| Address: Mumbai City, Maharashtra, 400007 |
| Website: www.dell.com |
Hey everyone!
Before I begin, I'd like to apologize for the un-formatted text. I just dumped it from my Word file, as-is. I'm extremely jaded right now thanks to Dell's "premium gaming brand". I also haven't been able to attach files here. My actual DOCX file, my video files and the screenshots are missing. I'm new to Steam Forums, so I'll need to figure out how to include those. Suggestions are welcome. I'll also edit my post later & format it better for easier reading.
Formatted dump of my report (in a docx file), Video files & screenshots. (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BynIJD_FQlrIbXlQc3M5dDZuYlE)
Link to Steam (Gamers') Community post: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/[protected]/
English is not my first language. Please forgive me for any grammatical errors.
It’s been a while since I bought my Alienware 17r3 (2016) and a review has long been overdue. I’m writing this review -- not because countless people (friends, family, fellow gamers and similar) have asked me how my “Monster” of a laptop is doing, roughly 7 months (12th April 2016) after I decided to purchase it -- but, because I want to highlight my experience of owning a computer that could have (otherwise) been mistaken for the purchase of a small car in my Income Tax audit, at the end of the financial year.
Before I begin with my rant review here are some facts, that you should be aware of.
Facts
1) I’m an Information Security Professional. Here’s a link to my Linkedin profile (in.linkedin.com/in/disassembler) and here’s another link to my Twitter handle (https://twitter.com/Disassembler). I actively deal with security issues pertaining to software, hardware, networks and all sorts of technical stuff on a day to day basis. Not the average run-of-the-mill gamer/user. I could go on about my professional experience, but that’s what the (above) links are for. Let’s not delve into that. I’m also an avid gamer. I love games.
Look me up, send me a friend request! Origin, UPlay & Steam ID(s): disassembler9
2) Here’s the Spec-sheet for my Alienware 17r3 (2016):
Intel i7-6700HQ (Skylake), Intel HM170 (Intel PCH-H), BIOS v1.2.14 (06/02/2016), NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980M (GDDR5 8GB), Intel HD530 (integrated), 2x 8GB (Total: 16GB) DDR4 SK Hynix RAM, 1TB 7200 RPM Seagate HDD, 3x USB ports, 1 USB-C port.. well, you can read about the rest about it here (points to Dell’s official website). I’ve also installed a 256GB Samsung 950 Pro NVMe that I run my OS (Win10 Pro) and memory intensive games off. The build quality does look good. As you can see, it looks extremely good on paper. I chose the regular FHD model over the 4K version to avoid several issues. 4K doesn’t go well with a 980M. It’d probably require a 1070 or higher for optimal performance. If you’d present me with an option between the 4K version and the regular version, I’d thank you for the extra processing power and go with the FHD version.
3) This is not my first laptop. This surely won’t be my last. However, it will be my first and last Alienware.
Presently, I own one dual-booted (Kali Linux + Win10) MSI GL62QF (another gaming laptop) which is primarily used for work. Without diverting from the topic, it’s very similar to my 17r3 except that I bought it at less than half the price (literally). I’ve upgraded my GL62’s RAM to 16GB to help me run multiple VMs. I plan to buy another 256GB NVMe 950 Pro to boost the “Dragon”, but that’s for later. The tradeoff between the two laptops is that the MSI compromises on the Graphics Card (4GB 960M vs 8GB 980M), but that isn’t a problem, since I use the GL62 for work, and not for gaming (though I’m sure it could give the 17r3 stiff competition if it shipped with a 980M or higher.. I’m sure higher MSI builds do ship with configurations equivalent to my Alienware 17r3, at roughly the same price). You could run a comparison between the two and find that the GL62 offers fair value for money without burning a hole through my pocket (or my desk, for that matter). More importantly, it has proven to be extremely stable, despite being subjected to intense computing tasks and long(er) uptimes. To be extremely clear, the Alienware 17r3 was bought primarily for gaming - something that Alienware is (in)famous(?) for.
4) I bought the 17r3 from a local reseller (a very close friend/business-partner), being aware of warranty/support issues faced by products bought online in India. He officially has ties with every major company in the market - from Dell, HP, Lenovo & Asus to Intel, NVIDIA, MSI, Gigabyte, Kingston, WD, Seagate and similar. He’s directly in touch with regional Sales & Marketing teams/executives. He was present (in person) for the unboxing of my 17r3, installation of the SSD and all other tasks related to maintenance & troubleshooting. We regularly game together on Steam, Origin and Uplay as well. He ensured that the product was delivered in the same condition that he received it and helps with regular maintenance/upkeep of this beauty.
Anyway, now that we got those bits out of the way, I can continue with my rant/review.
ISSUES
The first four months went without much of a problem - if, “not much of a problem” can be described by several intermittent issues ranging from overheating to my SSD not being detected on boot. I can’t believe I actually thought that my 950 Pro had failed! Dell’s engineers seemed adamant about pinning it onto a SSD “problem”. I promptly sent the SSD for RMA in disbelief. A day later, the guy from the local Samsung Office called, saying that the SSD was perfectly fine and even went as far as telling me the directory structure on my SSD! The problem clearly was NOT my SSD. I called Dell India Support and scheduled for an onsite Engineer to visit.
The engineer was a senior Engineer from Wipro. He knew his work well. We shared a laugh about some thoughts regarding SSD failure & Dell’s acquisition of Alienware. The motherboard was replaced, and everything was working again. The motherboard had clearly failed!
“Fair enough, this could just be a one-off”, I thought, “Not everyday does a laptops motherboard fail or malfunction.”, except that this was not just any everyday laptop! It weighed the proverbial Ton and cost as much as a small car. I was aware of the risks associated big-ticket purchases but had not seen this coming – not within a few months of purchase. Asus’ ROG G752 was my first choice (one that I could not buy due to lack of availability of stock in India). I had a long discussion with my friend (the one I referred to, previously) regarding how Asus’ ROG would have been more reliable. We respectfully disagreed; he still had some faith in Alienware as a brand.
Few more months passed by. All sorts of games were being played – FPS, MMORPG, Action, Adventure, Real Time Strategy, Sports, Racing, Open World, etc. I was finally happy with my product.
It did, however, seem to get very warm at times while gaming (I was playing DOOM & Tomb Raider, at that time) despite being in an air-conditioned room and on a flat surface. My 17r3’s battery life is a good 6-7½ hours, when off the hook. I had set my laptop to “Desktop Mode Battery Charge”, so a worn or overcharged battery was not likely the case (Lithium Polymer Batteries are fantastic, in this sense). Dell’s on-call support team passed it off as some minor problems, “Maybe the room is too hot .. or the area you’re in is too humid. It doesn’t seem like a problem.”
“Fair enough, maybe they know about their product better than I do. I’ll take their word on it.”, I thought -- that was my biggest mistake. For a seasoned Information Security Professional, I had left an awful lot on trust, something I (reluctantly) believed a brand like Alienware was worthy of.
Weeks passed. The heating issue seemed to die down without any technical intervention. “Oh well, maybe they were right!”, I thought.
Fast forward to recent times -- one fine day, my 17r3 started becoming laggy, which was odd, because the games I’m actively playing are all on my SSD. All software/programs/Win10Pro are also installed on my SSD. Lag should be minimal or non-existent. Far Cry Primal was averaging 11 FPS in-game on various settings. (Tom Clancy’s) The Division was barely able to maintain 20 FPS irrespective of whatever settings I was running it on. FIFA 17 could barely hold its own at 33 FPS. I wouldn’t even dare talk about Battlefield 1 & Titanfall 2 -- they could average 40-45 FPS (optimizations?) but caused a great deal of overheating.
I assumed it was a NVIDIA driver problem. Reinstalled. Checked again. Reinstalled in clean mode, the second time. Nope. This was not the problem.
Maybe it’s a HDD/SSD problem? Same games ran off a 7200 RPM HDD on my MSI GL62QF well, without heating the chassis. My Alienware 17r3 sported a 950 Pro NVMe SSD (where most of my games were running off) in comparison. Formatted the SSD & spent a day reinstalling everything from scratch. Same result.
Maybe it’s the BIOS? Checked BIOS version. Nope. BIOS is updated as well.
Maybe it’s something I may have overlooked. Faulty RAM module? Checked. Nope, not RAM.
Couldn’t be the drivers. I double checked all the drivers before downloading, installing and configuring
Maybe it’s malware. My friends (some very cool folks, by the way) love playing pranks on me. I spent an entire week testing my 17r3 for malware. It was a matter of professional integrity. A thorough forensics sweep followed by a security sweep of my entire system revealed some unusual patterns, but those were random processes on Windows working overtime because a scan was running in the background. Nope. I cross confirmed with my friends. Nobody had me in their crosshairs, at the time.
I have a 3 year Kaspersky Internet Security license, have reasonably hardened the Windows 10 OS on my laptop and regularly run multiple (daily) security checks while simultaneously analysing active and passive memory for hints. I regularly update all security software and account for all guidelines followed by competent peers (fellow security professionals in the security industry) to ensure that my system is clean. DEFINITELY NOT MALWARE. This was something else, entirely.
I ran every benchmarking software test I was aware of. Negative on all counts. All tests gave poor performance results. No noticeable irregularities surfaced, except maybe poor performance and one more thing ~ My 17r3 overheated beyond measure, heating up my HP printer (which is usually a good 6-7 inches away from it, inside my desk) in turn. The keyboard seemed unusually hot & the fans seemed unusually stressed, despite having turned performance mode off. The system was not under any kind of load, save for a passive security check running in the background, which I turned off in response.
There was no software interfering with the boot process. The BIOS had not been tampered with. No bootkit. No rootkit.
A day went by. I began noticing other intermittent problems: The Caps Lock key & Power Button had started behaving strangely. Maybe it always behaved this way, maybe it did not. This was, however, the first time I had noticed this problem. Post-boot, sometimes the Caps Lock key would work, firing up the corresponding status LED on the top left corner. Sometimes, it would not. The power button faced the same problem. On boot, I would press it once. My laptop would not switch on. I had to press the key again, a second time. It still wouldn’t power on. Then, I’d press it very hard. Voila! It worked! Problem was, this situation came up only once in a while.
Definitely a hardware problem.
I called up Dell India’s Premium Support help line, complied with their request to run diagnostics and followed the standard procedure and ran the ePSA tool, which is pretty horrible, I’d like to add. I ran it anyway. A long burst of beeps pointed to error code[protected] with some weird validation code – in simple words, the integrated SMART module had thrown up an error, suggesting HDD failure or corruption. The SSD was perfect, according to the test, but the HDD had somehow “failed”.
I had also informed Dell Support of the Power Button and Caps Lock key problems.
We promptly scheduled an appointment for the on-site Engineer to visit and they assured me that their engineers would look into the problem(s).
In the next few days (Dell India boasts Next Business Day support for Alienware. It’s never been NBD for either of my support requests… they always find some reason or the other, mostly citing unavailability of parts to be a reason for delay), the “Engineer”, someone roughly my age (around 24), arrived with another “Engineer”, who was also around my age. This was the first time I had seen two engineers attending one service request, which led me to believe that he was incompetent or was a rookie, or both. Turns out, he (the one who had to actually service my laptop) didn’t even know how to open the 17r3 and was referring to a Powerpoint/PDF or some online guide on his mobile phone for the same! The IT industry never ceases to amaze me. It seemed though Dell’s support partners (HCL, they claimed), had sent two rookies to service a premium product. After some sort of “inspection”, they finally arrived on the decision to open the product. I shared my background with them, told them that I had a technical experience as well, but was aware of Warranty Terms & Conditions, hence, called Dell Support for some competent engineers to look into the matter. I also informed them that I was aware of the fact that they were not very confident and skilled at handling the laptop, but would allow them to work with it simply because Dell had authorized them to. I expected my laptop to be handled with skill and care and hoped that they would not disappoint. They assured me that my laptop was in good hands and began opening it with their tools. All was going well till the person actually handling my laptop flipped in on the table without any cloth underneath. I shouted at him in annoyance, asking him to keep some cloth underneath to protect the back of the screen from any scratches. I told him that this laptop cost as much as a small car. It was a premium product and I expected it to be treated as such. He promptly complied and asked for a napkin or some sort of cloth, after receiving which he continued the process of opening its chassis with some caution. He inspected the motherboard and the hinges, almost dropping the laptop on its side, one time. I had my heart in my mouth and wished for this appointment to conclude, irrespective of whether my problem was solved or not. I let him continue with the process so as to not be rude about it. He cleaned the motherboard and the fans coarsely with one of my brushes (thought he’d at least be equipped with a compressed air can for such cleaning tasks). Then, he proceeded with examining the underside of the power button and stated that it was not faulty. I said that the problem was intermittent and might not show up. He still could not see the problem upon further inspection, so I left it be. Then, I asked him to atleast check the Caps Lock key. He reluctantly said that the Caps Lock key would require him to open the entire Keyboard module for inspection, as if he was trying to avoid the task. Hoping to get him to complete the appointment, I agreed to let him overlook that task, figuring I’d get Dell to send a (competent) engineer later. He reassembled the laptop with some difficulty while I talked to his co-worker hoping to ease the uncomfortable atmosphere. I asked him why the power button and the Caps Lock key had not been replaced. His co-worker replied with one of the most absurd explanations I had ever heard. He said that he could not replace all the parts given to him because it would invite pressure from his superiors (WHAT THE HELL?!). Replacement of too many parts would somehow cause their superiors to look at their work as inferior or incompetent?! He specifically mentioned that being a junior engineer, he would be answerable to his superiors. What sort of explanation was that? Alienware products are premium-grade electronics. I wouldn’t expect anything less than support of equivalent quality. I asked him to atleast check the power brick, since it was not being detected by the BIOS properly. After inspection, he said, “since it charges without a problem, it shouldn’t harm your system”. Bloody hell! I insisted on changing the power brick. He ran an entire 29 minute ePSA test just to prove that the power brick was okay and was being detected by the system properly, only to be denied of the result he was seeking, in the end. He reluctantly changed the power brick and ran another ePSA, quitting early just to access the logs at the end. Finally, it showed as “240W input” under the respective record in the log. I pointed that out to him and said that I’ll keep the power brick then. The replacement works as per specifications and shows up correctly in the BIOS. The old one was clearly faulty.
Finally, I agreed that the service was rendered properly, just to get them out of my house. While leaving, he showed me a white slip which did not say anything about a Caps Lock Button and a Power button, according to him.
Relieved that they were finally out of my house, I called Dell Support and briefed them on the matter. The support assistant said that he would look into it, as he did. I received several follow-up calls regarding the same. Care was taken and I was assured that a senior engineer would attend the follow-up appointment to ensure that issues in my laptop are resolved.
Since I was to travel out of Mumbai on work, I had to ask them to reschedule the follow-up appointment for the first week of December. Dell Support dealt with the request well and were open to the change in schedule.
After coming back to Mumbai, in the last week of November, my laptop began heating up beyond reason. Even a small gaming session of 10 minutes was enough to cause the CPU to overheat to 93 degrees Celsius. GPU & PCH temperatures reflected the same. I’ve attached HWinfo64 logs (screenshots at different timings before/during/after gameplay) at the end of this massive post for proof.
Panicking after coming across temperatures nearly hot enough to boil water, I called Dell Support, requesting that they schedule the follow-up appointment ASAP. I feared for the health of my SSD & the internals of my laptop. Such high temperatures are very uncommon.
During the 3 support calls that I had initiated, I was directed through the standard diagnosis method which included long 30 minute ePSA tests, which were fruitless, to say the very least. They did not lend any clarity to the support staff attending to my calls and they were still unable to give a reason as to why I came across such high temperatures on my laptop. Every single time, I was “greeted” by frustrated support assistants who didn’t even have the slightest of clue as to what the issue could have been caused by. The entire experience was not as “premium” as it was advertised to be, on the support page. The conversations I had with support assistants and their supervisors bordered on the extreme. However, I did my best to maintain professional courtesy and allow them to do their jobs.
One supervisor even went as far as arguing that “ALIENWARE IS NOT A GAMING BRAND” when I asked him if the “Alienware experience included overheating when playing games”. I’m absolutely sure Dell’s Call Center & the Escalation Team have it on the record as well. I’m led to believe that they will go to great lengths to avoid the issue altogether. I assumed that he may have misunderstood my question and rephrased it, asking him if “Alienware was *at the very least*, a High Performance Computing Brand”. He denied that as well! Oh, how I would love to post that recording, just to get back at them for giving me such a bad product! Dell’s engineers have replaced more than 80% of the laptop’s parts (Motherboard, Power Button, Hard Disk, Keyboard, Power Brick) in the past 7 months. And my 17r3 is still in warranty (which ends in late May, 2017)! Wouldn’t it just be better to give me a new 17r3 instead?! As a customer, I believe I’m being ripped off. As a professional in the industry, I’m absolutely certain that I’m not the only one who’s been through such an ordeal. On top of such horrendous service, they have the nerve to ask for as much as 14, 999 INR (1 year) to 24, 999 INR (2 years) for extending warranty & “premium” support. It’s a rip off!
I wouldn’t settle for anything less than a complete product replacement & complementary extended warranty. If Dell can’t provide for a full product replacement, I’ll happily settle for a complete refund. More than 3/4 th of my product has been replaced within 7 months of its purchase. It is still in warranty and is eligible for premium NBD support. Support (On-site and On-Call) is mediocre, to say the least. Issues keep cropping up again and again. This is not the “Alienware experience” a customer would expect to receive. Michael Dell is in for a rude awakening when more Alienware customers start raising their voices. Alienware was once, a premium gaming brand that was trusted by gamers and professionals across the globe.
I’m dissatisfied with the product, the after-sales service AND the onsite service. In the words of my new best friend, “Alienware isn’t a gaming brand”. Avoid their products if you’re in the market for anything even remotely close to a high performance product. Your money is better spent elsewhere. Go for MSI, Asus ROG, Lenovo (haha!) or even Acer (ugh), for that matter! As a member of the gaming community, I urge fellow gamers to avoid Alienware products! As an Information Security Professional, I’d advise clients to never trust Dell or Alienware for a big-ticket purchase.
I deeply regret purchasing my laptop. I hope this mail reaches Tech columnists, Youtubers, Gamers and Reviewers.
~ Disassembler.
Product Tag: 4H20K72
Express Service Code: [protected]
Note: I've also sent a mail to Michael Dell's official email address (I found 3 of his email addresses. Wasn't sure which was true, hence, sent to all). Attached screenshot for the same below.
Dell India customer support has been notified about the posted complaint.
