The Alienware 17 Laptop Appreciation Thread

[Besty]

I tried to do a deal with Dell today for an R4 as it is month end. The problem is that Nvidia want too much money for the 1080 as there is no competition. My spec ended up being £1000 over the R3.

Am now waiting for Vega and simply buying a GPU Amplifier for my R3 to tide me over.

FYI - 17inch R4 models with the HK Kaby Lake model are now orderable.

 

[Lmg80]

I had one and generally did not have any complaints, but others complained about throttling on the R2 GTX980m models due to the hybrid power - my initial reason for getting one for portability and had it 2 years. I sold it tail end of last year and built a PC losing only £200 so from that perspective AW do seem to hold their value.

 

[delta0]

17 R3 6820, 16GB RAM, 980m 8GB, 4K screen, 512GB SSD (+ 1GB HDD). Absolutely love it. I'm running all my games maxed out in either 1080p or 4K. It's also super easy to upgrade if I need to in future.

 

[Teknobry]

Have you had that long? didn't think the 980m was still being sold.

 

[delta0]

Have you had that long? didn't think the 980m was still being sold.

R3 is the previous model. I've had it since last year.

 

[Besty]

I got a last minute deal in the end. R17 R4 Laptop with 1080 and Kaby Lake arrived today (3 week lead time). impressions to follow.

 

[Teknobry]

I got a last minute deal in the end. R17 R4 Laptop with 1080 and Kaby Lake arrived today (3 week lead time). impressions to follow.

awesome, what did that set you back?

 

[Besty]

I ended up paying £2,200 in the end. I think the G-Sync, 1080 and Eye-tracking added around £500 to the price of this years model. I think next years model will have AMD options on it for CPU/GPU so looking forward to paying less next year as Intel/Nvidia simply have no competition - for this year I have swallowed it, I will think hard and long when Q2 2018 comes around and its time to chop in one of them.

I seriously considered the new 17 inch Razer Pro but they wanted closer to £3,200 (similar spec. with the 4k panel).

 

[Besty]

some first impressions.

pros.

- beautifully engineered (photo below)
- windows hello works like a dream, how did i live without it ?
- the 120hz TN panel is not as bad as expected, once using the calibrated profile
- 1080GTX powah ! (stock boost is 1850mhz/5000mhz)
- Level 1 CPU OC set in bios yields 4.1-4.3 GHZ out of the Kaby Lake CPU
- 2666 MHZ RAM
- G-Sync !
- 1080ti support via amplifier (1080ti Hall Of Fame test incoming)
- Full VR support with my Oculus.

cons.

- not sure the keyboard is an improvement, the keys have longer travel
- TN panel, need OLED
- The laptop itself is longer than last years model as the cooling zone for the GPU sticks out from the back
- the powerbrick is bigger and heavier

 

[MrFunex]

Besty - where did you get the calibrated profile from for the screen?

I absolutely love my 17 R4. It's so fast! Was playing about with the 4.1GHz overclock and it seems 100% stable. Not sure I'll bother though - everything runs at 60+fps with all settings maxed as standard anyhow! Temps are 85C max as standard and 92C when pushed to 4.1GHz (mines the SkyLake 6820HK chip.)

There's an update for the GPU on the Alienware website - squeezes a bit more speed from it! (Mine seems to be running at 1911/5005)

 

[NanimalMother]

Does anyone have the new style 15? I'm looking at it (against the new Aorusx5 v7). What is the build quality like? Is it an aluminium style body? I've looked at the "epic silver" but every photo has the garish pink neon trim. Is that standard or can the colours be changed? It's well specc'd for the money too. I'm hesitant as I've mostly heard Alienware are all fur coat no knickers since Dell bought them.

 

[waldaize]

@MrFunex so how is your 6820 1080 refurb?

 

[MrFunex]

@MrFunex so how is your 6820 1080 refurb?

Sorry! Been too busy using it!

In a nutshell; it's a wonderful machine. I've been playing GTA5 and Just Cause 3, with everything maxed out at 1440p; it's been superb and always manages 60-80fps or more. It's a very fast machine! I've got the i7-6820HK CPU, GTX1080 8Gb and 32Gb RAM.

People often ask about temperatures on these machines - I've seen a max of 85C CPU and about 68C GPU. I place a book under mine to raise it an inch off the table/floor to aid airflow. It kind of needs it.

I've played about with the BIOS supplied overclocks (from standard 3.6GHz to 3.9, 4.0 and 4.1). It's perfectly stable at those speeds, but temperatures rise by around 10C on the highest speed setting.

I've done a few benchmarks - just 3DMark and Unigine Valley - I couldn't think of any others.

Standard out of the box (receive laptop in post, plug in, switch on and run...) 3DMark FireStrike score was 14740, rising to 16410 with the 4.1GHz OC.

The M.2 SSD is very fast indeed and mine came with a 1Tb 7200rpm drive too.

I have the 1440p 120Hz GSync screen - it's excellent. Nice and sharp, colours appear vivid and no banding or other issues that some report.

It's built like a tank. It weighs a lot and would probably dent the floor rather than break the laptop if it were ever dropped! Battery life is about 3hrs from the 99Wh battery (about 8hrs if you don't spec the 120Hz screen), but I only really use it plugged in.

As for the reason it was discounted - I found the scratch/dent. It's a chip, about 1.5mm across on the right side of the lid. Hardly noticeable!

I'm extremely happy. Just about to buy an Oculus Rift to really push it!

 

[Rannoch]

Selling mine on the MM if anyone's interested

 

[Neil King]

Sorry! Been too busy using it!

In a nutshell; it's a wonderful machine. I've been playing GTA5 and Just Cause 3, with everything maxed out at 1440p; it's been superb and always manages 60-80fps or more. It's a very fast machine! I've got the i7-6820HK CPU, GTX1080 8Gb and 32Gb RAM.

People often ask about temperatures on these machines - I've seen a max of 85C CPU and about 68C GPU. I place a book under mine to raise it an inch off the table/floor to aid airflow. It kind of needs it.

I've played about with the BIOS supplied overclocks (from standard 3.6GHz to 3.9, 4.0 and 4.1). It's perfectly stable at those speeds, but temperatures rise by around 10C on the highest speed setting.

I've done a few benchmarks - just 3DMark and Unigine Valley - I couldn't think of any others.

Standard out of the box (receive laptop in post, plug in, switch on and run...) 3DMark FireStrike score was 14740, rising to 16410 with the 4.1GHz OC.

The M.2 SSD is very fast indeed and mine came with a 1Tb 7200rpm drive too.

I have the 1440p 120Hz GSync screen - it's excellent. Nice and sharp, colours appear vivid and no banding or other issues that some report.

It's built like a tank. It weighs a lot and would probably dent the floor rather than break the laptop if it were ever dropped! Battery life is about 3hrs from the 99Wh battery (about 8hrs if you don't spec the 120Hz screen), but I only really use it plugged in.

As for the reason it was discounted - I found the scratch/dent. It's a chip, about 1.5mm across on the right side of the lid. Hardly noticeable!

I'm extremely happy. Just about to buy an Oculus Rift to really push it!

Looking to buy an Alienware R4 off ebay reseller, OCUK MM or Dell Outlet, seems you can make big savings this way, just wondering if i should go with 1080p or 1440p screen, is web browsing readable on 1440p screen or do you need to scale to 100%?

 

[Rannoch]

If you're after the GTX 1080 I think it only comes with the 1440p screen. The screen is 120hz g-sync.

 

[Neil King]

If you're after the GTX 1080 I think it only comes with the 1440p screen. The screen is 120hz g-sync.

Ok thanks, i'm open to 1070 or 1080, read somewhere the 6820/1080 had heat/throttling issues, not sure if this is still the case, 6700/1070 does run cooler and if you get a LG panel overclocks to 100 hz.

 

[MrFunex]

Web browsing is fine - it's a 17.3" screen, so probably not much of a pixel size difference to 1080p 15" screens.

If it helps with comparisons, I paid just over £1.7k for mine...

No heat throttling on mine unless I place it on the carpet - about half of the underside is an air vent, so that removes most of the cooling! On a flat surface it's fine. The pascal cards do run warm, but it's never been a problem to mine. The 6820/1080 is the fastest option of the SkyLake generation; the CPU and GPU share a heatsink with 3 heat pipes to even things out. In a chassis just over an inch thick. It will get hot!

 

[Neil King]

Web browsing is fine - it's a 17.3" screen, so probably not much of a pixel size difference to 1080p 15" screens.

If it helps with comparisons, I paid just over £1.7k for mine...

No heat throttling on mine unless I place it on the carpet - about half of the underside is an air vent, so that removes most of the cooling! On a flat surface it's fine. The pascal cards do run warm, but it's never been a problem to mine. The 6820/1080 is the fastest option of the SkyLake generation; the CPU and GPU share a heatsink with 3 heat pipes to even things out. In a chassis just over an inch thick. It will get hot!

Seems the 1070 has inferior screen though, think i'll go for 1080 but with a 7820, read they more reliable than 6820, dell outlet only sells ones with 6700 or 6820 though, think i'll check ebay or wait for 7820's to appear on the Dell Outlet.

 

[Rannoch]

Seems the 1070 has inferior screen though, think i'll go for 1080 but with a 7820, read they more reliable than 6820, dell outlet only sells ones with 6700 or 6820 though, think i'll check ebay or wait for 7820's to appear on the Dell Outlet.

If you haven't done so have a look at this thread, 7820 can still get high temps. I had a repaste done by the Dell engineer.