What's so bad about alienware laptops?

[Pavilion]

Nothing is wrong with Alienware laptops I owned the 14" model for around two years gaming on it almost every day and nothing was wrong with it, and I find that the new models are well designed. If you like it go for it.

[System Error Message]

a lot of the dislikes about alienware is related to hwo dell treats the line and they have been doing badly with alienwares for a while until recently. Its still not perfect though.

 

I have 2 alienware laptops, 1 with ivybridge and kepler, and another which is the newest line. Pricing wise i never bought them at original price (stuff costing more in the UK). Dell doesnt give the same options internationally. You get more choices in US but less in UK for instance from dell's own site.

 

I have disassembled the alienware m14x r2 a few times. The stock cooling wasnt great and the GPU would throttle at 70C (again dells fault, otherwise the laptop is decent). It was actually pretty portable for battery life and it was a middle end alienware. GPU was soldered onto the board but not CPU. (dell brought over its practices from the XPS line over to alienware).

 

the new alienware line has horrible choices though. I initially wanted an i7-7820hk with IGP and gtx 1070 but dell being dell, solders the CPU and GPU to the board so you cant have that CPU with an IGP.

 

the alienware line is nice but dell ruins it a lot. Heres a list of flaws with the new alienware 15 though (if you compared to if alienware was never bought by dell)

1) AGA disables onboard GPU (original alienware could have dual GPU + Physx card), this is a betrayel to the original design. What if i plug in my titan xp and want to use my onboard gtx 1070 for physx? Dell did this on purpose, its in the bios.

2) Lack of SD card slot (seriously bothers me), i use many devices that use SD cards. Its a common necessary port like USB that even intel skull canyon NUC has one.

3) Lack of triple slot sound (older alienwares had 3 slots for sound allowing you to have surround sound, even the first dell xps line has it)

4) Soldered CPU and GPU

5) lack of quad slot ram

6) usb-c is only 5Gb/s, it does not offer any benefit over regular usb3 other than the form factor and lacks what other usb-c ports offer.

7) custom buttons should go ontop. I liked the first dell xps for that, it had 3 shortcut buttons that could light up on the top panel where the power button is. I always keep pressing the wrong buttons when trying to press esc for isntance.

8) lack of keypad (not a big deal but still)

9) Side LEDs dont shine far enough to read documents in the dark

10) CPU cooling still not very good but decent

11) config choices differ by country despite the laptop being produced in china when you order and shipped straight to you. Also ties in to soldered CPU and GPU

12) terrible speakers and no subwoofer.

edit: 13) AGA doesnt work with non GPUs, i tested different NICs and they didnt get any power and werent detected.

 

Heres what dell has done right with the new line

1) Battery life, battery life is great

2) pricing is better

3) Stronger build, its more durable

 

 

Despite all these flaws, its not a bad laptop and doesnt warrant the despise that others have for it. Dell really needs to stop treating this laptop like it does with its other lines and actually put better effort into designing alienwares for people who want the most out of things. You will find that dell produces the alienware in a similar fashion to it's xps line.

 

Help get this out to dell so that they can introduce some fixes for the current line (like bios as i hate the disabling of onboard GPU), and for future lines to improve.

[Amaranth]

21 hours ago, System Error Message said:

AGA disables onboard GPU (original alienware could have dual GPU + Physx card), this is a betrayel to the original design. What if i plug in my titan xp and want to use my onboard gtx 1070 for physx? Dell did this on purpose, its in the bios.

 

A dedicated PhysX Card in 2017 will not get you any major performance benefits so I wouldn't be too upset that the AGA disabling the onboard card.

 

21 hours ago, System Error Message said:

usb-c is only 5Gb/s, it does not offer any benefit over regular usb3 other than the form factor and lacks what other usb-c ports offer.

The new Alienware laptops should be using the full version of USB-C, if you're having speed issues I suspect it is either your USB device or you have a faulty USB-C port and should contact Dell.

 

21 hours ago, System Error Message said:

CPU cooling still not very good but decent

If you're having cooling issues then you should look into having your system repasted, particularly if you have an early SkyLake model, since the cooling system shouldn't be having any problems. Because the new Alienware laptops actually some of the better cooling systems out there (although poor thermal paste caused issues for a bit, this has since been fixed though you can still get better temps by repasting units yourself).

 

 

[System Error Message]

Just now, Amaranth said:

 

A dedicated PhysX Card in 2017 will not get you any major performance benefits so I wouldn't be too upset that the AGA disabling the onboard card.

 

The equivalent tech would be dx12 multi GPU. Not to mention programs that can use various GPUs at the same time like blender.

1 minute ago, Amaranth said:

The new Alienware laptops should be using the full version of USB-C, if you're having speed issues I suspect it is either your USB device or you have a faulty USB-C port and should contact Dell.

USB-C ports have a logo beside them that tells you what it can do. Theres no subscript 10Gb/s. go look up the usb-c logos and what they mean as the logo on your laptop tells you what its capable off.

2 minutes ago, Amaranth said:

 

If you're having cooling issues then you should look into having your system repasted, particularly if you have an early SkyLake model, since the cooling system shouldn't be having any problems. Because the new Alienware laptops actually some of the better cooling systems out there (although poor thermal paste caused issues for a bit, this has since been fixed though you can still get better temps by repasting units yourself).

no heat issues, but i'd like the temperature lower. above 80C is unacceptable.

[Amaranth]

Just now, System Error Message said:

The equivalent tech would be dx12 multi GPU. Not to mention programs that can use various GPUs at the same time like blender.

Those are more legitimate complaints, although I think you should have stated them initially instead of using PhysX since, as I posted above, you don't see any major gain when using a dedicated PhysX card. At the moment DX12 Multi-GPU tech is nowhere to be found, and I suspect that not many developers will choose to support it since that's something that they would have to enable, but Blender is a fair point - although, personally, I don't know how much of a gain you would see there using two GPUs instead of one.

 

That said, the AGA was also developed years ago and there will likely be an update soon that, since the original was designed before DX12 hit the market, might support the use of multiple GPUs. As it stands the AGA is still the best eGPU housing you can get when it comes to overall performance and I'm glad to have it as an option even if it's imperfect (and I think it does live up to what it promised - the ability to use full desktop GPUs in laptops and future proof your laptop, it wasn't designed with multi-GPU solutions in mind and never mentioned that in any of the promotional material as far as I saw).

 

 

Just now, System Error Message said:

USB-C ports have a logo beside them that tells you what it can do. Theres no subscript 10Gb/s. go look up the usb-c logos and what they mean as the logo on your laptop tells you what its capable off.

My understanding is that all Thunderbolt 3 ports with all of the lanes enabled will preform like USB 3.1 Ports and have at least 10 Gb/s - although I will admit that I have not tested my port personally since I don't own any Type-C devices. If that were the case though, I would not expect them to add a 10Gb/s logo on the USB-C port since it already is marked as a Tunderbolt 3 port.

 

I think the USB-C 10Gb/s logo is only for USB-C devices that support USB 3.1 but are not full T3 ports. Again, I haven't tested this, and couldn't find anywhere online where someone had, but given the information at hand I think that if you're only getting 5 Gb/s then something is wrong and your port is not operating as intended.

 

Just now, System Error Message said:

no heat issues, but i'd like the temperature lower. above 80C is unacceptable.

 

That seems slightly high for a 15, do you have a SkyLake machine or a KabyLake one? Also, when did you get it?

 

Repaste your system if you want lower temperatures and try an Undervolt. The cooling system on the 13 can deliver temperatures well below 80c and the ones on the 15 and 17 are even better and run cooler. I recommend Kryonaut or Conductonaut and adding some sort of cooling mod over the PCH while you're in there.

[System Error Message]

1 minute ago, Amaranth said:

That said, the AGA was also developed years ago and there will likely be an update soon that, since the original was designed before DX12 hit the market, might support the use of multiple GPUs. As it stands the AGA is still the best eGPU housing you can get when it comes to overall performance and I'm glad to have it as an option even if it's imperfect (and I think it does live up to what it promised - the ability to use full desktop GPUs in laptops and future proof your laptop, it wasn't designed with multi-GPU solutions in mind and never mentioned that in any of the promotional material as far as I saw).

According to dell support, the onboard GPU is disabled to avoid driver conflicts. The laptop bios shows 3 fields for information (IGP, GPU 1, GPU 2).

So with the AGA connected it shows this:

onboard gfx : kabylake

GPU 1: not detected

GPU 2: nvidia gfx

 

However if i disconnect the AGA it shows this

onboard gfx: kabylake

GPU 1 nvidia gfx

GPU 2: not detected

Get it? Its not a limitation in hardware, its a bios doing something. When you plug in the AGA and reboot, the laptop reboots twice. The first time to disable the onboard GPU, the 2nd time to boot normally. This is dell treating the alienware line like it does with its other lines. Dell really needs to understand that the alienware is a machine for entertainment, gamers but also what some devs would also like to use too. Not being able to use multi GPU is a big deal because thunderbolt doesnt have that issue.

 

5 minutes ago, Amaranth said:

My understanding is that all Thunderbolt 3 ports with all of the lanes enabled will preform like USB 3.1 Ports and have at least 10 Gb/s - although I will admit that I have not tested my port personally since I don't own any Type-C devices. If that were the case though, I would not expect them to add a 10Gb/s logo on the USB-C port since it already is marked as a Tunderbolt 3 port.

 

I think the USB-C 10Gb/s logo is only for USB-C devices that support USB 3.1 but are not full T3 ports. Again, I haven't tested this, and couldn't find anywhere online where someone had, but given the information at hand I think that if you're only getting 5 Gb/s then something is wrong and your port is not operating as intended.

 

 

That seems slightly high for a 15, do you have a SkyLake machine or a KabyLake one? Also, when did you get it?

 

Repaste your system if you want lower temperatures and try an Undervolt. The cooling system on the 13 can deliver temperatures well below 80c and the ones on the 15 and 17 are even better and run cooler. I recommend Kryonaut or Conductonaut and adding some sort of cooling mod over the PCH while you're in there.

I was talking about the USB-C port. I know thunderbolt is a super set of USB-c by my usb-c dock wont fit on the back of the laptop as its one of those that has the connected part of the device rather than cable. Its much better that way as it eliminates crappy cables from cheaper docks and also uses up less space and packs up neatly. I prefer to use the thunderbolt for another eGPU or display if im on the go as it connects to the IGP rather than nvidia GPU.

 

I know i have to repaste it but the last time i repasted my older alienware i accidentally ripped the keyboard connected off.

 

My main complaint is how dell treats the line. They treat it like the xps line where the exterior matters and not the interior. That is why you get some people who hate alienwares. I dont hate alienware, i do like the laptop but i really wish dell would at least just do a few things different that was really minor. GPUs may not be easy to make MxM in the case of design constraints (not to mention they want to price it down so they dont need such a high power adapter) but the CPU, thats just wrong. Other laptops can do switchable graphics so you can have both IGP and nvidia GPU and gsync by using switchable graphics and every brand has had laptops with switchable graphics (like in case of intel and AMD) which is basically just moving the screen from one GPU to another.

 

So i would not call thunderbolt or usb-c an added feature, rather a necessary feature to keep up with times. My complaint is with the removal of features. Im a developer and i find some things annoying with alienware and GPU MxM isnt a big deal especially with AGA and thunderbolt but CPU doesnt have to be soldered on. I dont get why dell just cant have a couple of boards and just stick the CPU in. Are they worried that its easier to steal a CPU from a factory since its much smaller than an entire board?