*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 Ryzen R5 Owner's Lounge

I tried the earlier posted vbios. Everything worked correctly except the hdmi thought it was DVI and would only go to HD resolution

 

Never tested HDMI out

 

How about the display port?

 

None I have a 3080 for the TV.

 

Hey Dee, could you please test Warzone with that vbios for me? It's the only game I play on my device, and would like to know what FPS you can get with that vbios before I go that route. Both 1080p and 1440p (with DLSS Quality for best 1440p results), please and thank you. If you don't have the game, no worries.

 

I have the game

 

Awesome. I'm very, very interested in those results too. Mine hasn't arrived yet but I'm certainly curious about any tweaks that could improve performance. Thanks so much!

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95-120 fps most times you are over 100fps at QHD

 

That's an impressive result for QHD! I was hoping there wouldn't be too much of a tax going QHD over FHD and it does not seem to be. Thanks so much for checking

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Is that on ultra settings? I presume that is also without Nvidia filters (which drop you 10 fps). That is what I am getting now with the R5 vbios and medium settings with Nvidia filters. IMO the machine should be able to produce a steady 120+ fps on relatively optimal settings (medium), especially at 1080p. With DLSS on Quality one would presume it should be close to possible with QHD as well.

 

Yes my results are Ultra settings. Bump down to high or hybrid well over 100fps for sure. You can also do 1080p the scaling is good.

 

I'm literally on the hinge right now. I can order the Legion 5 Pro 16" AMD QHD for $1849 + 10% cash back right now. Hardware Canucks gave it one helluva review. Performance mode on that thing is insane. The thermals are good as well. Though it is advised to upgrade the RAM as well. All in all, it's starting to look like the choice. I hate to part with this machine though, it is beautiful. I do love the keyboard, and the screen is rich.

 

I don't blame you.

Unfortunately it's still unavailable in Canada unless you want either the 2TB version or the 3060 version. Either of those, I don't feel is worth it over the deal I got for the Alienware. However, if the 32GB model goes back in stock, that might be worth it.

It's a great laptop for sure. They did such a good job on the 5 Pro.

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The only downside is the screen doesn't have nearly the same color accuracy as the AW QHD. It takes that W a good bit.

M15 R5: 141% sRGB, 100% DCI-P3, 97% AdobeRGB

Legion 5 Pro: 103% sRGB, 73% DCI-P3, 71% AdobeRGB

 

M15 has a better screen for sure. But Legion 5 pro has HDR and a better CPU, GPU

 

One thing to note, don't ever use HDR... I have the Legion 7i and it's a known issue that Windows does not play well with attempting to display HDR content. Division 2 in HDR blows out all the colours and looks very strange.

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To those of you who have upgraded the ram, what kind of performance increase have you seen?

 

Any vbios dump of the m15R4 3060?

 

Should I be using the video drivers straight from Nvidia? I know from previous laptops that Dell will almost never update them on their own.

 

Alright notebook gang, got a little update. I spent 2 hours with another Dell tech troubleshooting (his choice, we obviously all know his efforts were wasted) and after deliberating with an engineer they determined there simply is too much pressure in the system due to the thermals (LMAO oh for real?). They stated that the temperatures were extremely high (hey at least they admitted to it). Anyways, they are sending a tech with a new heatsink to see if this makes a difference. I assured him if it's an OEM part then it's not going to make a difference but he seemed to be convinced by the engineer that this replacement will help (we'll see). Regardless, while waiting on that I went ahead and ordered the Legion 5 Pro 16", and am looking forward to a direct side by side comparison.

 

Alienware m15 R5 Ryzen Edition Laptop Review - More performance for less money notebookcheck.com | Today

More performance for less money but the trade off is creaking noise, high temperatures and reduced connections and features. Verdict 85%

 

Looks like the laptop should have been fitted with a vapour chamber like the R4...

 

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.

 

Just signed up here. Wanted some info on this laptop; I have the 5800H + 3070 + QHD screen. The thermals are HORRIBLE. I tried to tune it with the Alienware system but no luck. Only playing with the fans on max works for keeping the system under control. Otherwise the GPU seems to shut off after about 10 minutes (speeds go to around 345-625mhz & wattage to 30W) after the GPU core temp hits ~86C. My guess is that the GPU has some internal limiter that causes it to go into some safe mode. The only way to get it to clock up again is to close the game and make the GPU turn off after going back to iGPU and then start the game again. With Ryzen Controller + Max fan speed it works but the laptop sounds like a jet engine and the CPU temps still max out @ my Ryzen Controller max temp of 91C even with 35W max "long term boost" wattage...

Any ideas or should I contact dell about this? I saw some other people complain about the temps and the CPU hitting a max of 101C out of the box but mine was much worse.... Out of the box my CPU hit 107.8C in Overwatch.... that wasn't with max fan speed but with the default profile (there are only 2 profiles on this laptop while the M17 R4 I had before had 4 fan profiles).

 

On my 3070 QHD unit I get around 130fps with my Cold War settings... I don't play warzone but when I did last time I got around the same FPS in Warzone as I did in cold war.... certain parts of warzone had around 10fps lower.
Mine are a mixture of high settings with certain things turned off to keep the framerate stable during special effects (like explosion shadows turned down).

 

Your 3070 won't throttle that low even at those temps. What you are experiencing seems to be a bug in the r5. It causes the gpu to lock at 30 fps or 60 or 70. Just apparently whatever it feels like. When it happens to me i alt tab to desktop and reset the display by selecting screen 1. Seems to always fix the issue. I can tell you that a liquid metal repaste will do quite a bit to help with the heat but it will still routinely hit high 90s in very intensive situations on the cpu. But it doesn't throttle and the 5800 and 5900 hx are awesome performance wise. The plastic build and the buggyness of the system has made me buy an m15r4 to see if it's a better option and it's really no contest. The m15r4 is better but has a weaker cpu in the 10870h. I am going to buy one with a 10980hk and return both of my current laptops. The only thing I miss about the r5 is the awesome screen and battery life. Everything else is better on the r4.

 

What kind of battery life did you get? My battery life is horrible. I have a ton of laptops though so I don't really need this for battery life. Just coming from a Nitro 5; it doesn't heat up or have problems with battery life.
I'm not worried about hitting 90C on the CPU in an intensive CPU task as it is a laptop.... I am upset that right now it hits 90c on the CPU at the desktop with firefox open.... talking about 7-10% CPU usage and it just cannot seem to get the heatsink cool once it heats up. When I start it up from 0 it will sit around 50C on the CPU for a while until it eventually reaches around 60c and stays there on the default "balanced" profile. However if I do anything to heat the CPU up to 90C (like play a game) then it will sit near 90C for an hour after I am finished gaming unless I leave the fans at max speed for ~15 minutes to get it back into the 70s. I've just never seen a system with such weird thermal behavior.
My nitro can hit 90C if I really try to make it go there; otherwise the CPU is hard pressed to pass 80C even in gaming and the fans NEVER hit 100%. The laptop is actually pretty quiet even in playing COD CW.

As far as it "locking at 30fps or 60 or 70" I think that this fps amount is just based on what the GPU can do at the given wattage. For me it always locks the GPU to 30W basically when this happens. It won't pass 30W no matter what I do with it and it seems that with about 30W it can get ~30-40fps in some games and 60-70 in other games (if it is a really light game). The FPS is just a fluke really, I verified it with HWMON.
Since you don't have the laptop anymore I guess you cannot test it.

I had the M17 R4 that I received for testing (I also work testing product via Amazon Vine) and I can tell you that the 10870H in the M17 was ABOUT the same speed as what I get from the 5800H @ 35W but the CPU has ALOT more trouble staying cool when doing anything. it is very common to see the CPU wattage at 75W just when browsing the web .To the point that the USB-C 65W power input is literally worthless because even with the screen at 60hz I couldn't get the laptop to not eat the battery while web browsing due to the high wattage on the CPU.
Temps were actually better in general than they have been on the M15 R5 which makes no sense considering that the CPU is using literally 1/2 the power or less most of the time.

 

My r5 has a mux switch so it hits about 6 to 8 hours on light loads. I don't know what to say as far as the issues you are having. Maybe it just gets crazy hot but dell lets these things get insanely hot. I still have the laptop. It doesn't lock to 30w because of heat is my point it does it because of a bug in the vbios likely. The system just seems premature or slapped together. They clearly did not put much effort into it. I think they just wanted to be able to say oh we have an amd laptop too. Then they immediately release an r6 with intels and pretty much stop promoting the r5. I don't blame anyone for returning the alienware m15 r5 but i think it can be a good laptop it just isn't even as good as the previous revision.

 

I think this was a social experiment by Alienware so they can say, "see this is why need to stick with Intel! There have been nothing but problems with AMD! We gave them what they wanted with AMD and user-replaceable RAM, and people have been doing nothing but complaining."
Meanwhile, if it was given proper engineering development and priority, it had the means to be the perfect system. On paper? It's amazing! In practice for most, it's a hot mess.

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Dell could spent $10 on Vapor chamber/ or put in better cooling. This isn’t AMDs fault. Purely Dell’s decision to cut costs.

 

I said it during the announce, I’ll say it again. The r5/r6 are G series rebrands. The G series has never had good temps out of the box. If you’re experienced in repasting, you can probably get it under control but you should not have to do it on an expensive machine like this. Get yourself an outlet m15r4 if you can live with soldered Ram if you want an AW since someone managed to even get the 165W VBIOS working on it.

Besides, as someone who has owned the highest possible config of both intel 10th gen (i9 + 165W 3080) and Ryzen (5900Hx + 165W 3080), for gaming the i9 is just as good as the 5900HX if not better

 

To be honest, I expect Alienware to run hot. My 14, 17, 15 R2 and 15 R3 all ran in the 90s up to 100 out of the box; all needed repasting. This is just Alienware in general. Perhaps with "Element 31" they will have temps under control but honestly, I just come to expect that I will see that dry, crusty toothpaste with anything else.

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Agree that they normally do run hot. It’s one thing If it runs hot and sustains above average performance .look at the m17r3/4 reviews from notebook check, while the i9 runs hot, it actually performs better than most other machines with the same processor. But the newer r5s don’t even deliver great performance while reaching very high temps.

Im okay to pay a premium for great build quality and great performance even if it comes at the cost of temps. AW used to do that, but there are better options on the block now.

 

I am looking for some help with doing the vbios flash on my M15 R5 3070. I used NVFLASH and was successful in creating a backup and then flashing the R4 vbios and it seemed to be working great. The only issue that I have is the DisplayPort no longer is working. I have re-flashed to the original vbios and it is working again. Just wondering if anyone else that has done the flash has had this issue or if there is a workaround.

 

Nope, flashing the 140w vbios buggers the displayport options, hdmi works though

 

Mine also has a mux switch. I have the QHD model.
My battery life was still horrible as it lost 50% in 2 hours while not even using the screen (plugged into a dock) and basically sitting at a static webpage.
Dell is going to come out next week to "repair" it. Let's see what they do to fix it. If they are going to change the cooler on it then I will ask them to repaste it with TFX when they do that.

 

So guys I also experienced the low FPS bug. Seems like the laptop gets too hot and something is kicking in lower the GPU clock speeds. So many issues with this laptop. My temps are not as bad as you guys but still in the mid to high 90's. Torn love the screen al keyboard(mechanical). I just use Ryzen controller and limit temps to 85. This has solved the problem for me.

 

Whack the fan to max and use Ryzen controller. Or Contact Dell and ask them to replace the cooler. They are coming to do mine and I will ask them to put it back together with my paste. the fans at max make it never happen otherwise the GPU crashes out after about 10 minutes where it gets limited to 450ish mhz (35W) and crap FPS dominates lol

 

Ya I have fans at max. replace the cooler ha will be the same.

 

It is fine as long as it gets repasted. Mine hits 107C max on the CPU and they said that this is "abnormal" personally I think it is just horrible thermal paste. The other thread where someone explains how to re-paste the laptop; it is clear that there is a ton of paste and it is very low quality. Too much paste = lower thermals, bad paste = poor thermals. So.... I have great hope after seeing the results in that thread.

 

Ya 107 is a problem most likely paste job.

 

Anybody with r5 having issues with left control also triggering last used fn+function key? On fresh boot for example, pressing left control triggers fn+f1, turning fans on full.

 

No

 

Yea, I hope that the dell tech will repaste it when they put on the new cooler. I will ask them to use my Thermalright TF8 instead of whatever useless paste will come in the box of the "new cooler".

 

So my unit is repasted now and running quite cool. Min temp on the CPU now is 31.5C


I was still able to make it throttle with yCruncher 1B pi calculation using the default balanced profile.... but this is the fault of the garbage balanced profile that literally didn't ramp the fans up until 98C.... The average temp while using the laptop is now in the THIRTIES (as evidenced in the "average") and this is without even using Ryzen Controller!

I have yet to push it hard with the dGPU but based on this performance I think we will be fine. Before the repaste the "idle temp" of the laptop was like 58C and average temp while using it was around 70-80C.

 

Why is idle temp so important? Remember the model have unified heatsink. This means heat will be balanced between the Cpu and Gpu cooling capacity. Put full load on both Cpu and Gpu will push the cooling to the limits. With yCruncher running you use the cooling headroom intended for the GPU.

 

Yes but no, the CPU fan ramps first before the GPU fan moves. Before my score in yCruncher was worse by almost 4 seconds on the 512M calculate. Also the temps hit 107C originally and dropped to nothing...
This time with my tuned fan profile (not the default that doesn't even ramp the fan until 95C) the CPU sat at 88C after peaking at 94c. So having 32 sec vs 36 sec is ~10% more performance at almost 20C less temp....

 

Yep, but how will this translate into full load hours forwards? This is more important than idle temp or temp spikes on the Cpu before it cools down again.

 

In my years of PC building, testing and overclocking.... few things bring the CPU temps higher than yCruncher. Therefore if it can survive a 1G calculation hitting only 88C then it likely won't go much higher under any other sustained load. Also very few things actually hit 16 CPU threads with complex instruction extensions the way yCruncher does.

 

Yep, but you tax only the CPU. With more cores people do more task simultaneous on the CPu while they gaming. The reason we have got more cores nowadays. You won't be able to steal cooling headroom from the GPU cooling if it run at full bore together with the Cpu.