RTX 4000 mobile series officially released.

[1610ftw]

9 hours ago, Papusan said:

No need to cripple an 330W Delta PSU. It can handle power spikes above 400w and stay loaded well above 330W the whole day. 

 

Yeah, the Delta can probably sustain more than 330W given that it is rather overbuilt but I can understand that manufacturers would not want to get into trouble by allowing a higher sustained power draw. As all manufacturers are affected by more power hungry CPUs since last generation it would not hurt if they could just agree on some kind of top of the line 400W+ GAN power supply form factor that would still be smaller than the current Delta unit. People who find big power supplies impractical for travelling can always get a second smaller one of let's say 240 or 280W if they need something more compact on the road.

 

 

 

9 hours ago, Papusan said:

And it seems Dell continue offer 101C as temp target. So woorse than the Razor-books. Can't beat thermal engineer Travis North's fantastic thermal engineering on Dell's gaming flagship. What a Joke! Dell even locked you out from undervolting, LOOL

 

 

From 1:02.20 Reset bios back to factory settings and send it back to Dell Alienware, LOOL

See also the talk about Dell Alienware Command Center. What a disgusting mess.

 

This is so strange - looks like they are throwing a big amount of hardware at rather mediocre performance.

At least when you just get one unit. You can probably go through 3 or 4 units and get a better one like @ssj92 and @win32asmguyapparently did but that should not be the case with such a high end product that took longer to release than almost all of the competition.

 

It is also unfortunate that serviceability of this one is subpar. To me this is not acceptable as I just want to pop open the bottom panel and maybe the keyboard from the outside but then I have to be able to do all the servicing.

 

[Papusan]

1 hour ago, 1610ftw said:

 

Yeah, the Delta can probably given that it is rather overbuilt but I can understand that manufacturers would not want to get into trouble by allowing a higher sustained power draw. As all manufacturers are affected by more power hungry CPUs since last generation it would not hurt if they could just agree on some kind of top of the line 400W+ GAN power supply form factor that would still be smaller than the current Delta unit. People who find big power supplies impractical for travelling can always get a second smaller one of let's say 240 or 280W if they need something more compact on the road.

 

Nothing stopped the laptop manufacturers in older days offer sustained power above 330W from the power adapters for older laptop models. Only the new and modern have a power cap well below the PSUs specs. Or around 250W. There is a major difference between +330w of sustained power vs castrate it at 250W from same type and brand power adapters. But I expect the power delivery welded on the tiny and cute MB in new and modern laptops is of cheaper quality to cut costs. The power delivery is most likely validated and built for higher peak power but not for higher sustained power above 250W. It's what it is. New and modern to cut costs.

[KING19]

On 3/25/2023 at 9:03 PM, Papusan said:

 

 

No need to cripple an 330W Delta PSU. It can handle power spikes above 400w and stay loaded well above 330W the whole day. 

What I see is a Cpu that stay in the low and middle 3GHz. Not the way I want to see my processors in use. This isn't much more different than previous gen laptops with Dynamic boost. An awful tech to save money and make all laptops as Apple clones. 

 

 

And it seems Dell continue offer 101C as temp target. So woorse than the Razor-books. Can't beat thermal engineer Travis North's fantastic thermal engineering on Dell's gaming flagship. What a Joke! Dell even locked you out from undervolting, LOOL

 

 

From 1:02.20 Reset bios back to factory settings and send it back to Dell Alienware, LOOL

See also the talk about Dell Alienware Command Center. What a disgusting mess.

 

 

Its still boosting over 4GHZs and it even reached to 5GHZ when he was testing Hogwart's Legacy. Also yes the 40 series uses dymanic boost same as the 30 series GPUs, that hasnt changed one bit. The crippling is already bad enough but at the same time the system is still averaging over 90Cs in CPU temps which isnt good for longevity and the Razor blades uses a vapor chamber cooling and liquid metal and it still averaging over 90Cs. After watching most of his videos it seems like only laptops with the I9-13980HX allows it to boost over 5GHz and remains there and using over 100W. Same goes with the Ryzen 9 7945HX as well

 

 

Dell/Alienware are still pretty bad especially this year, they cheaped out on the display, locked out undervolting (but might add it again in a BIOS update after more customers complain about the temps), Inverted Motherboard again making it very difficult to repaste and the list goes on...

[Papusan]

48 minutes ago, KING19 said:

 

Its still boosting over 4GHZs and it even reached to 5GHZ when he was testing Hogwart's Legacy. Also yes the 40 series uses dymanic boost same as the 30 series GPUs, that hasnt changed one bit. The crippling is already bad enough but at the same time the system is still averaging over 90Cs in CPU temps which isnt good for longevity and the Razor blades uses a vapor chamber cooling and liquid metal and it still averaging over 90Cs

All I see is a Cpu that jump all over the places. Even below 2.0GHz with +25% load. 

48 minutes ago, KING19 said:

Dell/Alienware are still pretty bad especially this year, they cheaped out on the display, locked out undervolting (but might add it again in a BIOS update after more customers complain about the temps), Inverted Motherboard again making it very difficult to repaste and the list goes on...

I think Dell will say... Use our fantastic feature TCC offset. So no need for undervolting, LOOL

 

[1610ftw]

12 hours ago, KING19 said:

Dell/Alienware are still pretty bad especially this year, they cheaped out on the display, locked out undervolting (but might add it again in a BIOS update after more customers complain about the temps), Inverted Motherboard again making it very difficult to repaste and the list goes on...

 

Watched the video now and there is a huge temperature differential between cores on that m18 so it obviously has a lot more potential but it cannot show it when most cores are barely above 80 and one is at 100!

 

No idea why Alienware wanted to go with this extremely silly design of the inverted motherboard - means that almost nobody will dare to take the m18 apart to risk being out of warranty when something goes wrong - BAD idea.

Instead people will just keep sending them back until they get one with a decent TIM application.

 

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes...

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, 1610ftw said:

Watched the video now and there is a huge temperature differential between cores on that m18 so it obviously has a lot more potential

 

Another, likely more realistic, way of looking at this would be: the cooling is inadequate, it's unlikely to be fixable, especially in view of the wretched inverted mobo, therefore the turdbook lacks further potential.  High end 13th gen is just difficult to cool due to crazy heat flux. 

 

1 hour ago, 1610ftw said:

No idea why Alienware wanted to go with this extremely silly design of the inverted motherboard - means that almost nobody will dare to take the m18 apart to risk being out of warranty when something goes wrong. 

 

That's the idea I think. They don't want people to be able to service their laptops, not least because they make a lot of money on their service plans. 

 

The good news is that those CPUs are quite efficient at lower power levels, so people won't be sacrificing that much by running them at 125 or 150W.

[ssj92]

On 3/26/2023 at 7:46 AM, 1610ftw said:

 

Yeah, the Delta can probably sustain more than 330W given that it is rather overbuilt but I can understand that manufacturers would not want to get into trouble by allowing a higher sustained power draw. As all manufacturers are affected by more power hungry CPUs since last generation it would not hurt if they could just agree on some kind of top of the line 400W+ GAN power supply form factor that would still be smaller than the current Delta unit. People who find big power supplies impractical for travelling can always get a second smaller one of let's say 240 or 280W if they need something more compact on the road.

 

 

 

 

This is so strange - looks like they are throwing a big amount of hardware at rather mediocre performance.

At least when you just get one unit. You can probably go through 3 or 4 units and get a better one like @ssj92 and @win32asmguyapparently did but that should not be the case with such a high end product that took longer to release than almost all of the competition.

 

It is also unfortunate that serviceability of this one is subpar. To me this is not acceptable as I just want to pop open the bottom panel and maybe the keyboard from the outside but then I have to be able to do all the servicing.

 

It's not about getting a "better unit" 

 

I can even tune my friends m18 and get similar results. 

 

I even found a way to unlock UV in bios so prepare for even better numbers. 

 

This is where the difference between an enthusiast will start to show 😃

[1610ftw]

4 minutes ago, ssj92 said:

It's not about getting a "better unit" 

 

I can even tune my friends m18 and get similar results. 

 

I even found a way to unlock UV in bios so prepare for even better numbers. 

 

This is where the difference between an enthusiast will start to show 😃

 

Looking forward to hear about that but no amount of tuning or unlocking will overcome a 10+ degrees temperature difference between cores. Not to mention the inverted motherboard design that is just wrong and Dell / Alienware have no performance advantage to show for it.

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, 1610ftw said:

 

Looking forward to hear about that but no amount of tuning or unlocking will overcome a 10+ degrees temperature difference between cores. Not to mention the inverted motherboard design that is just wrong and Dell / Alienware have no performance advantage to show for it.

 

People should just reject products which require heavy modifications out of the box to work properly to the advertised spec and  reasonable expectations, in order to disincentivise manufacturers and vendors from doing a poor job. Otherwise it is a moral hazard situation of sorts, where certain consumers are saying: whatever crap design you guys put out, we, the very best of enthusiasts, are so enthused that we stand ready to buy it and fix it as best we can lol

 

[ssj92]

11 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

People should just reject products which require heavy modifications out of the box to work properly to the advertised spec and  reasonable expectations, in order to disincentivise manufacturers and vendors from doing a poor job. Otherwise it is a moral hazard situation of sorts, where certain consumers are saying: whatever crap design you guys put out, we, the very best of enthusiasts, are so enthused that we stand ready to buy it and fix it as best we can lol

 

 

Unfortunately there's no gaming laptop that doesn't require some sort of tweaking for proper performance, not even Clevo. 

 

  

12 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

 

Looking forward to hear about that but no amount of tuning or unlocking will overcome a 10+ degrees temperature difference between cores. Not to mention the inverted motherboard design that is just wrong and Dell / Alienware have no performance advantage to show for it.

 

Yeah for now we are working on unlocking options in bios. We got UV working. XMP is next and hopefully hidden menus. 

10c core difference ain't getting fixed with UV. Will need phase change pad for that. 

[1610ftw]

17 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Unfortunately there's no gaming laptop that doesn't require some sort of tweaking for proper performance, not even Clevo. 

 

I would mostly agree as it is part of the fun IF something can be done. As enthusiasts I think we enjoy that unless it immediately voids the warranty which can obviously be an issue.

 

17 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Yeah for now we are working on unlocking options in bios. We got UV working. XMP is next and hopefully hidden menus. 

10c core difference ain't getting fixed with UV. Will need phase change pad for that. 

 

Looking forward to hear about your results.

 

You are right about phase change pads. I have been using them for some time now and even with desktop CPUs they are pretty good at evening out temps like here in a Clevo P775 with an 8700K:

 

1st test run: 129W, 91 to 95°C core temps

2nd test run: 142W, 96 to 100°C core temps

 

So very constant even at higher temperatures, no 10°C and higher temperature differences. It is also supposed to last very long and to be very easy to apply - not that this would matter here as I am actively looking for an 8-core CPU for that P775 😄

 

The problem with the m18 will obviously be that for putting in that phase change pad you will have to take apart most of the laptop whereas I had to losen 5 screws to get to the CPU of the P775 with separate heat sinks - only took a few minutes and probably is a best case scenario as it does not even have a unified heat sink.

 

 

[win32asmguy]

2 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

The problem with the m18 will obviously be that for putting in that phase change pad you will have to take apart most of the laptop whereas I had to losen 5 screws to get to the CPU of the P775 with separate heat sinks - only took a few minutes and probably is a best case scenario as it does not even have a unified heat sink.

 

The disassembly isn't particularly hard. Some of the cables had adhesive so they would stick to other things while trying to remove the mobo. I spent far more time trying to clean up the existing Element 31 TIM that had leaked past the barrier. Sadly the mobo is still dead so it was not exactly a great experience.

[ratchetnclank]

On 3/27/2023 at 3:30 PM, 1610ftw said:

 

Watched the video now and there is a huge temperature differential between cores on that m18 so it obviously has a lot more potential but it cannot show it when most cores are barely above 80 and one is at 100!

 

No idea why Alienware wanted to go with this extremely silly design of the inverted motherboard - means that almost nobody will dare to take the m18 apart to risk being out of warranty when something goes wrong - BAD idea.

Instead people will just keep sending them back until they get one with a decent TIM application.

 

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes...

 

Alienware are very hit and miss with their products although more miss than hit recently.

 

The first gen of their products always have stupid decisions like flipped motherboards, inadequate cooling, lack of vapour chamber or cheap VRM's or everyone's favourite tripod heatsink.

 

Honestly they aren't going to get any better until they fire that Travis North idiot and start building solutions for the specs they put in rather than seemingly designing the chassis in a vacuum and then sticking parts it can't cool or power.

 

I've bought 6 alienware laptops in my lifetime and I don't think I'll be buying another unless something drastically changes and they build something of similar quality to the Area 51m series again (which also weren't perfect). The M17x R2 was their peak.

[1610ftw]

1 hour ago, win32asmguy said:

 

The disassembly isn't particularly hard. Some of the cables had adhesive so they would stick to other things while trying to remove the mobo. I spent far more time trying to clean up the existing Element 31 TIM that had leaked past the barrier. Sadly the mobo is still dead so it was not exactly a great experience.

 

Taking out the motherboard may not be hard in a sense that it cannot be done but not everybody is as good at taking his laptop apart as some of us may be so I continue to dislike the need to take out the motherboard for this.

 

And sorry to hear that your m18 is dead, looks like Dell and Asus both have issues with their liquid metal application.

If I got one of those for any amount of time I would swap the liquid metal for something else before the warranty is over - a dead motherboard can be very costly.

 

 

[win32asmguy]

1 hour ago, 1610ftw said:

Taking out the motherboard may not be hard in a sense that it cannot be done but not everybody is as good at taking his laptop apart as some of us may be so I continue to dislike the need to take out the motherboard for this.

 

I agree that most users should be disassemble beyond upgrading memory or storage. Its a shame because replacing some parts that are semi-consumable like keyboards, fans and DC-in jacks are a lot more complex job than it was on most models ten years ago.

 

1 hour ago, 1610ftw said:

And sorry to hear that your m18 is dead, looks like Dell and Asus both have issues with their liquid metal application.

If I got one of those for any amount of time I would swap the liquid metal for something else before the warranty is over - a dead motherboard can be very costly.

 

Factory liquid metal sounds like a bad idea in general to me. Even if service techs are handling the repair while in warranty it only lasts a maximum of four years and by default these systems only include one year of coverage. It does not help performance unless it can be properly applied so why even bother knowing the track record of quality control at the factory?

[Etern4l]

14 hours ago, ssj92 said:

 

Unfortunately there's no gaming laptop that doesn't require some sort of tweaking for proper performance, not even Clevo. 

 

  

 

Yeah for now we are working on unlocking options in bios. We got UV working. XMP is next and hopefully hidden menus. 

10c core difference ain't getting fixed with UV. Will need phase change pad for that. 

 

 

We should draw the line somewhere, since some of this high-end hardware is outright scam. Take the 13900K as an example: advertised as running 54/43 clocks, but max 253W of power draw is supported. This CPU would maintain nowhere near those clocks at 253W, even with the heaviest undervolting. Most boards remove the power limit by default automatically voiding the warranty, and for a good reason, since the CPU (the solder/IHS) likely won't survive extended loads at higher power. 

 

An Intel laptop that doesn't support UV will perform terribly, so I would draw the line there, no matter the possible existence of any warranty-voiding hacks that work around that. 

[ssj92]

4 hours ago, ratchetnclank said:

 

Alienware are very hit and miss with their products although more miss than hit recently.

 

The first gen of their products always have stupid decisions like flipped motherboards, inadequate cooling, lack of vapour chamber or cheap VRM's or everyone's favourite tripod heatsink.

 

Honestly they aren't going to get any better until they fire that Travis North idiot and start building solutions for the specs they put in rather than seemingly designing the chassis in a vacuum and then sticking parts it can't cool or power.

 

I've bought 6 alienware laptops in my lifetime and I don't think I'll be buying another unless something drastically changes and they build something of similar quality to the Area 51m series again (which also weren't perfect). The M17x R2 was their peak.

M11xR3/M14xR2/M17xR4/M18xR2 was their "peak" generation for sure. 

 

m18 has similar build quality to Area-51m , which is why I bought it. No other AW between Area-51m to m18 gen came close. Every laptop I've dealt with has issues at launch. This time around it seems while they meant good by using liquid metal, it actually made things worse for us due to bad contact. Other than that, everything else is not bad. Screen is very good despite people complaining 300nits, performance is right there with the top scores except for CPU overheaing. I even have UV working now and XMP looks like it will be perfectly fine too. 

 

  

6 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

 

The disassembly isn't particularly hard. Some of the cables had adhesive so they would stick to other things while trying to remove the mobo. I spent far more time trying to clean up the existing Element 31 TIM that had leaked past the barrier. Sadly the mobo is still dead so it was not exactly a great experience.

What happen? This definitely doesn't make me wanna do it to mine now lol 

[win32asmguy]

8 minutes ago, ssj92 said:

What happen? This definitely doesn't make me wanna do it to mine now lol 

 

Not sure what happened. I used DJUnreal's X17 R2 teardown video as a guide for care in heatsink removal with Element 31. Basically tried to be gentle while separating the heatsink from the mobo so as to not bend anything or cause any LM to spill.

 

After I pulled it apart I could tell that most of the LM was no longer emulsified in the paste and much of it was up under both the CPU and GPU barriers, some of which had made its way on to the BGA contacts for CPU, GPU and GPU memory.

 

If you want to get it replaced I would suggest trying to get a tech sent out to do the job. That way if the LM spilled they can simply report it and get a motherboard part dispatched without having to point to customer modification damage.

[Papusan]

On 3/27/2023 at 6:34 PM, ssj92 said:

I even found a way to unlock UV in bios so prepare for even better numbers. 

 

This is where the difference between an enthusiast will start to show 😃

Cat and mouse game until Dell push out an very needed bios update😎 TCC Offset is here to stay to reduce RMA/support costs. As well throw their customers under the bus if they start to complain about 100C and want tech support to fix it. A genius idea implement this feature in bios. Worth millions for Dell. I hope the software engineer that come up with this great idea got a huge bonus.

[KING19]

On 3/26/2023 at 10:25 PM, Papusan said:

All I see is a Cpu that jump all over the places. Even below 2.0GHz with +25% load. 

I think Dell will say... Use our fantastic feature TCC offset. So no need for undervolting, LOOL

 

 

Yeah it depends on the type of games you run, For open world games like Hogwart's Legacy it going to use more CPU power as you can see in the video and it boosts at normal clocks. The crippling is already bad enough but if OEM's are going to put in powerful CPUs like these they need make their laptops thicker and bigger to handle the heat. 18inch laptops are already desktop replacements and you're not going carry it around to work or school.

 

What a bad solution from Dell, All that does is to prevent the CPU from boosting and make it throttle which is going to lower temps and performance!.

[ssj92]

56 minutes ago, Papusan said:

Cat and mouse game until Dell push out an very needed bios update😎 TCC Offset is here to stay to reduce RMA/support costs. As well throw their customers under the bus if they start to complain about 100C and want tech support to fix it. A genius idea implement this feature in bios. Worth millions for Dell. I hope the software engineer that come up with this great idea got a huge bonus.

I'm still on BIOS 1.5.0 om my Area-51m R1 (they're at like 1.12 or 1.14 or something now) 

 

I will do the same on m18 if they decide to pull some stuff on us. TCC offset is optional so far and has been on previous models too. There are a lot of options in m18 bios that are hidden so hopefully we figure out how to unlock them. 

 

  

1 hour ago, win32asmguy said:

 

Not sure what happened. I used DJUnreal's X17 R2 teardown video as a guide for care in heatsink removal with Element 31. Basically tried to be gentle while separating the heatsink from the mobo so as to not bend anything or cause any LM to spill.

 

After I pulled it apart I could tell that most of the LM was no longer emulsified in the paste and much of it was up under both the CPU and GPU barriers, some of which had made its way on to the BGA contacts for CPU, GPU and GPU memory.

 

If you want to get it replaced I would suggest trying to get a tech sent out to do the job. That way if the LM spilled they can simply report it and get a motherboard part dispatched without having to point to customer modification damage.

Man now I am debating on whether I want to do mines. 

[1610ftw]

7 hours ago, ratchetnclank said:

 

Alienware are very hit and miss with their products although more miss than hit recently.

 

The first gen of their products always have stupid decisions like flipped motherboards, inadequate cooling, lack of vapour chamber or cheap VRM's or everyone's favourite tripod heatsink.

 

Honestly they aren't going to get any better until they fire that Travis North idiot and start building solutions for the specs they put in rather than seemingly designing the chassis in a vacuum and then sticking parts it can't cool or power.

 

I've bought 6 alienware laptops in my lifetime and I don't think I'll be buying another unless something drastically changes and they build something of similar quality to the Area 51m series again (which also weren't perfect). The M17x R2 was their peak.

 

One would think that they have an ear for enthusiasts in such a heavy and expensive flagship model that with a few changes could have offered more sensible design choices, more memory and more storage.

 

They could build a prototype and let people play with it and get some feedback on what to do and not to do and I am pretty sure that neither those silly 2230 SSDs nor the inverted motherboard would have been approved.

 

And say what you will about recent models by Asus, MSI and others but the hardware is there for all to see when opening the bottom cover - it is not that hard to do that...

[SapphiraTriX298]

21 hours ago, ssj92 said:

 

Unfortunately there's no gaming laptop that doesn't require some sort of tweaking for proper performance, not even Clevo.

 

16 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

 

I would mostly agree as it is part of the fun IF something can be done. As enthusiasts I think we enjoy that unless it immediately voids the warranty which can obviously be an issue.

 

Eh, yeah but even I consider myself less and less of an enthusiast as time goes on, and I have less of it. And that's not just the tech space, but in other avenues as well. Time is becoming the greater factor over the fun of tweaking.

 

4 hours ago, 1610ftw said:

 

One would think that they have an ear for enthusiasts in such a heavy and expensive flagship model that with a few changes could have offered more sensible design choices, more memory and more storage.

 

They could build a prototype and let people play with it and get some feedback on what to do and not to do and I am pretty sure that neither those silly 2230 SSDs nor the inverted motherboard would have been approved.

 

Because enthusiasts are the vast minority of buyers, and 99% of the units sold will go to people who never open their own laptop.

 

As to the prototype idea, Linus Tech Tips mentioned something about that in one of their videos, where they would have to enter an NDA, and follow specific criteria (not an open slate), and then could not do so for other manufacturers so as not to disclose ideas (which would be the parent company's intellectual property), and there could be no publicity, so that company secrets would not be revealed and benefit competitors. It is a tangled mess to deal with.

[ratchetnclank]

20 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

 

Not sure what happened. I used DJUnreal's X17 R2 teardown video as a guide for care in heatsink removal with Element 31. Basically tried to be gentle while separating the heatsink from the mobo so as to not bend anything or cause any LM to spill.

 

After I pulled it apart I could tell that most of the LM was no longer emulsified in the paste and much of it was up under both the CPU and GPU barriers, some of which had made its way on to the BGA contacts for CPU, GPU and GPU memory.

 

If you want to get it replaced I would suggest trying to get a tech sent out to do the job. That way if the LM spilled they can simply report it and get a motherboard part dispatched without having to point to customer modification damage.

 

Damn. Sorry to hear. I won't ever touch LM pastes for this reason they just aren't worth the gains in performance with the increased risk. Seeing dells handywork on the thermal paste on my machine i'm sure they send out machines with the liquid metal already everywhere and those are just ticking timebombs.

[ssj92]

This is just the beginning