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    Should I avoid the Alienware 17?

    Discussion in '2015+ Alienware 13 / 15 / 17' started by Lykotic, Jul 31, 2015.

  1. Lykotic

    Lykotic Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hey guys. I am currently looking at 4 laptops and deciding this weekend to order one (Asus, MSI, Alienware) and am curious if you guys would avoid the Alienware currently due to the cooling issue. I know the you can flash the bios down to A00 but is there a way you can manually set-up a fan profile with this laptop?

    Also how do you guys feel about the Amplifier? I currently plan to purchase this with he laptop (for the $100 discount) assuming I buy this laptop. Iwon't toss a graphics card in it until i need one (For Honor would be my guess)
     
    Lykotic, Jul 31, 2015
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  2. orancanoren

    orancanoren Notebook Consultant

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    The main issue with this laptop isn't heating. The CPU throttles down. I recently got my alienware 17r2 with 980m/4720hq and one time I even saw my CPU running at 800 MHz! However I was able to fix the issue using throttlestop. Now every once in a while the CPU throttles to 3.2 GHz and comes back up to 3.5 GHz. Other than that I don't know if I would buy this laptop if I had a chance to go back in time and be able to buy any laptop I want but currently I am very happy with the laptop since I got the throttling sorted out. In this forum someone said that the throttling issue happens in every laptop brand that has 4th gen soldered CPU but alienware gives you 180W PSU so that is why alienware seems to have bigger problems. There has been hybrid bios releases and I am using the A05 (latest) BIOS with the 180W PSU. Temps go high if you don't control the fans. I have been doing some testing and if I max the fans via HWiNFO and undervolt the CPU by 59.6 mV's my CPU works almost perfect (as stated above) and max temp I get becomes 88 deg C. I don't have any info about graphics amp but I am planning to get one in 2 years thinking like you (dont need graphics amp until its needed). I have been playing shadow of mordor and dying light mainly. Shadow of mordor runs at 50-60 fps ultra (avg 57) and dying light runs 55-60 fps (2 minor settings on medium instead of high, view distance on about 25% sometimes goes down to 40's for 5-10 seconds) so I am amazed by the perforamance. My pc scored 8305 on firestrike today.
     
    orancanoren, Aug 1, 2015
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