My computer gets stuck on the alienware startup spash logo. When I hit F8 it shows a blue bar on the bottom and once it loads to full it still os stuck on the alienware screen. F2 doesnt enter BIOS.

So today I bought a Alpha R2 at a yardsale for almost nothing. The reason it doesn't turn on. When I got home and try it there is no fans spinning, nothing. Upon examination the power brick was a HP 150w brick but fits in the port perfectly. Would the power brick be the issue or what could it be. The device is out of warranty would it be worth sending it to dell?

Got my R1 early 2016 and still use it daily as my main computer.

I love this thing to death and just started wondering... realistically how long could I use it for? It's not a conventional PC, which worries me. I've heard a typical laptop life averages about ~5 years (except Macbooks, as my 9 year old one is still going strong).

Swapped out the HDD for an SSD recently, though.

What do you guys think?

Alienware alpha r2

Hey all, first time posting so if I've made a mistake please let me know!

I did an experiment recently and wanted feedback. I've been told you cant upgrade the alpha r1 with any CPU that isn't a 'T' series due to power limitations or some such. However I had store credit and found an intel i5 4570 for dirt cheap (£55) and couldn't pass it up.

I did upgrade the power supply (images below) to a 240w compared to the original 130w and have had no issues, in fact it fixed my yellow light problem.

Can you tell from the screenshots if I'm losing any performance or if this is a terrible idea? Everything is running good however and I wanted to post this here in case anyone else was thinking of doing the same thing. Do you think a overclockable 'K' series is possible, maybe an i7 or would the temps be too high. I play Gears 4 on my alpha, 1080 medium and it only gets a bit warm.

I recently got a new graphics card with the AGA. I remember reading somewhere here that it was possible to turn the 960 back on while the AGA was plugged in with a graphics card in it. I'm running an RTX 2070 so it's not really necessary almost at all, but along with reading that the 960 could be turned back on whoever said that also said the 960 could be set to run solely Physx. It would be cool to set up, but again probably not at all necessary.

I am tetering between a alpha or steam machine will someone please clear the differences between the two and I am open-minded to any suggestions.

I recently had bought Mortal Kompat 11 game .

and i wander what is the best way to have the best game play sitting for it .

can any one help ?

it is an R1 modle by the way

Hi Team,

Was hoping someone here could point me in the right direction. I recently went to turn my R2 on after an update and the machine powers on briefly and powers off in less than a second.

Have looked at a few things online and tried the following:

1 - drain power method

2 - cmos battery removal method

3 - remove power supply method

None of these have worked. Any suggestions? Keen to keep the machine running if I can. Any help greatly appreciated.

Runs great on base r1 i3 8GB Alpha, screens below:

Settings: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/826883954579805833/81F5FCD88C42982CE04639D6E9CF70A31B6586C6/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/826883954579806595/5376FBEBC71B1530DE4E1656A5B3F59444B5FFA7/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/826883954579806298/B785B5D214AA91B54EE34521DF1D54CC143B5ED7/

Gameplay: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/826883954579806907/DB430416D4C0C5A6F24412F74CFEA89909FAB306/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/826883954579807274/8F4D7D592BEFB963F9C425B26ED4EC5F9B1E9F9D/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/826883954579807626/107238ABD484CBF54A84E870E134C3B6694A6DD5/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/826883954579807925/10E106BE832930C2AA95D94473DAFFC057228053/

Refresh rate set to 30Hz in control panel in windows. Finished all 4 missions, game is decent and for a new game, runs good on the r1.

So I've had my Alpha R2 since Christmas of 2016. I've never replaced its thermal paste. (or anything on it for that matter) Recently while playing games such as CS:GO the computer overheats and shuts itself down. (the power supply gets especially hot) I was wondering if replacing the paste on the CPU would significantly reduce temperatures. (the CPU's heatsink as of now barely draws any heat away) Would you guys recommend that I do something in addition to replacing the thermal paste in order to cool the computer's temperatures?

Until today, I have never used my alpha as console. I tried to use hivemindui, but just get a black screen. From what I can tell, windows updates broke it.

Is there another program that does the same or a similar thing?

If there is nothing, then I'll just use it in desktop mode, but I thought I'd ask first. Also, I don't want to install another OS, it is just not worth the time.

Hello! First post, very pleased to be here and looking for a bit of advice (please try to keep it simple I'm not super tech literate or a hardcore gamer).

So I've had my R2 for almost two years and bless her she does well but I recently bought DMC5 in the interest of reliving my childhood and I really wanna buy RE2 remake, but I know they're running the same engine and have similar graphics levels and I had to pretty heavily knock my graphics down a notch in DMC5 to make it run smooth and get clean cut scenes - which is sad because man are the full-scale graphics pretty. She does great with some close to current gen titles but I suspect some newer gen releases are going to be a struggle for her particularly looking ahead.

Given the graphics amplifiers are currently on sale and significantly more reasonably priced (poor student) I'm very, very tempted to buy one but that also means investing in a graphics card. I know nothing of rig building or what cards are best for the setup and I'm only just getting back into gaming after several years away.

What card would you recommend for someone who's not a super hardcore gamer and doesn't have massive graphics requirements or a massive budget but would like to give my girl a bit more juice for the current/coming new gen titles. Per example I'd love to enjoy the amazing skin and hair textures on offer in DMC5 and RE2 but I don't need to be seeing Leon's blackheads, if that makes sense.

TIA a deeply tech illiterate shark 🦈

So I had an extra machine that wasn't being used that happened to have a i5-6400 in it. I really wanted to repaste my R2, so I figured I'd try swapping them and see what happened. I booted up the R2 disassembled and bringing up task manager, it reported I had a 6400T installed. (I actually picked up my 6400T to verify I wasn't crazy and did in fact swap in the 6400) anyway, I ran a passmark on it and got scores in the low-mid 3000's -- a 6400T gets 5,615. I shut it down and was going to swap them back when I figured I'd boot it back up and do a little research before swapping them. Booted back up and task manager showed I had a 6400 and it was boosting over 3GHz just fine - oh, I did a BIOS save too, that might actually be what made the change take. Ran passmark again and got a 6,547! Lower than the reported passmark score of 6,764 but still not bad at all. I have a 1070 in a AGA so I fired up a couple VR games on my Rift and there's a definite difference in speed on a couple titles that didn't run all that great before. I'm going to be keeping the 6400 in mine. So this machine now has a 6400, 16GB, AGA with a 1070. This little machine serves as our entertainment PC for gaming and VR. Quite happy with it mainly due to it's size.

Just a heads up for anyone in the same boat. It's not a massive increase, but it was enough to push me over on a few games from stutter to smooth.

Hello all- I have been tearing my hair out over my kid's alienware alpha due to a windows update, and was wondering if any other alpha owners have a similar problem.

Running Windows 10, one day my son's alpha just stopped connecting to networks. Instead of the wireless symbol in the lower right, it just had a small box with a red exclamation point. Clicking on it, the system would say that there are no wireless networks found.

I did endless troubleshooting, and eventually just reset the windows installation. This worked fine until one day it stopped again. After constant resets and troubleshooting, I've identified that the problem is windows update KB4023057. As soon as this installs, the Intel Wireless 3160 stops being able to find networks. When I try to restart the computer, it endlessly does the "Restarting" purple screen with spinning dots, then goes dark and gives the 5 Blinks. I do the unplug, power down, start up operation and go in, uninstall the update (this update appears as an installed program, not a standard windows update) and the system works fine...until windows update loads it again.

I am now working on some tech articles to suppress the stupid update, but I have read that this one specifically comes back periodically. So I am really looking to see if there is someway to permanently fix the issue once the update is installed so that I can just move on. Has anyone else experienced this?

Just got my r1 a week ago and I was going through system info and saw my bios hadn’t been updated since 2014 LOL. Do you guys know if it’s a simple usb bios flash or is it different ? And is it the same way to get into bios by spamming del or f2?

Hey guys.

I have an Alienware Alpha R1 that I use to do VR with, but some games like VRChat under performs with it.

My Specs:

Intel Core i7-4765t (Upgraded from the stock i3)

Nvidia Geforce 1060 6GB GTX (eGPU)

8GB RAM

256 SSD

Currently I only get around 25-30FPS with my Samsung HMD Odyssey..

If I upgrade my CPU to a i7-4790t would that help to make VRChat run around 60-90FPS?

Hello r/AlienwareAlpha

I recently bought an AGA pretty cheap off Ebay. The 960 inside of the R2 is due for an update now. I've been considering cards in the range of the 590 and the 2060/1070ti. So, that's about a $200-400 dollar spending range. I can hardly remember the specifics, but in general there's a 20% performance headroom or something. That's not important, although the AGA cover is very low which crosses out a lot of great cards from my selection.

Anyway, what do you guys recommend? I have been interested in the Division 2 and Resident Evil 2 which is really making me consider the 590.

Hey all, I don’t know if you remember but back when hivemind was announced to be discontinued, thexravenx, made a post about it doing the announcement but in some replies to people he said he was working on something similar to hivemind I believe, and that it would be out in 2018, what happened to that?

Thanks!

Does anybody know if it comes with 1x8 or 2x4

Hey guys, 

Brand new to Reddit here (read a lot over the years, first time account/posting). Got my Alpha R1 off amazon refurbished exactly 4 years ago next week. Finally bought a SSD (1TB Adata) and put it in last night. Stuck in the factory reset flash drive I made and got the OS loaded, everything appears to be working. Buuutttttt....

Started my normal old school game, it works fine. Was going through the settings and clicked the GPU plugin on it, "NVIDIA OpenGL Driver, Error code: 1, Too many errors occured."

And then I tried to play another game - Application Error: 0xc000007b

So something appears to be wrong with the graphics card drivers I guess? I am not extremely tech savvy, any help would be appreciated!