*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Owner's Lounge

Just subbed your YT channel. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it.

 

Well... i just tested my other games and I never went above 94c on CPU, and never above 76c on GPU. I think that's actually livable since my main use will not be gaming.

However, I'm leaning towards returning right now because this thing is just too warm to even use comfortably when not even in a game. I just compared it to my 2014 MBP 13" and XPS 13 and it definitely gets warmer than both by a noticeable margin. I plan on letting cool off in sleep mode then trying again just to make sure it's just not having trouble cooling back down after gaming, but my gut tells me it's not that.

 

That's my only remaining concern with the m15 is non-gaming temps. It seems to want to have the fans off at idle, which makes the CPU run at about 55 and the bottom of the chassis is fairly warm. I don't mind in the winter, but it will drive me crazy in the summer.

I dealt with this on my 15r3 by having a custom fan curve via HWInfo64 so that the fan is going at a low speed at idle, keeping the CPU around 40 and the chassis nice and cool.

I'm just hoping Dell with either update the BIOS to support fan speed control or will fix AWCC so that the user-defined fan profiles actually work. If that hasn't changed by Christmas, I'll be sending in a ticket/bug report about it. Worst case scenario, I can run the fans at full speed periodically during the summer months to keep it from being too hot for my lap.

 

I'm really just in search of a Thin & Light 15" laptop with a full kb that includes num pad. I thought that since this laptop wasn't that much more than other options, I could also get the perk of gaming. But now I'm not sure where to look.. the full sized KB seems to be the lacking requirement on the popular options like XPS 15 and Lenovo X1 Extreme.

I see the T580 has a deal and it's at least under 5lbs... really want this M15 to work though!! It's a nice package otherwise

EDIT:

And in my case, it's the top of the KB & palmrest I have issue with, the bottom can get warm all it wants in my case... but I don't feel a ton of difference between the bottom & top right now.

 

Might want to try an undervolt. I used the below guide to do mine. I'm at work, so I can't game on it, but quick benchmarks show promise. Before undervolting, the same benchmark I hit 100c easily, after a -.150 benchmark the highest was 77c. This is a very, very short test, I'll do more later tonight, but shows promise. I might not even repaste if this is where they are hitting for me.

Guide: https://www.notebookcheck.net/How-t...ife-The-ThrottleStop-Guide-2017.213140.0.html

 

Dell just canceled my order. Probably because I used $100 worth of rewards, got %15 off, and used another $50 off code. Greedy pricks didn’t want to deliver. Tried to reorder and they said that I couldn’t use the previous $100 rewards or the 15% discount. I could use my military 10% but that’s it. So I think I’ll sideline this endeavor for now. I’m so mad.

 

Are you freaking kidding me? OK, so it’s just a matter of time then. I’ll let you know what happens with mine.

 

I wonder if there is a common component being ordered for all these people getting cancellations?

 

I have thought about this and if I had to guess based on that question, it's the 512gb pcie ssd.

 

All the order issues I have seen is due to the 512 pcie. I ordered mine with it. The one that shipped with mine is a Toshiba KXG50ZNV512G.

 

Man, sorry to hear this. Silver lining, but since you were worried already about it, maybe not meant to be? I had got told no a lot on mine when I asked for better rates. Ask to speak to a manager and don't take no for an answer. They might be able to help you.

 

Can you disable HT in the bios? With 6 physical cores I would gladly do this. In the past I know HT has added a fair amount of heat.

 

Can anyone add 1080p @ 120 hz in the Intel gpu panel? It doesn't seem to allow me to do this, say the bandwidth is not enough...

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100% agree.

I got a call from my rep after emailing him about what I had read here. They won’t budge and offer me more. $1,792 before tax for 10 pro, 8750h, 1070 mq, 16 gigs, 144 hz, 512 ssd and 90 wh battery in nebula red.

 

I didn't see an option for that during my tour of the BIOS. I did see a speed shift option, but I'd rather leave it enabled and adjust on the fly using throttle stop. I think you'd have better results using throttle stop to prevent it from turbo boosting too high and also under volting.

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What was the panel on this m15 again for the 144hz display? What do the response times look like? Anyone notice ghosting?

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Has anyone tried using CRU to make the display run @ 120 hz? https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU

Anyone have experience using this tool? After windows update, if I right click the desktop I get the nvidia control panel instead of the intel gpu panel, any way to fix this? Area we still waiting for driver fixes from dell?

I love the sound and build quality on this thing. Already undervolted it and the temps are mid 70s which is fine for me.

 

I’ve used CRU quite a bit. Are you trying to drop the Hz from 144 to 120?

 

Probably the AUO80ed. Someone will surely confirm. That’s just been a very common display right now.

 

This is what came in mine and at least 2 others I saw that posted it. I'd say the quality is very good, I did not notice any ghosting, but possibly an ever so slight input lag.

 

Can anyone confirm changing screen refresh to 120hz? Or even 60 hz for battery saving?

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Yeah maybe not, the bezel is my least favorite bezel of the $1500+ laptops right now. But man, 15% off, plus dell rewards, plus $50. They probably felt like I was stealing it. Oh well. My wife brought up a good point - maybe just wait until Feb/March.

 

Just got my m15. Have you guys figured out how to install the latest Nvidia drivers? The drivers pre-installed are quite old.

 

Download GeForce Experience app, sign in and install the latest driver through that. Optimus laptops usually have to work this way now.

 

Got through my first full day of use with my m15 today. A few minor hitches but nothing major.

Applied a -150mv undervolt, seems stable so far and brings temps down under 90 and eliminates throttling in XTU
If anyone has the issue I did where your power button stops lighting up no matter what you do, reflash your BIOS. It's the same version (1.1.0) but it fixed the issue for whatever reason, at least for me.
Speakers are so so, but I'm not too concerned with it. They're loud enough and clear, just lacking in bass/midbass. They do have very good stereo separation I think.

So far, I really like the laptop for what it is. I knew when I got something this thin and light heat would be a concern, and it can be especially without the undervolt, but I think it's a good compromise, at least for my use case. This wasn't meant to replace my desktop, even though for a lot of people I think it very well could.

 

I got to play around with it a little more this evening. I am still running with a -150mv undervolt and I also set speed shift to 140 in throttlestop. This caps the CPU boost to about roughly 3ghz. also for testing set the Alienware Command Center to performance mode so the fans ran at max.

3dmark Timespy fresh out of the box with no tweaks was 4770 : https://www.3dmark.com/spy/5130542

And now with the undervolt and speed shift adjustment I ran 3dmark Timespy again and got a score of 5132 : https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/30754903

Then I ran Prime 95 for about 30 minutes and HWiNFO shows the average CPU temp was 82 deg C with max temp spikes to 100 deg C
its about 24 deg C in the room I am testing in so not in a freezer or anthing.

Looking around the score seems pretty good and I think the temps are where I expected. And no throttling

 

So I installed the m.2 heatsink. No more stuttering. Now a new thing has come up. When playing Forza Horizon 4 Team Adventure the battery will discharge a little and lots of power limit throttles. The 180 watt power brick is super hot. I'm thinking of trying the 180 watt power brick from my 17r3.

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That won't make a difference. They probably use the same power adapter. You should use a 240 or 330watt to remove the powerlimit.

 

Day 2... did an undervolt and some gaming tonight.

First, during work on battery. I plugged it in around 45%. This was watching a 10 hour youtube video in the background for about 2 hours, and about 1-2 hours of web browsing through the day. Not scientific or exact by any means, but like knowing I can use it for a few hours and still have about half my battery. This is with screen at 40% and power setting to balanced.

Undervolted at first to -.160 and played without a hitch for about 30 minutes and then BSOD. Changed it to -.150 and played awhile, then -.125. Very little difference between the two. Kept it at -.125 due to the BSOD at -.160. Also have speed shift to 140. Speed shift in FFXIV was about a 10c difference and Intel Extreme Utility well over 20c.

FFXIV for 1-2 hours (at -.125 undervolt and 140 speed shift) - stable temps around 75-77.
FFXV for 5 minutes (at -.125 undervolt and 140 speed shift) - stable temps in the low 80s.

I have not repasted and honestly the temps are to the point where I doubt a repaste will make enough of a difference. The keyboard deck still gets very, very hot. The palm area isn't bad, but do feel it on the keys themselves. I was running Discord and chatting with a friend and had the game volume at around 30%. I barely heard the fans, if at all with those temps. I can hear my wifes desktops (about 6ft away) fans more than I can this PC. This was all on "balance" mode in ACC.

Another odd issue, though. Steam randomly lost all its settings. I had to reboot, launch as admin, change all the settings back (FPS top-left, no overlay, no news popup, minimize friends) and reboot again to get them to stick. Very strange, but hey its Windows so who knows.

Pretty happy with these results.

 

It is the same reason I will be returning my Blade 15 which is a lovely machine build quality wise and ran my games perfectly - my issue is that I wanted to be able to use it for productivity too..

I had to undervolt and fiddle all sorts of settings just to get it to idle at 30 degrees (celsius) and show >10 hours of battery life (with 144hz screen on and "Better battery"), with average idle power of under 2W. However, even when I am doing productivity/downloading stuff/watching a video, it heats up enough for it not be comfortable on my lap.

I don't want to fiddle with things further, such as changing turbo multipliers or disabling turbo while on battery etc - kind of defeats the purpose of having these machines.

This seems to a be a problem not just on your laptop, but the Blade 15, Aero 15x, MacBook Pro 15, XPS 9570, MSI GS65 etc - notice a pattern? All on the new i7-8XXXH CPU's with a thin chassis. This CPU is far hotter than it's predecessor and it is just unreasonable to try get it to run cooler due to how powerful it is.

I decided to call it a day and buy a new XPS 13 9370 instead because, I can game using that connected to my external + eGPU at 60+ FPS, while if I am doing productivity I don't have to burn my lap or worry about the battery dying quickly.

I think these machines are fine if you're mainly planning to use them on desks and with a charger about, but forget comfortably portable use.

 

You can do that and it will help with the power limit? Where do I find one from Dell?

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Running any system with 30c on idle is quite hard even for the thicke rmodels with previous gen core i7s.

 

It should actually read 30's, so it idled between 34-38 for me. I am in the UK though and it is winter, so that helps.

 

What is a comfortable temperature at idle time? I bought it not for playing but mainly for machine learning application using the GPU while I'm not in the office.
Apart from this, I will mainly web browsing and watching movies. I'd like not to have a boiler on my lap while doing this.

 

Ok new updates...

I tried the Throttlestop suggestions... On the CPU, I did an undervolt of 125mv AND I disabled turbo mode (just to see what's the best I could do) and my temps went from low 90's in Rocket League down to 68c ... and I didn't notice a dang bit of difference playing the game! Very impressed... likely I will add turbo back in and see what the in-between is.

The other thing I found was the "Cool" and "Performance" fan settings in AWCC... I tried making my own custom curves in AWCC but I don't think they were working.

*EDIT* The reason I know they weren't working is because I would force the setting to 35% with the Fixed option, and they wouldn't move to 35% no matter how I tried to apply my custom profile.

In fact the only one I know for sure works is the Performance setting because it just blasts the fans. I do think once the fan control is corrected, there may be an acceptable balance between noise and heat. Due to this... I did the next part...

I looked up a breakdown video to see what is under the right palm rest, as it easily gets hotter than the left. Turns out directly under that area is the mechanical hard drive should you opt for one (I ordered it with the 1tb mechanical only since I had an SSD waiting). I checked the system temps and it was 32c (100f), so I thought it would help to remove it. So this morning I took out the 1tb drive (and unfortunately it was a Seagate... hate that brand) and put in my 512 950pro... did the Windows install but it was still running updates when I left.

ONE POSSIBLE NEGATIVE...

While I was taking off the bottom chassis, the system started to creak. I figured this was just due to the bottom plate keeping the tension and didn't think anything of it until I reassembled and a small creak was still there... So I flipped it back over and tried to tighten one screw at a time... it came down to one specific screw that only took a super tiny twist to eliminate the creak. My worry is that the tiny bit of tightening corrected the issue (I can't describe how small of a turn, it barely moved guys) that over time this system will start to creak and there is only so much tightening you can do. For now it's just something to keep an eye on.

One last comment is that it wasn't until I was re-doing the windows install and staring at a lot of black screens that I noticed just how bad the BLB is on my unit. If you're real picky about this, you may have a major panel lottery to be up against. I don't notice it at all during normal use and my typical use will just be in windows, so it did not bother me much. But FYI.

 

Why can't you go to geforce.com and download the drivers there? No geforce app and no sign in.

 

I too would like this solution, but I really want a slightly larger laptop and numpad to go along with it. I would take a 15" with the 8250u in it to keep it nice and cool and light for sure... maybe I just don't know enough laptop models. I really think the design and form factor of this M15 is near perfect though, it's just the dang heat on the surface!

 

If you are having trouble installing your GeForce driver on Optimus laptops it's because the iGPU is the display source when attempting to install the Nvidia driver. The Nvidia driver won't recognize the GPU since the iGPU is doing the work.

I haven't seen this work any other way these days.

 

Would it work if we temporarily disabled the iGPU?

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If you think the HDD has heat put 2 970 Evo 1 TB drives in without the heatsink, I thought the hairs on the side of my hand singed.

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I think it's more due to the location. I can live with more heat under my fingertips which is closer to where the M.2 ports are, whereas the mechanical drive location is directly under my palm where I like to rest my hands. I don't typically rest my finger tips (outside of gaming, but I'm fine with heat in that scenario).

 

I don't think you can disable the iGPU. Nothing wrong with the GeForce app.

 

Im, in the netherlands so equally cold

But 38c is already a big difference ofcourse.

 

Always worked that way for me... Never had any Problem doing it that way. I hate that piece of spy-junkware called GeForce XP. I dont know why u should even use it...

 

Never had an issue with GeForce experience, don't know why so many people hate it.

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So in your guys' opinion, with the temps everyone is seeing, would it make sense to wait on the i5 version if you're not doing "intensive" gaming? I just want a unit that can handle most games without worry, but will be a solid content creating/productivity unit also.

 

If i am not wrong, i think the display signal is sent through the igpu (when you have optimus), so it´s not possible to disable the intel gpu.
With my last optimus laptop (MSI Ge40 with 850M) it was possible to update the intel drivers and then just install the newest nvidia drivers.
I thought that AW Laptops need AW drivers because of the Graphics amplifier, so they need modified drivers?

 

I think the i5 will be the perfect sweet spot between performance, battery life and thermals. I7 with 6 cores might make sense for people who want to compile programs or do a lot of multimedia editing.

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I completely agree. I wanted an i5, but couldn't wait for timing. The i7 will be fine if you don't mind tweaking it some to prevent overheating. Seems like that is possible without repasting if you don't need maximum performance.

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I don't think there will be a big heat difference between the two CPU's, they are both 45w parts. I also don't think there will be a big performance difference though either, I'd have opted for the i5 to save some bucks if it were available.