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

That's what i have tried to tell to every freaking uninformed youtuber that in the notebook specifications dell states clearly it's a 2x4gb config but noo every whinny OMG soldered 8 gb single channel....

 

I do recommend 16GB of RAM though. If this was my personal machine, it would have 16GB and a 4K OLED display.

The CB score you see is after UV and using adding some airflow under.

The CPU shoots straight to 100C on two cores, not all. I'm assuming heatsink uneven, thermal pad too thick, or thermal paste needs to be repasted. Unfortunately the cpu and gpu are on the opposite side.

Out of the box CB was 28XX, very low. The performance is there, just not the cooling. I didn't run into any weird limits or anything.

 

I'm also considering a new M15 R2... Cannot decide on the screen. I need it for photo editing. I'm afraid the OLED will be too saturated and darks hiding too much detail.
Someone has experience with photo editing and OLED or the 240Hz screen? Thanks in advance!

 

Thanks, I will be upgrading my m15 R1 to 64GB RAM soon though

 

Ill prob have LNIB oled 6 core,2070, 16gb ram, 512ssd with 3 year geek squad/accidental warranty for sale soon.

 

Took too long but finally done and published:

I actually mention the R1 as a viable option especially with 64GB RAM in my conclusion LOL

 

Does anyone know if the 17 inch version has a bigger and therefore stronger cooling system then the 15 inch? Is the 2080 maxq in the 17 inch any faster or has a higher power limit than the 15 inch model?

 

They are almost exactly the same in every way except for the screen.

 

Why I Won’t Use Less than 32GB of RAM Tomshardware.com | Oct 24, 2019

Browser Slowdowns and RAM-Gulping Apps
With all of those apps and tabs open, dumping six photos into Photoshop used to cause Chrome to panic, dumping a ton of cached images and ads that were stored in memory to the drive. After that, bumping through my tabs would result in some pages going blank and reloading, some not scrolling properly until I waited for certain ad services to reload and images to reappear. When seconds count, reloads were taking minutes from my day. Every day. And so, two years ago, I upgraded to 32GB. Problem solved.

Conclusion... Soldered ram should only be allowed in phones/tablets.

 

Spot on bro. I'm actually thinking of upgrading to 64GB, the only thing holding me back is the CL19 of the 32GB Samsung modules.

 

Guys is there any video/picture tutorial about the new m15 r2 repaste?

I've done my prev 17 r4 repaste many times and other notebooks with no problem, i consider myself as a techguy (love to fix my own car/pc/notebook/anything around the house) but i would be happy if i could go into this without fullblind mode.

 

I found the repaste to be quite easy and just followed the service manual. As you already know, don’t force anything and take it slow.

Manual - https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/alienware-m15-r2-laptop_service-manual_en-us.pdf

Pics from a reddit user (not mine) - https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=NElya0tXczY5X3loYkd2SXRCWWlVSTNUT1hfdGNR

 

Thank you but i found the same reddit post as i've seen from picture the thermalpads has no push in marks maybe they are too thin? I want to repad and repaste it for the best performance (but not with lm i did it in the past but dunno i fear my new baby too much)

 

Understood. I didn’t redo the thermal pads when I did Liquid Metal and I’ve been happy with results and temps, but I agree that if it’s apart it’s a good time to put on quality thermal pads if you’re worried about that.

 

Nice try. The repaste is idiotically complicated compared with th R1 due to the wretched inverted mobo design.

 

Anyone have the dell part number for the left IO board that has the AX wifi chip?

 

Received M15 R2 yesterday, performing as expected. GPU barely leaves mid 70s after 1 hour Valley/AIDA64 stress test in all modes.

On quiet fan mode, CPU hovers around 3.3 GHz and upper 70s.

Balanced Fan Mode, CPU hovers around 3.7 GHz and high 80s

Performance Mode, CPU is closer to 4 GHz and hitting 100.

I have not undervolted, but will likely use TS to do that. Debating whether it really needs either a power limit or freq limit applied as balanced already seems to work pretty well to keep the CPU from maxing out. I doubt in-game performance will suffer in Balanced mode. I am already able to do Civ VI at 40-60FPS at 4K and it looked incredible.

I have the OLED model after much debate. That screen is stunning. I think high frame-rate on a laptop overly stresses the CPU, so I intentionally am limiting myself to 60. I may keep my 95Hz Pixio monitor around for some smoother FPS games, but Destiny 2 looked and ran great at 1080P/60 on this screen. I also got lucky with a Samsung PM981 2TB drive, pretty excited about that!

One thing I wanted to know from other users - trackpad is mediocre. Good surface but two finger scrolling is abysmal. It only responds well to more aggressive “flicks” of two fingers to initiate a scroll. Small movements of a few mm the response is either none of janky as hell. Anyone have this problem on their trackpad? I have a MacBook Pro, which I know is king of trackpads, but geesh scrolling on this (or even pinch zooming) is terrible.

Let me add full specs:

9750H/16GB/2070Max-Q/OLED/2TB Single SSD/240-watt ANCHOR BOAT

I currently have a desktop setup with the 9700K and full fat 2060 Max-Q, but am moving to a house half size in near future and doubt I will have room for a desktop setup.

Late reply - but because you are in quiet fan mode, it will auto-limit CPU I’ve found. Mine hovers around 3.3 GHz in quiet mode as well. Works great for a lot of games. I’m not seeing the GPU being throttled in Quiet mode either. Balanced mode doubles acoustic output (fan noise) and CPU jumps up to 3.7 GHz on average (+/- 150 MHz).

Basically, only TDP throttling occurs at “Max Performance” fan mode which drives the CPU north of 4 GHz. I will probably stick to either Quiet or Balanced for the majority of my gaming needs. Will see once I try to do VR once the Oculus Link releases. May need all the CPU freq I can get to drive north of 80FPS

 

I repasted my M15r2 with liquid metal 3 days ago. I've been testing it out for the last few days and I can report back that at best it is a 10% to 20% improvement over just undervolting. I had my cpu undervolted -.130mv in xtu and my temps would stay at 87c or under at full load. After the cpu at 4.0ghz and balanced fans stays at 80c or under at 100% load. Gpu stays at 65c or under no matter what.

I can say that it was a pain. The old alienwares were built much more robustly. These are very delicate and I recommend taking your time. Apply liquid metal a bit more liberally than in a desktop application and that'll do. I didn't see an issue with the thermal pads making contact so I did not replace them. Anyone who tries this should be aware that the screws strip easily so apply even pressure. There is actually a bit of headroom and I would guess that if someone had the 9980HK in this they could get some decent speed if they repaste with LM and undervolt.

I replaced my alienware 14 with this as my daily laptop and so far it's been fine. I am very unhappy with the fact that it's all bga and all soldered. It feels vindictive and I am not sure it serves the purpose that dell thinks it does. If and when this thing blows it's a magnesium brick. I don't care for the touchpad. All that being said I love it and hate myself for it. It's a great little laptop that feels and looks premium. I'd like none soldered ram. Maybe they will release an r3 and just change the Motherboard a bit to allow that upgrade. That would be great.

 

Maybe I stumbled on this, but after I killed off/uninstalled all remnants of Tobii software/serves/whatever - two finger scrolling seems worlds better! It now tracks small movements and is a much smoother experience now. I had previously disabled Tobii, but it was still running some executables in the background and after I just happened to kill those while looking at other running applications/services/etc, immediately a jump in overall scrolling smoothness.

ALSO - pinch zooming has also followed suit - working with superior smoothness and responding to very slight/minor inputs. I can't guarantee the previous crappy two finger scrolling/pinch to zoom issues were because Tobii software was running, but it sure seems like it.

 

My employer purchased a fully loaded M15 R2 for me (i9-9980HK w/ 2080 Max-Q). Repasted with LM on the CPU and Kryonaut on the GPU. It looks like the thermal profiles override TDP settings, with Performance having a 145W max. I currently daily it with 4.2 Ghz all core which hits mid-high 70s during gaming. I can technically do 4.5 ghz all core and hit low-mid 80s but I haven't seen a noticeable gain in FPS, so I'd rather take the lower thermals.

My 4.2 settings are -.180 offset on Core and -.110 on cache

 

After too many “fixes” Alienware M15 R2 is doing well for me, but I’ve noticed what I would say is severe “banding” on my OLED. Any recommendation on whether I should request a panel replacement or should I just return? I think I’ve got a pretty solid unit otherwise, some lottery items seem great, such as Samsung PM981 SSD, and overall decent fan noise/thermals (after minor undervolt). Seems to do well in quiet mode to achieve 60FPS in a lot of GPU bound titles.

However, this OLED panel deficiency is bugging me because too many windows applications love to use that gray background (rather annoyingly) which highlights the banding problem. Otherwise, the high DPI display is gorgeous and I’m too accustomed to Retina displays from too many apple products in my life to deal with 1080P panels. Additionally, I can tell the response rate of OLED is excellent with minimal ghosting. I guess I can deal with the gray uniformity problem, but wonder if it’s worth it to gamble on having Dell tech come out to swap out for a new OLED panel to see if it improves anything or if that’s a gamble with a low payoff probability.

 

Hi All, Received my M15 M2 on friday as an upgrade from work for my A13r3. Went for the i7/2060/1080 high refresh rate display. Have been having lots of issues with the Nvidia drivers on this thing. Tons on blue screens and have now gone back to my A13. Have got dell coming out this week to replace mobo. Has anyone else had issues with getting the right drivers for the Nvidia GPU? Have tried dell letest and previous aswell as latest from Nvidia.
Thanks

 

I had the same issue on my A51m and it too was caused by Tobii. Only recently found this out when someone told me in the A51m Thread that they too had the same issue.

 

Sorry to hear that - my device is working flawlessly on the driver front. I haven't even had any issues with AWCC either - strangely all the lighting works as expected. Civ VI is still borked up, but apparently that's because the game tries to address the key color, and it's not AWCC's fault. I have the 2070 Max-Q and 4K OLED. RIght now the only flaw i can see is the somewhat annoying vertical banding on solid gray content.

 

I have 13R3 OLED and have the same banding with grey color background since I bought the laptop. Other colors are fine. I took a picture with phone camera (link below). Please see post #2672.

If I set grey Windows backgorund to re-produce color/situation similarities, the banding is gone. I think it is a very specific situation (picture, program backgound) when it apperars, I have not seen the banding since I set Google Chrome to use dark reader extension.


http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-alienware-13-r1-r2-owners-lounge.770303/page-268

 

I really am enjoying my m15r2 but I wish it had a mux switch to turn off the dedicated gpu. Nvidia optimus sucks and even when I set up a custom battery saver mode best I ever get is 2.5 hours of battery life. This laptop is almost always plugged in but I use it for school and am not always near an outlet on jobs. Do you guys notice the poor battery life? Maybe I'm just a dingdong and don't know how to set up a proper battery profile? Any suggestions?

 

Your picture looks significantly better than mine. If I had your OLED banding I wouldn’t sweat it. I’ll have to take a picture later today to show it. I have two major “dark” columns on the left 50% of the screen. If I go left to right, it’s probably 15-20% of the left is much much darker, then there’s a 15% column of very bright gray, and then another 15-20% that goes very dark again. Right side of the screen is more akin to what you show in your picture with a more even variation that is likely harder to spot unless you really look for it. I can tell because even though I can see some banding on the right side of the screen, my eye is not really drawn to it, left side however is fairly major.

 

Are you using AWCC to change power profile? I’m pretty sure AWCC trumps anything you choose in windows power settings. I’m getting 5+ hours on my 4K OLED, so no way you should only get 2.5 hours.

 

I know there is a dedicated R1 owners thread - but anyone here who’s owned both R1/R2 please chime in.

I’ve recently put in a second order for an M15 R1 since it is considerably cheaper than the R2. Obviously pros and cons exist, but to get an OLED equipped M1 with nearly all the same specs I am saving 475 dollars (675 if I don’t count the VISA prepaid card as I haven’t received that yet).

SO R1 Specs: 9750, WIFI6, 16GB, 2060, OLED, 90Wh, 512GB drive
My R2 currently in hand: 9750, WIFI6, 16GB, 2070 MQ, OLED, smaller battery, 2TB drive

What I gain going to the R1:

• Money in the pocket
• Better maintenance, and easy repaste
• Num-pad? Lol
• I think I prefer the R2 design language overall, but I don’t like the front edge of the R2 at all compared to the R1 (the glossy angled edge of the R2)
• I don’t have to worry about that beautiful white surface getting discolored on the R2
• 90Wh vs 76 seems like another hour

What I would lose going to the R1

• 2070 Max-Q performance - but I think this is only a 5-10% frames loss?
• Storage - although I plan to put my existing 2TB Intel SSD from my desktop in there to offset, but I was going to put it in the R2 anyways so I don’t consider the price of that drive part of the delta
• Smaller bezels
• Less color calibrated OLED? I’m not a “creative” so I don’t think this matters

Inviting everyone into my brain - it’s tough but the banding on my R2’s OLED is probably one of the worse I’ve seen so I would have to either return it or try to have them swap out the display, but a tech mucking around and losing screws on my 2300 dollar laptop sounds no fun.

 

I've used both awcc and windows power options. I make sure it lines up. Still i don't get near 5 hours.

 

Adding in my pictures of OLED banding - if anyone else can chime in on how severe this is. I think it's fairly bad - understand some banding is a nature of OLED.

https://imgur.com/a/q8CeXID/

 

Agree.This is definitely a big surprise from a new OLED. Is it please possible to have a snip of the GREY background/picture you use and brightness setting in your worst "banding' scenario?

I will post my results, somehow I am not able to re-produce my previous OLED banding result.

THX lul

 

How does the i7 compare to the i9 in terms of thermals and gaming performance?
Because on the Belgium website, if you want to combine RTX 2080 and the Oled panel, you have to pay 680€ more for just getting the i9 instead of the i7, which seems ridiculous to me

 

I simply went on YouTube and searched “5 gray uniformity test” and used first result. I took a picture on 50% and then 100% brightness.

 

I currently have the final generation of the MUX and socket CPU Alienware 17's. I run hackintosh on this for Xcode development and require the ability to run on either AMD or Intel GPU (Nvidia doesn't supply drivers for current-gen macOS). I saw a review that said the 2080 Max-Q Alienware m15 R2 does not have switchable graphics.

Do any of the current models offer switable graphics to utilize the onboard Intel graphics? This is a deal breaker for me but I'd really like to upgrade my machine.

 

I will post it here aswell maybe some of you had similar experience or can help how to measure space between heat sink and die.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/...are_m15_r2_9750h_rtx_2060_repaste_experience/

 

I have an alienware 17r1 too. Awesome machine. Unfortunately to answer your question there is no mux switching on the m15r2. It can be made to run mostly* on igpu or dgpu by messing with power settings and choosing to run in igpu mode by right clicking the exe. I hate nvidia optimus. I don't know why they think it's a better idea to have both on all the time rather than disable one. God forbid these laptops actually serve a real function. They would love it if you bought a new one every year like a cell phone.

 

While not a Hackintosh, I am running macOS Catalina on VMWare on my 15 R2 for XCode use as well.

 

If it's possible to switch and both cards are there, I think that's the answer I needed. During the hackintosh process I can force things on/off and may be able to get it to work.

Last I used VMWare the USB drivers were not updated to debug on a real device, has this been fixed?

 

I can't speak to previous releases, but I haven't had any issues debugging via USB passthrough to an iPhone XS.

 

I have an Area 51M with the i7 9700K and an RTX 2080.
Due to many issues I had with the laptop, I got offered a full refund and a discount of 12% on my next alienware purchase.
I don't play games that often anymore. But when I do, I of course crank up all the settings for my 1440p 144hz external monitor.

So because of the extra discount I got, and because of the superior support.
I plan on staying at alienware. Back when I bought the area 51m, the r2 wasn't available of the m15.
So I'm planning to get the m15 r2 as a replacement. With the i7, and RTX 2080 max q.

I guess it should be enough to run the latest games > 60 fps at 1440p right?
Because I always end up using my work laptop I got from my work (which is 13 inch), when I need portability. But that's my work laptop, not my personal laptop.
The Area 51M is very powerful, it's size is actually not bad for what it offers. But it's simply is still too large.

I planned on getting the razer blade 15, but bad support, and no acces to US qwerty in Europe, made me change my mind. And still the 12% extra discount is nice too.
What do you guys think?

EDIT: Will also the i7 cause a bottleneck for the RTX 2080 MQ when gaming?
Also I forgot to ask, On Alienware CC I current have in the Area 51M a thermal limit slider option on the fusion tab for the GPU. Is that option also available on the M15 r2?

 

The i7 will not bottleneck the maxq 2080. I almost went for a 2070 max q but it runs neck and neck with the rtx 2060. The 2070 max q is only slightly faster if at all i think the 2080 max q is only about 20% faster. All that said i have the i7 and 2060 in mine and it runs solid with no issues. Especially given that you intend to run in 1440p i suspect you'll be very pleased with how the i7 keeps up. If you plan on repasting with LM then consider the i9. On LM my 9750h tops out at 79c so there may be enough headroom to get a decent overclock. Lastly, the fusion bracket is the same between the two laptops and has all the same options.

 

I’m not sure this statement about the 2070 is 100% accurate - the 2070 Max-Q in the M15 R2 is somewhat odd-beast. At times it runs just a smidge ahead of the 2060 Laptop card, and others it behaves more akin to a full fat 2070 laptop card with a considerable speed advantage. For example, I can actually run AC:Odyssey at 4K above 30FPS with just a couple tweaks to ultra settings (volumetric clouds mainly). The benchmark tops out at 28 FPS on ULTRA settings without any tweaks too. From the database at NBC, the 2070 Max-Q is low 20s in the same benchmark.

I have a 2060 R1 coming in today to compare with, so I’ll update with my own analysis. If the 2060 is really only 5% behind, then the 300 dollar premium for the 2070 MQ isn’t worth it, but if it provides a greater than 10% boost overall, and also provides more stable frames at 4K, then it is completely worth it!

 

Sure there is variance. Overall the difference is small. There a few games that the 2070 MQ beat the 2060 by a decent margin so it could come down to game preferences. Overall my personal opinion is it is not worth it to upgrade past the RTX 2060 with a max q implementation but that is a subjective measurement. There are those who would pay double the price for 30% improvement like people going from 1080 ti to 2080 ti. Just comes down to what feels worth it to the buyer.

 

Later this week after I’ve had some time with the 2060, I’ll let you know my thoughts.

I think your view is mostly in line with price per performance type analysis I’ve read elsewhere. The 2060 is a good mobile card that most will be just fine with. The reason I picked up the R1 with a 2060 was because I’m not sure the 2070 Max-Q is worth the premium either. All that said, in many situations the 2070 in the Alienware specifically runs closer to a 2070M (mobile), not the Max-Q variant; that means 10-15% improvement across games with some being closer. I just don’t think it’s accurate to say that’s negligible - it’s a different question altogether to say it’s not cost efficient (which I agree with). It’s probably better to get the 2060, and save up for the AGA with a 2070 Super or something - $300 gets you fairly along that path.

I am annoyed the 2070 in the R2 is difficult to fully categorize. I’ve noticed a lot of inconsistencies though, that may further be an argument it isn’t worth the $300 premium over the 2060. For example, in Far Cry 5, on 1080P Ultra, I was getting over 80FPS in the benchmark utility - but for some reason when I actually play my save game, I’m seeing dips in the mid-50s weirdly without even much going on screen (although fire seems to set it off). Might be CPU related as I’ve used TS and capped at 3.6 GHz?

 

I quick question. I have the Aorus AD27QD G-Sync compatible monitor.
Am currently using it through the mini displayport of my Area 51M. And I can use G-Sync through it.

Just to make sure. Will G-Sync still work in the same way with the M15 r2 on the same external monitor?

 

As long as you use the mini-DP output - it should work just fine. I haven’t tested yet on my R2, but I have a FreeSync monitor that works with my existing nVidia 2060.

 

Having dealt with a max-q in the past I'm not a big fan of it but even still I'd pick the 2060 over a full 2070 if it only had those types of performance gains. I've found the 2060 to be on par with a mobile 1070. My issue with my particular 2060 is that it is a poor overclocker. I'm definitely in the price to performance category for this machine. Not my usual stance though. For every other laptop I like new and shiny regardless of price.

 

To respond to my own commentary - stumbled across chatter on the inter webs that using a BT connected Xbox Controller may influence frame rates significantly. I’ve noticed this in the past when I saturate a BT connection with both my Bose Headphones and an Xbox controller, but this time around it wasn’t immediately noticeable as I had no stuttering or FPS spikes. I never understood that it may suppress the average FPS across the board. It might just be why the benchmark in Far Cry 5 is well north of 60FPS, but then when playing (via the BT connected Xbox controller) I actually am struggling to maintain >60 most of the time, even when I dumped the quality settings to high. I will be testing tonight!!!

 

I’ll post in both R1 and R2 threads, but received my R1 yesterday. Did some immediate OLED vertical banding test. R1 is demonstrably better on this front in almost every way. Only thing I noticed side by side is the R2 OLED Reds seem more accurate, whereas the R1 looks a bit more orange. I don’t know how to correct this color inaccuracy? Is this something in the Intel Graphics Control Center (now called Command Center) or do I do something in the nVidia control panel? Or is this a windows setting somewhere? Thanks for any tips. I’m posting pictures to show how much better then R1’s OLED display is. This is no knock on the R2 model in any way, just interesting how bad it truly is.

I should say I am somewhat surprised, but I actually prefer the R1 design more so than the R2 now that I have it in hand. It comes across as smaller and thinner even though objectively not really true (although the shape does make it a touch smaller when viewed on top of the R2 due to the angular design). Also I am finding I don’t like the very sharp corners on the R2, where your wrists may rest when typing. The R1 design softens those edges a lot more.