*OFFICIAL* Alienware m17 Owner's Lounge

The top M.2 slot (near the GPU) support PCIe SSD's only. So you could do a 970 Evo in the top slot, an 860 Evo in the bottom slot, and an 860 Evo in the 2.5 inch bay.

 

Legacy Bios? You mean the original one? Also, what are the capacities of your SSDs?

 

Oh, I thought it supported both PCIE and SATA based SSDs.

 

Pretty sure it's that way. It's printed right on the motherboard in white what each slot supports.

 

Not that. I disabled secure boot and my drive was detected!

 

Can anyone please share the dumped by gpu-z vbios of RTX 2080 max-q?

 

any screen upgrades for these things? q or uhd?

 

Anyone know the part number for the copper heatsink that covers both the m.2 ssds. Is it the same as the one for the m15, I have an m15 and a friend just got the m17 r1 and was wondering if we placed an order for the same part number will it work on m17 as well or is it a different one for the m17, the part number for the dual heat plate I ordered was R46DX

 

I recently obtained an m17 with the i7-9750H processor, GeForce RTX 2060, 16GB RAM and a 512GB NvME SSD. Thus far I have been impressed with the sheer power and capabilities of this machine. Gaming is quite impressive on the 1440p 120Hz display, I can play in native resolution on Ultra in quite a few games with a very respectable frame-rate on many games. When doing productivity activities the system performs beyond expectation, running office programs with ease, graphics like its nothing, and video with ease. If there was one thing about this laptop that could be better would be thermal performance, when doing anything more than basic browsing and tasks it runs rather hot around 90C average doing basic tasks it runs at a comfortable but not cool 50C. When gaming it is at a constant 100C and thermal throttling starts to happen, fortunately even when thermally throttled this PC still performs at playable frame rates on everything I have tried. Overclocking is doable but gains very little processing power from the CPU it does however allow for tuning of the voltage to turn it up or down to better control throttling which can also help with thermal loads. The most impressive part to me about this laptop is the battery performance after a bit of tuning I can get over 4 hours doing basic tasks and about 1 hour and 30 minutes best on higher performance tasks. Overall I would recommend an m17 or even a similarly spec'd m15 for anyone looking for a powerful and portable machine with a couple hours of battery minimum required.

 

Good day to all. I am in the market for a new Alienware and it appears the m17 (r1) is the ticket. If you guys don't mind what are some issues you are facing with your rigs? I understand some of the early models had heat problems, which was controlled with undervolting. But is there anything else going on with these guys?

Also is there any real difference between the 8th gen and 9th gen versions of the r1? I see the price is a lot less for the 9th gen but there is no option for the 2080 RTX. Many thanks in advance.

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Here, (from m15 R1)

What are you going to do with it?

 

Has anyone tried swapping panels on the m17 R1? I was wondering if I picked up one on the Dell Outlet or eBay with a 1080p 60hz panel, how much trouble it would be if I tried swapping the lcd to the QHD 120hz panel down the line. Would it just take finding a proper 40 pin cable or is it more complex than that?

 

Hey guys

I was going to upgrade my Alienware 17R4 (LM pasted by iunlock!) to a 17R5 or whatever the next gen was as this was purchased 3 years ago. I'm sad to say that it looks like the 17R has been replaced by the M17? This looks like a budget version and looking at reviews keyboard is crap, mouse is worse and the body is flimsy plastic. Basically everything I loved about the 17R4 has been ditched which makes no sense to me.

Am i right in assuming that if I want an upgrade to the 17R4 I have to go with the new Area 51M machines? These seem like overkill for me and they are so bulky!

 

Upgraded from 15R2 to m15R1. Keyboard is actually more suitable for me in terms of layout, although mechanically it's a minor step back (no issues to speak of though). No practical issues with the pad, although again a slight step back from the mechanical buttons for me.

Battery life is worse. They overquote (=lie about) the capacity, and drain is higher. Still, more than enough for me.

What's so much better if you are on the go is the form factor, feels like half the laptop. Requires a repaste and undervolt for optimum performance of course. m17 is identical except for the screen. HTH.

 

Unbelievable! they still need a repaste even after all these years and all the problems with reported with prior versions?!

What is the build quality like on the M's ? Are they as flimsy as they look?

 

Everything soldered on the MB now. You can only swap out your storage and heatsink for now... Frank Azor and Alienware went for soldered Wifi in their newest Alienware gamingbooks...

And avoid Lunar White (a part of build quality) http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...5-owners-lounge.825553/page-360#post-10990172

 

Build quality is good on the R1.
Edit: one caveat - myself and others have noted one particular heatsink screw not going all the way in, possibly causing uneven core temps - still the thermals tend to be good enough after tweaks including static voltage, on the 8750h and 9750h at least.

I should also mention my unit arrived with a faulty GPU/mobo, although this was very promptly fixed on site.

Repasting and mobo replacement are trivial tasks on this laptop.

HTH

 

Quick question, anyone know the thermal pads thickness? Trying to get some fujipolys to bring the heat down.

Edit: Figured it out by dry running. Turns out the heatsink is mega warped and some vrms and resistors didn't even have pads on them because of how warped the heatsink is. Doesn't help that the heatsinks are combined and the GPU side only has 3 screws instead of the usual 4. If you pad everything correctly and get pressure applied everywhere evenly, the GPU die won't make contact with the thermal paste or liquid metal. So, you gotta sacrifice vrms for gpu die which sucks. CPU is fine, though. Barely hits 80C after a -.100v and a 40x on all 6 cores from 99C. GPU overheats and throttles in a few seconds so I'll just use ic diamond on it. The viscosity would probably do it wonders.

 

For those on the fence - A first impressions review of the M17 R1

I just received my M17, purchased directly from Dell, with the following configuration:

Intel i7 9750H
Nvidia RTX 2070 Max Q
Two Samsung 1 TB SSD (not in RAID)
90 whr battery
Killer Wireless
1080p 60hz IPS screen

She's a hot one!

This coffee lake refresh is a hot CPU. Out of the box it will thermal throttle, quickly and with no effort. XTU or Throttlestop is a must if you want to avoid hitting thermal limits. I've also noticed that the heatsink is not flush on the CPU die, with temperature differentials in excess of 10 C between the hottest and coolest cores. A repaste and repad is probably necessary in order to sort that out. An additional note on undervolting, there's a thread in the hardware section discussing Intel's response to the plundervolt exploit removing undervolting on this model laptop (including the M15). I can verify that with the most current BIOS revision (2.4.1) this is not a problem. I don't know if something changed on Dell's end with how the mitigation is being implemented, but I can confirm that with the latest BIOS, undervolting with XTU is not disabled.

Battery Life

The 90 whr battery appears to promise average run times away from the mains of roughly 6 - 7 hours, depending on use. I haven't had the opportunity to cycle through many charging loops, but off the mains I got roughly 3+ hours of use and was still above 50%. Also, this thing is whisper quiet on battery power along with being very cool. While it's charging, however, it does get toasty. The battery is located under the palm rest and you know when it's taking on juice.

Performance

It's a hexacore CPU. I'm seeing regular operation at 4.1 Ghz, with clocks hovering on average around 3.9. I'm coming from a 15R3 with a 7700HQ, so this is a significant performance improvement. Everything is snappy, the laptop boots very quickly, and nearly everything is noticeably quicker.

Summary - As of today

I'd say if you're two or more generations back, the upgrade is probably worth it. I'm very happy with the performance and, if you've owned any laptop in the past 6 years, I'm not afraid of repasting. If you're looking for something that doesn't have these problems out of the box (thermal issues) then steer clear. However, I'm not sure who you'd turn to as an alternative. As the miles pile on, I'll update as needed. Also, if anyone has any questions, feel free to fire away.

 

Sigh, Alienware just doesn’t seem to care about performance still!

Thanks for the review. Eluktronics and many other manufacturers are superior than Alienware by many many many miles.

 

I'll bite. Can you connect an Alienware Graphics Amplifier to, or get on-site support for an Eluktronics laptop? What many many many other superior manufacturers have you got in mind? Please provide specific model examples and reasons why you believe they are superior than the m17 within its class. Thanks.

 

So, I'm getting ready to repaste/repad this laptop. I believe the stock pads are 2.5mm and I was thinking about going down to 1mm. Does anyone have experience with this and will that adjustment work?

 

Update to my review: I've got the 90 whr battery and I'm seeing consistent 7+ hour runtimes (youtube, web surfing, light office work). For those interested.

 

Question guys. I am tempted to buy a M17 R1 for photo editing purposes.

Reason I want the R1 version is because I can still put a 2tb mechanical drive inside along with the M.2 SSD.

For the following specs, I can get a M17 R1 for less than USD 1.7k. I will then buy a 2tb mechanical drive and then install it later.

• RTX 2060
• 17.3" FHD (1920 x 1080) 60Hz IPS, 300-nits, (Would upgrade this to 4k if I can)
• 16GB RAM
• 1tB M.2SSD
• 60wh battery
• 2 years premium support

Soo much question is, given that the R3 just came out... does this seem like a good idea?

 

Update to the update, after I followed the instructions in this thread here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e-on-windows-enabling-deeper-c-states.815602/

I'm seeing 8 to 10 hours away from the mains doing light office work, surfing, and YouTube. I have an Alienware laptop that's rivaling my wife's XPS 13 in terms of battery life.

 

The R3 has soldered RAM, just like the R2. That's a showstopper for me. Plus, the motherboard is inverted, making it very difficult to repaste. The R1s are the easiest laptops I've ever seen for pulling the heatsink off of. Pull the bottom off, and like a dozen screws later you have the heatsink removed. No worrying about the Wifi antenna, no sub structure to remove, everything is right there.

At $1700 USD, that isn't bad at all. I got mine with the RTX2070, two SSDs, and the 90 Whr battery for $2K. They aren't offering this laptop anymore with the 4K display. I would probably look for a higher end monitor to plug into rather than trying to upgrade what's in it. I think Alienware is getting ready to launch a 25" monitor with 100% Adobe RGB coverage in a few weeks.

 

Thinking of picking up a AW m17 r1

Have stuck with AW for a long time. Looking at other brands, but still wind up back to wanting an AW.

However the refresh seems to be plagued with overheating issues.

Would an undervolt/ repaste with thermal grizzly (now liquid metal) make a difference? Or is the fault due to faulty design?

The model I'm looking at is with the the i7 8750 & RTX 2070 MQ.

Is it worth a buy and a would tha AGA make a difference down the line? Or is the CPU not good enough for something like a 1080ti?

Thanks for your time & input.

 

As i expected, Alienware shot themselves in the foot yet again, with their m17 and m15 r3 design which follow the same exact design of the previous iteration where the motherboard is inverted and ram is soldered ..



Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/...7r3_manuals_released_still_soldered_ram_wifi/

m17 r1 and m15 r2 FTW..or else you have to purchase these laptops through their website with atleast 32Gb as you damn sure will need it

 

Does anyone have a good source to purchase replacement fans for alienware m17 online?

I inspected aliexpress and ebay to no avail...

PS: where did you get the 90w battery from dell? or a retailer?

 

I purchased directly from Dell.

 

Thanks for the reply.

I would get the R2 or R3 if only I can configure it below USD 2k (the ceiling of my budget) and still have 2TB of secondary storage. That is hard to do with M.2 SSDs and I can only see that being doable with a mechanical drive

I see lots of changes on the Dell website lately. Maybe I will be lucky and they will offer the 4k panel on the R1 again soon.

 

Hey guys, would I be better off getting an older AW 17 R5 (8750/1070) or the newer AW m17 R1 (8750/2070MQ)?

Thanks

 

wassup!? I got the alienware m17r2 and was hit w/ ransome ware...
--
...i'm trying to flash it with a d0d 3 pass wipe (if anyone could suggest a free ver i'd appreciate it i'm using killdisk), and i'm not remembering what my bios is set at w/ an "american microtrends" bios? was this flashed or is this si stock bios? what do i set it to boot via usb...i see winboot, then ip4, then ip6...ty

 

m17 R1. Will need to undervolt and repaste for best results.

 

Guys if I want to upgrade to a 2TB SSD for my M17 which should I get? I'm curious if the Samsung NVME will work. Is there a compatibility issue when uprgrading to one or if it'll bottleneck?

 

Samsung NVMEs will work. I've got a 2GB Corsair Force MP 510, almost as fast as 970 Evo +, can recommend.

 

Awesome! I'll look into getting one. And loading windows on it would be the same? Using the media creation tool?

 

I put it to the second slot, cloned my primary onto it using Macrium Reflect, swapped and voila

 

Is Macrium Reflect free? does it copy everything including settings so it will be an exact copy as if I didn't change it?

 

Double yes.

 

Whoa! so no OEM problems or anything? What doesn't the free version back up? Will anything I have stored on my SSD get backed up like music and images and such? Or is it only system files?

 

Have you googled it? It takes a full exact image of the whole disk, boot records and special partitions included.

 

I did, I think I seen something was excluded I might've been mistaken.

 

The free version misses some extra features (e. g. incremental backups, or folder-based imaging) , but the base whole disk cloning and imaging is included in the free version.

 

Ah I gotcha! I'll give that a look and see what I can do with it.

 

This model is ridiculously bad (same with m15). Managed to unlock the undervolt by downgrading, repasted with Arctic MX-4 and did a -0.150 undervolt on CPU and -0.50 on iGPU, still one core is reaching 100c (others appear to be fine). Firestrike score 16100 is the max i was able to get after all of this (i7-8750H and RTX 2070 Max-Q). I am seriously thinking in repasting the CPU with liquid metal (the gpu is fine, i wouldnt take the risk, the max i got was 77).

 

FireStrike looks low. One nice thing you can do with this model is throw out Dell's slow RAM, and put in HyperX Impact.

 

Any one have the 2080s vbios I want to try to flash my m15r3


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I dont think RAM is the issue, when the temperatures are hitting 100 even with the undervolt. Will see whether liquid metal changes things.

 

Oh yeah, my CPU temps are nowhere near 100C in graphics benchmarks. GPU temps are not even worth a mention. Phobya Nanogrease Extreme + Gelid GP Extreme.