*OFFICIAL* Alienware m17 Owner's Lounge

When i saw enhancement about keyboard lights i thought they bring new effects and improvements but of course nothing has changed on the visual and AWCC still gives that annoying there are upgrades for OC and Sound even though they are at their latests version.

 

I was hoping the application would stop crashing everyday. Unsurprisingly, no change.

 

Anybody knows the thickness of the thermal pads for the Alienaware M17 R1? Some Dell Techs would come over to replace the fan assembly of my laptop due to severe thermal issues, and I am hoping to also have them apply some Noctua NT H1 thermal paste on my CPU and GPU as well as some Gelid Thermal Pads on some areas. I am just unsure of the thermal pads themselves, what specifications would work best with the M17 R1. I am thinking of this.. though I am not sure if it is the appropriate height as well as how many I would need on my laptop.

 

Wrong thread/delete.

 

I know it's two different thicknesses but I'm not certain of the exact height. I do know that they come preinstalled if you buy a new heatsink, and at $30 new from Dell, that's not too bad.

 

Hmm.. the Dell techs would be replacing the fan assembly as part of my warranty since my laptop was overheating and thermal throttling like crazy, even reaching above 100 degrees. I am not sure if that would come with thermal pad replacement as well. I will have the DELL techs repaste my laptop in the process however. Might as well make the most out of it.

 

If you're getting a new heatsink and fans, it'll come with the pads.

 

Alright, thanks. Hopefully they would also replace the heatsink when they replace the fans on my unit. Still have yet to get the call from their techs in my country, would have to wait and see.

 

I ended up going with a Dell G7 17" 7700 from Best Buy. Choosing an Alienware gaming laptop right now was so frustrating. If I decide I want a black Alienware laptop, I lose options for GPU or Screen options. If I choose 16gb ram, I can't have the processor I want. If I choose 32gb ram I have to pick the fastest GPU available. Never felt so limited when choosing which configuration Alienware laptop I want. The last straw was the fact that if I wanted replaceable ram, I had to get the Area51m that requires 2 Power Outlets to run games, but if I got the M17 I would get only one power brick, but can't even upgrade RAM........SO annoying that I'm skipping this gen and waiting for next 2 generations to see what they offer. Plenty happy with my Dell G7 7700 though. Impressed with what I got performance wise for so much less money. I was really worried it was going to be terrible, but I have been wrong so far.

 

Alright! The Heatsink and Fans replacement seem to have been a huge success. ^^ Noticing overall way better temperatures and steady framerates in games, I am even running some of my games at 1440p again and perhaps, even better than before; with relatively high FPS of 80+. It is like I bought a brand new system.

Here is my previous score (Before Servicing by DELL) using the Heaven Benchmark:



And now this is my current score after the Servicing by the DELL Technician:



Quite a huge improvement over what I had previously. When I saw the old heatsink, it was quite bad. The thermal paste have all dried up and the thermal pads themselves have turned grey and are quite brittle. In contrast, the pads which came with the brand new heatsink were yellow-ish in color. The fans are also now running at 100% no problem when I run my games. The DELL Technician also agreed to apply the Noctua NT H1 thermal Paste I provided, and not the standard DELL issued one. Hopefully this would last for a long time.


So happy for Dell Premium support. ^^ I would have to replace my battery however, but that is sadly not covered by DELL since the warranty for that expired last year. Oh wells. I am still quite satisfied nonetheless. It is like I got a brand new laptop. Would definitely see to having the premium warranty extended for a few more years, at least it would help keep my laptop running for longer.

 

New AWCC available for download:



This version appears to address the constant KERNELBASE.dll crash the application suffers from.

 

And I take it back. AWCC was working fine for a couple of days, started throwing the same error yesterday.

 

I guess I can say its stability has improved, but I have no idea by how much. There are a number of factors that apparently affect the operation of AWCC; is fastboot enabled, is the application service set to "automatic" or "automatic-delayed" and likely other factors. The application apparently recovers silently on its own without any action by the user, I suspect many folks are unaware that the problem even exists. I have a case of OCD when it comes to how my computers are running, and inexplicable errors bother me, even if they don't appear to have any impact on functionality. My opinion is that it isn't supposed to behave that way, so it shouldn't behave that way.

The KERNELBASE.dll error has been around for several years, with Dell being unwilling to fix it (likely due to the way the application recovers). I've seen the problem less since installing the most recent version of AWCC, so I guess that's good?

 

New BIOS available (2.8.0) Addresses the following:

INTEL-SA-00463 - Summary, escalation of privilege requiring local access
INTEL-SA-00464 - Summary, information disclosure requiring local access
INTEL-SA-00459 - Summary, escalation of privilege requiring local access

New iGPU driver available. Addresses vulnerability identified in INTEL-SA-00438 - Summary, escalation of privilege, denial of service, and information disclosure requiring local access.

 

New BIOS available (2.9.0)

The description listed on the Dell website says, "Firmware updates to address security vulnerabilities" but offers no security advisory listing providing any details of what is being patched.

Not going to install this one.

EDIT: I'm a glutton for punishment. Went ahead and installed it anyway and against better judgment.

 

As your community sacrificial lamb, I went ahead and installed 2.9.0 just to see what would happen. I still have the ability to UV and nothing seems borked...yet. I'll report back if anything happens.

 

New AWCC and OC Tools available.

Haven't had the chance to install them yet, will do so later today and report my findings. The list of fixes doesn't include the constant KERNALBASE.dll exceptions I've seen, but here's to hoping!

 

While it might be too soon to tell, my reliability monitor hasn't reported an AWCC.exe crash since the update. It usually took a day or two to pop back up but so far so good. I'll report back if anything goes sideways. Also, the upgrade to BIOS 2.9.0 has been uneventful. Your mileage may vary, but I haven't noted anything of concern.

EDIT: The KERNELBASE.dll errors are back. Took about three days to show up. Guess this isn't the fix.

 

New BIOS available (2.10) Addresses the following:

INTEL-SA-00562 - Summary; escalation of privilege requiring local access, affects 7th, 10th, and 11th gen processors (among others, but these are the generations that are found in Alienware laptops).