New Alienware 13

StryderxX

StryderxX

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 22, 2006
Messages
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I picked up the new Alienware 13 with the OLED display and the GTX 1060. The laptop is pretty sweet. The OLED display is amazing. The only downside is the weight. Let me know if any of you guys have a question about it.



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Have you tried gaming at 1080p on it? Wanted to see if the scaling is good or not.
 
How did you manage to get Dell to send you a laptop in the first place, let alone a working one?
 
I was looking at this. I ended up with something else but if I could have seen this in person things might have been different.

I'll watch your video and follow up with questions if needed.
 
StryderxX said:
I wasn't aware that this model was having issues. The one I was sent works perfectly.
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The whole product range is having issues (overheating, light bleed, parts shortages, wrong builds sent to customers, etc), it seems like the 13 is the best off but they were having severe shortages of the OLED screens. My own orders were cancelled three times because of lack of parts, I went ahead and closed my Dell account after the runaround they gave me over the 15 and 17 models I ordered.

Its not really surprising though that reviewers got good ones to promote the product which is what made me decide to order in the first place before I started researching and finding out all the horror stories since the 10 series refresh, too bad they couldn't supply the people buying them in a lot of cases.
 
LigTasm said:
The whole product range is having issues (overheating, light bleed, parts shortages, wrong builds sent to customers, etc), it seems like the 13 is the best off but they were having severe shortages of the OLED screens. My own orders were cancelled three times because of lack of parts, I went ahead and closed my Dell account after the runaround they gave me over the 15 and 17 models I ordered.

Its not really surprising though that reviewers got good ones to promote the product which is what made me decide to order in the first place before I started researching and finding out all the horror stories since the 10 series refresh, too bad they couldn't supply the people buying them in a lot of cases.
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Wow... I honestly didn't know about any of this. The 13" I ordered took about 3 weeks from order date to delivery. There's zero back light bleed and other that the annoying Tobi eye tracking software it's been rock solid. I have it connected to a graphics accelerator and two external monitors (40" 4K Samsung and a Dell 2716DG).
 
StryderxX said:
Wow... I honestly didn't know about any of this. The 13" I ordered took about 3 weeks from order date to delivery. There's zero back light bleed and other that the annoying Tobi eye tracking software it's been rock solid. I have it connected to a graphics accelerator and two external monitors (40" 4K Samsung and a Dell 2716DG).
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I'm glad you got a good one and not what I got!

I first ordered a 15R3 that came with overheating/blackscreen issues, severe light bleed on the monitor, and they had to cancel it twice before shipping because they couldn't figure out they didn't offer the 120hz Gsync panel with the 6820HK. Then they refused to replace it and told me to order again, so I did. They cancelled that one and told me I could get a 17R4 for the same price due to lack of parts, then called me back the next week to say the 17 couldn't be made either because - you guessed it - lack of parts. So I ordered a 3rd 17 model and they called me back to tell me they don't offer the 17.3" 1440p 120hz screen any more so I had to change the whole thing and get a 1060 instead of 1070 and a 4k screen which I didn't want.

Needless to say, I told them to stuff the whole thing where the sun doesn't shine, I currently have about $4300 tied up with Dell because they take over a month to do refunds. Never ordering another Dell again after getting treated like I did by their support from India. Getting hung up on, not calling back when they said they would, trying to "force" downgrades on me even when I said no, it was just a total shitshow. If you check Alienware forums anywhere you'll see it piled with these issues, so bad the co-founder has been making statements about fixing everything.
 
OP, couple questions. I recently bought the new Razer Blade + Core myself because I wanted to go with a eGPU solution just like you did however a couple things drew me away from the Alienware. First was that I heard the Alienware graphics accelerator has size restrictions so a GTX 1080 that I have may not have fit. I was curious what you have running in there. Also, my Blade that I just got 5 days ago also has the 1060 built in and I have been able to play Fall out 4, Just Cause 3, Crysis... everything at 1080p on maxed-out settings with no issue at all. However, I am curious first of all what external GPU you are using and what gaming like is on it? Also, which 13 did you get; the one with the i5 or the i7?

Btw OP, is that your YouTube channel? I really like it. I watched all your Blade stuff before I ended up deciding on getting it.
 
I was looking at these earlier too before buying my latest gaming laptop. From what I remember, Alienware uses a proprietary port (even though they come with a thunderbolt port), while Razer just uses the thunderbolt port.

On top of the difference in form-factor (the Razors are nice and slim) - if I was trying to decide between the two, I'd go Razer (and this is coming from a guy that has 4-5 Alienware laptops sitting on his workbench).
 
dvsman said:
I was looking at these earlier too before buying my latest gaming laptop. From what I remember, Alienware uses a proprietary port (even though they come with a thunderbolt port), while Razer just uses the thunderbolt port.

On top of the difference in form-factor (the Razors are nice and slim) - if I was trying to decide between the two, I'd go Razer (and this is coming from a guy that has 4-5 Alienware laptops sitting on his workbench).
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That is what I ended up going with. It's a beautiful laptop. Stunning build quality. Amazing performance for this form-factor. Very pleased with it. Battery life is good enough to me too. Ordered a dbrand skin to cover the ugly Razer logo on the lid though so it'll look a little more professional.
 
I have a 15R3 that has the heating issues in which they have finally fixed, going to try out the 13R3 tomorrow myself. Overall I have tried both the Alienware Graphics Amp and the Razer Core and both work as advertised.
 
zamardii12 said:
OP, couple questions. I recently bought the new Razer Blade + Core myself because I wanted to go with a eGPU solution just like you did however a couple things drew me away from the Alienware. First was that I heard the Alienware graphics accelerator has size restrictions so a GTX 1080 that I have may not have fit. I was curious what you have running in there. Also, my Blade that I just got 5 days ago also has the 1060 built in and I have been able to play Fall out 4, Just Cause 3, Crysis... everything at 1080p on maxed-out settings with no issue at all. However, I am curious first of all what external GPU you are using and what gaming like is on it? Also, which 13 did you get; the one with the i5 or the i7?

Btw OP, is that your YouTube channel? I really like it. I watched all your Blade stuff before I ended up deciding on getting it.
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I had the AGA for a bit and it worked fine with a full sized EVGA 1070 ACX 3.0, you just can't put godzilla sized cards that are 14" long and twice the height of the slot.
 
Just got the 13R3 in and WOW! The OLED is gorgeous. They also fixed the heatsink issues when I went to repaste not only does the CPU heatsink now have full contact but they used thermal compound instead of the stupid stamp thermal crap. After repasting with the Grizzly Kryonaut the temps at idle were all within 1-2C of each other at 34/35/34/35 and at full load maxing out with all 4 cores around 77C.
 
AthlonXP said:
Just got the 13R3 in and WOW! The OLED is gorgeous. They also fixed the heatsink issues when I went to repaste not only does the CPU heatsink now have full contact but they used thermal compound instead of the stupid stamp thermal crap. After repasting with the Grizzly Kryonaut the temps at idle were all within 1-2C of each other at 34/35/34/35 and at full load maxing out with all 4 cores around 77C.
Click to expand...

I decided to give it a shot, the OLED is a 40+ day lead time right now so I got the standard 1080p screen (I could care less about OLED anyways, I've seen it and I couldn't be arsed to use 1440p on a a tiny screen like that - good colors or not lol). I ordered one up just now supposedly it will ship before the end of the week.
 
AthlonXP said:
Just got the 13R3 in and WOW! The OLED is gorgeous. They also fixed the heatsink issues when I went to repaste not only does the CPU heatsink now have full contact but they used thermal compound instead of the stupid stamp thermal crap. After repasting with the Grizzly Kryonaut the temps at idle were all within 1-2C of each other at 34/35/34/35 and at full load maxing out with all 4 cores around 77C.
Click to expand...
The OLED display is worth the price of admission alone. Amazing color and contrast.
 
zamardii12 said:
OP, couple questions. I recently bought the new Razer Blade + Core myself because I wanted to go with a eGPU solution just like you did however a couple things drew me away from the Alienware. First was that I heard the Alienware graphics accelerator has size restrictions so a GTX 1080 that I have may not have fit. I was curious what you have running in there. Also, my Blade that I just got 5 days ago also has the 1060 built in and I have been able to play Fall out 4, Just Cause 3, Crysis... everything at 1080p on maxed-out settings with no issue at all. However, I am curious first of all what external GPU you are using and what gaming like is on it? Also, which 13 did you get; the one with the i5 or the i7?

Btw OP, is that your YouTube channel? I really like it. I watched all your Blade stuff before I ended up deciding on getting it.
Click to expand...
There is a limit on the length of the graphics card you an install into the Alienware graphics accelerator. I have a founders edition GTX 1080 in mine now. The model laptop I purchased has a quadcore i7 cpu and the 6gb 1060. I've only tried 2 games so far and they run perfectly at 1080p (SFV and Dishonored 2).

BTW that is not my youtube channel.
 
LigTasm said:
I decided to give it a shot, the OLED is a 40+ day lead time right now so I got the standard 1080p screen (I could care less about OLED anyways, I've seen it and I couldn't be arsed to use 1440p on a a tiny screen like that - good colors or not lol). I ordered one up just now supposedly it will ship before the end of the week.
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Yeah looks like the 13 is a good solid choice, glad they finally fixed all the issues. The 1080 screen I heard is pretty good as well.
 
I saw that they added the 7th gen processors today, so I bit.
i7-7700HQ, OLED, 16gb@2667, 256 m2 & the amp $2050
Looks like I will be waiting a month for it. :eggface:
 
I had to cancel my 13 order, I'm 5 days past the delivery date and it still hasn't even been completed yet. I have to have a laptop when I leave on Monday so I'm just going to drive to microcenter tomorrow and pick up whatever they have in stock.

EDIT: ha, I didn't even get to cancel it before Dell did it for me. They called me this morning saying - guess what - parts shortage so it had to be cancelled. Good thing I ordered a backup laptop from Amazon a few days ago and already have it in hand.
 
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Trying now to decide if I should keep this or return it for the Kaby Lake refresh or go back to a 15. The Dell outlet models seem pretty tempting.
 
LigTasm said:
I had to cancel my 13 order, I'm 5 days past the delivery date and it still hasn't even been completed yet. I have to have a laptop when I leave on Monday so I'm just going to drive to microcenter tomorrow and pick up whatever they have in stock.

EDIT: ha, I didn't even get to cancel it before Dell did it for me. They called me this morning saying - guess what - parts shortage so it had to be cancelled. Good thing I ordered a backup laptop from Amazon a few days ago and already have it in hand.
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Wow... your situation with Dell is getting re-god-damn-diculous!
 
AthlonXP said:
Trying now to decide if I should keep this or return it for the Kaby Lake refresh or go back to a 15. The Dell outlet models seem pretty tempting.
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There is zero benefit while gaming by going from Skylake to Kaby Lake,. Doesn't make much sense returning your laptop just for that processor change.
 
I bought the 15" back when the new chassis design came out, and had nothing but a fantastic experience with it. It's a shame people are having issues with this, including you Lig! (you sold me that white PC a while back in person, not sure if you recall ;)). Seeing this thread today makes me want to jump in on this "laptop + external GPU" business...I never use my desktop anymore and only really game on the PS4. Do the amplifiers that Razer and Alienware use even support the Titan X's? Would be great to repurpose one of the ones I have and be able to game on the go. Looks like the Razer is a lot sleeker looking to...decisions...
 
BiH115 said:
I bought the 15" back when the new chassis design came out, and had nothing but a fantastic experience with it. It's a shame people are having issues with this, including you Lig! (you sold me that white PC a while back in person, not sure if you recall ;)). Seeing this thread today makes me want to jump in on this "laptop + external GPU" business...I never use my desktop anymore and only really game on the PS4. Do the amplifiers that Razer and Alienware use even support the Titan X's? Would be great to repurpose one of the ones I have and be able to game on the go. Looks like the Razer is a lot sleeker looking to...decisions...
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One thing to keep in mind is the AW amp, while locked to the dell machines is only $150 and you can swap out the PSU with any standard 150mm long unit. I don't know about the Core, but its much more expensive - enough to where I would invest the $500 into a laptop with a 1080 before I bought one honestly. Anything you can physically fit inside of it should work. When I had one I tested it with an EVGA 1070 and the performance was within margin of error to normal desktop scores.

Just make sure if you get the AW amp to unplug the stupid front fan, its annoying and does nothing in particular.
 
LigTasm said:
One thing to keep in mind is the AW amp, while locked to the dell machines is only $150 and you can swap out the PSU with any standard 150mm long unit. I don't know about the Core, but its much more expensive - enough to where I would invest the $500 into a laptop with a 1080 before I bought one honestly. Anything you can physically fit inside of it should work. When I had one I tested it with an EVGA 1070 and the performance was within margin of error to normal desktop scores.

Just make sure if you get the AW amp to unplug the stupid front fan, its annoying and does nothing in particular.
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Interesting information about being able to swap the PSU, will keep in mind. Thanks!
 
I get mine on Tuesday, refreshed with Kaby Lake i7. Graphics Amp will be next. The only thing I don't like about the Graphics amp is there is no 1Gb ethernet..or I wish it had room for 1 more PCI-e slot since I run 10Gb in my office for NAS and Home Lab access to my current workstation but i'll live. I'll post here my experiences..but essentially replacing Macbook Pro and a custom workstation. Consolidating.
 
Nice, I am anxious to sett your setup. I ended up going back to a 15R3 from the Outlet. Ended up saving $500 bucks in the process (6820HK, 16GB Ram, 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD, 1080p IPS, 1070)
 
AthlonXP said:
Nice, I am anxious to sett your setup. I ended up going back to a 15R3 from the Outlet. Ended up saving $500 bucks in the process (6820HK, 16GB Ram, 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD, 1080p IPS, 1070)
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How much was that?
 
I'm within my delivery week (Jan. 19 - Jan. 26) but no tracking as of yet.
Everything else I've ordered has already been delivered; Including the graphics amp.
I too have 10gbe and have already looked into that, but super expensive:
http://www.promise.com/Products/SANLink/SANLink2/10G-SFP
I plan to start using more usb flash drives rather than my server/san anyways.

-edit-
Just got tracking, to be delivered tomorrow, 25th.
 
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My oled kaby 13 just arrived. I'll do some benches later, but first impressions...
I was expecting a samsung 851 ssd, came with a Toshiba thnsn5256gpuk, feels slow.
Just watching task manager I can tell I'm going to want a 950 in this asap; Glad it has two slots.
OLED, black is def black lol, not sure that its right tho, white items are quite yellow even with brightness maxed (too warm I guess).

Running prime95, cores are within 5C of each other.
Turbo boost seems funky, selecting inconsistent multiplier at full load. Anywhere between 30 and 33x. Highest temp so far 84C. HWiNFO64 says that it's not thermal throttling.
But I bet the SSD is:
atto.png

I ordered a 950 pro, copper shims, arctic silver adhesive and some thermal pads.

Funky turbo boost was 'fixed' with bios setting of cpu performance mode. Holds 34x turbo till it gets too hot. The fans never go above 3000 rpm, unless select performance fan mode, but that mode the fans never go below 5000 rpm (even at idle). Wish it had a fan curve adjuster in bios.
Speedfan can control the fans, but it seems like an on/off switch 65% and below pwm = 3000rpm ; 75% and above pwm = 5000rpm. Might be speedfan, might be bios issue.

After further review, I believe the issue to be with speedfan, as long as I don't run speedfan, the fans do speed up correctly with usage and no longer overheats. HWiNFO doesn't show fan speed on this laptop; can anyone suggest another application other than speedfan?

New benchmark with the 950 installed:
atto2.png

Still waiting on the copper shims from ebay.

TimeSpy score: 3653 (gpu 3575 ; cpu 4169)
Thinking its so low because of the 1440p, ran just under 20fps
I do have the graphics amp, and a 1070 to go in it, but might not get around to it till the weekend.
 
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I received mine last week and have had it for a little over a week now. Here are my impressions:

1. 2k OLED: This is hands down the nicest picture I have ever seen on a laptop, period, however it's not without flaws. The borders are huge, wish they would've made it like the XPS infinity display and the glare is pretty bad, though the display in high light situations make up for the glare a bit.
2. Very powerful, mine is i7 7700 Kaby Lake and 16GB RAM. I installed a 512GB 950 Pro as my second drive but the included toshiba m.2 ssd isn't all that great on writes, but fine for an OS drive.
3. It get's hot under load and loud (though haven't played with the fan settings) 80+ when playing Battlefield 1. I've read in on notebookforums.com that this is common and a lot of folks are repasting and applying thermal pads which help a lot. I ordered mine from Amazon so I will be doing that.
4. Keyboard and trackpad are good, zone lighting is a little cheap, would have preferred individual keys for RGB but still decent. Trackpad is still not as good as Macbook, and that's a shame because it's 2017 and we're still talking about it.
5. Packing sucked, literally. Ever since Dell bought Alienware, it's moved to cheapville and non custom. I had called to ask them to only install a single 16GB DIMM so I could easily upgrade to 32 without rip and replace and they couldn't do it. Sorry, but the best part about Boutique, IMHO, is customization and attention to detail which is lost in the Dell factory.
6. Battery life sucks even doing common tasks and that's also a shame, it's 2017 and nothing has really changed on that front. Turning off background apps does give you about another hour.
7. Power brick is heavy and still plugs in like it's 1992. Come on, haven't we learned anything over the last decade?
8. It's heavy for 13" but I expected that for the power you get, I can live with it but a road warrior may not.

Overall, 8/10. That's generous but only for the power, OLED display, keyboard, etc.

BTW, no coil whine that i've heard.
 
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