Purchased an AW 15 from myway1985 last month. DFO (Dell factory outlet) unit. Overall i'm very satisfied with the seller's service. Was in KL for a couple of days and contacted him last minute, he took time off and met me at my hotel to show me the product even before I confirmed the purchase. Friendly, honest and down to earth guy! . Spent some time chatting with him about technology and games. He was happy to just talk, and not in a hurry to seal the deal and leave .

About the product (DFO)

Unit came without the alienware retail box, manuals etc. I personally don't mind, but those who want to 'display' their boxes in their rooms may have to think twice . Arrived in a brown dell box sealed, the laptop is packed with foam and the charger and installation CD is provided.

Some minor cosmetic flaws we're on this unit (No dents, just slight scratches on the plastic portion of the lid (Unnoticeable). With a DFO unit, don't expect a 100% perfect laptop because you pay for what you get . For the specs I got (i7 6700hq, 1070), it's even cheaper than other brands which was a steal.


However, the unit was a pre-december 2016 unit (overheating and huge difference in core temperatures on CPU; due to uneven placement of CPU heatsink and crappy thermal paste = 99c while playing overwatch/csgo). Units after december 2016 have been rectified by Dell (better thermal paste, thinner thermal pads to ensure even pressure on CPU die). I had to open it up and replace the thermal paste, but have yet to replace the thermal pads to thinner ones to fix the uneven contact on cpu heatsink. Undervolted by 0.14v, and now CPU temperatures reach 87c while gaming.

Will be attempting to replace the thermal paste with liquid metal (Thermal grizzly conductonaut) soon, if I can get my hands on it in Malaysia .


Link to IUnlock's thread on AW15/17 disassembly,repaste,uneven heatsink fix.

This post has been edited by jedi_dc: Jul 4 2017, 07:24 PM

I'm using intel extreme tuning utility (XTU), very easy to do and with great results

Reason I want to go liquid metal is to fix the uneven heatsink issue easier. With traditional paste I will probably need to sand the heatsink

From what I can tell from reviews, it does not dry up, but solidifies (can be changed to liquid form again with heat from hairdryer etc ) .

Besides, its meant to be applied once perfectly and leave it for years

However, risk of laptop dying from short-circuit with improper installation without non-conductive tape is high

Will be trying out with kryonaut first to see if i can get temps around ~70'c as done by famous iunlocks (he polished the heatsink surface and readjusted it to make sure its completely flat on the CPU.

nonoldo



970m is a decent card, but is not worth it compared to the new 10-series GPU on notebooks (more efficient, better performance) .


Benchmarks of 970m are slightly faster (1-2%) compared to the 1050Ti. Hence, if you could get a 1060 laptop (near double the performance of the 970m (~90% increase in performance)) for that price range, its much better.

Better yet, save up a bit and get an alienware 13 with 1060. (~RM6499 with 1060) or less with discounts and some features u dont need

a LOT of backpacks cant fit the alienware 15 in their laptop compartment . Not even my 17" laptop bag can fit it. too long (vents behind the screen) . If possible, get the alienware backpack (but too flashy for me

oh right! forgot the 970m was previous gen without ass

then it will be a problem finding a bag that fits the thickness

Yeah, i've heard of cool lab's liquid metal 'drying' up. But so far have not seen any conductonaut reviews which mention 'drying'. With a desktop no worries about temperatures even on basic paste .

Laptops on the other hand, trying to squeeze every possible performance out of the cooling system to keep it quiet and relatively cool (else palmrest heats up, fans go nuts )

temperatures of my AW15 are ~90's on load now after repasting and undervolt. previously using stock paste, the 6700hq hits 99c all the time even while playing csgo limited at 100fps