Alienware 13 R3 W/ GTX 1060

[igouvea]

Hi everyone,

I was debating which small gaming laptop to get. I've had some problems choosing, and asked you guys for help.

I ended up getting the Alienware 13 R3, newest one with OLED screen. I tried the MSI GS63VR,  but the throttling and low battery life were annoying. Plus the lack of touchscreen (not relevant for gaming, but Windows makes good use of it) made me return it.

I am writing to tell you guys my first experience with the AW13.

Freaking awesome. I noticed some coil whine, but once the fans kick in, you cannot hear it. You really have to put your year right next to the laptop to notice it after 1 minute of gaming. During this 1 minute it is noticeable.

The rest, touchpad, keyboard, screen and power. Absolutely fantastic. Running AIDA64 stressing everything, the CPU goes to 90C, but keeps 3Ghz Turbo constantly. the GPU goes to about 78C.

During gameplay, Overwatch maxed with VSYNC on, both the CPU and GPU were at 73C +- 2C.

The computer is fantastic and I am very happy, it checks all marks. Fast enough, upgradable (storage, ram and wireless card) and externally through both the Graphics Amplifier and Thunderbolt 3, so you can choose.

It has thunderbolt 3, future proof (or sorts) and even IR camera for Windows Hello. Some cool LED tricks, not important for me.

The size and weight are weird. It is small, big bezel on the bottom and heavy for a 13 inch. But it has the power of a 15 inch and it is STURDY. Super well built.

I haven't tried the battery yet, I'll update when I find out.

So if you are looking for a similar computer and has a relatively good budget, I recommend it so far.

Hope this helps. 

If you have any questions, I'll try to answer.

Good Luck

[Pendragon]

9 minutes ago, igouvea said:

If you have any questions, I'll try to answer.

 

 

9 minutes ago, igouvea said:

Running AIDA64 stressing everything, the CPU goes to 90C

Run Aida with HWInfo on the side. Take a screenshot. I'm curious. Great experience you seem to be having. 

[astec23]

im still inbetween the 13 and 15, do you think the 13 is not worth if you dont get the OLED panel? it is going over my budget with the specs that i want and might as well just get a 15. 

[igouvea]

23 minutes ago, Pendragon said:

 

Run Aida with HWInfo on the side. Take a screenshot. I'm curious. Great experience you seem to be having. 

I'll try to download HWInfo later. So far no issues with throttling nor heat management.

1 minute ago, astec23 said:

im still inbetween the 13 and 15, do you think the 13 is not worth if you dont get the OLED panel? it is going over my budget with the specs that i want and might as well just get a 15. 

Astec, if you want the best bang for your buck. 15 Inch. They are both pretty slim for a gaming rig. (Not MSI GS63VR slim, but still slim.), the 15 is heavier though. But you can get a 1070 for the price for the 13 inch, and there are some deals on the 15 inch going on.

I have to say that the 1060 is enough for me, I am willing to give up the 1070 for the portability and OLED touchscreen display. The 15 inch is more of a powerhouse.

I am moving to Europe soon, so having Dell's international warranty was also important (forgot to mention) If in the future I need more graphics power, the Amplifier should do the trick.

[Pendragon]

17 minutes ago, igouvea said:

I'll try to download HWInfo later. So far no issues with throttling nor heat management.

24 minutes ago, astec23 said:

Yea i'm curious how the AW13 heatsink design is. No one has done a tear down yet.

[ScaryFatKidGT]

I'd go Razer unless you really really need a 1070

[Pendragon]

31 minutes ago, ScaryFatKidGT said:

I'd go Razer unless you really really need a 1070

no.

[pimno]

3 hours ago, Pendragon said:

Yea i'm curious how the AW13 heatsink design is. No one has done a tear down yet.

Same as the 15 and 17, with the tripod mount. Based on what I saw on reddit, it also has a temp differential between cores. Good news is that repasting doesn't require full disassembly. 

[ScaryFatKidGT]

1 hour ago, Pendragon said:

no.

Why? Thinner, better build quality, lighter, still has a 6700HQ, great 100% RGB screen. 14" form factor is nice if your into that, good inbetween size.

[Dackzy]

2 hours ago, ScaryFatKidGT said:

Why? Thinner, better build quality, lighter, still has a 6700HQ, great 100% RGB screen. 14" form factor is nice if your into that, good inbetween size.

LOL you must be joking, or you have no idea what build quality is. 

It thermal throttles like hell, it power throttles, has so many QC issues, worst support ever.

Build quality is:

Hardware parts

Screws

Glue

how well it is put together

The shell

 

And the blade basically suck at everything.

[Wizard]

17 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

LOL you must be joking, or you have no idea what build quality is. 

It thermal throttles like hell, it power throttles, has so many QC issues, worst support ever.

Build quality is:

Hardware parts

Screws

Glue

how well it is put together

The shell

 

And the blade basically suck at everything.

Some guys just assume that better looking / premium "feeling" = build quality.

[Dackzy]

2 minutes ago, Wizard said:

Some guys just assume that better looking / premium "feeling" = build quality.

yep, it is sad

[Wizard]

2 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

yep, it is sad

I get where they are coming though... It's some kind of "social status" value, and you would have to make sacrifices for it.

I would agree that if you have to carry it around on a work environment, and you can only get ONE laptop for traveling, taking it around, and game with somewhat a nice performance, the Razer Blade with a D-brand skin that covers the logo it's like a nice option for now, because the 6700HQ is more than enough for web browsing, and excel, word, media consumption, and not heavy cad/bim work (you can work there and then render in your desktop), while being able to play some of the last games at 60+ fps even if the 1060 is power throttled (In the Razer benchmark thread the laptop surprisingly doesn't get THAT hot on gaming sessions playing ARK or Doom, CPU below 85 °C). However, you would likely need to know that you will have to RMA it once or twice until you get a good one (personally I would pucharse it from an MS store if you live in the US, or HIDevolution so you can talk to Donald and make sure you get a good one).

In some work environments having a "higher" social status gives you better opportunities. But if you want the laptop for gaming in your home, or being your primary gaming device?, For the same amount of money you would be better with a Clevo and some cheap Dell Outlet XPS13 for your work environment (if you are not doing some tasks that require a quad core).

However, that will change with some laptops like the XPS 15 getting a 1050 or a 1050Ti.

[more_fps]

6 hours ago, ScaryFatKidGT said:

Why? Thinner, better build quality, lighter, still has a 6700HQ, great 100% RGB screen. 14" form factor is nice if your into that, good inbetween size.

you want a stove, because that's how you get one.

[igouvea]

7 hours ago, ScaryFatKidGT said:

Why? Thinner, better build quality, lighter, still has a 6700HQ, great 100% RGB screen. 14" form factor is nice if your into that, good inbetween size.

 

1 hour ago, TechNutz said:

you want a stove, because that's how you get one.

I wouldn't go for the blade because the AW15 has even better battery life, and more importantly, Dell support instead of the useless Razer support.

The AW 13 has the same build quality, 100% Adobe RGB spectrum, better thermal management and upgradability. Still same great support.

Finally the power supply for the AWs are correctly specced, while in the blade, it can discharge while in heavy load.

That's why I chose the AW13

 

PS : as mentioned above, computers based on a clevo design are much cheaper, but I value form factor and build quality (materials and rigidity)

[Guest lilbman]

19 hours ago, astec23 said:

im still inbetween the 13 and 15, do you think the 13 is not worth if you dont get the OLED panel? it is going over my budget with the specs that i want and might as well just get a 15. 

The 15 is gr8-I'd know, I'm using one as I am typing this.  If you are going to get one, stress test it AS SOON AS YOU GET IT.  There is a chance they fucked up the heatsink and you might have seriously big core temp differences, like I did.  If you have a jacked up heatsink, send it back.  Don't wait until it's too late.

 

Otherwise, it's my favorite computer ever.

[ScaryFatKidGT]

My friend has a stealth and it is very nice build IMO and a very nice power brick, also the persons name who is in the title of this forum also liked the 14 and the stealth very much.

 

Sure the AW gets better battery life and runs cooler its double the thickness.... have fun RMAing screen issues and re-pasting ur processors heatsync.

[astec23]

On 12/3/2016 at 5:27 PM, igouvea said:

I'll try to download HWInfo later. So far no issues with throttling nor heat management.

Astec, if you want the best bang for your buck. 15 Inch. They are both pretty slim for a gaming rig. (Not MSI GS63VR slim, but still slim.), the 15 is heavier though. But you can get a 1070 for the price for the 13 inch, and there are some deals on the 15 inch going on.

I have to say that the 1060 is enough for me, I am willing to give up the 1070 for the portability and OLED touchscreen display. The 15 inch is more of a powerhouse.

I am moving to Europe soon, so having Dell's international warranty was also important (forgot to mention) If in the future I need more graphics power, the Amplifier should do the trick.

 

On 12/4/2016 at 1:07 PM, lilbman said:

The 15 is gr8-I'd know, I'm using one as I am typing this.  If you are going to get one, stress test it AS SOON AS YOU GET IT.  There is a chance they fucked up the heatsink and you might have seriously big core temp differences, like I did.  If you have a jacked up heatsink, send it back.  Don't wait until it's too late.

 

Otherwise, it's my favorite computer ever.

well, my max budget would be around 1600$ USD, im from Philippines so ill be buying it from a third party seller which would add about 200$ to the price, because of that, i wont be able to afford the 1070 on the 15 or the OLED on the 13 so im probably going with an i7 1060 model on 13/15 and cant decide which would be the ideal size for me, battery life wont matter much since im usually plugged in. 

[Pendragon]

46 minutes ago, astec23 said:

well, my max budget would be around 1600$ USD, im from Philippines so ill be buying it from a third party seller which would add about 200$ to the price, because of that, i wont be able to afford the 1070 on the 15 or the OLED on the 13 so im probably going with an i7 1060 model on 13/15 and cant decide which would be the ideal size for me, battery life wont matter much since im usually plugged in. 

Are you comfortable opening up the laptop and tinkering it? No? Avoid this laptop. Yes? It'll be alot of fun getting it working properly. 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/warning-some-i7-6820hks-and-i7-6700hq-have-uneven-core-temps-due-to-uneven-heatsink.797477/

^ it's not "some", it's in basically ever Alienware that has been tested properly with OCCT + Unigine with MSI Afterburner and HWInfo. The few functional ones are few and far between.

[Eason85]

Why does dell not know how to make a fucking heat sink already lol 

I mean the XPS 15 didn't have a VRAM chip covered

[Pendragon]

4 hours ago, Eason85 said:

Why does dell not know how to make a fucking heat sink already lol 

the worse part is, it's not just complete idiocy like Razer. They put heatsinks on their laptops. and toothpaste. 

[Dark]

I'd be all over the AW13 if the OLED was at least 75hz.  I owned a few in the past and while the screen size was a bit hindering the build was nice.

 

 

 

 

[Guest lilbman]

11 hours ago, astec23 said:

 

well, my max budget would be around 1600$ USD, im from Philippines so ill be buying it from a third party seller which would add about 200$ to the price, because of that, i wont be able to afford the 1070 on the 15 or the OLED on the 13 so im probably going with an i7 1060 model on 13/15 and cant decide which would be the ideal size for me, battery life wont matter much since im usually plugged in. 

Well, the screen size is purely a matter of opinion.  Do you want something you can put in a backpack and go, or something that gives you more screen to look at?

 

Also, lighting.  The 13 doesn't have the lights on the sides like the 15 does.

 

The 13's temperatures won't be as good thermally UNLESS the 15 has a uneven heatsink, like mine.  The 13 will probably be cheaper to get.

 

I'd say 13 for your needs.

[Guest lilbman]

11 hours ago, Pendragon said:

Are you comfortable opening up the laptop and tinkering it? No? Avoid this laptop. Yes? It'll be alot of fun getting it working properly. 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/warning-some-i7-6820hks-and-i7-6700hq-have-uneven-core-temps-due-to-uneven-heatsink.797477/

^ it's not "some", it's in basically ever Alienware that has been tested properly with OCCT + Unigine with MSI Afterburner and HWInfo. The few functional ones are few and far between.

^He's right.  It would be a fantastic machine if the heatsink wasn't a fucking shitshow.

 

10 hours ago, Eason85 said:

Why does dell not know how to make a fucking heat sink already lol 

I mean the XPS 15 didn't have a VRAM chip covered

It's a matter of making a heatsink, it's a matter of assembling it.  They didn't put the heatsink on correctly.

[igouvea]

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2016 at 4:54 AM, ScaryFatKidGT said:

My friend has a stealth and it is very nice build IMO and a very nice power brick, also the persons name who is in the title of this forum also liked the 14 and the stealth very much.

 

Sure the AW gets better battery life and runs cooler its double the thickness.... have fun RMAing screen issues and re-pasting ur processors heatsync.

I've had the GS63VR briefly, and returned due to throttling issues (peaking at 30% on AIDA64) and poor craftsmanship. Some of the ports were bent out of the box.

Sure, it is 0.5kg lighter, but for me it is not worth it. Glad to hear your friend likes it, but as someone who owned both laptops. I am happier with the AW.