Alienware M17R5 Gaming Laptop - 17.3-inch FHD 480Hz Display, AMD Ryzen 9-6900HX, 32GB DDR5 RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 GDDR6, Windows 11 Home, 1 Year Support - Dark Side of the Moon, Black

This is a review for the AMD 7845x & Nvidia 4080 model, with 32 GB RAM and the 1200p 480hz screen:This laptop is working perfectly and scoring extremely well on benchmarks. The only thing you need to do is uninstall Dell SupportAssist (after you use it to update all the lastest drivers/bios) because SupportAssist causes major but brief video/audio stutters every 10-15 minutes.Don't do a custom overclock on this. There's very little upside. If you do, it might bluescreen several times until it auto-reverts to default settings. Just use this on the Alienware performance mode and watch it crush other similar laptops in benchmarks and give you 100-400 fps in modern games at 1200p using the 40 series Nvidia features like DLSS, Reflex, and Frame Generation.The AMD CPU outperforms 11900 i9 (non-OC) desktop CPUS and the 4080 mobile GPU outperforms 4070 desktops GPUs.It's an absolute cutting edge gaming machine for 2024 despite being a laptop because of the giant 18" chassis which allows for adequate cooling, therefore no throttling.Seriously, I could not be happier.

Eight months later… Literally the worst system I’ve ever purchased! It has been replaced and all the issues from the first are in the second. This is the most buggy system ever. When it goes to sleep, it goes into repair mode 90% of the time! It can hold the battery charge for about 30 minutes and then it goes into recovery mode… If you put the lid down while it’s on… It goes into recovery mode! This is just Garbage for the price you pay. This is the second laptop after the first had many many many issues! And it was a lot of work to get it replaced. Replacement is no better don’t waste your money.UPDATE 6!It has been a month and a half since I received this system that has not worked for me yet! Multiple service calls endless hours on the phone. The last promise I had was an exchange was what we were doing and I was to anticipate a phone call to arrange the exchange. At that time I said, I’ll believe it when I hear it because I feel like they’re gonna call and start me all over! Boy was that prophetic! I got a call this week, and I was excited… Until the guy said he was trying to set up a service call because they were looking for a motherboard still I informed him to look at my notes and that it’s been a month and a half and that at this point they were exchanging it. We’ve had three service calls. The parts that were replaced failed. The system doesn’t work … And they started it all over again! The guy acted like there were no notes in my file. I am so disgusted with this company and the lack of concern or care they have for customers time. I paid $3000 for something that still doesn’t work and they won’t exchange it and they don’t have the parts available! I’m at a complete loss and they’ve almost exhausted me to the point where I just want to give up. All I’m guilty of is spending nearly $3000 on a laptop. I can’t return it because Amazon has the policy if you bought it on Black Friday and you return it they won’t exchange it! Even though they sold you a broken device they won’t exchange it cause you bought it at the cheaper rate! That’s who you’re working with stay away from the system because you will lose so much time since I believe this is a build issue. Everything they’ve replaced has the same problems. They replaced the battery the battery port, the battery charger… All of those things still fail. It can’t be unplugged or it will shut down within 10 minutes now. You just can’t use it. None of the USB’s work the USB-C don’t work… It doesn’t hold a charge where you plug in for the AC power. That also doesn’t hold the cord in place! It’s too heavy and the minute you move your laptop even a centimeter the power cord in the back falls out. They replaced that too and I have the same problem. This is a nightmare that doesn’t end. One month and a half later and I’m still sitting with a broken $3000 system that they can’t find parts for and they will not exchange! Absolutely unacceptable. They told me five parts have to replace before they will consider an exchange! Very different than what the other people have been telling me in fact, every time you talk to someone it’s a whole different story and they try to start you over every time it is the most infuriating frustrating system to try to communicate through. They don’t care what you’ve been told. They will set up expectations like… We’re going to exchange your system. The next call will be about that… And then the next call has nothing to do with that and they’re mad at you because , you were set up with expectations they did not meet! This company is a jokeUpdate 5:Still awaiting an exchange. I’ve been through thousand people in customer support, and usually have to start all over quite often. It’s a very frustrating system to navigate. Now I have constant audio tearing, which sounds like static about every two minutes. Waiting for an approval on an exchange! I can’t even believe they have to debate it. At this point. The system is two weeks old. Seriously stay away. Can’t return it via Amazon because I bought it on Black Friday and they will not honor return exchange.Update 4:After waiting for service to show up with a new motherboard and being told multiple times it had arrived it never did. Service never called. Now they are sending me a completely new laptop. They informed me that if they cannot find this laptop, they will upgrade one. so I can at least say the customer service has been responsive it’s just I’ve had to spend too much time with them. I really really don’t recommend this because online my issues were not new so many people had the same things go wrong. None of my ports on my system work now and every time it goes to sleep it awakens saying that windows did not load correctly. It’s pretty much a paperweight now I’m really looking forward to sending it back.Update 3!!Problem still persist. It dies in sleep mode in 30 minutes on a full charge with nothing on. Now they are coming on a third visit to replace the motherboard! If you read the other reviews, there are several people that have had their motherboards replaced. Keep in mind this computer was built 29 days ago! There’s a problem with these. Do not purchase this yetUpdate 2: now the keyboard turns on, but there’s no screen video. It’s just black. New technician coming out. Power issue was never resolved. Now they think it’s something with the motherboard! There are several reviews that talk about this on here. I wish I had paid attention. this is not what you want to see out of a nearly $3000 computer in the first week. Dell support is terrible and that they give you a day to take off work and then on that morning will tell you the parts not in and to take the next day off. They have done this with each and every technician that has come out. Nightmare.Update: technician came out..could not resolve power issue. It is now not working at all. Won’t turn on. Multiple issues! More now since tech came out!Battery unplugged last 16 minutes! Began beeping and error messages everywhere. 2 hours with Dell support. Sending new battery??? Will return promptly if 2nd battery does not fix issues. Really Really disappointed. Should have given more attention to the reviews below. Dell is sending out technician to install the battery and check the status of everything else. I am in the tech field so I did do some troubleshooting. This is a very, very very expensive expensive laptop to have as many issues as it has. I will say when it was working, it ran half life, Alex on the quest, three flawlessly! And then it just quit working

I love this machine. The display is crisp and has very good color balance. I really like the deeper screen (16 x 10 instead of the usual 16 x 9). The keyboard has a great feel. Keeping up with drivers, etc. is very easy with the Dell support site. It is a bit heavy, so may not be a good choice for someone wanting a really portable machine. There is a slot available to add a second hard drive if desired. The sound quality is above average, but not fantastic. There are plenty of USB 3 ports. The machine does not have an Ethernet port, but I rarely need that anyway. The CPU is fast enough for all the games I play, and with 32G of memory, it has enough resources for almost any use.

Alienware has done it again! This 480 Hz gaming laptop will not disappoint, I've had this unit for close to six months putting it through the most extreme tests in gaming situations and it is come through like a champ. I have had no issues with regards to its performance. You might find that you need a settlement firmware upgrade where popping sound can crop up occasionally. This is a driver issue which is easily corrected with a proper download. The 18 inch screen is a dream, if you've never had a screen to speak you are in for a treat! I would highly recommend this product. On my scale of 1 to 5 I rate this product 5+ (SOLID BUY)

Hardware itself is greatDoes not come setup out of the box. If you aren’t a computer whiz, I don’t know how you would be expected to configure this.Did not come with an activated version of windows 11 home, I purchased an OEM key for 30$ from g2aHad to disable Optimus mode in biosDrivers did not come fully updatedI purchased used, and I could see why someone would return the product if they didn’t know what they were doingWould have given 5 stars if this came fully configured and updated with an activated license for W11 proBiggest issue I had was: when I had a secondary monitor plugged in, unreal editor and high performance games would run fine on the attached monitor, but when you put them on the laptop monitor, FPS and performance was just awful, I’m talking less than 1FPS, turns out, for whatever reason the laptop monitor was running on the integrated GPU, rather than the RTX card. Why? Why would any manufacturer or resaler ship a high performance laptop like this? There was nothing online that explicitly told me what to do, I had to understand that the main monitor was locked in Optimus mode, take a look at the BIOS settings and find something about Optimus, I disabled it, restarted the laptop, and it runs flawlessly. Again, who on earth, would think a consumer would want that type of behavior? If im paying over 2K for a high performance product, I want high performance.Resaler should be paying me to fix their problems.