it is possible on 15 R3 so probably it should be possible on this as well. But their connection speeds are not the same on 15 R3 so by doing raid 0 you can reach as top speed as the lowest connection allows.
I just ordered the same laptop but with only 8GB Memory and 256GB SSD. Is it true that if you order the one with the 8GB config you only get 1 DIMM slot? and or miss out on Dual Channel Memory? I hope this is not true, mine is still being built right now. I was gonna add another stick later on for the dual channel. Dell chat is confusing me, he said only 1 slot but i can add after i received the system?
Thanks for video. Any idea of the upgrade capabilities of this for the future? I gather a different CPU could be installed, but how about a 1070 or even a 1080 GPU?
Achoo You can only replace the SSD, RAM and Wireless card in this model. The CPU is BGA (soldered to the motherboard), and the GTX 1060 is soldered as well (Some 15" and 17" models sport a removable GTX 1060 in an MXM 3.0b format). This laptop however allows for 2 eGPU enclosures, which will definitely be enough for future GPU upgrades. The CPU is a 4-core, 8 threads chip, and is more than enough to avoid major bottlenecks in games. Unless more multi-threaded, CPU intensive games make it to the market in the future, you should be fine with the CPU in the next half decade.
My 13 R3 arrived with a silver screw holding in the NIC, unlike your black one. The screwdriver that got me into the case perfectly fine immediately stripped this silver screw. :(
Unless those heat-syncs and heat pipes are made from mostly silver you'll need to replace thermal paste every six months because it'll get baked and efficiency will nose dive.. Most people don't realize this and throttling will kill FPS and eventually BIOS will reboot. This only applies to people who do eight hour gaming sessions frequently.. I miss liquid cooled gaming laptops..
I would disagree that it's more important, just depends on your specific needs/concerns. However, you do have access to it if you remove a few more screws. I just didn't go there in this video. In fact a full teardown is probably not all the difficult. The entire system is well designed and accessible that way.
i have a question, is that gonna work i just add a 512g ssd into that empty slot just for storage? can i see the new drive in afterword? or do i need do more steps in order to see it in This PC.
2:08 - hah yeah, apart from the battery which you will need to replace by taking all of the top components out and unscrewing everything. Wish this wasn't such a pain to get to.
Thanks man. You've been alot help. Im taking alot of things into consideration to buy a laptop. I move alot as a pilot but this bad boy looks like could be my ideal laptop.
Thanks for the teardown. Good to know that the laptop accepts M.2 SATA Drives as I was considering a 250GB Boot NVME and 1TB SATA combo - though it might just be worth it to pony up the extra $130 or so for the PCIe NVMe. Now it would be nice to be able to find a good single stick of 16GB RAM.
Ace Jack yes you can even raid them together but of course it will blow away the original OS volume if you do that. Not a big deal to reformat fresh but just a heads-up.
HotHardware I tried t do this the other day and could sure do with some help. I managed to put the original 256gb ssd and then and additional 256gb ssd onto raid0, but took a clone rather than an image leaving me without a laptop. I also appear to have lost the Intel rapid raid controller within the bios
another great review Thanks. Would love it if you would do the same reviews and autopsy on the new Razer Blade Pro 17 inch. Both really powerful laptops at high cost, but seem to be very interesting
would this be tiny compared to an acer chromebook 15? my chromebooks dimensions are Height: 1" Height (Front) 0.95" Height (Rear) 0.97" Width: 15.1" Depth: 9.6" Weight 4.85 lb looking to upgrade to do some gaming and editing that my chromebook cant do
Nah, this is a reasonably large machine for a 13-inch. Full sized key caps etc. You'd dig it, mechanically. The display is smaller though but likely way higher quality than that Chromebook.
Do you know what the refresh frequency for the oled screen?
That's want I want to know.
60Hz with 1ms pixel response time
Raid possible?
it is possible on 15 R3 so probably it should be possible on this as well. But their connection speeds are not the same on 15 R3 so by doing raid 0 you can reach as top speed as the lowest connection allows.
Haha now I have this laptop in front of me ^^ it should be possible but makes no sense for me now... 960 pro and pci lanes are limited
Raid 0 with ssds is not really worth it as you substially reduce the iops per second.
I just ordered the same laptop but with only 8GB Memory and 256GB SSD.
Is it true that if you order the one with the 8GB config you only get 1 DIMM slot? and or miss out on Dual Channel Memory? I hope this is not true, mine is still being built right now. I was gonna add another stick later on for the dual channel. Dell chat is confusing me, he said only 1 slot but i can add after i received the system?
there are two slots.
I have one that I ordered with 8gb and I can confirm that there is a gaping empty slot right below the filled one
Got any info on the motherboard and maybe hardware schematics?
Do we have an extra screw for the second SSD? Or where do we get that from?
yep, it's in there.
does the battery appear to be easy to remove?
As far as I can tell, it's not user serviceable/removable.
what is the length of the ssd drive bay in this? 60mm? 80mm?
Thanks for video. Any idea of the upgrade capabilities of this for the future? I gather a different CPU could be installed, but how about a 1070 or even a 1080 GPU?
Not possible on all laptops except custom barebones laptops which weighs more than a real brick and is 1.5inch thick.
Achoo You can only replace the SSD, RAM and Wireless card in this model. The CPU is BGA (soldered to the motherboard), and the GTX 1060 is soldered as well (Some 15" and 17" models sport a removable GTX 1060 in an MXM 3.0b format). This laptop however allows for 2 eGPU enclosures, which will definitely be enough for future GPU upgrades. The CPU is a 4-core, 8 threads chip, and is more than enough to avoid major bottlenecks in games. Unless more multi-threaded, CPU intensive games make it to the market in the future, you should be fine with the CPU in the next half decade.
My 13 R3 arrived with a silver screw holding in the NIC, unlike your black one. The screwdriver that got me into the case perfectly fine immediately stripped this silver screw. :(
where is the screw to secure the second ssd stick?
Claudio Valdebenito it was in its post
are the SSDs 2280? Can I fit a Samsung 950/960 PRO in there?
also, what model?
yes
Unless those heat-syncs and heat pipes are made from mostly silver you'll need to replace thermal paste every six months because it'll get baked and efficiency will nose dive.. Most people don't realize this and throttling will kill FPS and eventually BIOS will reboot. This only applies to people who do eight hour gaming sessions frequently.. I miss liquid cooled gaming laptops..
Is there a spare screw to secure the second SSD ?
Yes
HotHardware Where is this found ?
Access to cooling system more important, than everything else, which we "officially" don't have here :/
I would disagree that it's more important, just depends on your specific needs/concerns. However, you do have access to it if you remove a few more screws. I just didn't go there in this video. In fact a full teardown is probably not all the difficult. The entire system is well designed and accessible that way.
maybe you're right, but in my opinion, you can do no upgrade, but you must clean your cooling system time to time.
Fair point, actually.
HotHardware yeah it would be awesome to see a full teardown and a repaste
Thanks. Very helpful. Love this. Do you know when will the 15 inch version come out?
Do you recommend this laptop? Can you recommend other 14" gaming laptop with decent gpu . I prefer gtx 1060.
hey you know you are doing the real stuff need to be done keep going really cool thats the pure info needed
Rudraksh Sehgal thanks!
i have a question, is that gonna work i just add a 512g ssd into that empty slot just for storage? can i see the new drive in afterword? or do i need do more steps in order to see it in This PC.
You'll need to provision it in Windows but yes, essentially it'll just work.
17 in review?
Would you upload a video about repasting cpu n gpu on aw 13 r3.. Thanks..
2:08 - hah yeah, apart from the battery which you will need to replace by taking all of the top components out and unscrewing everything. Wish this wasn't such a pain to get to.
Thanks man. You've been alot help. Im taking alot of things into consideration to buy a laptop. I move alot as a pilot but this bad boy looks like could be my ideal laptop.
Very cool. Glad to be of assistance. Good luck and enjoy bud!
Can I install a samsung 950 or 960 pcie M.2 ssd drive into the second ssd drive bay?
Yes, absolutely. That's exactly what it's for.
please tutorial for battery replacement alienware 13 r2 ,thnks
Does the other m2 slot accept PCIe or sata or both?
杨帆 as I understand all M2 slots will take both SATA and PCI Express or NVMe on the latest Intel chipsets.
This is so helpful, thank you so much!
What is m.2 ssd? Is that a storage file? Like hhd?
It's a type of solid state storage. Currently some of the fastest client storage types are M.2 form factor like this and are NVMe.
Thanks for the teardown. Good to know that the laptop accepts M.2 SATA Drives as I was considering a 250GB Boot NVME and 1TB SATA combo - though it might just be worth it to pony up the extra $130 or so for the PCIe NVMe. Now it would be nice to be able to find a good single stick of 16GB RAM.
That's for watching.
great review! Unfortumate that most core parts are not user accessable
Incase I missed and anyone wants to know this machine does support raid0 and raid1.
Steve Beck you are correct sir!
Can i use two m.2 nvme pcie on this laptop? Does it effect the bandwidth of the graphic card?
Ace Jack yes you can even raid them together but of course it will blow away the original OS volume if you do that. Not a big deal to reformat fresh but just a heads-up.
HotHardware does sk hynix pc300 a good choice? I got a special offer for that nvme
Ace Jack yes those are decent SSD though my current favorite is Samsung's 960 Evo or Pro
HotHardware I tried t do this the other day and could sure do with some help. I managed to put the original 256gb ssd and then and additional 256gb ssd onto raid0, but took a clone rather than an image leaving me without a laptop. I also appear to have lost the Intel rapid raid controller within the bios
Darren James if you have a clone, Can you not copy that to the new RAID 0 volume?
does it do raid ???
Yes but you'll need to format the OS volume to set it up.
another great review Thanks. Would love it if you would do the same reviews and autopsy on the new Razer Blade Pro 17 inch. Both really powerful laptops at high cost, but seem to be very interesting
Will see what we can do!
I think that the "autopsy" could be an amazing series same format as this one.
would this be tiny compared to an acer chromebook 15?
my chromebooks dimensions are
Height: 1"
Height (Front) 0.95"
Height (Rear) 0.97"
Width: 15.1"
Depth: 9.6"
Weight 4.85 lb
looking to upgrade to do some gaming and editing that my chromebook cant do
Nah, this is a reasonably large machine for a 13-inch. Full sized key caps etc. You'd dig it, mechanically. The display is smaller though but likely way higher quality than that Chromebook.
thank you. im looking into the 256gb model and adding a 2nd ssd. some sites list the 2tb 960 pro as an option, isnt the max it will take 1tb tho?
2TB is the max, actually. It has two M.2 slots that can take 1TB each.
Do some online research b4 u make your mind..
One of the cleanest serviceable laptops out there. Look at those labels and covers.
Definitely
Many thanks. Helped a lot
no disassembly at all ...
Very informative, thanks.
After this autopsy I feel violated 😳
Brian Berkes oh good. :)
Our full written review is here! hothardware.com/reviews/alienware-13-r3-review-oled-and-geforce-10
It's nothing but garbage from Dell.