the Alienware m15 r2 is a thinner machine with some powerful hardware
inside so just how hot does it run and does this cause any problems let's find
out and see what improvements can be made to thermals and performance the m15
r2 is available in different configurations mine has an Intel i7 97
50 H processor nvidia r-tx 28 Emacs q graphics and 16 gig of memory and dual
channel so expect different results with different specs you can find updated
prices for different configurations linked in the description air comes in
from the bottom in through the vents above the keyboard and is exhausted out
of the left and right sides towards the back and rear left in right corners
there are a couple of fans inside with heat pipes shared between the CPU and
GPU the Alienware command center software lets you select different
performance modes including quiet coal balanced performance and full speed and
these are just fan speeds and parliament's there are also a couple of
overclocking modes 1 & 2 which overclock the GPU by these amounts thermals were
tested with the 21 degrees Celsius ambient room temperature idle results
down the bottom were on the warmer side but no real issue with that
worst-case stress tests were done with the aida64 CPU stress test with CPU only
checked and the heaven benchmark at max settings at the same time and gaming was
tested with watchdogs - as I find it to use a good combination of processor and
graphics the CPU would run up to a hundred degrees Celsius however I'm
showing average temperatures here as it would throttled back down a bit once a
hundred was hit making 99 the highest reported average no GPU thermal
throttling was same during any of this testing the lowest quiet mode was the
coolest then cool mode was a little warmer balanced and performance modes
were about the same then enabling full speed boosts the CPU power limit
so the CPU temperature rises as a result though under bolting and using a cooling
pad was able to help here granted more so in the game than the
stress test these are the average clock speeds while running the same tests
we're able to hit the 4 gigahertz or quarter by boost speed in the game by
under vaulting while the stress test is almost capable of full speed when adding
in the cooling pad the GPU speeds don't change
much while in distress test however they progressively improve more when actually
playing this game the CPU clock speeds are basically the same in cooling quite
modes then again it balanced and performance modes this is because of the
power limits we can see cool and quiet cap the processor - 25 watts
while balanced and performance seemed to run at 30 3.75 watts full speed mode
sets pl/1 to 80 watts so basically thermal throttling will
become the limit by design whereas we will power them at throttling prior to
this this explains the higher temperatures earlier the GPU wattage was
interesting despite running with a 90 watt limit in full speed mode it would
actually boost to 100 watts in balanced and performance modes which is why we
have those mid 90s I'm guessing because the processor has its power limit capped
here more power is allowed to be assigned to
the GPU instead let's actually see how games perform with these different
settings I've tested shadow of the term Raider with the highest setting preset
using the games benchmark tool as this is a GPU heavy test and our GPU power
limit is basically always fairly high regardless of setting mode we're still
able to hit 80 FPS even with quiet mode while under bolting in full performance
mode got us a couple of extra frames I thought the higher GPU power limit
seen in performance mode might have given it an edge but nope full speed did
better playing more CPU intensive games like watchdogs 2 worked alright in quiet
mode 2 so gaming there was possible for both CPU and GPU demanding titles if you
want to see more gaming benchmarks from the m15 are to check the card in the top
right or link in the description where I've tested 20 games at all setting
levels now let's take a look at a CPU early workload with the GPU idle here
are the clock speeds while running to a 264 CPU stress test with all the default
options checked so we could only hit the 4 gigahertz or core turbo speed with the
under bolt in place thermal throttling was taking place in balanced mode and
above however the under bolt was able to reduce temperatures a little and this is
because less power was needed to hit full speed here are some Cinebench
results to give you an idea of CPU early performance when the GPU is idle the
results when under bolted are actually very nice for this test this is
basically a best-case 97 50 H score at least for multi-core and that's
because the four gigahertz or core turbo was constantly being hit with the under
bolt in place it was running in the mid 92 gree range but this is simply due to
the high power limits that are possible in CPU early workloads
as for the external temperatures will actually be put in your hands at idle it
was in the mid 30s in the center but warmer up the back with the stress tests
running in quiet mode it gets to around 50 in the Sun top but that seems to be
in between the keys as the keys themselves felt okay cool mode didn't
see too much difference balanced mode was also pretty similar and performance
mode was again not too different hitting the lower 50s in the middle it's a
little cooler with full speed owing to the higher fan speed let's have a listen
to how loud our guts
at idle in quiet mode it was completely silent there was some extremely subtle
coil whine but this wasn't noticeable once the fans were going with the stress
tests going in quiet mode it's still on the quieter side
coal was a little louder balanced and performance were a little louder still
though about the same as each other full speed mode was strange when you
first enable it the fans spin up louder to about 58 decibels which is quite loud
however it only lasts for a few seconds before spinning down to around 52
decibels which is where it remained indefinitely this is strange because
full speed isn't actually giving us full speed while it does for the first few
seconds then it slows down granted the slowed down speed is still faster than
any other mode it can clearly go faster I tried making a custom fan profile in
the Alienware command center software and set both to max speed but I had the
same issue is the full speed profile considering thermals can run hotter in
this machine due to the high power limits it would have been good if we
could actually utilize these faster fans if we want to considering that the m15
r2 is around 2 centimeters thick and is paired with some pretty good specs I
don't think these results are too bad here yes it can get hot however this
seems to be down to the higher power limits that are configured many other
laptops will just cap the process of wattage to 45 watts and call it a day
however in full speed mode the m15 is able to push beyond this this means
higher performance is available but at the expense of thermals it's a trade-off
but there is also the option of running a lower performance mode if you want to
stay cooler this is why we saw thermal throttling with temperatures up to a
hundred degrees being hit which is more than I'd be comfortable with long term
granted these are worst case tests and as we saw improvements could be made
this behavior also seems to introduce inconsistent cpu performance in CPU only
workloads like Cinebench it was fine but when combining CPU and GPU load together
the CPU would throttle back a fair bit once it hit the hundred degree mark I
think this could explain the lower one percent lower result in battlefield 5
although the average FPS is well up there due to the 28 Emacs q GPU with
good power limit the one percent low seems to suffer and is behind many other
machines additionally performance at lowest
setting levels where the CPU matters more
occasionally dipped back a bit and I think this is a result of it backing
down as the cap gets hit for example once it hit a hundred degrees Celsius
and a test it would drop back to ninety briefly then back to ninety five ninety
eight and a hundred these are fairly big swings that will affect clock speed and
thereby performance so faster band speed under vaulting or using a cooling pad
should help with that and as we've seen using these techniques could give us
fair improvements these differences in performance showing aren't hard and fast
rules there are different factors which will vary results primarily the
temperature of the room you're running in application of thermal paste and even
the specific hardware which comes down to the Silicon Lottery you may not be
able to overclock or under bolt as much as me it depends on the chip and its
specific power requirements so you'll have to do some testing to find out
what's best for your hardware it may be possible to further improve temperatures
by swapping the thermal paste however as this is a review unit that I have to
send back I'm not able to change the paste otherwise the next reviewer will
unknowingly report different results due to what I've done let me know what you
thought about the thermals from the Alienware m15 r2 gaming laptop down in
the comments and if you're new to the channel you definitely want to get
subscribed for the upcoming full review to see everything this machine has to
offer