*OFFICIAL* Alienware 14 Owner's Lounge Thread

I have ordered my Alienware 14, should have it in 2 weeks with 256GB mSATA already installed.

For the optical drive, where can the caddies be brought from. It looks like a non standard connector ribbon, or the actual slot load drive is different for a normal type replacement caddie?

 

You guys will love your new rig. Received my 14 4 days ago and it is an awesome machine. I had the M14X for almost 2 yrs. and really liked that one also. I like the new 14 better with one exception. I really liked the nebula red and would have been great to have the new 14 in red also, however, the gray lid with orange lighting is a sight to behold.

 

Out of curiosity, anybody get the 1366x768 screen? I'm curious as to how it is and if anyone could post pics. I like the IPS's colors and viewing angles but the resolution is tough on my poor eyesight. I have the DPI set to 125% but even still it seems to bother me after an hour or two.

N

 

When I want to read on the interwebs for awhile I just go to resolution in the control panel and drop it to 1600X900. I make sure I switch it back before watching a blu-ray or playing a game. I do this on my Asus Zenbook also which has the same FHD screen.

 

rather than switching you can also leave the resolution as is and just use the browsers in-built zoom function

Nexus 4 via Tapatalk 2

 

How you find the keyboard, is the actual keys themselves better?

The lighting on the old keyboard is pretty cool, as in it lights up a square shape on each key. How do you find the lighting on the new keys which are black?

 

Hey guys, i'm waiting for my new Alienware 14 and it comes with Win 8.
I just want to replace its HDD to my SSD and install win7.
I would like to ask you guys that what i suppose to do ?

Thank you very much.

 

The keyboard lighting is different than the M14X. Instead of the entire key lighting up, just the number is. It's a little more understated than before and I actually think I like it more. It is a more subtle presentation than before and looks more professional rather than garish. The keyboard itself has a metal plate underneath and this gives the keyboard a nice solid feel, I like it but really don't notice a big difference from before in actual operation.

 

In bios change to ahci, and clean install ssd.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

 

Yeah, I forgot to switch from RAID to ACHI and had to do the the registry hack in order to change modes.

 

If it is not to late, reconfigure your order to Windows 7 as an option, doesn't cost any extra, then just clone the drive soon as you get it.

 

I would still do a fresh install, I think windows 7 does some optimizations on an SSD. I just remember there was a good reason not to do this when I upgraded my m15x

 

Always best to clean install when going to SSD to insure TRIM is working.

 

Hey guys, so Dell sent my shipment confirmation today...as I was unboxing lol. I checked some of the things people have been concerned with and here are my thoughts and very early impressions:

-Backlight bleed: my screen has a tiny bit of bleeding in the lower left area of the screen. Nothing really noticeable at all.
-Subwoofer: There is definitely bass and the sub is definitely working (touchpad vibrating and all that). The sub is definitely more mid-range than bass but I can clearly make out bass guitars and the like. I briefly had an r2 and the bass was definitely clearer on that. The problem I think is that the new 14 doesn't have an opening for the subwoofer: it sounds like the bass is reverberating on the inside of the chassis, which is muddying up the bass notes. This kinda destroys the stereo separation and it melds with the other 2 speakers (which also sound like they have more mids than most laptop speakers). To be honest, I don't know why they put the subwoofer in such an odd spot...
-Loose Power Jack: my power cord can wiggle quite a bit in the jack, but its in there pretty firmly. Doesn't seem worrying.

Other pros and cons so far:

The Pros:
-Screen: I personally think the screen is beautiful. It's bright and colors pop. It's definitely on the warm side though. Matte is super nice
-Sound: despite the oddities with the subwoofer, the sound is excellent compared to most laptops I've heard (not saying much).
-Keyboard: feels awesome, no flex anywhere.
-Build: feels like a tank. Some creaks and pops here and there, but nothing that bad yet (haven't really had much time with it).

The Cons:
-Temperature: this thing is pretty warm at idle. CPU temps are 54-58 degrees celcius at idle on integrated graphics. Played TF2 for a bit, CPU hit 79, GPU hit 67 max.
-Noise: the 750gb HDD included is loud (OS is on mSATA, HDD just data). Its a WD scorpio black I think. I just put one in my '09 MBP13 and its loud. This one is no different. Fan also ramps up at random during idle. However, the laptop is suprisingly quiet at load. Optical drive also makes all sorts of hoopla whenever it wants to.
-Touchpad: people seem to be getting along fine with it, I don't like it at all. My finger just doesn't glide nicely on it. Wish it had some texture to it. Definitely nowhere near as good as Apple's unfortunately.
-Battery life: so far, it seems pretty bad. With minimum brightness, power savings, and CPU state limited to 5%, only seeing between 3.5 and 4 hours. This thing has almost the same size battery as the Razer Blade 14, shame its battery life isn't as good (the nicer screen probably drains a lot, oh the irony).

The "Meh:"
-Why is the trackpad a "status zone?" When I hit AlienFX to turn off, I clearly don't want a bright square lighting up in the middle of the laptop lol.
-The mics pick up everything the speakers output. Anything I say sounds garbled unless I plug headphones in to turn off the speakers. Mic sounds decent otherwise.

Specs:
i7 4800mq
16GB ram
GTX765m
1080p IPS display
Blu-ray
256GB mSATA+750GB HDD


Overall, the laptop seems kinda like a mixed bag. Will have to play with it some more to see if I wanna keep it. Anyways, hope this helps someone!

 

Does using Alien respawn to restore windows onto the new ssd counts as a "clean install"?
or I have to find a windows DVD in order to clean install it?

 

You will need to find a Windows DVD to do a clean install (note to Alienware: we really need our Windows DVDs!). And don't be tempted to just clone the HDD to the SDD. I did that and it worked for a day then refused to boot. Since the clean install everything seems to be working okay now..

 

Ok so the technician came, and replaced tehj sub and it still doesn't work. My battery lasts 3 horus max it seems with everything turned down. My battery drains from 100% to 8% over 8 horus in sleep mode. they tell me this is normal? - the dell support team... is it ? The keyboard is a bit squeky on the enter key.... t this is getting very frustrating ........... I wished I lived in America where the alienware support is amazing.... what can I do? will dell let me return / exchange it? another technician coming in a day or so.... see what happens ....

 

where do you live? nothing in your profile

 

I live in australia

 

give twitter a go

https://twitter.com/AlienwareOz

 

Your battery should not be completely drained in 8-9 hours while in sleep mode. If they cannot fix that then that alone is reason enough for either a return or brand new replacement.

 

Hi everyone - ordered one of these for my son and it arrived on Saturday. 765M, 1080p screen, and Windows 8. He's loving it.

One issue we've run into, though - the first thing I wanted to do is run AlienRespawn to back up the recovery partition to a USB drive. Did this on both my m17x, and my wife's Inspiron. However, on my son's Alienware 14, I'm getting an error message that the recovery partition is "missing or corrupted." I can see in Disk Manager that a recovery partition exists.

Has anyone run into this?

 

When I did the backup, the first thing that popped up when I went into AR was an update was available, not the one you pay for. It updated the respawn application along with the usb and graphics driver. When I first turned it on and it was going through all of its first time use crap it asked if i wanted AW to check for updates and I said yes. This would have been easy to miss in all the excitement we get in powering on a new rig for the first time. Try and update respawn and see what happens. Do you have windows 7 or 8? I have 7 and received a 7 cd, a recovery cd and a applications cd.

 

Amazon sent the first one I got yesterday and it was a opened. Factory seal open, some sticky grimy food looking stuff smeared on the bottom. So I called, they overnighted another. Just got it, all sealed up in outer brown box, factory seal etc. about to boot her up... Yay...

 

So I was looking to get a couple usb 3.0 flash drives for respawn and to use as a linux boot disk and I came across this article about a bug with usb 3.0 and haswell: Intel Confirms, Fixes Haswell's USB 3.0 S3 Sleep Problems. Looking around, the bug is present in all recently shipped motherboards and systems and causes usb 3.0 drives to disconnect when entering S3 sleep. I checked with CPUID and my 14 has the C1 stepping (with the usb bug). Now I don't think the bug will bother me much unless it impacts the ability to boot from a flash drive. Can anyone please confirm that they can boot off of a usb 3.0 flash drive into alienrespawn, linux, windows, or whatever?

Also curious what are everyone's thoughts about this seeing as us "early adopters" probably all have C1 boards.

 

@tangerines - Which utility are you running to confirm your mainboard stepping? CPU-Z doesn't appear to provide anything other than CPU stepping.

 

In CPU-Z, go to mainboard, to the right of southbridge. Rev 04 is C1 stepping and Rev 05 is C2 stepping from what I've read.

 

Yeah I have but I haven't got my new AW14 yet, it does this on my M17x R3 and have never been able to create restore disks. Dell support was poor on several times I called, telling me that if I wanted to restore, I would have to reinstall windows by using the included windows disc. That is not a restore in my mind, that is dell trying to adviod the issue.
I tried everything I could to get it to create restore disks but nothing would work, mine is still there too. Let me know if you figure this out.

 

hey guys, sorry to keep complaining, but the dell service is pretty bad here in Australia. They insist the battery life is only 1-2 hours and only can last 4 if its open but you do absolutely nothing on it. and that its normal for the battery to run down almost 100% in sleep mode in 8 horus since it is a "powerful" notebook. Im not sure what to tell them anymore

 

Questions...I was on Dell chat and they told me the new model is called Alienware 14, yet the people who are getting it says the paper/invoice that comes with the Alienware 14 says M14xR3.

I can't see why Dell would call it an R3 model since it is completely redesigned. It's going to cause lot s of confusion IMO.

 

Sounds like you're stuck with some idiots down there.

Tell them that people who actually own the 14 who use it for surfing, video, email etc are getting 3.5-4 hours of battery. Tell them that no matter how "powerful" a laptop is, that sleep state for any computer, laptop or otherwise, is only powering the system memory. Keep asking for someone, anyone!, who knows what they're talking about. Reach out to the AW reps here to see if they can help get you going in the right direction.

 

Quick update... Did bios update from A01 to A03. Couple other things. Ran BF3 in native 1080p with settings on high, shadows low. Played BF3 for about 3 hours, HWINFO reported max CPU temp was 83 and Max GPU was 63. Average FPS was 54, pretty danG amazing for such a small machine.

The screen is absolutely beautiful, almost as good as my retina MBP. I can see myself using this machine for my photograph editing as well as my Mac. In will try to do a more in depth review later. I did the fn+ f5 to put it in dedicated only as I personally don't care about integrated graphics at all. Wish I could just install the intel video drivers do it doesn't work at all.

I will put it through its paces more to make sure it's stable.

Anyone know where to get a slot loading blue ray burner that will work with this machine?

 

All of my documentation, order receipt, invoice etc. says Alienware 14

 

Ok good. Thanks for the info!

 

That's the same range of numbers I'm getting gaming as well. I can't seem to get the GPU above 66C. Love the performance with 326.41 beta drivers and I haven't seen any throttling of the CPU or GPU.

 

Hi everyone and hi slickie88,
I have received my Alien 14 today...so excited.
Thank you guys for guiding me install win7.
I have done it without any issue.

My one comes with A01..and i have checked it on Dell Support with my service tag.
The problem is nothing to display in BIOS section related to my service tag...OMG.

So should i need to check on BIOS section which is supported for Alien 14 series? There is a newest bios version A03 appear on the drop list.

Thank you very much.

 

Just choose an operating system, then show all files and it'll list the bios update.

 

my aw14 is on its way! pulled the trigger on the base fhd model and added the 2gb nvidia.

14.0 inch (355.6 mm) WLED FHD (1920 x 1080)
8GB1 Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz
750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M with 2GB GDDR5

ordered sat 3 aug. shipped weds 7 aug. delivery down for mon 12 aug. amazingly when i checked my order status on monday just gone it had an estimated delivery date of 27 aug

so more than happy with the date i now have. shipping from shanghai btw.

 

congrats
I must say the working speed is quite impressive!!
Mine will arrive on the same day as yours but I placed the order on 27/7
Waiting for it to come is killing me

 

when i placed the order on the 3rd it said 'estimated ship date 9 aug' on the dell website. then on monday when i saw 'estimated delivery of 27 aug' on my order page i phoned up and kicked up a bit of a fuss. the dell guy who had been looking after my case phoned today to confirm delivery details. apparently he had 'expediated' the order process a bit by way of an apology.

congrats on your purchase too. i'm an aw virgin so hoping for good things come next week!

 

So I pulled my old cooler master sf19 laptop cooler out of the closet (huge cooler with two 120 or 140 fans. I used it with my old sager 9370.

Ran BF3 for 8 hours on high with shadows off. CPU maxed at 71 and gpu maxed at 54! So this tells us te little fans in this bad boy jut can't suck in enough air on its own. Mine runs fine without but nice difference with this cooler.

I'm going to order a smaller CM U2 or u3 to fit the notebook size better and easier for travel. I think it's for to play in a pick without one but I think I'll keep a cooler under it as much as I can.

Now if my 512gb Samsung mSata drive will get here :/

 

I'm ready for a new gaming-capable laptop and am close to ordering a new AW 14. A few questions:

What are some thoughts on the screen now that people have been using it for some weeks? Specifically, how do colors look? I would be coming from a Dell L502X with a B+RG screen, so I'm prepared for the fact that nothing I buy is going to be as bright or vivid, but I'll get used to it as long as it isn't actually bad. But I tried a couple of Dell L521X units last year and sent them back due to what I perceived to be low quality screens with gridlines and dull colors. In fact, one thing that makes me a bit nervous about possibly ordering an AW is that I don't want to have a new XPS 15 revision released in a month or two with a return to the B+RG screen (I'd be kicking myself, if so). To me, screen is a tad more important than GPU, but the 540M in my current system just isn't cutting it anymore.

Is there any reason to get 16 GB of memory over 8? Will more than 8 ever be used? I don't do any graphics or photo editing, just gaming and browsing. And I don't run all kinds of applications at once.

I didn't like Windows 8 when I tried it last year. Should I stick with 7, then, or there is any good reason to get 8? Seems all computer manufacturers are "recommending" 8, but I imagine that's because MS is paying them to.

Finally, can the price be negotiated with a salesperson in chat? Think I could get anything knocked off a $1700 model if I compare it to a similarly-specced cheaper model from another manufacturer? I am in the US, if it matters.

 

@jmeyer2039,

I think the general consensus is that the screen is good. It's a matte ips panel so viewing angles are good and there are no issues with glare. Contrast is extremely high so things really "pop" in my opinion. If you need color accuracy though, color gamut is only around 62% I think so it probably wouldn't cut it for professional color work. Some reviews say that it's dim but it seems painfully bright to me on maximum. Overall, I think its a great screen and its probably the best screen you can get in the 14 inch category. I am referring to the 1080p screen btw.

For just gaming and browsing, 16GB is overkill, 8 GB will suit you fine unless you start doing heavy video/music editing or run VM's.

Windows 8 has some optimizations under the hood so it's faster than 7 if you can deal with the rest of it. I personally went with Windows 7.

Price can be negotiated (ask for a US rep). There's a thread somewhere that gives some haggling tips...



Also, I wanted to follow up with my previous post regarding the Haswell usb 3.0 bug (buried in this thread somewhere). The bug causes some usb 3.0 drives to disconnect when entering sleep (so you have to re-plug them in after the computer wakes up). It's minor, but it might affect some people who like leaving things connected to their laptops all the time. There will be a hardware revision to the motherboard chipset that fixes this, but it looks like most buyers won't receive the revised version until early September at the earliest. Apparently though, the bug only affects some usb 3.0 drives and I thought I'd share this test I found on 22 different drive models: 33 Haswell motherboard group test: 26x Z87, 4x H87 and 3x B85 - The USB issue: definitely there | Hardware.Info United States.

So if you want to avoid the usb 3.0 sleep disconnect issue, just make sure you buy one of the drives that doesn't have the error. Hope this helps someone!

 

Glad to hear all that about the screen. I don't need color accuracy. My current display with the B+RGLED isn't accurate, either, just very, very rich in color which I do like (some don't). But, as I said, there's nothing 15" or smaller to my knowledge outside of a retina display that's going to come close, and I'm not buying a Mac. Anyway, contrast sounds great, 62% color gamut sounds average or perhaps slightly above, but Alienware advertises it as having "rich" color, and I haven't really read any complaints from users. So, that's good.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer all of my questions. Do you happen to know if the thread with haggling tips is in the Alienware forum or somewhere else?

Edit: Just read that the color gamut on the M14x was 45%, so, with AW claiming a 60% increase, that would put the new 14's screen at 72% and not 62%. Obviously, I don't know which number is right, if either. And I'm not saying you're wrong. But 72% actually sounds pretty good. Where did you get that it was only 62? I guess it doesn't really matter, neither number is going to make or break my decision. Just wondering.

 

Just changed my order and re-ordered for about $100 less money. I can still change this back

What do you think?

Old order (costs more):
i7-4700MQ
16GB RAM
765M
256GB mSATA + 750GB HDD
Killer NIC 1202
DVD drive

New Order (costs less):
i7-4800MQ
16GB RAM
765M
64GB mSATA + 750GB HDD
Boardcom 4352
Blu-ray drive

 

Good for you. I would have definitely taken the updated order.

 

so, they gave you a upgraded core and a bluray for cheaper? You got a deal there

 

are there any custom BIOS' available for this model yet? I would like to be able to control GPU selection in the BIOS instead of using the GPU button in Windows. Would it ever be possible to select between nvidia-only, intel-only, and optimus, or will it only be a choice between nvidia-only and optimus like it is now?

 

Keep in mind that the one review that bothered to measure color gamut, luminance, etc did so on the AUO panel. Others like me have the LG panel so the observations and data will not apply. I suspect you have the LG based on your brightness statement.

Could not agree more. Running more than one VM at time, video/audio editing are the only reason people should be ordering 16GB RAM. 8GB is more than enough otherwise.

 

notebookcheck.net is the only site out there that does full on panel measurements in their reviews. In fact they're the only worthwhile reviews out there at all. Be aware that it's possible you'll get the LGD03EA panel rather than the AUO113D that they reviewed. I'll be running similar tests to see how the LG compares (in as much as I can given that I use a different colorimeter than they do).

My personal take on the LG panel is that it's gorgeous. Not retina-gasmic, but gorgeous nonetheless. It runs a bit bright (mine measured over 300cd/m2) and was extremely close to being calibrated to 65k/2.2 right out of the box. The matte finish is as good as I've seen in any laptop panel and colors are pretty rich.

I'll be posting a some of my tests and an ICC profile for the LG this weekend. For those of you with the AUO panel, notebookcheck has made theirs available for download.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/uploads/tx_nbc2/alien14.icm