*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Ryzen R5 Owner's Lounge

A new lounge for Alienware's mobile return to AMD CPUs. It's distinct enough from it's R4 Intel brethren to deserve its own owner's lounge. More information to be updated in this post.

Support
Manual
Specs Page
Product Page (link to be added)

Pre-release links:
Notebookcheck
The Verge
Tom's Hardware

Specs:

Source: NBC

 

I am excited that they are FINALLY going back to SODIMM RAM instead of soldering it on the motherboard. Albeit a small one, its a step in the right direction .

 

With the removal of the AGA and mini-DisplayPort outputs with no extra USB-C with DP-alt mode, I'd call it one step to the side (bringing back SO-DIMM RAM that should never have been taken away in the first place) and one step back.

 

Good stepping stone to Ryzen 6000 series which will support USB 4 (Thunderbolt)

 

Where the **** are the OLED panels?

 

OLED is overrated. This is one thing I'm glad has been left out here.

 

Alienware posted a longer teaser for the m15 R5, and if you watch in slow motion of the back of the laptop, you can see a "D" next to the USB-C port. I believe this means that USB C port does double as a Display Port.
Either that, or it's just there to show it can do power delivery like it says in the tech specs sheet.
EDIT: Well, apparently, one of the renders is wrong. On Videocardz' article, there's a lightning symbol next to the USB-C port, so I don't know which is correct.

 

I'd be more inclined to believe the video that comes straight from Dell. The "D" next to the port indicates DisplayPort output. The lightning symbol is typically reserved for Thunderbolt, though it could mean the capability of charging the laptop. However, that would contradict the spec sheet, which says the USB-C supports power out, not in. Will have to wait for reviews to see what is what.

 

Soooo, how long until they announce the m17 ryzen edition with 3080? Cause that's what we really want

 

Holy **** this is enticing.

 

This is a technological dead end. No upgrade paths other than RAM/SSDs/WiFi? No eGPU? The 3070 better be the last word in mobile GPUs because that's all this will ever be able to leverage unless you go pure hacksmith and use a PCIe extension through one of the SSD SATA ports.

I will be waiting for a USB 4.0 version.

 

People like you genuinely confuse the hell out of me(I mean no offense!). Every single eGPU option that exists sucks so bad, it makes more sense to just sell the laptop and buy the newer one(investing the absurd fortune you would have into an eGPU setup into this + funds acquired from selling the system) with a better mobile GPU when ever that comes along every 1-3 years, than continue to use the same old busted thing w/ external graphics instead of internal graphics.

Especially now since the silicon shortage means GPU prices are just going to keep going up and up and up to absurd levels for the next year or two, you already usually have to buy a very high end GPU to overcome the insane bottlenecking eGPUs' suffer from, never mind the price of a good external enclosure - which I admit, the AGA is absolutely the best bang for buck option, but still! Especially w/ Alienware moving away from the AGA now, I feel like every time I do the math on this, it never ever makes sense to follow through!

 

I strongly disagree that eGPUs "suck so bad". I have the AGA, it works great, and vastly extended the life of my older 15 R3 before buying my current M17. When used with an external monitor, performance loss is within 10% of baseline for a reference card. It gets even narrower if you have a higher powered card and you push the resolution or framerate. Your comments about 'insane bottlenecks' are just flat out wrong.

Another big driver behind my decision to get the AGA is that it offloads the thermal workload of the dGPU to an external device. The cooling solution in the laptop is now only managing the CPU which makes everything run better. It was a big reason why I decided to go with Alienware to begin with, and it's not a decision I've regretted since making.

Do you seriously believe that the silicone shortage is going to be ongoing into the foreseeable future? I read that some fool paid $3K for a 3080 on eBay; that makes me laugh so hard my sides hurt. At any time the feds might hit the crypto market in the US with regulations and will crater that market and flood the secondary with used cards, not unlike last time. Foundries, meanwhile, will continue to ramp up to meet demand and we'll eventually clear this momentary spike in prices.

Even with USB4 being close to mainstream release, the AGA is (as you acknowledged) the best eGPU on the market. With a near 100% guarantee that GPU prices will eventually make sense again, why on earth would I go out and buy a new laptop every two to three years at about $2K a pop when I can buy a new GPU at around a quarter of that cost?

Finally, have you used an eGPU before? I noticed you have a Strix Scar G533, which can't use one anyway. Are you basing your claims strictly on what other people have said about it, or have you had one in the past?

 

Because I can't take an eGPU (especially a bulky one like the AGA) and external monitor around my house to work and game. An eGPU (let alone a monitor) is not feasible when I travel either. Further, there are plenty of awesome laptops that are more than capable of gaming at 1080p and high settings that you can buy for $1,000-$1,500.

An eGPU may work for enthusiasts and in certain niche cases, but for most of the computing public (who do not frequent forums like this), they are impractical and unnecessary.

 

Pretty low tdp, even lenovo garbage for half the price comes with LM and more power. Not worth it at all.

 

I know OLED is not especially attractive in the Gaming sector, but I assure you that once you preubes OLED all other displays (IPS, TN, VA, etc) are so ugly in comparison that you will never want anything other than OLED, unless you really value high hz you will never want to game on anything other than OLED. Imaging is at a higher level, I have a 13R3 2k OLED and love it, I also have a 120hz G-Sync ultrawide 3440x1440 Monitor and still prefer OLED, the only thing I don't like about is that all Alienware OLED's are 4k... it makes no sense a 4k on a gamer laptop....

As soon as I have a chance I will change my Ultrawide monitor for an LG OLED CX or C1 which has G-Sync and 120hz, it is expensive, but OLED is the best of the best.

 

You would think mini led is the way to go for overpriced alienware to set a example why you should buy their hardware at all.

 

Still maxing out at 32GB 3200MHz even after older AW supports 64GB 2677MHz + XMP if on HK though A51 M2 never got XMP 2 I reckon!
If its per DIMM 32GB then its good, otherwise its very bad.

 

1- I have not tried mini-led, but I have tried TN, IPS, VA and OLED, and OLED is superior in every way, the picture is beautiful, bright and the contrast is perfect.

2- Many say No to OLED for fear of screen burn-in, but I have had my 13R3 since it came out 4 years ago (Feb 2017) and it has no burn-in at all.

3- Unless you prefer high screen refresh either for personal taste or competitive, OLED is the best of the best in picture quality, once you try it you don't want anything other than OLED.

 

For Gaming purposes 32gb in RAM is more than enough, no game consumes more than 14-18gb even in 4k...

The only thing I see sense in 64gb Ram is for video editing...

 

I don't cart my whole setup around my house when I game. I have an area, not unlike someone with a desktop, that I use exclusively with the AGA. It has my monitors, joysticks, all that crap for goofing off. Yes, it isn't terribly portable, if you want to get the maximum performance out of it. Arguably, and in most cases, the desktop card in it outperforms the dGPU in the laptop even when backsignaled to the integrated display. I've never considered it, but I can see someone with a decent-sized suitcase doing a business trip hauling an eGPU with them. My M17 R1 has more than enough oomph under the hood to get the job done if I'm out and about without the AGA, which to me is the best of both worlds. I can have a desktop at home with the AGA, and a great mobile gamer when I'm not.

Sure, the market has several laptops with good TGP 3070 and 3080 cards onboard, at prices that aren't quite the $2k number I mentioned. They're still more expensive than what I know a desktop GPU will be a year from now. I'd argue that eGPUs are considered niche because we, as computer product-related consumers, have been desensitized to a market that iterates several times a year. There is always something better in the pipeline, always a new system that outperforms the last (even if only by a few percentage points) and we've been conditioned to reach into our wallets when it comes along.

 

I was ready to buy as well but no EPU, no expansion, no mas. The AGA while to many is a stupid idea was a great marketing point and I owned, loved and used one all the time. Absolutely stupid oversight on Dell's part but then again have you seen the new XPS line? Looks awfully familiar......

At this point Alienware is a dead brand that is being quickly absorbed into Dell proper, very sad. The only thing that differentiates them at this point are the stupid neon RGB that no one asked for.

I think you're missing the point. A lot of us, more than you think use Alienware as workstations. If you don't believe me look at HP with the new Studio, Create and Fury lines. The difference is that those used to cost $1k more than a comparable Alienware. Now that it's devolved from it's roots it's now no different than the market Razer is going after and Razer is better at appealing to douchebags than Dell is.

 

It's the same for me, "best of both worlds", Laptop with good performance to take with you and at home connected to AGA over a high end GPU you lose less than 10% performance.

The AGA port for me is an absolute priority, although I understand that for others it is not, each user has different priorities.

By the way do not confuse AGA performance with other thunderbolt eGPUs, there is no comparison in performance, eGPU over thunderbolt loses on average 30-40% of GPU performance in games.... This will never be an option for me....

 

I mean if Asus can do it I can't see why Dell wouldn't unless they're banking on USB 4.0 but again as you said the losses are real. What I suspect is going to happen is that Dell has decided to re-enter the malaise years and chase the same segment that Acer and Gateway used to. Cheap crap that falls apart so they can sell services and extended warranties you'll be too frustrated to use. First thing I noticed when pricing out a 15r4 was the "included" per month charge of premium support I definitely will NEVER use with no clear way to turn it down without reading the fine print.

Frankly HP is on point lately as is Lenovo and from a marketing perspective I really can't see a unique selling point for these devices other than the QHD panel which Asus, HP and others already use on better built, better equipped devices.

I mean we already have U.2 hot-swappable interfaces that are PCI-E 4x that update with each revision without a redesign going from 2.0 -> 3.0 -> 4.0. How hard could it be?

 

Of course, I had already commented it in another forum topic:

"There is still the "Asus Rog Flow X13" which comes with a Ryzen9 5900HS or a R9 5980HS, and has the Port: "ROG XG Mobile Interface" which is basically a direct PCI 3.0 x8 connection (the AGA connection is PCI 3.0 x4), and its EGPU is a 3080 Mobile Max TDP, which according to Benchmarks performs at the level of a desktop 3070. The combo for this equipment plus the eGPU is $3,000.

Personally out of the price what I don't like is that the RAM memory is a LPDDR4X (16gb or 32gb) and the screen resolution is 3840 x 2400...."

For now for me the best option is the 15m R4 with Intel i9 in AGA with a 3080/3090. But everyone can choose what suits them best according to their tastes and needs.

 

Well if you were considering the Thinkpad route, don't. Had a P15 and it was god awful, using a P1 decent success for now. I agree that the 15R4 is probably top of the heap with various Mac clones over thunderbolt being second (ie Thinkpad P1g3/X1Eg3, X1C, Zbook Studio/Create/Fury) The Zbooks overall IMO are some of the most under-rated overbuilt monsters that money can buy but boy does it take *alot* of it. HP is the only manufacturer to state that if you buy a Zbook Fury 8 Core Xeon it will neither power throttle or thermal throttle at max all core turbo clocks with a RTX5000 or 2080 for the low low price of $5k+, but the option is there.

 

I tried taking an RTX 2070 FE in a Razer Core with a Blade 14 on vacation a couple years ago and it freaking sucked. Traveling with the entire setup was a PITA. I returned the enclosure, put the GPU back in my desktop, and went about trying to find a more all-in-one laptop solution. No gaming-oriented laptop checked more of my needs/wants boxes more than the XPS 17, despite it not being marketed as such.

I'm not going to lie, I find Alienware Ryzen models to be very intriguing. I'd love to have a portable RTX 3000 machine, but given how badly I've been burned by other gaming-focused laptops, I'll probably end up going for the next-generation XPS instead.

 

I have yet to run any AAA game that pushes more than 12GB of total ram usage with nothing running in the background. 16GB is more than enough for just gaming. By the time you need 32GB you will have a new laptop

 

You're right, I haven't run any game that consumes more than 12gb in RAM either, but I don't play in 4k, I play in 2k and ultrawide. I don't know if any game consumes more than 12gb in 4k?

I personally prefer 32gb to go ample and not so tight, for 1080p/2k gaming 16gb is fine, in 4k I don't know, but for sure 90% who play in 4k for sure have 32gb or more.

 

Hooked to my 4k monitor I see no difference in RAM usage, only VRAM spiked

 

Same here. I'm disappointed that Dell has officially given up on the AGA, or any future chance of going back to something like it, but the M15/17 R4 using the vapor chamber looked to have Intel's furnaces under control. I can only imagine what they do with the Ryzen APU. I hear Razer is winding up a laptop using Cezanne as well. I think we will soon be awash in Ryzen competitors to the Intel offerings, which won't change any time soon.

 

My concern is that while Intel is terrible right now it has far fewer errata and other qos issues compared to AMD.

The last good AMD laptop was made by Huawei. I wouldn't touch a Razer laptop ESPECIALLY a Ryzen with a billion foot pole.

 

I’d wait for the upcoming 11th gen 45W, it will be better than this in my opinion, real world performance wise. Feel this version is almost a buyers remorse trap.

 

Great to see the RAM slots making a comeback, however, this seems like a model aimed at a lower tier of the market. Let's see if they carry on the improvement onto the next Intel flagship model.

 

did u miss the part where every 11th gen intel chip so far has been kind of a joke?


"Waste of Sand" - Steve Burke, GamersNexus

 

Having now been locked out of my RazerID for the last three days for seemingly no reason, and their tech support hell bent on declaring the problem is with my Internet connection, I'm done with the brand for good. I'll be selling off my remaining Razer peripherals once I've found suitable replacements, which I believe I have in the form of the Glorious GMMK keyboard and Model D- mouse that I'll be picking up today.

Unless Intel has done the same 10nm to 14nm back-porting work for the mobile parts, they should otherwise be straight rehashes of 10th-gen. Let's not jump to any conclusions until the lineup is officially announced.

 

Tiger lake (10nm) is not the same architecture as Rocket lake which is 14nm. We should see better performance at lower power consumption.

The Rocket lake desktop chips uses the back ported 10nm sunny cove design which was used in the i7-1065g7 etc. Tiger lake H and HK will use the willow cove design used in i7 - 1165G7. So we should ideally see benefits of IPC improvement over Rocket lake plus lower power consumption due to 10nm process being used. In short I expect the 11th gen h chips to beat the 10th gen h chips by 15% while running cooler and consuming less power.

 

Might as well wait for alder lake if you all like to play the waiting game. Much better IPC boost, DDR5, and better pcie 4 support. Should hit end of the year

 

What do you mean by IPC boost? Instructions Per Cycle?

 

I also use it for development as well, 16GB runs out pretty quickly.

 

Yep

 

Alder Lake will support PCI Express Gen5. But you won't see 12th gen mobile H class chips this year. And expect the 15W variants will come first. 35W+ mobile chips will always come later. Spring 2022 at earliest.

 

The reason why eGPUs now are basically pointless is because the bandwidth is completely saturated by cards such as the RTX 3080 at only 4 lanes. Sure, you can use a 2080 or even up to a 3070 with some success, but the difference in the amount of data being transferred by an RTX 3080 or 6800XT is much greater and would need at least PCIe 3.0 x8. Thunderbolt 4 is still only using 4 lanes of PCIe 3.0. Sorry but eGPUs are dead unless TB5 brings more lanes in.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 PCI-Express Scaling - Performance Summary | TechPowerUp

Also, if you also look at independent benchmarks with the RTX 3080 in an eGPU it's basically the same as a desktop build with a 2080 Ti. A full TDP 3080 mobile is also on par with a 2080 Ti. It's a waste of money.

RTX 3080 in an eGPU discussion | NotebookReview
How does an RTX 3080 perform inside an eGPU? | PCWorld

 

If you're referring to Rocketlake yes, Tigerlake no

 

Not a complete waste for those who use it as a dock for a thin and light. Even at a 50% hit it is still worth it to me

 

As a dock with a 50% hit? Sure, you do you I guess.

 

This is very application specific. Many are not really constrained by PCIe bandwidth. Probably the case with a lot of games when an external display is used. Also worth noting Asus managed to come up with a 8 lane eGPU (albeit they paired it with a mobile GPU lol).

 

And a bunch of proprietary hardware =\

 

Looking forward to the m17 version with Ryzen!

One thing that annoys me with the port layout for m15 is the left side ethernet port. Why don't they put it in the back? The Lenovo Legions do this. It's one of the things I really like about my old 17R4.

 

Agreed, why they have the Ethernet there and no USB is baffling to me.