Alienware 15 R3 (2016) unboxing (56k no!)

Spike_UK · 23 Nov 2016 at 19:19

My AW 15 R3 arrived today, and as requested in another thread, here are some unboxing images.

I'll add more later, once it's finished setting up.

HEADRAT · 23 Nov 2016 at 19:43

Interested as I'm considering buying one for my son for Xmas, how much was it?

Spike_UK · 23 Nov 2016 at 20:05

I managed to sneak an order in before the prices went up so I picked up the 15 R3 with i7-6700HQ, 16GB DDR4, GTX 1070 and 1080p 120hz G-Sync display for £1880 inc VAT.

I opted to keep just the base HDD option so it's got 1TB SATA, but has room for M.2 SSD's inside. I felt it'll be cheaper to put my own drives in than bump the price of the laptop to over 2k.

Five_Star · 24 Nov 2016 at 10:54

Thanks for this, loving the classic thread title

Please can I request a good picture of the power adaptor / brick please

Can you put it on a piece of A4 paper or something similar for scale? Dell are useless at supplying information on this as is almost all reviews online and YouTube!

icey_haj · 24 Nov 2016 at 10:58

Love the lighting on the side and the trackpad.

kaktus · 24 Nov 2016 at 12:15

Looks good, enjoy and don't forget to run those benches asap

Andr3w · 24 Nov 2016 at 12:20

Spike_UK said:
I managed to sneak an order in before the prices went up so I picked up the 15 R3 with i7-6700HQ, 16GB DDR4, GTX 1070 and 1080p 120hz G-Sync display for £1880 inc VAT.

I opted to keep just the base HDD option so it's got 1TB SATA, but has room for M.2 SSD's inside. I felt it'll be cheaper to put my own drives in than bump the price of the laptop to over 2k.

Nice! I paid roughly that for the same specs but 60hz instead of 120 :rolleyes:

Get some benching done

You can download 3Dmark free on steam and let us know the results.

kaktus · 24 Nov 2016 at 14:38

Dell is currently offering 12% off for Black Friday and Quidco is doing 7.7% on any dell purchase. Not sure if these can be used together or if Dell will decline the cashback but if they don't decline you can get:

* 17 R4 with a 1070, 256GB PCI-e / 7200 HDD, 16 GB 2667mhz Ram and QHD G-Sync for £1,867 inc

* 17 R4 with 1070, 7200 HDD, 8GB 2400mhz RAM and QHD G-sync for £1,623 inc

So you're effectively looking at a differential of £243 for an upgrade which includes 256GB PCI-e SSD and 8GB more ram.

Priced separately you could pick up a Samsung 960 256GB and Samsung 16GB Ram for about £200 so potentially save £43. Not great but you know, every little help

killswitch73 · 24 Nov 2016 at 15:15

You can't use both together , quidco cancels as code was used .

Spike_UK · 24 Nov 2016 at 15:58

icey_haj said:
Love the lighting on the side and the trackpad.

That was a major part of my decision making process when buying

You can configure the colour of each strip independently (the alien head logos too).

Spike_UK · 24 Nov 2016 at 17:22

Five_Star said:
Thanks for this, loving the classic thread title

Please can I request a good picture of the power adaptor / brick please

Can you put it on a piece of A4 paper or something similar for scale? Dell are useless at supplying information on this as is almost all reviews online and YouTube!

Here you go

That's a standard sheet of A4.
It's big, but not the biggest I've seen.

Spike_UK · 24 Nov 2016 at 17:47

kaktus said:
Priced separately you could pick up a Samsung 960 256GB and Samsung 16GB Ram for about £200 so potentially save £43. Not great but you know, every little help

This is exactly why I decided to stick with the 1TB mechanical drive and save a bit of money. It's far cheaper to put your own drives in, and thankfully the way the Alienware is designed maintenance is trivial.

£1800 on a laptop with upgrades possible in the future is a lot more acceptable for the other half than £2000+.

Spike_UK · 24 Nov 2016 at 18:02

First benchmark. I'm a bit out of touch in benchmarking these days so I have no idea if that's good or not or if 3DMark is even a good tool to use anymore.
Kind of crazy seeing those GPU tests never dropping below 30fps on a laptop!

kaktus · 24 Nov 2016 at 21:04

remember to bench the temps and check the individual cores as well

Five_Star · 25 Nov 2016 at 09:30

Spike_UK said:
Here you go That's a standard sheet of A4.
It's big, but not the biggest I've seen.

....
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Thanks for that, yeah, pretty big!

(no wonder Dell don't draw attention to it on their website!)

Ciqala · 25 Nov 2016 at 10:53

Goddamit was just about to buy an MSI GTX73 and they do the 12% offer got some thinking to do before the 28th, I'm liking the 1080 with the new g-sync screen

kaktus · 25 Nov 2016 at 11:12

Ciqala said:
Goddamit was just about to buy an MSI GTX73 and they do the 12% offer got some thinking to do before the 28th, I'm liking the 1080 with the new g-sync screen

HP are doing 15% off anything (SAVE15) including their laptops. It makes the Omen gtx 1070 with same specs as AW about £500 cheaper. Granted it's supposed to be a little noisy and gets a little hot but still £500 cheaper is a lot of dosh

james_2k · 25 Nov 2016 at 11:17

some people hate on alienware, but when i had mine it was fantastic, enjoy bud!

kaktus · 25 Nov 2016 at 21:15

killswitch73 said:
You can't use both together , quidco cancels as code was used .

Not sure but it looks like Quidco has just posted a new code which is 10.5% of *all sales* and be used in conjunction with the existing 12% off via Dell Black Friday

Expires in 50 minutes

Dangerous · 25 Nov 2016 at 21:25

that screen bezel :eek:

Take my XPS 13 any date