2013 Alienware 18 v 2016 Alienware 17

Hi Everyone,

I have had an Alienware 18 since early 2014 and simply LOVE it. I'm a graphic designer who's also into sim racing, so it has been the perfect machine for me. It has been carried up and down the hills of San Francisco and bashed around on BART and MUNI pretty hard in an AW Orion backpack (also an excellent piece of gear), and used for 10+ hours daily, with a fair bit of that at high CPU/GPU useage.

After all this it looks like new and runs faster then ever - Windows 10 has been a pain to get correctly configured but now it's super-fast, and the M290X GPUs perform especially well.

Unfortunately health problems (arthritis and other bad stuff) means that it's just getting too heavy for me to be carrying around all the time, so I need to cut down on weight somehow. I've been looking hard at the new AW 17 with UHD screen, which seems like the best compromise I can find between weight and power, not to mention the higher resolution being a major bonus for work.

My only doubts with the new 17 are over build quality and durability. Like many people here, I'm not a fan of the trend towards BGA in manufacturing, and have doubts over Alienware's real motives for their focus on "thin and light". Does anyone have first-hand experience of both machines (especially if they've done teardowns) who could perhaps give me their comparative take on build quality and durability?

I'd hugely appreciate some insight!

 

I had the Alienware 18 and currently rocking the Alienware 15R3 (though it doesn't belong to me).

The Alienware 18's build quality is superb, but given that it is a larger machine you will get more chassis flex compared to the newer models. The 15 and 17 uses full metal reinforcements and outer shell (to less of an extent) and therefore is able to be more structurally rigid compared to the 18.

Cooling wise, the 15 and 17 has exhibited severe issues from the factory, but this problem can easily be curbed by a dose of Liquid Metal, bringing down temps compared to stock paste with a delta of up to 30-35 degrees. IMO it's better than the 18's cooling, since the fans on the newer machines are much more powerful and have an extremely aggressive fan curve. The temperature results on the 18 was less than stellar in my opinion.

Upgrade is the hard part, sure the 18 has socketed parts but it is not able to upgrade to pascal due to the LVDS support being dropped by nvidia 10-series mobile GPU. The newer machines fix the issue of expensive replacement MXM GPUs with an external NGFF eGPU box that you can buy separately. Alternatively if you want an eGPU box with thunderbolt, you can also buy the Razer core and connect it.

Storage wise, you get 1 2.5", 2 NVME (raid capable), and one M.2 SATA SSD slot. It has one less M.2 and 2.5" but there are big gains to be made with NVME drives.

If you don't keep machines for more than a year, then definitely go for the newer 15 and 17, sell it within a year with minimal losses and buy a new one.


You lose some, you win some, but in the end I think it would be worth ditching the AW18 since it's quickly losing market value due to the LVDS display.



@iunlock has the 17R4, he can give you more insights to this machine since I only have the 15R3.


Also, check my sig if you want to know what Alienware thinks is "acceptable" in their machines.

 

Thanks very much for taking the time to respond in such detail, Mobius. Very useful indeed. Your comments on the AW18 cooling were interesting - I've never had any issues on that front at all, however, mine has always run cool even with the GPUs maxed out for extended periods - maybe it's something to do with them being AMD over NVIDIA. I've also never noticed any real-world difference in heat levels or fan performance after BIOS updates either.

I'm just about brave enough to disassemble and do the replacement paste thing. I've only taken my 18 apart a couple of times, first because the audio board was loose on delivery (!!!!), then a few months ago to give it a good clean inside. Haven't been brave enough to do anything like take off the heatsinks though. Even though the 18 is more like a truck to a sports car when it comes to repair from what I have experienced, amateur tinkering with 2,800 bucks worth of machine was pretty nerve racking. Is the new 17 harder or easier to work on in your opinion?

Had a good read at your remarks in the other thread, a lot of food for thought there too regarding operating temperatures. I'm sure the new CPUs and boards can theoretically take it as Alienware claim, but there are lots of other components around them that tend to have shorter lives in a hotter environment...

Again, thanks for your time and thoughts.