*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Ryzen R5 Owner's Lounge

I wonder if the new vbios will return the cores but keep the performance increase. Hmm...

 

Received my SSD bracket, heat sink and screws from Dell. Picture below for anyone interested. Took about a week due to the parts not being in stock.

https://imgur.com/UZkNNZj

Whilst not impressed with the part not being included to start with my experience with Alienware support was very good. The guy knew what I needed and agreed to send them within a couple of hours of my email. He then kept me updated on the progress.

 

Did you just tell him you needed the ssd bracket and heat sink? Or did you have to find the parts numbers ahead of time so he knew what you were referring too?

 

I listed the part numbers in the email and linked to the thread on the Dell support forums. I'd already been reading about it on there anyway and figured it couldn't hurt to include.

 

Atleast they didn’t play any games with you. Hopefully everyone can have that easy of a time getting them.

 

Just saw this post about the vbios workaround after filing for a return on mine. I was super disappointed because the keyboard and screen are honestly wonderful. Not sure why they cut corners so hard on this product, but it could have been great if they didn't gimp it by basically rebranding a G15 chassis. Ultimately I'm not gonna re-paste and flash with a probably "unsupported" vbios just to almost get the product I already paid for. The SSD mounting bracket was like the icing on the cake for my decision to return. That is just greedy nonsense, these guys have really fallen since the days of the R2.

 

It doesn't address all your issues but it seems that Dell have confirmed the bug in the VBIOS with the CUDA cores and are working on a fix. Have a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/nscz1s/announcement_m15_r5_rtx3070_gpu_cuda_core_issue/

 

Yeah, saw that posted yesterday. Still better to file for the return now while I can, than wait for a bios fix that may not even address the problem that well. Hopefully they release it before I send it back, maybe I'll cancel the return.

Like idk what you guys are getting on your benchmarks but I'm underperforming virtually all of the cheaper products from competition running the same configs. Plus I'm running higher temps to boot. I can't even hit the average scores for a mobile 3070. It seems pretty obvious this "bug" was probably an intentional effort to reduce thermal pressure on a cheap chassis, and make the newer models released right after seem amazingly more powerful.

 

What kind of scores are you getting?

 

Typically averaging around low 10k on Timespy. Had as low as 9800 and max I could pull of was 10200, with average Timespy for this GPU reported being 103xx. From everything I'm seeing of other products it's a solid 5-15% below other comparable market options out of box right now. My CB R20 for the 5900hx is 4800 which is also underperforming it's capabilities.

If this was a slim-form sub 3 pound laptop this would be a great performer, but it's not. It's a 5.5lb software-throttled thermal nightmare. As soon as you run extensive benchmarking the temps go through the roof, even for Ryzen standards. As much as I probably don't even need the 15% for my typical usage, I feel scammed and it makes me very distrustful over the quality and longevity of the product. Considering I didn't extend the warranty that is very concerning. Folks shouldn't need to re-paste and sketchy vbios flash a brand new machine just to get expected averages.

 

Sounds like you should return it

 

The newer X models need to be put in front. They are the future and may be a good competitor to Razer.

 

I agree with your thought, but unfortunately nowadays looks it is almost mandatory to do a repaste the laptop after purchasing, especially with the gaming line. It shouldn’t be that way, especially not with a premium brand like AW. Owerall I have one step forward, two step back feeling with this line and looks not the flagship line anymore.

 

Yeah, it's just super disappointing, because I felt confident this was a solid deal for what was advertised. For the sake of being thorough, I re-downloaded 3D Mark on Steam this time, and re-did Timespy benchmarks with different thermal profiles and somehow between the first 36hrs of owning it and two weeks later I'm hitting scores closer to 9800 average now. As low as 9587 high as 9963. I haven't been quite able to break 10k again after 4 runs.

I'm not sure if it's because of using steam version, or just having more stuff installed since first day but that's a huge difference from even my worst of first tests. I'm reinstalling the stand-alone 3D Mark I downloaded before just for sake of making sure it's not a resource eating issue with steam in background (even though if I'm playing games steam is probably running in the background. smh) I also need to update the driver again I guess, so I will do that before I re-run new tests on the stand alone 3d Mark.

https://imgur.com/a/pBodlPX

 

Run it on dgpu. I also switched to gskill double bank ram and my cpu is now performing like it should.

 

After installing, and updating drivers I now get a hangup forcing hard reboot during the initializing of 3DMark. Can't even run the stand-alone one anymore. So, guess I just go back to trying the steam one with new drivers.

Edit - Nope, that one force crash as as well...

Edit 2 - Turns out the driver broke it lol. If I go into Control panel and force Nvidia GPU it locks up trying to initialize it. I do not recommend updating to latest 6/3 Nvidia driver.

Edit 3 - Uninstalled the graphics card and deleted drivers. Default restored to the old 5/5/21 drivers thankfully. Card operates again without locking up system on initializing. Back to low 102xx max scores though dGPU only. Guess that does make a difference.

It was immediately initializing the dedicated GPU so I assumed it just ran with it the dGPU profile the whole time when running 3dMark. The 95xx scores haven't popped up anymore so it definitely matters. However, scores still wildly varies between high 96xx to low 102xx depending on how cool it stays between runs. If I run repeatedly to get it good and toasty it will throttle down. But even in a well ventilated cool area it doesn't seem to be able to push through to get that average #s for the card. I threw first three tests up in the same album. Gonna reboot and run some more to see if with enough tries it hits something consistently.

Final Edit 4 - Final 5 runs after a nice reboot. Keeping it as cool as possible. I'm in a super low temp steel building with industrial cooling (65 degrees), and have it propped up with ventilation space underneath. Pretty extreme if comparatively you're planning to use this in your 72-75 degree house flat on some table. But it does consistently hit the high 101xx-low 102xx in those perfect conditions. It seems it still can't push the average performance without overclocking, or maybe upgrading something like the ram as suggested to get the CPU score up some.

 

They should have just put the same effort into making the chassis as good on the R5 and we probably would just be here talking about how great this thing is. The R6 would be a pretty minimal upgrade, if one at all. They really screwed this thing up, and it seems on purpose using low TDPs and software-throttles.

If I were a betting man I'd say this was mostly a ploy devised by Intel to get a bunch of Ryzens off the market. Putting them in poor preforming systems, and providing a side by side for their i-11 that doesn't make them look overpriced for performance.

 

I increased my score in cinebench r20 by 800 points by swapping out the single bank ram. I don't necessarily think this is malice. This laptop is significantly cheaper than the m15r4 and the previous iterations. Given the build quality i still prefer it to any other brand offering. I hope they release an official vbios but as far as the total package is concerned i actually really like this laptop.

 

I mean cheaper than the m15r4 was isn't saying a whole lot to be fair. This has a far worse cheaper chassis, and some cheaper components. Should be comparing to other same component builds of other companies imho.

The only thing making this a difficult decision was the keyboard and screen. They're undoubtedly of the upper echelon of quality in this particular market. So, if you're indeed getting substantially better scores simply by upgrading your ram, I would like to see if I can do the same, and get comparable results before I finalize a return. If possible just let me know the specific chips you got, and I will do more testing as soon as they come in.

Just curious if there any specific difference a ram upgrade would have caused your GPU scores to improve 400 points as well or was that from something else?

 

I have an overclock applied on the gpu.

 

EepoSaurus, been reading through this on the lack of proper specs on our 3070 cards. I have the same issue with my system as well. When you had the m15 R4 vbios installed, did you try disabling the dynamic boost to keep it from going over the 125W limit of this chassis? Also, I've not been able to find that vbios if you could post it? Do you know if displayport over usbc worked with this vbios?

 

I've physically posted it and linked the webpage to download the vbios i used. I did not test the DP port. I also did not try to limit the wattage. The gpu works fine under it but after the flash you need to use DDU to clean the old drivers then install the dell approved drivers. After that it actually functions pretty good. The instability seems to be gone but it sometimes acts as if the power supply can't feed it. Which is strange since the m15r4 uses the same psu.

 

I'm glad he did a video on it. It should help Dell stay honest. I think given the responses he lists and the different posts we've seen this is most definitely intentional. I just wonder to what end? They just want their X series to look good? Did they not consider that there would be tons of companies that would release similarly specced laptops? These dell guys need to hire people who know what they are doing. I don't know how much more their reputation can take.

I ran a timespy with all my cudas back and this is how it did.


Let's hope dell handles making up for this correctly

 

Thanks for the reply. I'll look again, but the only post I found with vbios contained the 125W variant along with your original vbios.

 

That is the right vbios. It will scale from 125w to 135w.

 

Thanks again! I was reading through those posts after you indicated it was posted with the second request with the link you posted and I just realized that the link posted was the higher wattage vbios you've been referencing. I appreciate your assistance and information. Great people in this forum it seems and everybody helps each other.

 

Dell use EC to tune the power limit settings, temp theshold or throttling temp in combination with a load of sensors welded on the MB. Many ways to tune the performance/power draw. Pair it with battery boost and it will be a complete mess.

How Dell cripple performance explained by....

 

Does anyone know hot many watts the 5900hx will draw?
In this video the 5800H is drawing around 55 watts max.

 

During a firestrike cpu bench my 5900hx draws about 55w and got a cpu score of 26611

 

OK thanks, do you know the max all core mhz?

 

3300mhz. Mine boosts to 3800mhz but it's on liquid metal.

 

Good ol Jarrod fighting the good fight. Hopefully someone like him making this public on YouTube with more or less force Alienware to do something. If they don’t fix the issue they better be ready for a wave of returns.

You could just roll back to the older bios though correct? Kinda how Area 51m owners were rolling back to the 200w bios?

 

AW's latest response states that a VBIOS update will enable all cores. Though I have a feeling that will increase GPU thermal throttling and there may not be a net gain in performance as a result.

 

Hi. Any comments on this? Same Ryzen Cpu in the 3060 and 3070 AW model, but the Ryzen chips in the more expensive 3070 SKU perform about 10% better in Cinebench R20. I expect Dell use same cooling for both SKUs.

 

I wasn't aware you were a member on our crazy little forum family. Hello! Big fan.

Well that's good news atleast. you would think by now Alienware would be smart enough to not try and pull stunts like this.

Honestly I don't understand why they don't let you control the TDP of the CPU in the Alienware Fusion software like Asus does. Pumping less power into the cpu would probably be a sacrifice people would make if they could manually control it. Any chance of getting an answer from Alienware why you couldn't do that or if they plan on making that available at any point?

 

Yeah I've swapped back and forth several times.

 

Hey m15 R5 gang.

I'm glad I found this forum, as I immediately knew something was wrong with my AW 5900HX 3070 QHD laptop. Before this I tried out the HP Omen with a 6 core intel chip and the 3070 GPU. It performed quite well. Running 120-140fps in Warzone with quality settings the GPU would reach mid 70's in an already very warm room (Vegas). The CPU never seemed taxed and temperatures were as expected as well. It was also a snappy machine with the intel chip, and never lagged or loaded slowly. From the jump, this AW has felt like dog sh*t. I'm extremely concerned, being someone who isn't too tech savvy, but knows this isn't normal for a $2400 machine. First of all, with hardly any applications open, it seems sluggish at times. Slow to respond to clicks, or slow to load. The HP would boot right up, and was fluid at all times. Now let's get to the most concerning thing, thermals. I immediately noticed my GPU spiking over 85C after 10 minutes of Warzone, and freaked out. I went into the ACC and noticed my CPU over 100C. 100C! This was alarming to say the least, as I was barely 10 minutes into the game. I set everything on performance and the fans full speed. Gave it another go and same thing, sustained temps at that level. I cut the machine off, scoured the internet for reports of this, and went to bed aggravated. I woke up today and decided to check it out again. Booted up, cut the fans on high, fired the game up, and temps rocketed. Within 2 mins my CPU was at 100C. I don't understand why, isn't this extremely abnormal and dangerous? The GPU would be sub 70C on the HP Omen I had, but this one cooks right away. Is this a premium laptop or a napalm bomb? This is madness, and very frustrating. Even idling, the temps can remain high. Though right now after about 30 mins of just having ACC open, temps are down to 48C CPU and 42C GPU, fan speeds ~67%.

Any help/advice/direction would be amazing, and I greatly appreciate it. It's a gorgeous machine, the screen is amazing & the keyboard is A1. I would like to settle on this model and be satisfied.

RC

 

The heat levels are bananas but if you reported it to dell they would tell you it is within spec. Technically it is but it can be unsettling. If you choose not to repaste then i would recommend switching to full speed and elevating the rear of the laptop about an inch and it may help a bit. The cpu will hit 3.3 ghz all core even at 100+c and the gpu will hit advertised boost clocks at those temps too.

If you are ok with repasting with normal compound then use a high quality paste like thermo grizzly or icdiamond. You won't see a huge difference but it makes a difference like @iunlock showed in his post. Also, dual bank ram like this gskill will up your performance a bit. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KSGVZD...abc_HFDFHT1XYM61K9BYFZV0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 and I know i am supposed to warn folks against flashing their vbios but absolutely nothing has gone wrong for me yet and it's reversible. So don't do it. *wink* *wink* (seriously consider risk assessment and your comfort level)

Lastly, liquid metal. Like the t-1000 it's the baddest stuff around. Hyper efficient and pretty scary. If you do it right you will see temps of 60 to 75c under just cpu load and 85c in gaming. Gpu won't break much above 70c no matter what.

If you are brave enough i recommend this thread as a guide for liquid metal repasting. http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/★★★-alienware-m15-r5-ryzen-edition-repaste-guide-results-★★★.836119/

 

The Omen with the 5800H and 3070 runs similar temps to the Alienware. Lots of power creates lots of heat.

 

I think my hands are steady and I brave enough to give the liquid metal a go. Granted it is a bit nerve-racking after some research on it. How often will I need to reapply? Would it be in my best interest to pay a seasoned builder/expert to do it? I gotta get these temps down, I won't have peace of mind until I do.

Also, definitely going to be reaching out to Dell about some of the complaints well documented here. That's definitely some shady business imo. Especially, at this price point.

 

Would you be so kind as to share your fan profile that has helped you with your temps? It would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
RC

 

They know their laptops run hot. Hence they started offer TCC Offset to try reduce Cpu temps. And they even removed the Vapor chamber option for the newer m15 R5 Ryzen Edition and R6. A wrong choice but will lower their build costs.



Alienware m15 R4 in the laptop test: Now also with a mechanical keyboard

For some, 50C on the KB is too much. External KB will then be the only solution for gaming.

 

Aren't they using that technology to balance power delivery, you would think while running cinebench it would favor the CPU though.

 

Absolutely no idea. Could simply be better thermal paste job on that particular 3070 model by happenstance, or flatter heatsink assembly (by happenstance) on the 3070 model. If it's a trend in many machines, then that's really weird.

 

I received the 5800H/3060 model today and I'm hugely disappointed. It seems to thermal throttle and the CPU was hitting 101C just running a brief Unigine Heaven benchmark. The touchpad is horrendous. Also I'm noticing mild flickering textures in all older games, and the plastic feeling keyboard deck attracts insane fingerprints. I don't have the patience to troubleshoot with this.

Might return.

 

The touchpad is straight up unusable. Possibly the worst touchpad I've ever used on a laptop. That's actually the real nail in the coffin for me.

 

I haven't noticed it as bad. Although I don't use this laptop as anything other than a gaming laptop so the small amount of experience that I have with it so far hasn't been negative. The mx keyboard is the best i've ever had in a laptop and this screen is equally the best. The touchpad isn't great but to me is no worse than they have been since implementing the legend design. Is this your first time with an alienware or did you own others?

 

The membrane 4-zone RGB keyboard is just OK. The screen is pretty good, comparable to my 2020 MacBook Air. Fan noise is quite tolerable. Overall though, I am feeling a twinge of regret at not spending $80 more to get the sale price on the M15 R4 with the 10870H/GTX 1070 instead of my 5800H/GTX 3060 R5 (my cashback didn't go through on this purchase either). Beyond the 5-20% increased gaming performance from the 3070 compared to my model, the R4 just seems like it's the more premium device.

 

I think a maxed out m15r4 is a better laptop than this. The mx keyboard would make it great but they don't offer it anymore. The heatsink also has a vapor chamber.

 

Despite all the review sites claiming Dell will fix this and issue a new vBIOS which they may or may not do, Dell refuses to even acknowledge this to a paying customer. They will not admit there is a problem, won't commit to anything. As a paying customer I would advise that if you are unhappy with the deception Dell has pulled on us, return it within your 30 days as there is no commitment this will be corrected. This is just FYI as I don't want any paying customer to rely on what review sites are posting on commitments from Dell when they themselves won't acknowledge this to a paying customer.