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

Isopropanol is safe. You can dilute it with water to form a kind of windex if worried. Some of my designs are car wraps and some utilize matte vinyl or we are working with a matte paint. I actually know what I'm talking about. I'm not going to waste $2000 dollars of vinyl, or pay to get an $8000 paint job on a bmw redone. I appreciate that people like to pretend they know what they are talking about, but I actually do know. It's safe.

If you want to feel 100 percent safe though, it costs more money but works, just go to your car detailing aisle at a local store. There are several types of cleaner that are suitable for matte paint which isn't as durable as vinyl or the alienware. I can get the names from my installer if you like. I know he used to use meguires or something.

 

I'm not claiming that you don't know what you're talking about but cars and laptops are quite different things and made of different materials. A car wrap or mattle paint is designed for vastly different conditions than a laptop palm rest and the car one is significantly more durable (yes even the matte paint) because its exposed to all sorts of crap when driving.

I have an R1 that has the same soft rubberized finish and extended use of isopropyl alcohol does wear it down and eventually it stops feeling like the soft rubber and ends up just feeling like plastic. But it comes down to how OCD you are about the hand prints.

 

i find fingerprint issue is when hand is oily otherwise slightly rubbing it goes away

 

I also use microfiber and cloth, don't rub too hard though

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Well I have cracked the code as to why I was getting high temps. I "downgraded" my bios from A01 to A00 and my load temps went from 95 to 80.

 

Yeah the A01 / A02 BIOSes do run hotter. But people have seen higher benchmark scores.

Hopefully A03 will solve both the hybrid BIOS and the temp issue that some people notice.

 

Hey guys, I've got a problem, I had an accident and the back plastic "grill" of the fan exhaust broke. Is there a wey to replace it?? Where can I buy it or do I just go over to warranty??

Thanks

 

Did you get the accidental warranty? If you did then dell will replace it for free.

If not then you'll have to call up parts and purchase one.

 

Hope you purchased accidental warranty

Anyone tried aw 17 with 4k external display ? Does it support n how is the FPS

 

It'll support it yes. As for performance it'll depend on the game. You should (?) Be able to play most games at that resolutions just at varying quality levels.

 

The hybrid BIOS is a "feature". I believe Clevo uses it too. It's the only way they can power the components with a 180w PSU. So I don't know if they'll "fix" it.

Maybe what they can do is disable the hybrid feature whenever the BIOS detects a 240w PSU (when using the 980M).

 

Hey guys,
after experiencing some weird issues last time (fan noise, bad sound quality...) I decided to order the Alienware 17 R2 again for testing. It just arrived yesterday but unfortunately I got again a really weird problem: When I connect a external usb harddrive with the AW using the usb ports on the left side while the speakers are active (listening music or something else), the integrated subwoofer makes loud mechanical noise (just like the external usb harddisk itself). This happens even when I mute the sound. Different operating systems (Linux) showed the same thing. But much more dissapointing is that the connection with the external usb drive seems to be disconnected time to time for just a second. The usb ports on the right side are working correctly with no problems.

Do you have experienced something like that or is this a known issue? Is there a solution for this issue?

 

I know I read somewhere for the prévious version of 17 you can fn+f5 to boot up using Nvidia graphic. With new aw 17 is it still possible doing that ?

 

Nope. You can't do that on the old AW 17 R1 either. The reason for that is rather simple and to do with nvidia Optimus.

Theres two ways you can use nvidia optimus:

1. Use a hardware switcher. In this case both the iGPU and the dGPU have a connection to the monitor. That way one card is always disabled. Most manufacturers do not do this anymore because its expensive.

2. Use a software switcher. In this case ONLY the iGPU has a connection to the monitor, the dGPU only has a connection to the iGPU. So when the software (nvidia drivers) call for the dGPU, the nvidia chip does the processing and then passes it on the iGPU which passes it on to the monitor. There's no way to disable the iGPU because that's the only card with a connection to the monitor, so if you disable it then nothing will be displayed.

Both the R1 and the R2 (as well as pretty much every other OEM nowadays) use the second method. The original M17x4 I believe used a hardware switcher.

 

I've seen this issue with the ASUS ROG line. Essentially, the two left USB ports were connected to the motherboard via a daughter-board (or something like that). This would cause disconnects every now and then due to a poor connection.

Not sure if that's the issue here as well.

 

Had same issue with my asus n55sf all asus laptop have this issue but not sure about aw

 

Is anyone having issues with their AW 17 r2 having high idle temps. I noticed that my laptop is hot even if I'm just browsing and reaches up to 56-75ish and 88-94 when gaming. I have th 4710 and 970m. I was planning to repaste the system thinking that it had a bad paste job but when I tried opening it, there is black part on the fans that looks burnt. I only had it for 2 weeks. It was bought from the US and finally reached my country after a month. I tried calling AW Support and they are saying that the temps are normal what I am trying to explain to them is the temps are high coming from a cold boot and without any apps open. They will send me a tech but wanted to get inputs. Im also looking at repasting with IC Diamond 7.

 

I doubt that the black 'burnt' bits on your heatsink fins are actually burns, I don't think they are, they couldn't get that hot in that location. Your temperatures are quite high, although you don't say whether it's your CPU or GPU temperature. What you wanna do is use GPUz to monitor your clocks and temperatures to check if you're getting any throttling on the GPU when running games. You could do with running a CPU monitoring program that tracks your CPU clocks & temperatures too while you're gaming - again to check if you're getting CPU throttling. You might want to run 3DMark11, 3DMark Firestrike, etc to compare your scores against other people's A17 R2's, that way you can see if you're getting any performance problems related to overheating and/or throttling.

 

Why did you lift up the keyboard instead of removing the bottom panel? That's where you'll have to go to re-paste.

 

I have an asus g750 which i'm pretty well satisfied with, i got it from bb. Now i want to replace it coz of the gtx980m gpus are sick.
First question: I've been reading a lot about the temp issues, i'm no expert but is the cooling of the current r2 okay or is it bad? I've browsed through the forums and seen diff opinions

2nd quest: i'm a civilian but can i order thru AAFES website?
3rd ques: my cousin is serving, dell offers 10% to them can i use his coupon? - stupid questions but thnx in advance for repz

 

Im getting the issue on both gpu and cpu.

3dmark test 1 and 2
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6564563
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/6566902

Why did you lift up the keyboard instead of removing the bottom panel? That's where you'll have to go to re-paste. - The bottom panel was removed but that's it. It's a smaller piece unlike the previous version. You'd have to get the palmrest off to get to the rest of the parts.

 

Could you please run FireStrike and check the CPU score with low temp A00 bios and high temp A01-02 bios?

I've seen results around 9k with AW 4980HQ on the CPU side, which is on par with 4710HQ on AW15 and 11.5-12K on MSI GT80. If high temps remove throttling, then it might be better to leave the latter bios if they stay around the same, then i don't really know how to explain this)

 

My firestrike score is around 8.4 on both BIOSes, if the gt80 is scoring 11k I'm almost positive it would be heavily overclocked

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How to downgrade to A00 - what are the pros and cons. Was looking at trying that.

 

Go to driver download site and u can see the link I downgraded mine and idle temp is from 47-52

 

Nothing special to do just install?

 

Not really, the CPU can get up to 90C at stock even in MSI laptop. But 8.4k is even less what 4710HQ reaches, so there's something wrong for sure.

Did you try to undervolt the CPU in Intel XTU by abount -50mv? Usually it gives positive results. Give it a shot)

 

I haven't ran the test in a while, actually I haven't ran it on this replacement computer at all now that I think about it. I will report the results back one I have run it again

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Just downgraded haha. Will observe it. But Dell tech's coming in next week to check what that black thing is. Do you guys have any inputs on what those are?

 

Scores look OK to me, only repaste if you think the temperatures are too high, otherwise performance is fine and there is no need to do anything.

 

Downgraded to A00- and I think it's higher or about the same at A02

 

You wanna use the latest BIOS, this gives you the highest performance, the later BIOS stops the performance damaging throttling that used to happen. Those CPU temps in your pic are fine for a load temperature, but if you're not happy with them just go ahead and repaste - simples, job done! Same for GPU, just go ahead and repaste it. I remember you quoted 88-94 degC for gaming temperatures - yep that's a bit hot, you should be able to get better results by repasting. Gelid GC Extreme is a good paste, excellent temperatures but none of the danger associated with Liquid Ultra.

 

Thanks guys. I am not able to to fully disassemble the unit will wait for the Dell tech to apply the paste. Was looking at using IC Diamond 7. Thats the best I can find in the Philippines. Thanks.

 

I do have the 240 watt adapter though, so the numbers between a00 and a02 were pretty much identical (actually higher performance on a00)

 

Can request a tech to apply paste

 

I'm probably going to request this later, I only very very rarely get temp spikes to 93 on one core, during intense games, I rarely see the temps go above 80.

 

It's a good paste but it will scratch your CPU and GPU.

 

Only when/if you remove it incorrectly. Properly applied and removed, it shouldn't scratch anything.

 

So you need to remove the bottom panel and the keyboard to access the CPU/GPU to apply TIM?

 

As far as I can tell you need to almost fully disassemble the laptop to repaste.

 

Well, my irritation level just increased. Lack of sockets is one thing. A piss-poor design that requires so much work for a simple re-paste is...Frustrating to say the least.

 

yea honestly pissed me off a little, but I don't mind taking a little extra time to do it myself.

 

Well I'll know soon enough. Coming from an AW17 R1 (which requires only 2 screws be removed to take off the ENTIRE base of the laptop) this much work for a re-paste is annoying. Not to mention that when you re-paste on this R2, you need to do both the GPU and CPU, since they share the cooling pipe system.

 

I am HOPING I am wrong, I glanced over the service manual.

 

That really looks high, I guess I'm a lucky one because my idle temps are between 38-45

 

that looks high, I guess im lucky mines are between 38-45 idle

 

this is idle sometimes is lower than today, but this are the usual temps

 

Hello guys,

First post here and I've been reading through a the thread regarding heat and the whole PSU.

This is my temp with the highs hitting 80+ when gaming. Not sure if I'm in trouble or not.




And in Asia, they seem to want to flash the Bios to A02 and replug the 180W to fix the throttling issue... thoughts?

 

In asia too anyone who could do a teardown vid will be so much appreciated. I hope my aw wont give me other headaches more than the temps this is my first Aw.

 

Only just noticed the i7-4980HQ has the Iris Pro graphics, what is this like to use over the usual HD 4600 for some old school games?

 

Just ran this bench with the Titan