usage on HDD storage, they would've made it so that we would have to ration between storage sizes (7mm vs 9.5mm).
I imagine 7200rpm vs 5400rpm on a single hard drive to be a drop in the bucket compared to the GPU; although that's baseless assumption - I haven't even looked at the numbers.


With that said, I suppose the question should be, what would we like to see instead of a 1TB 5400 rpm option?
- 500gb 7200rpm
- 1 TB 7200rpm
- 500gb 5400rpm
- SSD

Personally I think the 1TB 5400 is just fine.
I wouldn't know what to do with a 500gb 7200 HDD besides donating it to charity.
I wouldn't pay extra for 7200 rpm over 5400 rpm intended for storage. If I'm paying extra for storage, I'd opt to pay more for size (2TB) over speed (7200rpm).
I really wouldn't know what to do with a 500gb 5400rpm hdd besides donating it to charity. At this point, I know they're just charging me for surplus HDDs.
I wouldn't pay msrp+service cost for an SSD, as I can add my own at a much more reasonable price.

I would however, very much like an option in AC adapters. I think that would have been a good option to implement to minimize customer disatisfaction while enhancing profit.

 

I noticed that Dell technician forgot to add all the laptop info when adding the Service tag after replacing the motherboard, now the BIOS shows only Alienware 15 instead of Alienware 17R2.

Is there anything I can do to edit and correct these infos? Hope will not give me problems

I found this article online, may it helps?

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/driversdetails?c=us&l=en&s=gen&driverid=R80775


Please help me to edit the BIOS. I also don't remember what was written originally for the 17 R2, if someone can do me the favour and check his BIOS please.

 

I was actually looking at this one: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...8956&cm_re=crucial_m.2-_-20-148-956-_-Product

 

I'd wait till the end of march for the Samsung 850 Evo M.2 ssd.

The 850 series (both pro and evo) are seriously good SSDs and nothing out there compares to them when you take into account performance and cost (especially for the evos).

 

I have a crucial SSD, it's pretty good, but I can say my Samsung does perform noticeably better. You should be able to get a samsung 850 evo m.2 for roughly the same price.

Edit:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7399&cm_re=m.2_samsung-_-20-147-399-_-Product

I wish this would be released sooner in Canada, but I can't find any site selling it at the end of the month.

 

No one can guarantee that the Samsung 850 Evo gets the same problems as the previous model Samsung 840 Evo. Still has not Samsung managed to fix the problem with reading old files. Even yhe repair tool and new firmware from Samsung fails to fix the problem. Choose rather a different ssd (pro) or another brand that is tested and proven without such problems. Why choose a SSD with tlc nand when most other SSD's use mlc nand which is the most proven nand?

@ Logispice Post#661(659)
This was meant ironically because Dell managed to ruin the performance of their new high end Aw gaming laptop with a to weak power supply(180w).

 

@ Red Pyr4mid Service tag
Contact Dell support so you get a guide on how to enter service tag in the BIOS on your Aw.

 

Thanks, I'm gonna wait that an owner of AW17R2 on this forum writes the exact Product Name displayed on the BIOS, then call Dell.

 

here you go

 

Thank you very much! <3

My AW17 has identity crisis.

Still need help on how-to edit the Product Name on the BIOS.

 

@Papusan

I'll be buying an M.2 ssd in april. which one do you recommend for 500+gb?

@Red Pyr4mid
happy to help.

 

I went with the 850 pro, and it works beautifully. So I can second this recommendation.

 

Except that the 850 evo is completely different? It uses a different controller and a different type of nand memory.

The only difference between the 850 Pro and the 850 Evo is the controller and the warranty. The 850 Evo uses a dual core MGX controller, the 850 Pro uses a triple core MEX controller (same one found in the 840 series). The evo is warrantied for 5 years, the pro is warrantied for 10 years.

Then keep in mind that the 850 Evo has a warranty of 5 years and 150 TB. If you wrote and erased 50gb a DAY it would still take you 8 years to reach that warranty limit and Samsung have openly said that in their testing that the drives last much much much longer, easily over 1000tb.

You make it seem like Samsung is the only one to have had an issue with their SSD. Intel, Crucial, OCZ, Samsung every single one has had their own share of issues. As it stands right now the 850 Evo AND the pro is the best SSD you can get for your money. I have 2 850 512gb evos in my laptop and both have had just under 4TB written to them and they both continue to work perfectly and numerous sites / tests/ reviews will agree with that statement.

As for which is the most proven NAND? Well it's SLC lol.

 

Have not looked on tests of M.2 ssd as my Aw nor my PCs do not use these. But because of that Samsung uses tlc nand, I dare not recommend Samsung as an alternative. Mlc nand is well tested so look for a M.2 ssd of well-known brand that uses these.

 

TLC NAND Is just as well tested, please stop spreading FUD.

There are NUMEROUS test sites that have tortured Samsung SSDs to the death by wearing out the drive completely and every single one of them has come to the conclusion that it would take well over 20 years for those drives to stop functioning.

Yes the 840 Evo had an issue with reading old files in which performance would drop if the file was old. It didn't cause any data corruption, any data degradation just performance in that NAND sector would be slow while around it the drive would operate normally. Yes they released a fix which didn't solve the problem for everybody but it did work for a LOT of people. They're also working on releasing a SECOND FIX to the issue.

Granted you can fault them for the issue in the first place but judging how they're still working on fixing an issue with a drive that is now almost 2 years old simply shows that Samsung cares about it's customers. They could have just said oh well the original fix works for a lot of people, if it doesn't work for you then too bad buy our new 850 series.

Anyways the 850 series uses a totally different kindoff memory than the 840 series. Just because one series had an issue doesn't mean the other will.

MLC NAND isn't as perfect as you claim it to be since like I already mentioned every single SSD manufacturer has had issues. Crucial, OCZ, Intel, Micron, Sandisk etc have all had issues and most of them have had to do with reliability and data loss.

At the end of the day every manufacturer has improved on their SSDs. It's pretty silly to hold them to something that happened in the past. And to be honest I'd rather deal with a potential performance slowdown than data corruption and reliability issues.

 

SLC NAND is the best option and most proven but mlc nand is number 2 .. SLC NAND is too expensive to use in a ssd to be sold at a reasonable price.

As you probably know, Samsung has not fixed the problem with Evo yet. This has the credibility to do. Samsung has not been able to fix the problems they have created for their customers. An ever can. These new Evo ssd is not tested sufficiently yet. What's going to happen to these new Evo ssd, nobody knows. What I know is that SSD drives with mlc nand whatever brand, do not have such problems whatever controller a ssd use.

 

And what about the reliability issues that Crucial drives have suffered from? You don't want to talk about that do you. You keep wanting to bring up the 840 Evo memory issues and yet completely disregard that the 850 Evo doesn't even use the same type of memory that the 840 does.

You put MLC up on this holy grail and then completely disregard that every manufacturer of MLC drives have had their own share of issues. And then completely fault Samsung for having a performance issue.

If you want to buy a SSD from a manufacturer that hasn't had issues, then you won't be buying a SSD at all.

Is it true that the 850 Evo could have issues? Sure there's always a chance a similar (or different) issue can pop-up. But the drive is warrantied for 5 years or 150 TB written. 5 years is plenty of time to notice any problems with the drive and return it for replacement if any such issues pop up.

 

I don't see the point in what you're arguing? All the SSDs released have some issues to some degree. It's a newer technology, every company is working out their bugs. The fact samsung has such a great warranty and lifetime and is working on a fix for a past issue, just shows they're trying to fix the issue.

The memory on the 840 and 850 are different, so you can't make the judgement that the issue will plague it yet. Don't kill it until people have tested it. Samsung have been reliable SSD wise for a while besides that small issue. Every SSD has had an issue, it's a fact of life.

 

Oh wow, I didn't even know Sammy was releasing this month. I'll wait then. Thanks to both of you and bnosam for the link.

 

Yup. I only wish the new alienwares supported PCI-E SSDs.

Sure they cost a little more than their SATA3 brethren but they're seriously seriously fast. 2000MB/s read, and 1,500MB/s write. That's more than 3-4x the speed of the top tier SATA3 SSDs.

And it makes sense. For pretty much any SSD out there right now, the NAND chips are capable of doing so much more than they are doing. The SATA interface is essentially whats limiting their capability. Remove that and replace it with PCI-E which is capable of significantly higher throughput and the interface is no longer the limiting factor, the NAND chips become the limiting factor and they're plenty fast with current technology.

 

Day #3 of no BSOD. I will be keeping this laptop! d-(^.^)z
I played some games on it today. FF14 and BFBC2.
Everything works as it should. No difficulties with the peripherals: gamepad/mouse/keyboard.
It's all just so beautiful! Everything is so crisp and the colors just pop out at you from all sides.
I really love this display. It's really made this purchase worth the initial worries of BSOD.
It gives off a "wow, technology's really come a long way" sort of feel.

I suppose what comes now is to purchase a squaretrade warranty and look forward to upgrading it in April.
As for the SSD upgrade, I'll wait for the 850 EVO, which should be available by the second week of April here.

 

Glad it all worked out for you =)

One thing to keep in mind for the future. I know it's a pain but its good practice to always just reinstall windows and start fresh when you get a new laptop. One reason is that you won't have to worry about things like Lenovos superfish (thankfully dell doesn't install too much junk with their alienware laptops). Another reason is that sometimes installations can get funky and give you errors that aren't really hardware related.

 

This screen is absolutely amazing. I can't even describe how great it is. I'm actually using it outside in the sun. No fading, no glare.
It's so nice. I love it!

@cookies981
Thank you. I completely agree. I'm just waiting until April as I'll be ordering one of the 850 Pro's and intend to Windows 7. We'll see. Windows 8.1 is starting to grow on me. Only slightly though...

 

I'm happy you're keeping the laptop, maybe others performs slightly better or give less issues but I just love this Alienware generation, I mean this is the first time where I'm looking more at the notebook itself than the display.

Talking about the display I also think that is fantastic, moreover the TrueLife version has an excellent contrast and it's frameless look is astonishingly beautiful.

Let me just point out that I also agree with @cookies981 because performing a clean Windows installation not only solves many software issues, but is also an act of love for your fellow computer, please stop with all this violence against computers.

It's also important to say that with a USB pen drive plus Windows Media Creation Tool now the installation process is very easy-to-use and superduper fast.

Just remember that clean installation means that you have to create a new Windows USB pen drive, avoid using the one that Dell gave you. There is also a tutorial on this subforum.

I made peace with Windows 8.1 by using Classic Shell.

 

Hi

It didn't work, but thanks anyway.

Mine is red and it's only visible on a black background. I've tried to 'unstuck' it with a youtube video but it didn't work. Did you contact Dell regarding this matter?

 

What screen do you have? FHD or UHD? Thanks

 

Since this is the AW 17R2 owners lounge it'll be the FHD screen. The 17" laptop doesn't come with a UHD option at all (only the 15 and 13 inch ones do).

 

I have my replacement system coming Monday for a separate issue hopefully nothing wrong with the screen on this one.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Yes, you're right. I knew it comes with 2 screen options, I just forgot that the other one was a touchscreen. Thanks

 

Ok, thanks. I've sent an email to dell support. I hope they will get back to me tomorrow.

 

I wanted to ask, why run OS off the 2.5 and storage on the M.2?
I am considering SSD over HDD for storage to avoid mechanical failures such as head crash and so forth.
I would like large storage like a 2TB HDD, but would prioritize a more stable option if available, which was why I was considering an SSD.
Just curious if there were any advantages to storage on the m.2 drives over the 2.5, or if you opted for your choice for alternative reasons.
Thank you!

 

The Samsung 850 pro ssd that is my new 2.5" drive is just a better drive than the 2 m.2 ssd's that I have installed. Aside from the performance, that 10 year warranty is hard to beat...so I'm gonna rewrite on it to the ground lol!

 

Does anybody have an infrared thermometer? I'd like to know the surface temps (specifically on the keyboard area) when idle vs under load.

I sold my R2 before getting my thermometer, so I couldn't objectively measure the temps. I just know they were uncomfortably warm/hot, and I'm wondering if that's how they all are, or if I just got a bad unit.

 

Remember this is a very thin gaming laptop. Clearly there is a worse cooling solution in anything like that .. Surely not nice to use this on full load, if it is possible to overclock this.

 

This is a thin laptop? Where the hell have you been hiding? You act like it's the size of a razer laptop. Even with their thinner design, it is still not THAT thin that you can overreact about its size. If you actually read the posts instead of making stupid ignorant comments you'd see that temperatures are in line and within reason. Even overclocked my GPU didn't go over 70C, obviously it is possible to overclock it. How is that a bad temperature? It's not, it's in line with other laptops with similar specs.

 

Have you heard about the laws of physics?

 

Is that your way to draw away from the point I'm making?

I didn't find any issues with the keyboard heating that my G73SW didn't have. Both keyboards felt the same heat wise, maybe the Alienware felt cooler.

I don't understand how you can think the laptop is so thin the cooling of it is affected to any large extent. You'd have to be stupid to not understand the temperatures are fine because users have POSTED temperatures. But I know your posts, all you do is post stupid crap trying to bait conspiracies and arguments. I guess I'm falling for it.

 

Maybe the new Alienware laptop is not so hot, as the processor is throttled down to the 2.5GHz?? I have not tested this laptop but why complained Ramzay on uncomfortably warm / hot laptop?

 

It doesn't throttle down in all cases. Users have used it without having it throttle downwards. Even from Firebat's testing when it doesn't throttle down to 2.5 GHz, his temps are still reasonable.

That's Ramzay's personal preference. From my own experiences I haven't found it to be hot at all, maybe he got a bad unit.

 

@Papusan
Why are you so focused on being angry at Alienware? Do you post on any of the other forums on NBR besides alienware?
perhaps one of the other brands will have topics more enjoyable for you. You always seem so angry.
You get angry at dell. you get angry at alienware. you get angry at microsoft. you get angry at samsung.
you are always upset, and always in the alienware subforum. It does not seem healthy to have your life so full of anger and negativity.
life is not always about good things, but it does not have to always be about bad things either.
perhaps you can explore some other threads and find something you enjoy in discussing?
you appear to enjoy open source and customization. Have you tried exploring the clevo/sager forums?