*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 R2 / m17 R2 Owner's Lounge

Plus they get to rip the customers off by pushing overpriced slow memory on them. No option to just get 8GB, throw the garbage Dell SODIMM away (or push it in eBay) and upgrade with proper memory modules.

That's not actually that helpful either since one needs to upgrade with a module with same timings, which is easiest to ensure by using a RAM kit.

 

Etern4l is right. Thinner notebooks than AW's "thin" series are perfectly capable of having ram slots and almost no vendor believes that wifi isn't something that will need to be upgraded over the course of the life of the notebook. It's simply planned obsolescence. None of their super thin corporate designs work this way either. If this is permanently their way of building machines, then AW is simply something I'll no longer purchase.

 

It's almost as is Frank Azor left because of this. Dell let him make the Area 51m, but told him they were gonna be making changes without his insight. Plus he got facts wrong on the m15 r2 laptop all together when asked about it a couple months ago. He thought it had a single ram upgrade slot. So hopefully him going to AMD means we will see a decent DTR with amd parts and proper upgradable parts, then this might be a good thing in the end.

Not holding my breath though.

 

Does anyone else have a clicking noise from one of their fans? Here is what my right fan sounds like. Do you think I should exchange it?

 

Sounds like when my fans came off balance. I believe the bearing goes out or is defective.
If the rest of the machine and performance are fine, and you want to keep it, you can have Dell warranty the fans using your in-home warranty. I'd call and find out how soon they could get it done. If they give you any crap at all, id just initiate a return.

 

Had such high hopes for the m17 r2. Oh well, I guess I'll take my wallet elsewhere.

 

Right now it's at a good price for my use, the 2060 model with 16gb ram costs 1800 after tax, and comes with a $200 gift card. (effectively 1600 after tax) My problems are that asus should be launching its 17.3" 240hz fleet around Sept 15th, and also that Alienwares extended warranty is double the cost of everyone else's for 3 years.

Hard sell.

 

Thanks. I bought it at BestBuy and it has the old WiFi card and the 2070. It think I’ll just return this one and order a new one from Dell with the new WiFi and 2080 while I’m at it.

 

Wow. With Dell’s Labor Day sale I was able to get the 2080 and new WiFi card for less than the 2070 and old WiFi at BestBuy.

 

Very nice. Debating purchasing one myself. On the BestBuy model, was the screen bright as I hear, around 400 nits?

 

The OLED looks great and is plenty bright.

Does anyone know if I can swap drives from my current M15 over to my replacement M15 or will it mess up Windows activation? It would be nice not having to start from scratch setting things up.

 

Unfortunately since it’s a new computer with different hardware that’s not advisable.
Yes, it will work but there is a high likelihood it won’t be a smooth experience. Spend the hour and reformat / fresh install if you want to use the old SSD.

 

Hey guys, I might be getting to review the Alienware M15 R2 at the end of the month. Let me know if there's any specifics you guys would like to see. Specs:

Intel Core i7-9750H 6-Core
8GB RAM
256GB SSD
1080p 60Hz Display
RTX 2060
180W Power Adapter

 

Would be awesome if you can test with this method:

overall testing enviorment explanation e.g. uv, oc, room temp, repaste (if any)

Laptop flat and back raised
- log with HWInfo (cpu core clocks, cpu temps, thermal throttling, gpu - same, pch)
- warm up session for 15 minutes any game you like/cpu and gpu demanding game
- tab out, reset hwinfo and play for 30 minutes
- tab out and screenshot

 

Some of what you are looking for from my 9980HK testing in Cinebench. Now that I have the CPU figured out I'm going to start playing more with the GPU.

This was after a repaste to LM. Was getting terrible temps due to uneven core temps - likely a heatsink not screwed in perfectly.

 

Thank you very much for the effort and data.
Only problem i have is with this synthetic benchmarks. There are too short and synthetic.
Sustanied core clock and temps are hard to understand in quiet (uv) and full speed (uv). With a game it would be more clear.

 

Agree, that's why I took a screen shot of XTU monitoring after an hour of playing Division 2. Mostly stays at 1 core, but does spike to 8 periodically. Temps stayed below 80c and GPU stayed at about 70c. This was all on quiet fan mode profile set in Alienware Command Center. Note that the CPU stayed at 25w for almost the entire gaming session. Division 2 is not an intensive CPU game, but thought I'd share the results. No throttling or overheating but that would be pretty bad if it needed to at 25w...

Here's a 3DMark Time Spy 1.0 run from earlier as well to give you a performance idea. That run is currently #3 for 2080 Max Q cards though I'm sure it will be moved down quickly as people get more of these in their hands.

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/8477603

 

If you could choose 1:

M15 r2 i7 6 core, OLED, 2070

Or

M17 r2 i7 6 core 144hz 2070

 

M15 R2, since for a 17" I would prefer a Area-51m.

Also that OLED...super nice quality.

 

Thanks for that. Did you locked your cpu? Can´t believe The Division 2 uses only 3.07 Ghz^^

 

Yeah I agree. I actually just got the 15” OLED from Best Buy today. The screen is every bit as beautiful as my13 OLED.

 

are you having any scaling issues since it''s a 4K screen?

 

If you don't play games - OLED is good choice. Otherwise the better display choice is 15" 240hz IGZO display since it has better response rate, better contrast and lower power consumption than 144hz panel, and unlike OLED it is not limited to 60hz and not glossy.

 

No, sir. Scaled bf5 to 1080p it’s perfect. I actually don’t miss the 144 when looking at this OLED. Plays very nice.

 

I use my 51m for heavy gaming. Wanted a smaller laptop for a tighter are I need it in.

 

I thought it was odd as well so just tested it again during a 30 minute Heroic mission in Division 2. Look at the # of times all 8 cores were used! Maxed out at 82c entire run even when all 8 cores were running at 3.23 (not that high but impressive for 34w). Zero throttling entire time.

Division 2 players - please note that this game seems to hate overclocked GPUs. I couldn't understand why I was having issues till I went onto some other forums and found some users having issues with OC'ed graphics. Once I switched it back to stock no issue.

 

I just received my Alienware m15 r2 and thought I would give some initial impressions. Got a very good deal on it during the labor day sale:

Lunar Light Edition
i7 9750H
RTX 2070
16GB RAM
512GB SSD
240Hz upgraded screen

$2499
17% Discount
5% Additional Discount (chose financing, then paid it off as soon as it hit my credit card)
+$50 instant discount
+$200 Prepaid Visa
Effectively came to $1629 once the prepaid Visa arrives. Not bad.


Initial thoughts on build quality:
+Excellent fit and finish
+Keyboard is well above expectations
+240Hz screen is perfect. No screen bleed. Excellent uniformity. Impressive brightness
+Lunar Light edition looks even better in person

-not a fan of the glossy bezel, even though it is much smaller than previous models
-track pad works very well, but is small and when clicking it, feels cheap. I've been spoiled by my MacBook Pro.


Irritations:
-Despite setting the device manager settings to allow the keyboard to wake the computer from sleep mode, it doesn't work. I need to press the power button. Ill need to research the BIOS next.
-The speakers are strong and loud, but … something is off. There are a ton of equalizer settings and presets, but I just can't seem to find a setting that feels right. Everything sounds slightly harsh or muffled dependent upon the setting. I just cannot get the right clarity in voices.

In terms of appearance and design, I think this is their best looking laptop to date....but I still think it looks less impressive than the offering from Razer. I'm actually still tempted by the Razer model, but the numerous horror stories on quality and customer service have me worried. Plus a equivalent model would cost ~400-500 more.

I'll try a few games soon. She is running in balanced mode currently.

 

Can you take a side by side pic of area-51m vs m15? I am impatient, I get to play with one in 2 weeks

 

Guys help me, I just got my Alienware M17 R2 Lunar Light and it came with defective right speaker, sound has distortion when volume is more than 60% and I am trying to search where can I buy the replacement speaker because I bought the notebook in Usa and travelled to Brazil, and here they do not sell this model. I tried ownership transfer and I am waiting a dell reply to see If they will fix it here in Dell Brazil, but I want to search for the right speaker replace part in case they do not fix it I will buy the part and fix this.

 

Thought I would give a quick thermal update on my new m15. I kept everything stock, and did no overclocking/voltage changes to anything. I grabbed the free version of 3DMark, and put the laptop through the Time Spy graphics test. With the CPU fans set to "performance" (high cooling) the CPU was consistently hitting 100+ degrees Celsius during every test, and remained at 97-100+ until the test was over.

<edit> Played some Gears of war 5 at Ultra settings. Same thing. 100 degrees Celcius in multiple spikes, down to 78, back up to 100. I don't know how far it went past that, as Dells graph caps at 100 degrees Celsius.

<edit 2> Downloading/loading Plex library onto new system, 84-97 degrees Celcius, fan @ 80% speed

 

I would but its getting boxed up. Cant get the damn thing to recognize ethernet cord plugged in.

 

It needs a repaste. I had same issues when I got Dell G7 (which has same hardware as Alienware m15 r2 just different chassis and no second m.2 slot). Repasting it with conventional paste dropped temps by about 10-15c. You can use conventional paste - some people in these forums like Phobya Nanogrease Extreme or you can go with liquid metal for best performance.

 

Is there any chance of 32GB RAM becoming available on these machines? If not, the only thing it has going for it is the superior keyboard compared to the competition.

Would also like Windows Hello but meh...

 

They said, there won´t be 32 Gb Ram for this machine.

 

Anyone here with the OLED 15"?

I seem to notice screen tearing in games worse with games that run 90-100fps. Didnt seem so bad on my 13r3 OLED. I know vsync will solve it but man playing insurgency sandstorm or BF3/4 capped at 60fps is a disaster waiting to happen to my stats. I know I bought this with intentions using it more for video/photo editing and a daily grab and go. But man when I do want to play a game i want it decent, lol... Might just have to back up and punt..


Nevermind. After testing more it’s really just crappy programming in insurgency sandstorm. COD BO 4 and bf are smooth even at 200fps on 60hz panel. Digging it again

 

For those that bought either of these, how many of you have had heating issues with the CPU? Mine tried to melt down every time I loaded up Borderlands 3.

17" 144Hz display w/ eye tracking
i7 9750H
2070mQ
16Gb ram

 

Mine has been fine playing borderlands and everything so far that I've tried. I have a i9-9880H in a m15 r2. No issues so far.

 

What are your CPU temps and clock speeds in-game? Mine were riding at 100C and dropped down to 1.2-1.5GHz at times, even on low settings. Fans maxed out. Undervolted to -125mV. It was throttling bad enough to cause severe in-game stutters.

This was after getting all necessary driver/bios updates as well. You should have seen how terribly it performed before I realized I hadn't updated the Nvidia driver yet

 

To m15 R2 owners, are you happy with your laptop? Any quality issues? How is the thermal (specifically with the i7-9750H)?

 

I'm happy. Needed to undervolt the CPU slightly, but after doing that she went from throttling @ 100 degrees celsius and now hovers in the high 80s under stress tests. Build Quality is superlative. I have the 240Hz screen and it has no backlight bleed at all. I also purchased a Razer to do a side-by-side, and the Alienware keyboard is vastly superior, although the Razer had less thermal issues. But my understanding is that Razer undervolts at the factory, whereas Alienware does not.

 

In rough lines, how do the different GPU's on the m15 R2 compare in terms of temperature?
They all run roughly along the same TDP, but how does the higher core counts / clock frequencies translate in terms of temperatures?

 

The GPU is not the source of the heat problems in this laptop. My 2080 stays well below 80c at all times even when the i9 is maxing out. The CPU is the source of the heat issues hence all the talk about Throttlestop and undervolting.

 

My 15r2 OLED with 2080 and 6-core cpu gets toasty. Been tweaking it on and off for a couple weeks. Best result so far is limiting to 3.5 on all cores,, undervolt 140. Playing bf4 and insurgency sandstorm the cpu stays in the low to mid 80’s. The gpu is in the mid-upper 70’s. All stock no re-paste yet.

 

Mine arrives tommorow:

M17r2
Dark Side of the Moon
76Wh Battery (6-Cell)
Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (2x2) and Bluetooth 5.0
17.3" FHD (1920 x 1080) 144Hz 9ms 72% color gamut with Eyesafe(R) and Tobii Eyetracking technology
1TB PCIe M.2 SSD
16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 2666MHz
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 8GB GDDR6 with Max-Q Design
Windows 10 Pro (64bit) English
Killer Networking E3000 2.5Gbps Ethernet NIC
240W Power Adapter
9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750H (6-Core, 12MB Cache, up to 4.5GHz w/ Turbo Boost)

Comming from a 15 r2:

i7-6920HK 16gb DDR4 Ram
256gb M.2 SSD
1TB Hard drive, Win 10
GTX 980M 8gb DDR5
4k Display

It's a nice upgrade for me, casual gamer/power user. Main appeal is the size, dont care about weight but it helps too. The 980m played most games on med/high @4k(dx11/12) and high/ultra at 1080p so I see no concern here for gaming. As for the chief complaint thermals I think it was their lack of a binning agreement with intel, so they blanket configured the pbsmd for reliability. Almost as if they had it all worked out and intel didnt come through as promised...

 

I actually got it delivered to my House around 9am this morning via FedEx express, turns out they have a depo right in Nashville and im only 3hrs away from Nash. Prior to living here I always noticed dell orders shipped from TX.

Anyway I took some baseline benchmarks using C R15 and Crystal Disk. Im going to run some other later before I do any tweaking.

I have to say this thing is SUPER THIN, my Latitude 7490 is the same thickness. The videos and photos online and on the Dell website do it no justice at all. In fact they have an angle in the photos on the dell website that make the back(exhaust part) of the laptop appear thicker than the rest of the laptop when in fact it tapers off thinner!

The keyboards slight click is very satisfying, for me it has never been about travel but coming from MX Blues that little tactile feedback and click is a massive plus in a laptop im not used to.

The alien head logo are noticeably flat instead of concave and they are slightly recessed. I like the new look.

Boot times are fast, mine came with the Micron 2200s 1024gb, which its website gives it a low 500mbps read but the benchmarking program and general responsiveness puts it right up with the Corsair MP500 and Samsung mvne drives.

Coming from a 60hz 4k display to the 144hz 1080p display doesn't really trade blows, in fact this display and the responsiveness is on a whole new level. Granted quad pixel @ 1080p made for a slightly sharper view but it almost had a unlifelike feel.

Just from the few windows sounds so far ive heard it had just enough depth in the audio for me, better speakers would be more desirable but its very slim and I use wired headphones most of the time anyway. Im going to explore the power and clarity of the DAC on headphones later.

It has some very pleasing aesthetics and it has a solid rigid feel, an upgrade from the slightly plasticity but still ok feel of the 15 R2. It slips right in my briefcase style alienware bag that came with the 15 r2.

I will post photos later.

As for my purchase experience Ive been dealing with dell forever so I know all the tricks, im also a retailer(not for dell anymore) so I know when to catch a deal. I did not preorder, I used my dell DFS account linked to my dell university account with the additional SAVE10 discount going on. I also got 6% back on my purchase($135.48) that I used today to buy NEW ALIENWARE WIRED/WIRELESS GAMING MOUSE AW610M - Dark Side of the Moon for $104.25 and the ENHANCE GX-C1 - Laptop fan for $27.43.

Arrives By Oct. 07, 2019
Price
Qty
Total
Alienware 610M Wired/Wireless Gaming Mouse - Dark Side...
$94.99
Arrives By Oct. 07, 2019
Price
Qty
Total
ENHANCE GX-C1 - Laptop fan
$24.99
Subtotal
$119.98
Shipping
$0.00
Estimated Tax
$11.70
Total
$131.68

Laptop Purchase:


Arrives By Oct. 09, 2019
Price
Qty
Total

Alienware m17 R2
$2,257.91
1
$2,257.91
Subtotal
$2,257.91
Shipping
$0.00
Estimated Tax
$220.15
Total
$2,478.06

It said Est OCT 9th when I ordered on Friday the 27th but it shipped on Oct 1st and arrived on Oct 2nd(today) which is great! THATS JUST 5 DAYS!

 

My suggestion to all new users: download Forza Horizon 4 demo, it is free, and use the benchmark with frame limit and vsync disabled in this demo's settings. Unlike most synthetic benchmarks this will be realistic since Forza Horizon 4 is real game, and the benchmark will stress both your GPU and CPU like no other. Just run it and watch the temps climb in hwinfo ;-)

 

I've left everything stock in terms of balanced\performance and it's been hovering in the 80s for temps on the CPU IIRC, I'll have to watch it more closely or have it log while I'm playing get you a better idea.

 

Idk why this thread isn't stickied but......I am here to fix a misconception about the m15 R2/m17 R2 in terms of the 8GB RAM config.

I am currently finishing up my review video but I have found the RAM to be in DUAL channel even at 8GB. It's 2x4GB not 1x8GB config. All apps I have used including CPU-Z and HWInfo confirm this as well. I guess no one bothered to look? That's what I am here for though. Expect the review to be up in a few hours.

And enjoy this:

 

I don’t know that anyone had the balls just buy a 8gb soldered machine to try it even look at the config. Everyone I’ve seen or talk to goes straight to 16gb. Especially knowing they are stuck with it with no upgrading.

 

8GB... What fall from grace. In an era of $125 32GB RAM kits...

The CB20 score is pretty standard.