*OFFICIAL* Alienware X Series Owners Lounge and Discussion

Here is the new X series of laptops. It looks like the new design comes in a 15 and 17 inch for now. Intel 11th gen CPU, RTX 3000 series GPUs, removeable RAM and WiFi chips are back, new screen options. Availability in June or July. New quad fan cooling system, thinner, 11th gen intel, and new thermal material. They moved all the ports to the back. Is this why they ditched the 51m R3? Are we seeing the final nail in the coffin for big DTRs? Can't wait to see a review and teardown of this X 17.

 

Is this evidence that the industry has been listening? TigerLake appears to give users near Throttlestop levels of control over the CPU package, down to per-core voltage tuning. Dell offers a laptop with quad-fan cooling, with what appears to be an emphasis on keeping the thermal envelope controlled. TB4 as a viable replacement for the AGA? Is this the BGA unicorn we've been waiting for?

 

And why you think Dell finally will make a proper firmware and provide it with fully funtional Advanced option in bios? Or you think they will give you all needed tweak options in their software package? From Intel engineer. In short... Up the the OEM unlock or lock everything down in own bios.


What Gamers Want: Thin, Light, and Powerful Laptops
That’s an impressive doubling of performance, although it took place in Intel’s labs, so it’s not an independently run performance test. And many gamers don’t care about the demands of a 4K screen and are more interested in thinner, lighter laptops that can offer a silky-smooth 1080p gaming experience.

Intel Tips New 11th Gen 'Tiger Lake-H' CPUs for Thin, Powerful Gaming and Creative Laptops pcmag.com

Sone game over for the laptops nick-named DTR.

 

what specs

 

My hope is that Dell has been paying attention to what users have been saying, at least to some degree. TigerLake seems poised to be a competitor to Zen 3 (it will likely lag behind Zen 4) and seems to reflect that Intel, at least, has been paying attention. If Dell does the same, even in part, then I'd consider it a win. Yes, BGA is a baked-in obsolescence approach to technology but it does serve a purpose if what you put into it is powerful enough to last several iterative cycles. Ampere, TigerLake, Zen 3/4, and RDNA2 all fit those descriptions. TB4 opens the door for a more powerful eGPU solution, which might explain why Dell stopped supporting the AGA. If the X17 capitalizes on the full feature set of TigerLake with a thermal solution that finally addresses the long-standing problems with Intel's hot AF CPUs, this could be a laptop worth investing in.

Obviously, I'm not jumping in with both feet. I need to see final specs, reviews, price, etc, before making a purchase decision.

 

Was looking to pull the trigger on a m17 r4 3080, but x17 has my attention right now . . . wondering if it will be worth the wait.

 

It will have better cooling so that alone makes it worthwhile IMHO.

 

Definitely wait. Intel 11th gen alone is worth it.

 

how is thunderbolt 4 going to compare performance wise to the AGA? Doesn't AGA utilize the lanes more directly or something? It's a shame they are ending AGA.

 

Personally, I am very excited for these upcoming X-Series laptops, especially the X17. Planning on replacing my M17 R1 soon, and this could be the one I have been waiting for.

 

It feels like they made announcement to fight the competition from the likes of Lenovo. I was seriously interested in the Legion 7, but now I'd like to see how X17 performs before I decide.

 

Lol they are marketing quad fan technology like if this laptop was the first to ever use it.
I wonder if they will keep the 150+15W 3080 or not...

Did Dell finally implement LCD overdrive control in their software like Acer, Asus, MSI and Lenovo or Dell is still 1 step behind it's competition ?

I do wonder if the X will have a normal price or Dell keep continue being the Apple of laptops and overprice it...the m17 r4 had a ridiculous high price compared to other laptops on most markets and normal price was only available for some privileged markets, like the US market.

 

I'm still looking at lenovo with that sweet vapor chamber based heatsink. It uses the whole laptop base as opposed to AW which transfers the heat to pipes which can form a bottleneck and extra heat. Vapor chamber with some LM you've got yourself a genuine beast.

 

4 small thin fans + the liquid metal silicon pad(s) are needed due the new thinner design. And if I’m correct it will max out with a new lower powered power adapter to match the chassis thinness.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-whopping-margin.833406/page-37#post-11095439

 

Thunderbolt 4 really should’ve been called thunderbolt 3.5. It doesn’t really offer any noticeable bump in performance. Seems to be better on the 1% lows so you would get more consistent fps from what I’ve seen. I was kinda hoping they were gonna make a new and improved AGA when the old one was discontinued.

 

It seems that Dell is aware that many will jump to other brand in the next days if they don't do anything, so ... https://www.alienwarearena.com/AlienwareUpdate

 

This is the thing it's simple physics. Air needs volume and pressure to move heat in these tiny chassis it's hard to get volume and simply adding more fans doesn't create more pressure. Large fans create more pressure or faster rpm smaller fans create more pressure but if the rpm is too high the sound becomes really high pitch and unbearable. Same with the exhausts the smaller they are and the higher pressure through them and the sound profile of the cooling becomes a high pitched whine.

A thicker device is always more desirable from a cooling standpoint, it allows for more copper to hold more heat and bigger slower fans to dissipate the heat without the loud fan whine.

 

From what I'm reading, TB4 should be better than the AGA. The AGA was limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds, which was 1 GB/s per lane. The Thunderbolt certification means that the PCIe connection speed to the TB controller must be at least 32 GB/s, or PCIe 4. That should, in theory, mean the TB4 connection on any laptop would be twice as fast as the AGA connection. That would put an eGPU connected through TB4 a comparative 8 lane PCIe 3 connection speed, which is what most laptops have with their onboard dGPU.

It should be an improvement, in theory, and potentially explain why Dell dropped the AGA port.

 

The double amount fans is for the extended side heatsink. This was needed because of the very short main grills on the back. Double up with small fans can help reduce the overall noise. If they is designed to run at slower speed. Increased air pressure ain't always the goal.

And the fake part of the heatsink grills doesn't help much on the cooling either. They stole the room for bigger rear grills fin stack to be able to fit in the power intake. Why not put the power intake on the backside? I don't know. No AGA port on the back should mean more than enough space on the back. Not all the small I/O ports had to be there. Yeah, weird engineering/design choices.


It looks like Dell's thermal engineers have a special love for such type designs. Not the first time they used a useless piece of metal on on the rear heat sink grills. Funny thing I found on the 15R3 (2016) heatsink - glued on heatsink grills


And with such a thin design the battery will suffer. We will se a lot more of this... Alienware 15R3 - swollen battery, damaged body

 

You may be right, although I guess we'll have to wait for independent reviews to see if it actually will. This being advertised as "thinnest" is always a worry when it comes to cooling. The extra fans might help, depending on how the airflow compared with the 2-fan setup. Why did they drop the vapour chamber again?

Anyway, this seems like the successor to the 51M, so bye bye socketed CPUs and modular GPUs?

 

Well the short response is every video I watched showed basically no difference between thunderbolt 3 to 4 in games. Like literally Marin of error. And if you dig up AGA videos it pretty consistently won with much better in performance. There were cases here and there where the thunderbolt egpu won but that was far a few between. So AGA would’ve still been king. But it likely never sold enough to keep making since it was Alienware only. Maybe if someone makes a proper thunderbolt 4 egpu we might see better results. As it stands the proprietary ones still show the most promise as Asus has shown with the Flow x13.

 

There would be no difference in eGPU performance between TB3 and TB3.1 (a.k.a. 4) per se, however, there should be an improvement due to the direct CPU-TB3 link from TL onwards.

 

I do hope so. If someone can get it right and you can barely see the difference between an egpu setup and a proper desktop setup I can easily seeing many people getting in on it. Myself included.

 

One other problem with the eGPUs currently on the market is poor cooling and limited size compatibility. Typically you are best off sticking with the mythical 2x blower designs Nvidia keeps showing on their website to annoy people, or you can go to 2.2 maybe but the really huge gaming cards going up to 3x can be a problem. Of course, users can always mod their eGPUs, which is much easier done than modding a laptop to convert an M.2 slot to eGPU

 

Think that’s why Razer went with the larger design for the newer core. Much better gpu compatibility. I had the slimmer model for awhile and that was a nightmare to fight anything above standard size in it. Haven’t messed with an egpu since then.

 

I look at Dell like I look at my degenerate brother.

Not sitting here hoping he(they) fail but Im done hoping they will deliver on expectation. They are great for the masses I suppose but one question in the customers head and they itchy before they realized the rash.

 

And maybe you can add: BYE BYE cool gaming laptop. (this will overheat or be slow for sure)

 

Considering you couldn’t even upgrade the gpu from the first gen to the second it’s not that much of a lose.

 

The X will be interesting...

 

Agreed, it will be designed to work with this new type of thermal paste, traditional paste will definitely not be sufficient.... So untill they sell this new paste separately there will be no tear downs, unless you plan to re-paste with LM....

I'm excited, good chance I will order one. I like taking my 51m to the beach house, but it's getting tiring lugging it on and off planes.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/nog1vk/x17_leaks_4k_160hz_slotted_ram_price_etc/

More leaks out of China. Looks like 4k 120hz, slotted RAM and 165w TGP on the GPU. I am taking the OP's word on the RAM as I can't read the pics.

 

So-dimm. And of course the TCC offset as the guarantor for Cpu temps below 100C.


I hope the pict og the KB is misleading. No num pad on an 17.3 laptop is an big failure.

 

Is Alienware headquartered in China now?

 

A 17.3 laptop and no 10-key? :/

 

Could be they will offer it as a new must have feature for the X17R2 refresh. Dell did similar with the m15/m17 and the Area-51m series. First models of the "Legend" design come without the SD-Card reader Then it become the standard with the refresh before they removed it again for the R5 and R6.

 

It's clear that they're after the Razer Blade 17. Stark resemblance from the top down view.

The cooling solution is more robust than Razer's odd V shaped fins. Only time will tell what the peak potential will be with this system and new cooling design.



Sent from my SM-N986U1 using Tapatalk

 

TCC offset is the future.(sarcasm)
Eventually Dell might even remove the Heatsink.(sarcasm)

Customer just have to accept SLOW and COOL is the new Dell/Alienware (No sarcasm)

In the race to mediocrity, i believe, Alienware just took the lead.(Sad, very sad)

 

@Lakshya wasn't agree with me. And I understand that not all is able to see the same as me http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...r4-owners-lounge.835058/page-78#post-11095477

The direction Dell have pushed the Alienware brand haven't changed since they released the BGA model in 2015.

 

Yeah, ludicrous. I wouldn't even consider a 15-inch without a numeric keypad... totally sucks.

 

I wouldnt even call that a missed opportunity because its just expected on 17.3 and for me on 15.6 though I can understand others not caring about it on 15.6, its just surprising.

I guess their target market is far and away from what got them that prestige in the first place lol

 

100%... they have lost all of us and there is little or no opportunity for redemption at this point. They aren't looking for it, maybe even oblivious to their own failures and demonstrations of incompetence, and we trust them about as far as we can throw them. They didn't really have much choice. Finding a new market was a matter of survival when they alienated (pun intended) the group that made their brand famous. They're still riding on the coattails of that legacy even though they bear no resemblance to what they once were.

 

Not at all mate, you probably misunderstood my post. I did go through my post again, and in case I happen to come across that way, I would like to clarify the same.

I very well know that Alienware is indeed delving deeper into their fetish for thin and lights, which is pretty obvious given their move towards the X series. But my point was that I don't like that AW is heading towards that direction at all (as if the current m15/m17 R4's weren't thin enough). It's now getting to the point that the distinction between a Razer Blade and an Alienware can no longer be made, which could possibly mean no Max P options in the future (even if they threw a Max P in there, it is certainly going to throttle. And the m17 R4 was housing a 150W GPU, no one would expect the X series to handle that for sure). Alienware loses a point here itself.

If anyone from this group was heading AW, we would like to keep this brand unique and different from others, is what I meant. The current m15 r5 Ryzen edition, GizmoSlipTech showed how even on a CPU only load like Cinebench, it could barely handle 53W of power at 90C. So after the omission of the vapor chamber, this now has been reduced to Macbook-tier thermals. So how would the X, which is thinner than the current m15 fare any better at all? Let AW try. All that cost is going to reflect heavily on RMAs. Razer will continue to be the thin and light it used to be, but AW will lose its status for sure, which is already diminishing anyway. For my previous post I'd like to say it again, I know they are chasing them, but they shouldn't, is what I meant. "Why does Alienware feel the need to compete with Razer" is what I said. I do agree they are taking that route to Razer here, but why they're doing so is beyond me. So please don't take it that way, mate. I guess I should have been more clear about it.

 

Yeah. Dell is likely doing this, so that if a customer complains that his laptop is overheating, customer representative will ask the user to lower TCC offset to 15. Overheating solved like magic, as most users don't even know what TCC offset is, and therefore they are unaware of the pitfalls of altering the offset. I'll tell you how bad Dell service really is.

I had a Dell Inspiron 5577 Gaming laptop with the i7 7700HQ, my first gaming laptop which I purchased in 2018. After 6 months the CPU started running hot. Dell sends a technical rep, who couldn't solve it and made it worse. I had terrible temps going up to 100C with core differentials of over 20C, at just 35ish W on CPU only loads, which is unacceptable on a gaming laptop.

My Conversation with Dell Support on Overheating

Me: Sent a screenshot showing how the CPU runs up to 100C during NFS Payback

Dell Support: For NFS Payback, recommended specs are not met by a GTX 1050 system, so maybe thats why it's running hot. Try another game. (Ridiculous argument)

Me: Showed them another game where CPU hit 100C again. Showed COD Infinite Warfare.

Dell Support: Okay. Now turn off turbo boost.

Me: But why? That will deteriorate performance right? I already told that CPU likely isn't making proper contact with heatsink, hence the high core differentials. Also the CPU is rated for 45W, so why is it throttling at 35W CPU only, and 22W during gameplay?

Dell: Those core differentials you just showed are probably because those cores are not loaded. Your laptop is working as per the design. (Very commonly spammed phrase in Dell ecosystem)

Me: Did you look at the CPU Usage? 100%.

Dell: I understand, but we have to follow the protocol, as instructed to us by our higher authorities. So please turn off turbo boost.

It was pretty clear that I need to do something in order to convince them to send out a technician to replace that warped heatsink. CPU was maxing at around 85C without turbo, as the wattage went down considerably with an obvious dip in performance as well. So I slowed my fans down so that temps can rise.

Me: Temps are back at 94C again. This is without turbo boost, so kindly schedule the technician visit.

Dell: Last step, kindly boot into BIOS. And do the stress test there.

Me: How much more testing you need me to do? Already a lot of hours have been spent in the process, so no more testing please.

Dell: BIOS test runs outside the influence of any OS. So it rules out any software issues.

Me: Any OS/software issue is not going to load the CPU/GPU beyond 100%. So your argument does not hold ground. Secondly, I purchased this to play games, which is literally the purpose of a gaming laptop. You can't tell me to be fine with whatever the BIOS shows.

Dell: But dear, this is a mandatory step in troubleshooting. Please share with us a photo of the temps you get there.

I booted into BIOS, found how the stress test wasn't making the CPU warm at all. There was no way to check the clock speeds either, and no way to check GPU temps at all. I found the BIOS stress test was probably gimped in Dell's favour. Ran Dell SupportAssist's software and upon running their combined stress test, got temps to 100C on the CPU, and reported the screenshot.

Dell: We agree, but please do the BIOS test as advised.

Me: It's a CPU only load which doesn't even touch the GPU. How does that cover that use case where the GPU is lit up?

Dell: (clueless) please do bios test.

I then decided to roll the laptop, covered it with a blanket. Managed to get the CPU to 95C. If Dell is intentionally throttling CPU within BIOS, thats really bad. But I had to get the heatsink replaced somehow from Dell, as only then the core differentials would come down. Which meant I had no choice but to do this.

Me: Here you go. Any more testing and I'll complain to the seniormost department.

Dell finally agreed, sent over a technician.

See, this is the amount of work you have to put in, to get a technician to service your laptop. Despite showing them how the i7 7700HQ was throttling way below the advertised TDP, they don't care to listen. And with the introduction of TCC offset, cases involving warped heatsink are likely going to get even more complicated.

What happened during the technician visit: He wasn't able to fix it despite the heatsink swap. Technician wondered why GPU is running at 83C and CPU is running at 100C. (He doesn't know obviously that GPU die is much bigger, so it's easier to cool GPUs than CPUs). Technician then called up customer care, the customer rep first questioned his ability to apply thermal paste. Then he was told to download Intel DPTF (the cancer software), he ended up downloading some other laptop's DPTF which caused BSOD. I decided to act like I didn't know much about it, and said to Dell, what are you going to do about this now. They still continued to be in denial, and continued to say that your laptop is working as per design despite it throttling at just 20W during gameplay and going below the base clock at times. So I decided to hit the court, and somehow this was enough to wake Dell up and they refunded my money as an out of court settlement.

Dell is super clever at rejecting overheating claims these days. The trick they play is, they would divert your case to escalations team who takes a lot of time in providing resolutions, and has fully planned to deny any overheating complaints you make. You cannot reach out to the escalation team yourself, unless they decide to give you a call. The worst part is, if you contact customer care normally or even social media team, they'll only say that the case is with escalations team and we can't help. You'll be stuck in an infinite loop, so don't let the cases go to escalations team is one tip. Even better, don't buy anything which bears the name Dell/Alienware.

 

Surprised that lesson still needs to be said after the 17 r2 problems.

 

So, the x15 is a thing confirmed by Nvidia. (source: TechPowerUp)
Edit: Articles about the x15 and x17 are already coming out. Here's one from The Verge.

 

If you’re an Alienware enthusiast, be aware that the company’s mainstay graphics amplifier port is missing. We asked Alienware about this, and it provided this statement to The Verge:

Today’s latest flagship desktop graphics cards achieve graphical power beyond what the Alienware Graphics Amplifiers (as well as other external graphics amplifiers) can successfully port back through PCI (and Thunderbolt) connections. For Alienware customers who are already purchasing high-end graphics configurations, the performance improvements from our Alienware Graphics Amplifier would be limited. While improvements would be noticeable, in many cases it wouldn’t be enough to justify purchasing an external amplifier and flagship graphics card. So instead, we are using that additional space to offer extra ports and thermal headroom which provides a better experience for all gamers purchasing this product.

Right from the horse’s mouth. The new thinness stopped the implantation of the GA port. The same reason also for skipping the numpad on the X17.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/1/2...ia-rtx-3080-price-release-date-features-specs

"in many cases it wouldn’t be enough to justify purchasing an external amplifier and flagship graphics card. So instead, we are using that additional space to offer extra ports and thermal headroom which provides a better experience for all gamers purchasing this product"

 

Alienware's way behind many manufacturers these days. In the pursuit of Razer's form factor, they're getting beat by other brands, and most recently, they got the L from Asus this time.

1. Lack of AGA Port: @Papusan, because they want to prevent the user from using the AGA port and getting a possible 3080 Super/4080 in the future. Asus on the other hand, instead made an entire product line out of this, the Flow X13 and people are already liking it. They even plan on including the proprietary egpu interface into their upcoming lineups. Who knows, they may even allow future 4080 stuff to run on the flow x13 (not sure how much that thing would be bottlenecked by the CPU though )

2. Vapour Chamber: AW removed VC on all their laptops, whereas Asus has finally included a vapour chamber for their Strix G15 Advantage Edition. It also gets LM for both CPU and GPU. At least Asus doesn't obsess over thickness like AW does. They keep both the Strix and Zephyrus lineups so that people can get whatever they really want. They claim a 25W increase in cooling capacity over the previous 30 series models. Although final reviews are yet to be seen, it does make for a good first impression.

Alienware should really learn from what Asus is doing. When all brands are throwing every bit of R&D in their arsenal - LM on GPUs, Vapor Chamber, AW is obsessed with 100C being normal. AW is no longer the Alien Tech it once claimed to be, in fact even Hoomans are doing better lol.

Edit: Found out that the X15 from AW has a 90W 3080. That's yet another L right there. Quad Fans, eh?

 

All is about the Z-height from AW nowadays. The shrinking race continue. Less I/O ports (x15 even worse and with 3 less ports than the x17), No AGA port, still not a maxed out battery (87 Wh). No network port, no cherry low-profile mechanical KB or mem so-dimm slots for the x15 and no real KB with num-pad for the 17,3 inch model. You get less of everything.

Alien autopsy: Meet the radical 'Element 31' cooling inside Alienware's new X-series gaming laptops pcworld.com

Here's what Alienware's mysterious Element 31 is made of, and how it works.

Element 31—named for gallium’s 31st place on the periodic table—is essentially an encapsulated gallium liquid metal and one of the exotic materials Alienware used to make the stupidly thin Alienware x15 and x17 laptops....

Element 31 yielded a significant performance advantage too. North said the company saw a 7.5 degree improvement over the conventional thermal grease the company has used before. North noted that the grease Alienware used was already the “best in class” and no slouch.

“It looks like a grease, you apply it, compress the heat sink by screwing it down, it breaks the bonds of the silicone so we get liquid-metal to die touch points and to the base of the heat sink touch points,” he said.

Despite Element 31 not having the electrical conductivity of conventional liquid metals, North did say Alienware still took the extra safety step of fencing Element 31 off which is what most laptop makers have had to do with their liquid-metals.... Yeah, it need to be safe to apply when we know how Dell's in-hired outsourced tech team handle things. Better safe than sorry.

Dell's lead thermal engineer Travis North is the main spokesman for the 100C beauty and also the man behind this messed up thermal solution...



I would be damn mad if I had to struggle in blind with all needed ports on the back. But I expect Dell will try up-sell their Dell Docking Station as stated in the I/O specs. And I hate dongles. Only Apple-books have less I/O ports on the sides.


No Network port for the x15. Dongles needed.

Alienware x15 R1 Setup and Specifications
View PDF

Alienware x15 R1 Service Manual
View PDF


Alienware x17 R1 Setup and Specifications
View PDF

Alienware x17 R1 Service Manual
View PDF

Alienware's x15 and x17 Are Thinner than Ever, and Use Custom Element 31 Cooling tomshardware.com

The cherry on top. Alienware is also bringing back RGB lighting on the touchpad, but that will only show up in models with an RTX 3080 GPU.

Vapor Chamber is an expensive feature. Hence will only be offered in their High-end as the new thin X-series. But only for the X17.

(Note that Element 31 will only come in configurations with an RTX 3070 or RTX 3080).

 

Yep butcher the lower end to make the new thin crap seem a more attractive option.

 

X15 is gimped compared to even m15 r5. No upgradeable RAM even. X17 top end is heavier than the old m17r4 with just the upgradeable RAM being an advantage. No reason to get either. I’ll keep my Legion 7 for the time being lol. They could have put desktop grade GPU on the x17 at least.