Thoughts on NEW ALIENWARE 17 - which is best for my needs?

The NEW ALIENWARE 17 laptops I am looking to purchase for University, to be used for 3D modelling such as inventor, Autodesk, CAD, etc etc. I will be studying Architecture. At the same time I would like to game on the laptop, mostly Steam Games, and Xbox Games.



Which of the range of the models would have the right amount of capabilities for me to do all the things ?

Not looking for the most powerful and most expensive, rather the correct specs for just what I need to do.



Thanks!!

 

Hey Roland; a laptop with an i7-6700HQ and a GTX 1060 would do pretty well for modelling and gaming if your budget is limited. You'd be able to play all games on high/ultra, around 60fps. The color on the 1080p IPS screen for that model is also pretty nice. If you want more power, the next step up is a GTX 1070. For what you need to do, I'd say you would get the most for your money from an i7-6700HQ model with the 1080p IPS screen and either a GTX 1060 (~$1450) or GTX 1070 (~$1900), depending on your budget. I'm not sure if you're U.S.-based or not; those prices are in U.S. dollars.

There have been a lot of quality control and performance throttling going on with these models, mainly regarding the heat-sink. Lots of units have very hot processors. I'd read through some of the most recent pages of the owner's lounge at http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-alienware-17-r4-2016-owners-lounge.797457/ to get a good idea of everything going on. If you are in the U.S., I'd recommend talking to iunlock--he can repaste the processor and fix the heat-sink issue after you get your unit. An official fix for the over-heating processor issue is in the works from Dell; but there's no exact date on when models with the fix will come out.

I hope this will be some good information for you, and best of luck picking a machine!

 

Thanks Entionz for the detailed reply! This is what I've decided to go with, what do you recon?

Operating System - Windows 10 Home 64bit English, Dutch, French, German, Italian
Video Card - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1070 with 8GB GDDR5
Processor - Intel® Core™ i7-6820HK Processor (Quad-Core, 8MB Cache, Dynamically Overclocked up to 4.1GHz)
LCD - 17.3 inch UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS Anti-Glare 300-nits Display with Tobii IR Eye-tracking
Memory - 16GB DDR4 at 2667MHz (2x8GB)
Hard Drive - 512GB PCIe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
Wireless - Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1

I am also based in the UK, however will look into the over heating problem once purchased on monday!

 

Looks like a pretty good setup for a mix of gaming and modelling use! Just make sure to keep your eye on the heat of that i7-6820hk processor. Downloading a program like HWInfo and watching the temps when you're playing games or modeling is my only recommendation. Best of luck on your purchase Monday!