Alienware 15 R3 How Do I Change Boot Order In Windows 10?
Our Verdict
A speed demon that prioritizes raw performance, the Alienware m17 R4 puts plenty of pop into a sleek but bulky chassis.
For
- Unrivaled performance
- Awesome mechanical keyboard
- Attractive design
Tom's Hardware Verdict
A speed demon that prioritizes raw operation, the Alienware m17 R4 puts enough of popular into a sleek merely beefy chassis.
Pros
- +
Unrivaled functioning
- +
Awesome mechanical keyboard
- +
Attractive design
At present, RTX 3080 is the fastest laptop graphics menu around, but not all RTX 3080-powered laptops are created equal. Many vendors apply Nvidia'southward Max-Q engineering science, which prioritizes ability efficiency and depression fan dissonance over loftier performance. Alienware's m17 R4, still, seeks to pump out every possible frame, deploying a special cooling system and eschewing Max-Q to make its summit-of-the-line configuration one of the all-time gaming laptops. Nosotros were able to check the TGP (Total Graphics Power) of the laptop, which was reported as 165W in Nvidia's drivers — in the "150W+" range listed for mobile RTX 3080.
But the Alienware m17 R4 is not simply a speed demon. Starting at $2,106 ($3,586 as tested), this laptop has a sleek sci-fi inspired blueprint with enough of RGB, an optional 360 Hz screen and a snappy (optional) mechanical keyboard, the first with Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile Switches. You just have to live with a heavy chassis and the occasional tour of fan noise.
Editor's Note: Nosotros originally published this review in February, merely updated in April to add our experience testing with Alienware's new, optional mechanical keyboard.
Alienware m17 R4 Specifications
| CPU | Core i9-10980HK |
| Graphics | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 |
| Retentivity | 32GB DDR 2933 MHz |
| Storage | 512GB Boot, 2TB (2 ten 1TB RAID 0) SSD |
| Display | 17.three-inch, 1920 x 1080 360 Hz |
| Networking | Killer Wi-FI AX1650 (Wi-Fi half dozen), Killer Ethernet 2.5 Gbps NIC, Bluetooth five.one |
| Ports | 3x USB Type-A 3.2, 1x HDMI two.two, 1x mini DisplayPort 1.4, 1x Thunderbolt 3, 1x microSD card reader |
| Camera | 1280 10 720 |
| Bombardment | 86 WHr |
| Power Adapter | 330W |
| Dimensions (WxDxH) | 15.74 x xi.56 ten 0.87 inches |
| Weight | 6.half dozen pounds |
| Price (as configured) | $3,586 |
Design of the Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 has the same sci-fi inspired "Legend" pattern equally both its firsthand predecessor, the m17 R3, and its sibling, the Alienware m15 R4. Available in "lunar lite: white or "dark side of the moon" (blackness), the m17 R4 looks like a giant starship, rocketing through space. The body (ours was white) has a black rear stop that juts out like the jet engine on the back of an imperial cruiser. The number 17 on the hat appears in a sci-fi font that y'all might notice adorning a secret warehouse at Area 51.
In that location's a honeycomb design for the vents on the back, above the keyboard and on the bottom surface. Nosotros can only assume that Alienware aliens alive in some kind of hive where they are all doing CUDA core calculations.
And, of form, in that location'due south lots of RGB lights to brighten the mood in outer infinite. The standard keyboard has four-zone RGB and there are customizable lights on the dorsum edge and in the conflicting heads on the back of the lid and the power push. However, an optional keyboard upgrade and the optional mechanical keyboard both provide per-key lighting.
The chassis is made from premium materials: a magnesium alloy with matte white or black paint, covered past a clear coat for actress durability. The interior uses Alienware's cryo-tech cooling technology which has 12-phase graphics voltage regulation, 6-stage CPU voltage regulation and a CPU vapor chamber.
At six.six pounds and 15.74 x eleven.56 x 0.87 inches, the Alienware m17 R4 is not exactly low-cal or thin, not that would you lot expect that from a 17-inch laptop with a Core i9 CPU and RTX 3080 graphics. By comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G (5.95 pounds, 15.9 x 10.8 x 1.0 inches) and Razer Blade Pro 17 (6.1 pounds, 15.6 ten 10.two ten 0.eight inches) are both significantly lighter, though the Aorus is thicker. The Asus ROG Flow X13, which we're as well comparing to the m17, is much thinner and lighter (2.87 pounds, xi.77 x 8.74 x 0.62 inches), because it's a 13-inch laptop that gets its RTX 3080 graphics via an external dock.
The Alienware m17 R4 has plenty of room for ports. On the right side, there are two USB 3.ii Blazon-A ports, along with a micro SD bill of fare reader. The left side contains a Killer RJ-45 Ethernet 2.5 Gbps port, a 3.5mm sound jack and another USB Blazon-A port. The back holds a Thunderbolt three port, a mini DisplayPort 1.four, an HDMI 2.1 connection, Alienware's proprietary graphics amplifier port and the power connector.
Gaming Functioning on the Alienware m17 R4
Sporting an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU and an Intel Core i9-10980HK CPU, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 is as fast of a gaming laptop as you lot can get right at present. Thanks to Alienware's strong cryo-tech cooling solution and the visitor'southward willingness to include a full version of the RTX 3080, rather than the Max-Q variants in some thinner notebooks.
When I played Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra RTX settings, the game ranged between 61 and 72 frames per 2nd, depending on how intense the activeness was at any given time. The frame charge per unit improved to between 85 and 94 fps later I changed to Ultra settings with no RTX. In both cases, the fan racket was really loud by default. Changing the fan profile to quiet improved this somewhat while shaving only a couple of fps off, and just in intense scenes.
The Alienware m17 R4 hitting a rate of 120 fps in Grand Theft Motorcar V at very high settings (1080p), eclipsing the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and its Max-Q-enabled RTX 3080 and Cadre i7-10870H CPU by twenty%. The Asus ROG Flow xiii with its Ryzen 9 5980HS CPU and external RTX 3080 dock, was besides a good 13% behind while the RTX 2080 Super-powered Razer Blade Pro 17 brought up the rear.
On the very-demanding Ruby Dead Redemption at medium settings, the m17 R4 accomplished an impressive rate of 79.7 fps, besting the Aorus 17G and ROG Catamenia X13 by more than than 20%. Saddled with last year's bill of fare, the Razer Blade Pro 17 was a total 29 % behind.
Alienware's behemoth exceeded 100 fps again in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, hitting 103 while the Aorus 17G hovered in the mid 80s. On this test, surprisingly, the Razer Bract Pro 17 came close to matching the m17 R4.
Far Cry New Dawn at Ultra settings also provided a peachy case of the Alienware m15 R4's dominance. Information technology striking a full 105 fps where its nearest competitor, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G could just manage 92 fps with the Asus ROG Catamenia X13 and Razer Blade Pro 17 were both in the 80s.
To see how well the Alienware m17 R4 performs over the long haul, we ran the Metro Exodus criterion at RTX, the highest settings level, fifteen times at 1080p. The laptop was remarkably consistent, averaging 75.6 fps with a loftier of 76.2 and a low of 75.four. During that time, the boilerplate CPU speed was 4.19 GHz with a peak of v.088 GHz. By comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, got an boilerplate frame rate of just 59.half dozen fps with an average CPU speed of 3.47 GHz and the Asus ROG Menstruum X13 managed a slightly-higher 65.2 fps with an average CPU speed of three.89 GHz.
Productivity Performance of Alienware m17 R4
With its Core i9-10980HK CPU, 32GB of RAM and dual storage drives, which include both a 2TB RAID 0 PCIe SSD (two x 1TB) and a 512GB SSD, and that RTX 3080, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 can be a powerful work tool.
On Geekbench 5, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the m17 R4 got a single-core score of ane,318 and a multi-core score of 8,051, which wa slightly ahead of the of the Core i7-10870H-powered Gigabyte Aorus 17G on both counts only backside the Asus ROG Flow X13 and its Ryzen 9 5980HS on unmarried-cadre operation while creaming the Razer Blade Pro 17, which we tested with a Core i7-10875H.
The storage in our review unit came misconfigured slightly, with a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD as boot drive and a significantly faster 2TB RAID 0 bulldoze made from two 1TB NVMe PCIe SSDs. Dell sells this hardware, but consumers receive units with the 2TB as boot and the 512GB SSD every bit a secondary, storage drive.
In our tests, copying most 25GB of files, the 512GB bulldoze managed a mediocre 379.7 MBps, merely the 2TB drive hit an impressive 1305.five MBps, which beats the Aorus 17G (869 MBps), the ROG Menstruum X13 (779.v MBps) and the Blade Pro 17 (925.2 MBps).
The Alienware m17 R4 took only six minutes and 44 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake. That time is 21% faster than the Aorus 17G, xviii% quicker than the Flow X13 and a full 29% alee of the Blade Pro 17.
Display on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 comes with a choice of three different, 17-inch display panels: a 1080p console with 144 Hz refresh rate, a 4K, 60 Hz panel and the 1080p, 360 Hz panel in our review unit. Our console provided precipitous images and accurate but mostly unexciting colors, along with polish, tear-free gaming.
When I watched a trailer for upcoming volcano-disaster-picture Skyfire, the red-orangish of lava bursts was lively and the dark-green trees in a forest seemed true-to-life. Fine details like the wrinkles in player Jason Isaacs' forehead likewise stood out.
In a 4K nature video of a Costa Rican jungle, details like the scales on a snake and colors like the red on a parrot's feathers were also strong, merely non nearly as strong as when I viewed it on the 4K, OLED panel from the Alienware m15 R4 I tested recently. On both videos, viewing angles on the matte display were stiff as colors didn't fade even at 90 degrees to the left or right.
In Cyberpunk 2077, details like the threads on a rug or the barrel of a gun were prominent and colors like the red and yellow in the UI seemed accurate but didn't pop.
The Alienware m17 R4's display registered a stiff 316.2 nits of brightness on our light meter, outpacing the Aorus 17G (299.6), the Razer Blade Pro 17 (304.four) and the Asus ROG Flow X13 (281.6). According to our colorimeter, the screen tin can reproduce a solid eighty.six% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is about on par with the Aorus 17G and slightly behind the Razer Blade Pro 17, just miles alee of the ROG Flow X13.
Keyboard and Touchpad on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 comes with your choice of ii unlike keyboards: an splendid standard mSeries keyboard with a snappy feel and a mechanical keyboard that may be the best of any laptop'due south. A $176 (as of this writing) upgrade option, the mechanical keyboard is the start to feature Cherry MX Ultra Low Profile switches.
Providing 1.8mm of travel in just a 3.5mm-high parcel, the Ultra Depression Profile switches have the same kind of luxurious, clicky experience and and sound yous'd await from an external keyboard, without adding any heft to the laptop. They require a solid 65 grams of strength to actuate, which is a little more than Cherry's MX Blue switches, which they sound and feel similar.
Alienware sent the states a new review unit just to examination the m17's mechanical keyboard and I came away impressed with the feel. Thanks to the robust feedback, I hit a strong 102 words per minute (slightly in a higher place my average) on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, with a three percent error rate and a great deal of comfort. I also found that gaming in Cyberpunk 2077 was a pleasance. For more details, meet my article on going fingers on with the new Reddish MX Ultra Low Profile switches.
With a deep, 1.7mm of travel and some snappy feedback, the default Alienware mSeries keyboard also offers a peachy typing experience. On the tenfastfingers.com typing exam, I scored the aforementioned 102 wpm / 3-per centum error rate as with the mechanical keyboard. Still, the clicky keys on the mechanical keyboard but felt a lot more responsive and pleasant to use.
Whichever keyboard option yous cull, you become a full numeric keypad and four customizable macro keys above the pad on the top row. The Alienware Command Center software allows yous to set these to launch a program, enter text or utilize a pre-recorded fix of keystrokes when you lot hit them. I found programming them very unintuitive, nevertheless.information technology. Alienware Command Center likewise allows you to ready RGB colors or lightning furnishings for four different zones on the default keyboard or on a per-key basis for the other keyboard options.
The 3.one ten 4.1 glass touchpad, which uses Windows precision drivers, offers great navigation with just the correct amount of friction. Whether I was navigating around the desktop or using multitouch gestures such equally pinch-zoom or 3-finger swipe, the pad was always accurate and responsive.
Audio on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4'due south sound system outputs sound that's loud enough to fill a mid-sized room and rich enough to dance to. When I played AC/DC'due south "Back in Black" with the volume all the style up, the sound was mostly accurate, but some of the high-pitched percussion sounds were a little harsh. Earth, Wind and Fire's bass-heavy "September" sounded great, with a articulate separation of audio where instruments such equally the horns section appeared to come from a different side of the notebook than, for example, the drums.
Gunshots and the sound of my NPC friend Jackie yelling at me to stay downward sounded abrupt and clear in Cyberpunk 2077. All the same, I had to turn the volume way upwardly to compensate for the fan noise when the system was on loftier performance settings. Fifty-fifty on the "quiet" thermal setting, fan noise was quite prominent.
The preloaded Alienware Command Center app has an sound department that lets you tweak the sound settings and choose among profiles such as Music, Film, Shooter and Part Play. I found that the default "Alienware" contour sounded well-nigh the same as the Music one, but disabling the sound enhancement definitely fabricated the sound flatter.
Upgradeability of the Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 has three different M.2 SSD slots, all of which are attainable and user upgradeable. The showtime slot is an short 2230 length and the other ii are both the normal 2280 size. Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard and therefore not replaceable.
Opening the Alienware m17 R4 should exist like shooting fish in a barrel: there are eight Philips-head screws, some of which come up out and the others of which you can just loosen, on the bottom panel. In our testing, getting the screws loosened was piece of cake by prying off the bottom panel was challenging and required several minutes with a spudger. One time the console is off, all three SSDs are visible, just are covered past copper oestrus sinks you can easily unscrew.
Bombardment Life on Alienware m17 R4
Forget about using the Alienware m17 R4 without a power outlet for any length of time. The laptop lasted just simply 2 hours and 5 minutes on our battery test, which involves surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. That'due south atrocious in comparing to all of its competitors as both the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and Razer Blade Pro 17 lasted for an identical iv hours and 41 minutes. But this is a 17-inch, 6.6-pound laptop so portability isn't a primary concern.
Heat on Alienware m17 R4
The principal touchpoints on the Alienware m17 R4 stay relatively cool when you're not gaming and remain warm just tolerable when you are. Afterwards we streamed a YouTube video for fifteen minutes, the keyboard hit a reasonable 35.5 degrees Celsius (95.9 degrees Fahrenehitt), the touchpad was a chilly 26.2 degrees Celsius (79.iii degrees Fahrenheit) and the underside was just 36.6 degrees Celsius (97.9 degrees Fahrenheit).
After running the Metro Exodus benchmark for 15 minutes to simulate gaming, those temperatures were obviously college. The keyboard striking 35.five degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit), the touchpad measured 35 degrees (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and the bottom hitting 50 degrees (122 degrees Fahrenheit).
When I played Cyberpunk 2077, the area around the WASD keys measured near 40 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) but the key caps themselves didn't feel uncomfortably warm to touch on. At performance settings, the fan noise was extremely loud.
Webcam on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4'due south 720p webcam is zilch special. Fifty-fifty when I shot it in a well-lit room, an image of my face was filled with visual noise and fine details like the hairs in my beard were blurry while colors such as the blue in my shirt and the green on the walls were muted. Y'all'll become by with this congenital-in camera if you need to, but you'd be amend off springing for ane of the all-time webcams.
Software and Warranty on Alienware m17 R4
The Alienware m17 R4 comes preloaded with a handful of useful get-go-party utilities.
Alienware Mobile Connect allows y'all to control your Android handset or iPhone from your laptop, taking calls and texts for the desktop.
Alienware Control Center lets yous command all the RGB lighting effects, set keyboard macros, tweak audio settings and even modify the performance settings and thermals to become for ameliorate functioning or quieter and cooler temps. You lot can even change the max frequency, voltage and voltage offset for the CPU manually if you have an unlocked CPU and want to effort overclocking.
As with any Windows laptop, there's too a small corporeality of preloaded bloatware, including a trial of Microsoft Office, links to download Photoshop Limited and Hulu and gratis-to-play games similar Roblox.
Alienware backs the m17 R4 with a standard i twelvemonth warranty on parts and labor that includes in-home service (if there was already a remote diagnosis). You can pay extra to extend the warranty up to five years and you can add accidental impairment protection with no deductible.
Configurations of Alienware m17 R4
When you buy the Alienware m17 R4 from Dell.com, you tin can custom configure information technology with your choice of a Cadre i7 or Cadre i9 CPU, RTX 3070 or 3080 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 4TB of storage. You tin can choose white or blackcolor options and you tin can also pay extra to get per-fundamental RGB lighting instead of the standard four-zone lighting we tested.
You get three dissimilar keyboard options. The default mSeries keyboard feels snappy and has four-zone RGB lighting while a $29 upgrade gets you the same keyboard but with per-primal lighting. Finally paying $176 actress (as of this writing), gets y'all the mechanical keyboard with Red MX Ultra Depression Profile switches and per-key lighting. That's a hefty premium, just if you're already planning to spend more than $two,000 on a laptop, getting a all-time-in-grade keyboard is a worthwhile upgrade.
You too go a choice of screens that includes 144 Hz and 360 Hz 1080p panels, forth with a 4K, 60 Hz console that promises to hit 100 % of the Adobe RGB color gamut. If you value epitome quality over fps, we recommend the latter, because the colour on our 360 Hz panel was ok, but not exciting.
Our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 currently goes for $3,586.79. For that toll, yous get the Core i9-10980HK, RTX 3080 graphics, the 360 Hz display, 32GB of RAM and a combination of storage drives that includes two, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSDS in RAID 0 and a 512GB G.2 SSD by itself for a full of 2.5TB of storage. Dell lists the RAID bulldoze as the boot drive in its store but our review model came with the 512GB drive as boot and the 2TB RAID drive as storage, which seems odd.
Bottom Line
At this indicate, it'south hard to imagine someone making a gaming laptop that'due south significantly more powerful than the Alienware m17 R4 we tested unless they employ desktop parts. The RTX 3080 is currently the fastest mobile GPU around, peculiarly since Alienware didn't opt for Nvidia's more power efficient Max-Q technologies.. Using a stiff cooling system, pairing it with a Cadre i9-10980HK, and you have performance that'due south often 20% faster than competitors that also use RTX 3080s.
In addition to its potent functioning, the Alienware m17 R4 offers a all-time-in-course mechanical keyboard or an well-nigh-as-adept standard keyboard, forth with a uniquely attractive design that's all its own. The 360 Hz screen is more than capable, only unless you're a competitive gamer, yous tin can become with the default screen or, better yet, go for the 4K panel which promises much richer colors.
The biggest drawbacks for this ballsy laptop are those which are kind of inherent to whatsoever 17-inch laptop which turns the operation volume up to 11. Information technology's heavy, has short battery life, emits plenty of fan noise. Information technology's besides quite expensive. Information technology would be nice if, for this price, yous got a improve-than-awful webcam, just almost laptop webcams are terrible.
If you want to save a few dollars or you lot need a niggling more than bombardment life, consider the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, which goes for $ii,699 with similar specs (just just 1TB of storage) to our Alienware m17 R4. The 17G lasts more than twice every bit long on a charge and weighs 0.65 pounds less than the m17, but its gaming operation isn't as good.
If y'all don't feel attached to the 17-inch grade cistron, consider the Alienware m15 R4, which has the same design and keyboard options but is much more portable, admitting hotter. It likewise has an optional, 4K OLED panel which has incredibly vibrant output. Nonetheless, if y'all want the ultimate 17-inch gaming rig right at present, the Alienware m17 R4 is your best selection.
Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/alienware-m17-r4
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