*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 R4 / m17 R4 Owner's Lounge

Awesome! I need them Warzone 1440p fps results

 

Hopefully it should work, if it works I’m definitely going to find that panel.
Btw do you have any idea about m15 r4 and m17 r4 boards, I was thinking both uses identical boards. But then again they don’t have the same vram so there must be something to it.

 

It seems they are different. I'll probably swap in that 165w vbios when i get it tho

 

On my m17r4 was 1mm all

 

Yea that’s a definite update.
Please let us know how it goes and if possible please run some benchmarks.
Cheers

 

TY for this. did you replace the paste with LM?

 

I changed all pads, and only LM for CPU and i removed that sticker from gpu memory.

 

What are your cpu temps? I changed all the screws for longer ones with washers and on idle temps are all over the place for gpu steady 45C idle and 77 max on full load (Gpu intesive games) aka Three kingdoms. Cpu was able to be undervolted -115mv! and clocks max all core sometimes passes it and hits 10980hk speeds i turned off thermal velocity and set turbos to 5ghz in throttlestop.

 

I'm really curios how repasting changed temperature. Did you check it before repasting on the same load?

 

Was hitting 100C outta the box. Even on playing wow. CPU stayed around 1700mhz. Some cores stay now around 70C while others hit 100 still i get from 4100-4700 on some cores. I will take it apart tomorrow and try something i havent tried yet That undervolt is smooth though! GPU has yet to hit 150W max ive seen is 122W. I just updated the vbios I check tomorrow to see if it improved.

 

Could you try Prime95 small FFT (max heat) with 16 threads? What temperature will be after 30 minutes and which frequency on cores? What about vbios - is it version with increased power limit? I’m hoping someone will figure out how hack vbios to unlock cores (based on story with R5 with reduced cores in Rtx 3070). I have 3070 and it would be nice to make it 3080 for free

 

Try with 100% fans. If it’s hitting 100oC at least in one core then it’s definitely throttling.
Run it with turbo off and see how the temps are, you can do this on bios or else in windows.
May be you need a larger brick to get the full potential out of 3080. Did you flash it with the m17 r4 vbios or just did the normal vbios update ?

I don’t think you can unlock a 3070 into a 3080. What happened in R5 was: Dell had a vbios with less cuda cores on the 3070 then flashing with r4 vbios unlocked all available cuda cores.

 

Means cores are controlled by vbios, so 3070 could go up to 6144 cores present on chip.

 

May be that’s possible, you can try selecting the 3080 file for m15 r4 from the new vbios update from support page. But this procedure is risky but worth it if it actually unlocks.

 

Hi,

The VRAM didn't cause any issues, I'm assuming it's because there's m17 R4 with both 8GB and 16GB RTX 3080 versions so it would need to support both.

I haven't run any benchmarks yet, still gonna take some time before I get to overclocking and benchmarking but I did play some Monster Hunter World a little to test and saw the Board Power Draw in GPU-Z reach 163W, so I'm sure it is making use of the extra power.


Also, regarding flashing other GPU BIOSes, I actually flashed a RTX 3060 BIOS from the M5 onto this RTX 3080 by accident. And immediately flashed the 3080 BIOS back before I restarted (out of fear). But who knows what could work, seems like these GPUs have less restrictions on flashing different BIOSes

 

That’s great news, you can run some benchmarks on stock clocks.
But the card is definitely getting 165W, this makes the best out of two worlds.
Cheers

 

Definitely seems like a solid laptop, just wish Dell gave it a 165w BIOS from the start if it's capable of it anyway. Nice mix of portability and performance.
Did a Timespy with stock clocks (but fan profile set to full), this was the results

 

That’s just wonderful, it’s close to its big brother. Keep those numbers coming

 

Cpu 75-80 with -0
050 UV after 5h warzone on ultra 1440p and gpu 62-69.

 

With that gpu temp..in 2 weeks you change laptop

 

I don't think it's that bad, but there's definitely room for improvement. A good reason to get a m17 would definitely be better cooling.
But with sloppy voltage curve editing in MSI Afterburner and 500mhz memory OC, I could bring the GPU temps down a bit and increase the score


But that's really it. I'm sure pushing it further is not gonna be worth the effort for a few FPS gains. Gonna rather focus on reducing the temps because I don't wanna listen to fans when I play a game
The main thing is that it seems like the 165w BIOS does actually run on the m15 without issue, so I'm happy about that

 

hey what are your specs on your r4? I've been wanting to get some fps numbers on warzone for gaming in 1440p / normal settings. Want to know how the 3080 16gb does. I'm trying to reach 144+ constant fps..I do have some nvidia filters set too that take up about 10 fps.

 

Think to memory 100°+, vrm 100°+, they will degrade super fast.

 

Hmm, Is there a way to see the memory and vrm temps on the m15 r4? I would be interested to see what they are like

 

I feel like those temps are fine, you need to worry if it’s going past 90oC if not then you are good to go.
I would definitely use this on a cooler pad if I’m gaming for long duration.
By far your m15 r4 is the fastest m15 out there.
Very nice numbers, at this point I will focus on bringing the temps down so you can eliminate fan noise.

 

Tell me who knows. What program can be used to keep the battery level at 60%? My Alienware m17 r4 laptop will always stand connected to the network, I would like to extend the battery life. At ASUS, the MyASUS utility does this.
I have installed Dell Power Manager, but there are no charge level management options there.
I noticed that in my version 3.9, there are only Battery Information and Alert Settings tabs, and there is no Advanced Charge tab.

 

In BIOS there is such settings, you need to choose custom and set start charging % and stop one. I set 50% and 80%

 

Ive given up on getting this thing to work with lm as it will not make contact even with longer screws. I will now try phobya nano grease extreme.. if temps do not improve goodbye!

 

ok @Papusan @Mr. Fox i have done an exchange lol. They will contact me in 5 days with a replacement. Last thing to try before returning permanently. I put phobya extreme nano grease and temps Drop to 57C idol then........Gaming Shot to 103C i wanted to smash the machine. This was after Repadding and repasting. VRMs and Memory hit 100C...processor at 3.1ghz max.. GPU wouldnt touch 80W or more. Memory was different the CL Timing 17 17 17 39 As per alienware command center

 

No 1440P on M17 R4

 

That’s pretty bad. You can try this: loosen the screws holding the heatsink (all the screws) then retight it will less effort (looser than it previously was).
I feel like you are facing a contact issue(heatsink and the die doesn’t make proper contact).
Over tightening will bend the board slightly and will cause similar issue. Give it a go.

 

HaHa. How can you see VRM and Memory temps? Do you have a Flir or similar Thermal Camera?

Nothinge different than the Ryzen model http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...r5-owners-lounge.835745/page-38#post-11102466

 

I tried the 2560x1440 240hz r5 panel in my new m15 r4 with an RTX 3080. I can report back that it is a total no go. For some reason it just doesn't hook up as it should. I think it likely is a vbios issue. Oh well.

 

that’s some bad news, give it a try with m17 r4 vbios.
Cheers

edit: since stock m15 r6 comes with 1440p 240hz if we can find a vbios dump from that system we can cross flash that vbios and see for the 1440p support.

 

I'm exchanging it.

 

What I should have tried and I didn't was a copper shim what do you guys think? @Mr. Fox @Papusan

 

Sure then, let us know the results with the replacement.

 

Question for you guys that have bought a few of these machines. I always buy laptops with low storage sizes to save money. I end up with alot of left over lower capacity drives. Dell seems to configure their m.2 drives in raid 0 i believe. When i physically separate them and have tried to use them as external storage it never fails that some of them end up unusable. It even goes so far as to make the drive cause quasi system hangs until i physically pull the drive. Is this just me or has anyone else experienced this? If so have you had any success recovering the drive? Thanks guys.

 

Have you tried changing the bios setting to achi instead of raid 0. Also removing the secure boot settings to disabled (any os install after changing these settings will NOT work) you must reinstall after and wouldn't have issues like that again.

 

I went ahead and did both. I have tried this before and it didn't work. I just switched my r4 over and i get the same issue. The drives fail to load properly. They are not old or damaged in fact 2 of them were working in the very laptop i am now trying to get to recognize the drives. They were the original os drives in my r4. It's really strange. It must have something to do with how dell sets these drives up. Hmm. I'm gonna tinker with this more

 

How about turning off the intel software guard extensions sometime this causes os issues

 

I found the issue. Turns out the type of raid dell uses formats drives together in the bios. It creates a master drive on 1 drive and it extends to the 2nd drive. The 2nd drive can be formatted like normal but the the master acts as a larger drive and that's why it was failing. I had to remove all my current drives and then using a usb windows installation i went into command prompt using shift+f10 and with diskpart i was able to access the drives and clean them. Then i could format them. For some reason when i attached them externally or within windows it would cause errors and not work. Probably useless info but i have been wondering about that for ages. Now i have like 6 working m.2 drives. Haha

 

Glad you was able to figure it out

 

Dell decided to upgrade my exchange to per key keyboard and from 512gb to 1tb nvme drive. I tried to get them to pre install element 31 but no dice on it will try again lm on the new machine. Hopefully I can unervolt this one jut as good as the last one and lm actually works on this one.

 

I did some tests. For some unknown reason, I could not test my M17 R4 laptop in the 3DMark05 and 3DMark Vantage tests, they crashed during the test. Perhaps this is some kind of conflict with the drivers. Otherwise, the performance is good. The superiority over 2070 is about 40-70%. I didn't overclock anything, the processor and video card are working normally.

 

I'm suggesting you just to spend more time with undervolting (without repasting anything). In my case undervolting of -120mv makes a great difference by itself, so I decided not to repaste at all. Just set -120mv and 55w power limit in ThrottleStop, and now even under heavy combined CPU + GPU load, I don't see temperature on CPU going higher 85. In Prime95 with 16 threads and small FFT (without any GPU load), I see CPU temperature 78-80 with frequency 3100-3200 all cores.

 

Wow that’s actually nice that they went beyond just replacing.

Those are nice figures to start with, you can attempt a mild overclock on the gpu and retest.

 

Setting a power limit is like tcc worthless. Your just cutting out your performance. Though undervolting is like setting a limit you can still hit the limits of your processors ability Abit less though and keep max performance. I wanna hit 4.5ghz all core and maintain the temps at least in the 70s at most 80c. Gpu I wanna keep it under 60c.

 

I undervolted -115 temps still hit 100c even on world of warcraft which is crap now in gaming to gpus and cpus. My 2080s doesn't use 800mv because it don't need to on wow. I get static 200fps on it because that's the max the game can run on ultra everything even raids. Don't even get me started on cpu tems. It's like the cpu is almost idol compared to the m17r4. Only time it used full power was when I played on my 49 inch samsung at 120hz the ultrawide one that 32 by 9 5120x1440p

 

With this CPU it is unrealistic considering current cooling system, and I doubt repasting may help here. About GPU - I don't see much problem with temperature, it is usually in middle 70 "out of the box", which is fine for any modern GPU.