- Get link
- Other Apps
- Get link
- Other Apps
The Alienware m17 gaming laptop is a thin and powerful machine, but it is a laptop you
should we consider buying? In this review, we’ll take a look at game benchmarks, performance,
thermals, overclocking, battery life and everything else in detail to help you decide.
Starting with the specs my unit has an Intel i7-8750H CPU, the 90-watt version of the Nvidia
RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics, 16GB of memory running in dual channel, a 17.3” 4K 60Hz IPS screen,
a 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD and 1TB SSHD.
For network connectivity, it’s got gigabit ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5.
Pretty much everything in the m17 can be customized though, you can also pick RTX 2060 or 2070
Max-Q graphics, 1080p or 1440p screen resolutions, single or dual channel memory ranging from
8gb to 32gb, up to dual 1TB M.2 SSDs, larger battery and even the i9-8950HK overclockable
CPU too. You can check updated prices of different configurations using the links in the description.
The exterior of the laptop is made of a magnesium alloy, and it’s available in epic silver
or nebula red which is what I’ve got here, while the interior is all matte black with
a sort of rubberized material. All edges and corners were smooth and the build quality
was excellent.
The average weight of the laptop is listed at 2.63kg on the Dell website, and I found
mine to be about 2.8kg, rising by over a kilo with the 240-watt power brick and cables for
charging.
The dimensions of the laptop are 41cm in width, 29.2cm in-depth, and about 2.3cm in height,
so on the thinner side considering the powerful specs inside. This makes it a bit wider than
other thin bezel 17-inch machines, resulting in 1.3cm side screen bezels with a thicker
chin and top section. The plastic around the screen is glossy too, so it easily shows fingerprints
when you touch it.
The 17.3” 4K 60Hz 400 nit screen I’ve got here looks excellent and would be great
for photo or video editors. The first thing I noticed was how good the colors looked.
If you’re buying the laptop for gaming you could always run games at 1080p with the 4K
screen to improve performance, otherwise, you can also get the m17 with a 60Hz 1080p IPS
panel or 120Hz 1440p TN panel. I’m not sure why there’s no high refresh rate 1080p option.
At the moment it looks like the only high refresh rate option is the 120Hz 1440p TN
panel.
I’ve measured the color gamut of the 4K panel using the Spyder 5 Pro, and my results
returned 100% of sRGB, 93% of NTSC and 98% of AdobeRGB, very nice results. At 100% brightness
in the center, I measured 386 nits with an 800:1 contrast ratio, so not quite the 400 nits
specified, but above average for a laptop nonetheless.
I’ve taken a long exposure photo in a dark room as a worst-case backlight bleed test,
and there were just a few imperfections, none of which I could personally notice while viewing
darker content, however, this will vary between laptop and panel.
All screen tests here only apply to the 4K panel, expect different results with the 1080p
or 1440p options.
There was only a little screen flex, overall it was quite solid as it’s fairly thick,
and it’s got two wide hinges between the center and edges.
Despite having some weight to it, it was not possible to open up with one finger, and I
did notice that it was more back heavy, though still stable on my lap.
The camera is found above the display in the center.
The camera looks pretty good as it's 1080p and most are 720p, it sounds ok but not excellent
but it does an ok job at isolating the fan noise.
The keyboard has 1.4mm of key travel and RGB backlighting in four different zones which
can be customized through the Alienware Command Center. The lighting looks alright and even
the secondary key symbols get lit up. Pressing the keys down felt a little shallow, though
they did seem quiet, here’s how typing sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
The only problem I had with the keyboard was the smaller arrow keys, which
did get annoying due to miss presses while playing some games.
Above the keyboard, there appear to be some vents and more of the glossy plastic that
surrounds the display. The power button is in the center and lights up, there is some
customization here, you can select the color when fully charged, a different color to
show that it’s charging, and another for sleep.
The touchpad uses precision drivers and worked fine, it clicks down anywhere when pressed
and has left and right buttons toward the bottom. I thought it was perhaps a little
small given the size available.
There was almost no keyboard flex even while pushing down hard, overall it was solid, and
the wrist rest areas seemed even sturdier.
The rubberized black matte interior did alright at hiding fingerprints and smudges, and was
easier to clean than I expected, while the lid hid all fingerprints.
On the left, there’s Noble’s wedge security slot, air exhaust vent, gigabit ethernet port,
USB 3 Type-A port and 3.5mm combined audio jack.
On the right there are two USB 3 Type-A ports and air exhaust vent, so looks like Dell are
trying to minimize extruding cables where most people would place their mouse hand.
There are more on the back, air exhaust vents in the corners, then from left to right the
power input, HDMI 2.0 and mini DisplayPort 1.3 outputs, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port with
Thunderbolt 3 which is also wired for DisplayPort 1.2, and an Alienware Graphics Amplifier port
with 4 lanes of PCIe gen 3 for using an external graphics card. Meanwhile, on the front, there’s
nothing at all.
On the lid in the center towards the top there’s the Alienware logo with RGB lighting, and
this can be controlled through the Command Center software in addition to the keyboard
and the power button.
Underneath it was all smooth except the intake vents towards the back for the
fans. The two speakers are found down towards the front, they get fairly loud, sound good,
and there was some bass present, although I found them a bit muffled at higher volumes.
Here’s what we’re looking at with maximum volume while playing music, and Latencymon
didn’t seem to think it was great.
The bottom panel can easily be removed with a Philips head screwdriver, there are 10
screws underneath and 2 more on the back.
Once inside from left to right we’ve got the single 2.5-inch drive bay, two M.2 slots,
both of which supports PCIe and SATA, two memory slots, WiFi card up the top
above the heat pipes and battery down the bottom right.
Powering the laptop is a 60 Watt-hour battery, however, you can upgrade to a larger 90 watt
hour battery at the expense of no 2.5-inch drive bay. I’ve tested the lower 60 watt
hour option with the screen brightness at 50%, background apps disabled, and all RGB
lighting off. While just watching YouTube videos it lasted for 3 hours and 29 minutes
and was using the Intel integrated graphics in this test with Nvidia Optimus.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS
the battery lasted for 1 hour and 4 minutes all up and was running with a solid 30 FPS
the entire time without dipping. Battery life was about average in gaming, but not great
outside of gaming, so if you’re after more consider the 90wh upgrade option.
The 240-watt power brick mostly seemed to be adequate, however in some games after a
while I did find the battery to still drain slowly, this may not be an issue with lower
specs though, but depends if they sell it with different sized power bricks.
Let’s move onto thermal testing. As a reminder, on the bottom of the laptop, there are just
air vents up the back, directly above the intake fans. There were also a couple of heat pipes
shared between the processor and graphics, so a change in temperature of one of these
will affect the other.
The Alienware Command Center software allows you to select from different performance modes,
and I’ve tested using a mixture of balanced and a custom version of the performance profile.
By default, the performance and balanced profile performed the same in my tests, so
I slightly tweaked the performance profile to run with the fans at max speed, as the
performance profile didn’t do this by default.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 23 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments. I’ve tested idle down the bottom with the
quite profile, and the temperatures were quite warm. Gaming was tested by playing Watch Dogs
2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test and Heaven benchmark at the same time
to fully load the system. In all of the tests the CPU, shown by the blue bar, was power
limit throttling with a 35-watt TDP while under these combined CPU and GPU loads, and
I was not able to raise it. The graphics were thermal throttling in almost all tests at
86 degrees Celsius, this could only be removed by using the Thermaltake Massive 20 cooling
pad.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. With the gaming tests
there was no change to CPU clock speed by boosting the fan speed as it was power limit
throttling rather than thermal throttling, however, we do see an improvement to the graphics,
as that was thermal throttling. We only get a CPU improvement when applying a -0.13v undervolt,
shown by UV on the graph, getting to 3.5GHz in Watch Dogs 2. While under stress test even
with the all improvements in place, including maximum fan speed, CPU undervolting and a
cooling pad in use, we’re still about 600MHz below the full 3.9GHz all-core turbo speed
of the i7-8750H due to power limit throttling, however, we were able to improve the GPU clock
speeds quite a bit and remove the thermal throttling there.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load. With the Aida64 stress test running it was possible to hit the 3.9GHz all core
turbo speed of the i7 with the CPU undervolted in place, however, we were almost reaching
full performance at stock. This is because under a CPU the only workload the CPU was able
to run at a constant 60-watt TDP, although it was power limit throttling intermittently,
which is why the full clock speed wasn’t hit in this test. These are the temperatures
for the same tests just shown, with the CPU undervolted not only performing better, but
also running 14 degrees cooler too, as the CPU was now averaging a 44-watt TDP.
To demonstrate how this translates into the performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks here.
There’s no difference to the single-core results, as this isn’t enough load to cause
any throttling. There was a little improvement in multicore with the undervolt applied, as
it both runs cooler and without the power limit being hit.
Here are the GPU only clock speeds while under a graphical only stress test, and there’s
no point overclocking here because the temperatures show that the graphics are
still thermal throttling at 86 degrees even under a graphical only load. Without the CPU
being stressed GPU throttling was still hit, not great.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll be putting your hands, at idle with
the silent profile it was warm, 30 degrees is about normal but we’re hitting 40 in
the center with the m17. While gaming it was quite warm now, reaching the mid-50s in the
center making the keys uncomfortable, though cooler out towards the sides of the keyboard.
Similar results were seen with the stress tests running, and then with the fan maxed
out and CPU undervolted it lowered just slightly. While gaming on battery power the wrist rest
and the touchpad area warms up a bit, as the battery is directly below.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle it was fairly quiet, however, the fan did slightly ramp up a little at times, fluctuating
between one decibel or so. While gaming or running the stress test with balanced mode
it wasn’t too loud compared to other laptops, and we can see the performance model wasn’t
affecting fan speed as discussed previously. Only my custom manual profile was able to
fully max out the fans, though even this didn’t boost them much, and the total volume level
was a little quieter when compared to many other laptops I’ve tested under the same
loads.
Overall the Alienware m17 is a hot machine, at least with this high-end configuration
I’ve got here, I can’t speak for the 2060 or 2070 Max-Q options without testing. It
is also available with the overclockable i9-8950HK CPU, and while it may perform better I would
be concerned about adding even more heat into an already thermal throttled system. Granted
the CPU wasn’t thermal throttling in my testing due to the 35-watt TDP limit in combined
CPU and GPU workloads such as gaming, but as there are shared heat pipes dumping in additional
heat would likely further lower the performance of the 2080 Max-Q, as that’s already thermal
throttled in most of my testing.
Even in GPU, only testing without CPU load the graphics were thermal throttling which
was not good and not something I often see, however, I was at least happy to see that the
CPU can run much higher with a 60-watt TDP when under a CPU only load, it’s not just
hard capped to one level like we saw with the MSI GE75 and can change based on the workload.
As the fan noise was quieter compared to other laptops I’ve tested I do wonder if perhaps
they should have used more powerful fans to combat the high temperatures. The biggest
the thing we could do to improve performance was add in a cooling pad, CPU undervolting and
raising the fan speed did help a little, but the act of raising the laptop and blowing
in cool air helped the most.
Finally, let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks. My m17 has a 4K screen, but it’s
also available with 1080p and 1440p options. I’ve focussed my testing on 1080p but have
also tested some games at 4K where it made sense, as 4K is honestly too demanding for
laptops even with this level of hardware in most games, unless you’re happy with low
settings. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fairly test 1440p here, as I could not set that resolution
natively on my 4K laptop screen. I tested by connecting an external monitor which did
work at 1440p, however, this would show unrealistic performance, as it bypasses the Intel integrated
graphics that are used with Nvidia Optimus, resulting in higher FPS than what you’d
see using the laptop with a native 1440p screen. So with that in mind, let’s
get onto the benchmarks.
I’ve tested these games with the these Nvidia drivers and all available Windows updates
to date installed.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode and not in multiplayer mode, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run. The purple bars show the results with ray tracing
disabled, while the green bars show RTX on. The RTX results were good for medium and low,
at least for a laptop, and it played ok with RTX on at high and ultra, although
for a first-person shooter game, I’d want more FPS and stick to RTX off.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum or all settings on the lowest
possible values, as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. Even with all settings at
maximum over 100 frames per second was still possible, with a 23% higher average frame rate
with all settings at minimum, and a 24% increase to 1% low.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built-in benchmark, and over 100 FPS was possible
at low settings, with 80 just achievable with ultra settings in this test.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and even with max settings over 100 FPS was
easily possible in this well-optimized game. As this game could reach high frame rates
I’ve also given it a go at 4K, and medium settings or below were required to average
above 60 FPS, though it was still playable at higher.
Overwatch is another well-optimized game and was tested in the practice range, as other
players, bots and even different maps in actual gameplay affect the frame rate and this allows
for consistent testing. The 300 FPS frame cap wasn’t hit here, however, the results
are still extremely high. Overwatch was also tested at 4K due to the high frame rates we
just saw, and even with epic settings 60 FPS averages were still possible, during my testing
I found it to play fine here.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built-in benchmark with good results seen
for this test. Low settings we required to hit 100 FPS, though the average frame rate was
still good for this test at highest settings, ahead of most other laptops I’ve tested
as expected thanks to the 2080 Max-Q graphics.
CS: GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and as always I was getting very high frame
rates from this esports title, though not too much of a difference between all settings
at medium or low. I also tested this game at 4K, given as an esports title it runs with
high frame rates and the results here should at least be playable, but if you’re playing
competitively you won’t be using 4K anyway.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built-in benchmark and is a game I’ve found to
benefit from Nvidia’s new Turing architecture. The frame rates are super high as expected,
however it’s worth noting I always use the defaults the built-in presets set, so 50%
render scale and T-AA.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature, and almost 100 FPS average was possible at
ultra settings, however, there wasn’t much of a difference at the lower levels.
The results were decent, but not great. The ASUS Scar II with RTX 2060 beat it on average
FPS with the same replay file, though I suspect it would be a different story at
higher resolutions.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built-in benchmark, and I was seeing some
nice results for this test, with 60 FPS possible here at very high settings, and still acceptable
results maxed out given this doesn’t need a high frame rate to play.
Dota 2 was tested playing in the middle lane with an average amount of action going on,
and it was running very smoothly without any problems at all, not surprising given it runs
on just about anything and we’ve got some powerful hardware here.
Watch Dogs 2 is a resource-intensive game, but despite this even ultra settings were able
to average above 60 FPS, which is plenty given this is a game that I think runs perfectly
fine with a solid 30 FPS.
The Witcher 3 was also running very well with hair works disabled, and once again even ultra
settings were capable of reaching above 100 FPS averages with much higher possible at
lower settings.
I’ve tested 20 games in total in the dedicated gaming benchmark video, check the card in
the top right corner if you want to see more game tests.
Let’s also take a look at how the M17 compares with some other laptops to see how it stacks
up, use these results as a rough guide only as they were tested at different times with
different versions of Nvidia drivers.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve got the M17 up the top shown by the red bar, and out of this
random selection of laptops it’s performing second best, higher than the 2070 max-q but
not quite as good as the 2080 Max-Q found in the ASUS GX701 laptop due to the thermal
throttling.
Here are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings, and similar results here too. While
the 1% lows are the same as the other 2080 max-q laptop, the GX701, the average frame
rates aren’t quite as high, again due to suspected throttling on the GPU, however despite
this still ahead of the others and performing pretty well.
These are the results from Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the built-in the benchmark at highest
settings and the results follow the same trend as the other games, with the m17 second
highest out of this selection of laptops, but again not able to catch the GX701 with
equivalent specs.
Despite the lower results from the throttling noted earlier, the overall performance from
the m17 is good, easily able to run these games at 1080p with high settings no problem.
1440p with higher settings should work pretty well too if you’re going for the 120Hz TN
panel option, but unfortunately as discussed I couldn’t test 1440p here. Even with the
good specs here I don’t think this is a 4K capable gaming laptop, 4K is still just
too demanding unless you’re only playing less demanding games like the ones covered,
however, you can always get the 4K screen and run games at 1080p without a problem like I
did here, or the graphics amplifier is another option, you can check the link in the description
if you want to see how that helps.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy, Port Royal and VRMark from 3DMark, just pause the video
if you want a detailed look at these results.
As we saw earlier we’ve got the option of using a cooling pad, overclocking the graphics
and undervolting the CPU to increase performance, so let’s see how these changes actually
help in gaming.
Far Cry 5 was tested using the built-in benchmark at 1080p. I’ve got the stock settings shown
in purple, the results from applying the same -0.13v CPU undervolt and 100MHz GPU overclock
as before in red, then the green bar has the same weeks but with the cooling pad in use.
At higher settings, there’s no change between the red and purple bars due
to the GPU throttling, however, the CPU undervolted seems to help improve performance slightly
at lower settings where we’re less GPU bound. The green bar is performing the best in terms
of average frame rates, as the graphics are now able to perform better as the cooling
the pad helps remove the GPU thermal throttling. At ultra settings with the cooling pad in
use we’re seeing 6% higher average FPS than without it.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and the 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD that was
installed was offering good read speeds and lower writes. While the 1TB 5,400 RPM SSHD
was performing about as well as expected, however, expect different speeds if you pick
different drives.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording in the US, they don’t currently seem to have the exact specs I’ve
got here, the closest is this one with i9 CPU for around 3450 USD so the i7 would be
less. Here in Australia, they’ve got the configured I tested with, which goes for around
5000 AUD, so as expected quite expensive for a machine with high-end hardware in a
thinner package.
This is about what the ASUS Zephyrus S GX701 is going for with the same specs, however
as we saw in the game comparison graphs earlier the Zephyrus is performing better with the
same hardware as it’s not thermal throttling. In terms of raw performance, the Zephyrus is
certainly looking better for the money, however, the m17 does have other options that the Zephyrus
doesn’t, including an upgrade to a larger battery and 1440p or 4K screens, so which you should
pick depends on your needs, let me know if you want to see a dedicated comparison video
between these two.
So what do you guys think about the Alienware m17 gaming laptop? Overall I thought it was
a well-built machine, the materials certainly feel premium and there’s little flex. Considering
the powerful hardware inside the laptop is on the thinner side of what’s currently
available. There are also a lot of different customizations you can make. Some of these
include RTX 2060, 2070 Max-Q or 2080 Max-Q graphics, 1080p 1440p or 4K screen resolutions,
single or dual-channel memory ranging from 8gb to 32gb, up to dual 1TB NVMe M.2 SSDs,
60 or 90-watt hour battery, and the i7-8750H or i9-8950HK CPU. There is also a fair amount
of customizations, you can make with the RGB lighting, including the logo on the back of
the lid, power button logo, and 4 zone keyboard, however, it would have been nicer to have per-key
lighting control at this price point. The 4K screen in my unit looked excellent, I could
tell straight away after turning it on that it was a cut above the rest, and this was
confirmed after running my usual tests, so certainly a good option for a video or photo
editor with the power to back it up, it’s not just all about gaming.
Despite its thinness, the overall size isn’t exactly small for a 17-inch laptop in terms
of width and depth, and I know many people don’t like the thicker glossy screen bezel.
I was a bit confused that Dell only seem to offer 1080p 60Hz IPS or 1440p 120Hz TN panels
for gamers, the higher refresh rate 1440p is welcome, not many other companies
provide that option, but I would have liked to have seen the now standard 144Hz 1080p
option.
Like the m15 I’ve previously reviewed, the major problem that I had was thermal throttling,
in this case on the graphics card. It’s hard to say how this would differ with the
lower powered 2070 Max-Q or 2060 graphics without testing them, but performance was
kneecapped in my unit from hot temperatures. We were able to make some tweaks,
such as raising fan speed and undervolting, but when it came down to it using a cooling
pad provided the biggest performance improvement, though that’s less of a portable solution.
Even without of the box settings though performance in gaming was still quite good, as we’ve
seen. These high-end specs also saw some battery drain with the 240-watt power brick in some
games and I’d expect this to be worse with the i9 version unless that comes with a larger
brick, I’m not sure what size the 2060 and 2070 Max-Q versions come with, it may not
be an issue there.
When it comes down to it for the price, purely for gaming I think I’d personally be looking
at something else like the ASUS GX701 with the same specs but better performance and
cooling, but it, of course, depends on your requirements. The higher color gamut and
the brightness of the 4K screen in the m17 will be tempting for those that use their laptop
for things other than gaming.
Let me know what you guys thought about the Alienware m17 gaming laptop down in the comments,
and if you’re new here get subscribed for future laptop videos like this one.
should we consider buying? In this review, we’ll take a look at game benchmarks, performance,
thermals, overclocking, battery life and everything else in detail to help you decide.
Starting with the specs my unit has an Intel i7-8750H CPU, the 90-watt version of the Nvidia
RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics, 16GB of memory running in dual channel, a 17.3” 4K 60Hz IPS screen,
a 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD and 1TB SSHD.
For network connectivity, it’s got gigabit ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5.
Pretty much everything in the m17 can be customized though, you can also pick RTX 2060 or 2070
Max-Q graphics, 1080p or 1440p screen resolutions, single or dual channel memory ranging from
8gb to 32gb, up to dual 1TB M.2 SSDs, larger battery and even the i9-8950HK overclockable
CPU too. You can check updated prices of different configurations using the links in the description.
The exterior of the laptop is made of a magnesium alloy, and it’s available in epic silver
or nebula red which is what I’ve got here, while the interior is all matte black with
a sort of rubberized material. All edges and corners were smooth and the build quality
was excellent.
The average weight of the laptop is listed at 2.63kg on the Dell website, and I found
mine to be about 2.8kg, rising by over a kilo with the 240-watt power brick and cables for
charging.
The dimensions of the laptop are 41cm in width, 29.2cm in-depth, and about 2.3cm in height,
so on the thinner side considering the powerful specs inside. This makes it a bit wider than
other thin bezel 17-inch machines, resulting in 1.3cm side screen bezels with a thicker
chin and top section. The plastic around the screen is glossy too, so it easily shows fingerprints
when you touch it.
The 17.3” 4K 60Hz 400 nit screen I’ve got here looks excellent and would be great
for photo or video editors. The first thing I noticed was how good the colors looked.
If you’re buying the laptop for gaming you could always run games at 1080p with the 4K
screen to improve performance, otherwise, you can also get the m17 with a 60Hz 1080p IPS
panel or 120Hz 1440p TN panel. I’m not sure why there’s no high refresh rate 1080p option.
At the moment it looks like the only high refresh rate option is the 120Hz 1440p TN
panel.
I’ve measured the color gamut of the 4K panel using the Spyder 5 Pro, and my results
returned 100% of sRGB, 93% of NTSC and 98% of AdobeRGB, very nice results. At 100% brightness
in the center, I measured 386 nits with an 800:1 contrast ratio, so not quite the 400 nits
specified, but above average for a laptop nonetheless.
I’ve taken a long exposure photo in a dark room as a worst-case backlight bleed test,
and there were just a few imperfections, none of which I could personally notice while viewing
darker content, however, this will vary between laptop and panel.
All screen tests here only apply to the 4K panel, expect different results with the 1080p
or 1440p options.
There was only a little screen flex, overall it was quite solid as it’s fairly thick,
and it’s got two wide hinges between the center and edges.
Despite having some weight to it, it was not possible to open up with one finger, and I
did notice that it was more back heavy, though still stable on my lap.
The camera is found above the display in the center.
The camera looks pretty good as it's 1080p and most are 720p, it sounds ok but not excellent
but it does an ok job at isolating the fan noise.
The keyboard has 1.4mm of key travel and RGB backlighting in four different zones which
can be customized through the Alienware Command Center. The lighting looks alright and even
the secondary key symbols get lit up. Pressing the keys down felt a little shallow, though
they did seem quiet, here’s how typing sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
The only problem I had with the keyboard was the smaller arrow keys, which
did get annoying due to miss presses while playing some games.
Above the keyboard, there appear to be some vents and more of the glossy plastic that
surrounds the display. The power button is in the center and lights up, there is some
customization here, you can select the color when fully charged, a different color to
show that it’s charging, and another for sleep.
The touchpad uses precision drivers and worked fine, it clicks down anywhere when pressed
and has left and right buttons toward the bottom. I thought it was perhaps a little
small given the size available.
There was almost no keyboard flex even while pushing down hard, overall it was solid, and
the wrist rest areas seemed even sturdier.
The rubberized black matte interior did alright at hiding fingerprints and smudges, and was
easier to clean than I expected, while the lid hid all fingerprints.
On the left, there’s Noble’s wedge security slot, air exhaust vent, gigabit ethernet port,
USB 3 Type-A port and 3.5mm combined audio jack.
On the right there are two USB 3 Type-A ports and air exhaust vent, so looks like Dell are
trying to minimize extruding cables where most people would place their mouse hand.
There are more on the back, air exhaust vents in the corners, then from left to right the
power input, HDMI 2.0 and mini DisplayPort 1.3 outputs, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port with
Thunderbolt 3 which is also wired for DisplayPort 1.2, and an Alienware Graphics Amplifier port
with 4 lanes of PCIe gen 3 for using an external graphics card. Meanwhile, on the front, there’s
nothing at all.
On the lid in the center towards the top there’s the Alienware logo with RGB lighting, and
this can be controlled through the Command Center software in addition to the keyboard
and the power button.
Underneath it was all smooth except the intake vents towards the back for the
fans. The two speakers are found down towards the front, they get fairly loud, sound good,
and there was some bass present, although I found them a bit muffled at higher volumes.
Here’s what we’re looking at with maximum volume while playing music, and Latencymon
didn’t seem to think it was great.
The bottom panel can easily be removed with a Philips head screwdriver, there are 10
screws underneath and 2 more on the back.
Once inside from left to right we’ve got the single 2.5-inch drive bay, two M.2 slots,
both of which supports PCIe and SATA, two memory slots, WiFi card up the top
above the heat pipes and battery down the bottom right.
Powering the laptop is a 60 Watt-hour battery, however, you can upgrade to a larger 90 watt
hour battery at the expense of no 2.5-inch drive bay. I’ve tested the lower 60 watt
hour option with the screen brightness at 50%, background apps disabled, and all RGB
lighting off. While just watching YouTube videos it lasted for 3 hours and 29 minutes
and was using the Intel integrated graphics in this test with Nvidia Optimus.
While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS
the battery lasted for 1 hour and 4 minutes all up and was running with a solid 30 FPS
the entire time without dipping. Battery life was about average in gaming, but not great
outside of gaming, so if you’re after more consider the 90wh upgrade option.
The 240-watt power brick mostly seemed to be adequate, however in some games after a
while I did find the battery to still drain slowly, this may not be an issue with lower
specs though, but depends if they sell it with different sized power bricks.
Let’s move onto thermal testing. As a reminder, on the bottom of the laptop, there are just
air vents up the back, directly above the intake fans. There were also a couple of heat pipes
shared between the processor and graphics, so a change in temperature of one of these
will affect the other.
The Alienware Command Center software allows you to select from different performance modes,
and I’ve tested using a mixture of balanced and a custom version of the performance profile.
By default, the performance and balanced profile performed the same in my tests, so
I slightly tweaked the performance profile to run with the fans at max speed, as the
performance profile didn’t do this by default.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 23 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments. I’ve tested idle down the bottom with the
quite profile, and the temperatures were quite warm. Gaming was tested by playing Watch Dogs
2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test and Heaven benchmark at the same time
to fully load the system. In all of the tests the CPU, shown by the blue bar, was power
limit throttling with a 35-watt TDP while under these combined CPU and GPU loads, and
I was not able to raise it. The graphics were thermal throttling in almost all tests at
86 degrees Celsius, this could only be removed by using the Thermaltake Massive 20 cooling
pad.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. With the gaming tests
there was no change to CPU clock speed by boosting the fan speed as it was power limit
throttling rather than thermal throttling, however, we do see an improvement to the graphics,
as that was thermal throttling. We only get a CPU improvement when applying a -0.13v undervolt,
shown by UV on the graph, getting to 3.5GHz in Watch Dogs 2. While under stress test even
with the all improvements in place, including maximum fan speed, CPU undervolting and a
cooling pad in use, we’re still about 600MHz below the full 3.9GHz all-core turbo speed
of the i7-8750H due to power limit throttling, however, we were able to improve the GPU clock
speeds quite a bit and remove the thermal throttling there.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load. With the Aida64 stress test running it was possible to hit the 3.9GHz all core
turbo speed of the i7 with the CPU undervolted in place, however, we were almost reaching
full performance at stock. This is because under a CPU the only workload the CPU was able
to run at a constant 60-watt TDP, although it was power limit throttling intermittently,
which is why the full clock speed wasn’t hit in this test. These are the temperatures
for the same tests just shown, with the CPU undervolted not only performing better, but
also running 14 degrees cooler too, as the CPU was now averaging a 44-watt TDP.
To demonstrate how this translates into the performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks here.
There’s no difference to the single-core results, as this isn’t enough load to cause
any throttling. There was a little improvement in multicore with the undervolt applied, as
it both runs cooler and without the power limit being hit.
Here are the GPU only clock speeds while under a graphical only stress test, and there’s
no point overclocking here because the temperatures show that the graphics are
still thermal throttling at 86 degrees even under a graphical only load. Without the CPU
being stressed GPU throttling was still hit, not great.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll be putting your hands, at idle with
the silent profile it was warm, 30 degrees is about normal but we’re hitting 40 in
the center with the m17. While gaming it was quite warm now, reaching the mid-50s in the
center making the keys uncomfortable, though cooler out towards the sides of the keyboard.
Similar results were seen with the stress tests running, and then with the fan maxed
out and CPU undervolted it lowered just slightly. While gaming on battery power the wrist rest
and the touchpad area warms up a bit, as the battery is directly below.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle it was fairly quiet, however, the fan did slightly ramp up a little at times, fluctuating
between one decibel or so. While gaming or running the stress test with balanced mode
it wasn’t too loud compared to other laptops, and we can see the performance model wasn’t
affecting fan speed as discussed previously. Only my custom manual profile was able to
fully max out the fans, though even this didn’t boost them much, and the total volume level
was a little quieter when compared to many other laptops I’ve tested under the same
loads.
Overall the Alienware m17 is a hot machine, at least with this high-end configuration
I’ve got here, I can’t speak for the 2060 or 2070 Max-Q options without testing. It
is also available with the overclockable i9-8950HK CPU, and while it may perform better I would
be concerned about adding even more heat into an already thermal throttled system. Granted
the CPU wasn’t thermal throttling in my testing due to the 35-watt TDP limit in combined
CPU and GPU workloads such as gaming, but as there are shared heat pipes dumping in additional
heat would likely further lower the performance of the 2080 Max-Q, as that’s already thermal
throttled in most of my testing.
Even in GPU, only testing without CPU load the graphics were thermal throttling which
was not good and not something I often see, however, I was at least happy to see that the
CPU can run much higher with a 60-watt TDP when under a CPU only load, it’s not just
hard capped to one level like we saw with the MSI GE75 and can change based on the workload.
As the fan noise was quieter compared to other laptops I’ve tested I do wonder if perhaps
they should have used more powerful fans to combat the high temperatures. The biggest
the thing we could do to improve performance was add in a cooling pad, CPU undervolting and
raising the fan speed did help a little, but the act of raising the laptop and blowing
in cool air helped the most.
Finally, let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks. My m17 has a 4K screen, but it’s
also available with 1080p and 1440p options. I’ve focussed my testing on 1080p but have
also tested some games at 4K where it made sense, as 4K is honestly too demanding for
laptops even with this level of hardware in most games, unless you’re happy with low
settings. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fairly test 1440p here, as I could not set that resolution
natively on my 4K laptop screen. I tested by connecting an external monitor which did
work at 1440p, however, this would show unrealistic performance, as it bypasses the Intel integrated
graphics that are used with Nvidia Optimus, resulting in higher FPS than what you’d
see using the laptop with a native 1440p screen. So with that in mind, let’s
get onto the benchmarks.
I’ve tested these games with the these Nvidia drivers and all available Windows updates
to date installed.
Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode and not in multiplayer mode, as it’s easier
to consistently reproduce the test run. The purple bars show the results with ray tracing
disabled, while the green bars show RTX on. The RTX results were good for medium and low,
at least for a laptop, and it played ok with RTX on at high and ultra, although
for a first-person shooter game, I’d want more FPS and stick to RTX off.
Apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum or all settings on the lowest
possible values, as it doesn’t have predefined setting presets. Even with all settings at
maximum over 100 frames per second was still possible, with a 23% higher average frame rate
with all settings at minimum, and a 24% increase to 1% low.
Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built-in benchmark, and over 100 FPS was possible
at low settings, with 80 just achievable with ultra settings in this test.
Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and even with max settings over 100 FPS was
easily possible in this well-optimized game. As this game could reach high frame rates
I’ve also given it a go at 4K, and medium settings or below were required to average
above 60 FPS, though it was still playable at higher.
Overwatch is another well-optimized game and was tested in the practice range, as other
players, bots and even different maps in actual gameplay affect the frame rate and this allows
for consistent testing. The 300 FPS frame cap wasn’t hit here, however, the results
are still extremely high. Overwatch was also tested at 4K due to the high frame rates we
just saw, and even with epic settings 60 FPS averages were still possible, during my testing
I found it to play fine here.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built-in benchmark with good results seen
for this test. Low settings we required to hit 100 FPS, though the average frame rate was
still good for this test at highest settings, ahead of most other laptops I’ve tested
as expected thanks to the 2080 Max-Q graphics.
CS: GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and as always I was getting very high frame
rates from this esports title, though not too much of a difference between all settings
at medium or low. I also tested this game at 4K, given as an esports title it runs with
high frame rates and the results here should at least be playable, but if you’re playing
competitively you won’t be using 4K anyway.
Rainbow Six Siege was tested with the built-in benchmark and is a game I’ve found to
benefit from Nvidia’s new Turing architecture. The frame rates are super high as expected,
however it’s worth noting I always use the defaults the built-in presets set, so 50%
render scale and T-AA.
PUBG was tested using the replay feature, and almost 100 FPS average was possible at
ultra settings, however, there wasn’t much of a difference at the lower levels.
The results were decent, but not great. The ASUS Scar II with RTX 2060 beat it on average
FPS with the same replay file, though I suspect it would be a different story at
higher resolutions.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built-in benchmark, and I was seeing some
nice results for this test, with 60 FPS possible here at very high settings, and still acceptable
results maxed out given this doesn’t need a high frame rate to play.
Dota 2 was tested playing in the middle lane with an average amount of action going on,
and it was running very smoothly without any problems at all, not surprising given it runs
on just about anything and we’ve got some powerful hardware here.
Watch Dogs 2 is a resource-intensive game, but despite this even ultra settings were able
to average above 60 FPS, which is plenty given this is a game that I think runs perfectly
fine with a solid 30 FPS.
The Witcher 3 was also running very well with hair works disabled, and once again even ultra
settings were capable of reaching above 100 FPS averages with much higher possible at
lower settings.
I’ve tested 20 games in total in the dedicated gaming benchmark video, check the card in
the top right corner if you want to see more game tests.
Let’s also take a look at how the M17 compares with some other laptops to see how it stacks
up, use these results as a rough guide only as they were tested at different times with
different versions of Nvidia drivers.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve got the M17 up the top shown by the red bar, and out of this
random selection of laptops it’s performing second best, higher than the 2070 max-q but
not quite as good as the 2080 Max-Q found in the ASUS GX701 laptop due to the thermal
throttling.
Here are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings, and similar results here too. While
the 1% lows are the same as the other 2080 max-q laptop, the GX701, the average frame
rates aren’t quite as high, again due to suspected throttling on the GPU, however despite
this still ahead of the others and performing pretty well.
These are the results from Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the built-in the benchmark at highest
settings and the results follow the same trend as the other games, with the m17 second
highest out of this selection of laptops, but again not able to catch the GX701 with
equivalent specs.
Despite the lower results from the throttling noted earlier, the overall performance from
the m17 is good, easily able to run these games at 1080p with high settings no problem.
1440p with higher settings should work pretty well too if you’re going for the 120Hz TN
panel option, but unfortunately as discussed I couldn’t test 1440p here. Even with the
good specs here I don’t think this is a 4K capable gaming laptop, 4K is still just
too demanding unless you’re only playing less demanding games like the ones covered,
however, you can always get the 4K screen and run games at 1080p without a problem like I
did here, or the graphics amplifier is another option, you can check the link in the description
if you want to see how that helps.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy, Port Royal and VRMark from 3DMark, just pause the video
if you want a detailed look at these results.
As we saw earlier we’ve got the option of using a cooling pad, overclocking the graphics
and undervolting the CPU to increase performance, so let’s see how these changes actually
help in gaming.
Far Cry 5 was tested using the built-in benchmark at 1080p. I’ve got the stock settings shown
in purple, the results from applying the same -0.13v CPU undervolt and 100MHz GPU overclock
as before in red, then the green bar has the same weeks but with the cooling pad in use.
At higher settings, there’s no change between the red and purple bars due
to the GPU throttling, however, the CPU undervolted seems to help improve performance slightly
at lower settings where we’re less GPU bound. The green bar is performing the best in terms
of average frame rates, as the graphics are now able to perform better as the cooling
the pad helps remove the GPU thermal throttling. At ultra settings with the cooling pad in
use we’re seeing 6% higher average FPS than without it.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and the 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD that was
installed was offering good read speeds and lower writes. While the 1TB 5,400 RPM SSHD
was performing about as well as expected, however, expect different speeds if you pick
different drives.
For updated pricing check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording in the US, they don’t currently seem to have the exact specs I’ve
got here, the closest is this one with i9 CPU for around 3450 USD so the i7 would be
less. Here in Australia, they’ve got the configured I tested with, which goes for around
5000 AUD, so as expected quite expensive for a machine with high-end hardware in a
thinner package.
This is about what the ASUS Zephyrus S GX701 is going for with the same specs, however
as we saw in the game comparison graphs earlier the Zephyrus is performing better with the
same hardware as it’s not thermal throttling. In terms of raw performance, the Zephyrus is
certainly looking better for the money, however, the m17 does have other options that the Zephyrus
doesn’t, including an upgrade to a larger battery and 1440p or 4K screens, so which you should
pick depends on your needs, let me know if you want to see a dedicated comparison video
between these two.
So what do you guys think about the Alienware m17 gaming laptop? Overall I thought it was
a well-built machine, the materials certainly feel premium and there’s little flex. Considering
the powerful hardware inside the laptop is on the thinner side of what’s currently
available. There are also a lot of different customizations you can make. Some of these
include RTX 2060, 2070 Max-Q or 2080 Max-Q graphics, 1080p 1440p or 4K screen resolutions,
single or dual-channel memory ranging from 8gb to 32gb, up to dual 1TB NVMe M.2 SSDs,
60 or 90-watt hour battery, and the i7-8750H or i9-8950HK CPU. There is also a fair amount
of customizations, you can make with the RGB lighting, including the logo on the back of
the lid, power button logo, and 4 zone keyboard, however, it would have been nicer to have per-key
lighting control at this price point. The 4K screen in my unit looked excellent, I could
tell straight away after turning it on that it was a cut above the rest, and this was
confirmed after running my usual tests, so certainly a good option for a video or photo
editor with the power to back it up, it’s not just all about gaming.
Despite its thinness, the overall size isn’t exactly small for a 17-inch laptop in terms
of width and depth, and I know many people don’t like the thicker glossy screen bezel.
I was a bit confused that Dell only seem to offer 1080p 60Hz IPS or 1440p 120Hz TN panels
for gamers, the higher refresh rate 1440p is welcome, not many other companies
provide that option, but I would have liked to have seen the now standard 144Hz 1080p
option.
Like the m15 I’ve previously reviewed, the major problem that I had was thermal throttling,
in this case on the graphics card. It’s hard to say how this would differ with the
lower powered 2070 Max-Q or 2060 graphics without testing them, but performance was
kneecapped in my unit from hot temperatures. We were able to make some tweaks,
such as raising fan speed and undervolting, but when it came down to it using a cooling
pad provided the biggest performance improvement, though that’s less of a portable solution.
Even without of the box settings though performance in gaming was still quite good, as we’ve
seen. These high-end specs also saw some battery drain with the 240-watt power brick in some
games and I’d expect this to be worse with the i9 version unless that comes with a larger
brick, I’m not sure what size the 2060 and 2070 Max-Q versions come with, it may not
be an issue there.
When it comes down to it for the price, purely for gaming I think I’d personally be looking
at something else like the ASUS GX701 with the same specs but better performance and
cooling, but it, of course, depends on your requirements. The higher color gamut and
the brightness of the 4K screen in the m17 will be tempting for those that use their laptop
for things other than gaming.
Let me know what you guys thought about the Alienware m17 gaming laptop down in the comments,
and if you’re new here get subscribed for future laptop videos like this one.
- Get link
- Other Apps
Comments
Post a Comment