i have been running my R2 since it came out. i have the i7 with 16gb, 1TB SSD + 128GB M.2 and GTX 1660 Ti in the Graphics Amplifier. Next im looking to upgrade the CPU to the i7-7700T. sucks that im stuck with 4x PCIe and single channel RAM which does effect performance but it still is a beast
Let me know if the 7700T works for you. Most (if not all) research I’ve done has led me to the 7th Gen series not being compatible with the Alphas. If it is, I may go and get one.
After checking the prices I may make it a back-burner/“if I score a deal” thing. At $140ish it doesn’t seem too appealing to me-yet. Maybe if it can dip below $100, I’ll pull the trigger. Does look like I could get DDR4 2400 speeds if the 7700T and BIOS play nice together.
I can get a small variety of synthetic and game benchmarks for a follow up video. I don’t have a lot of “mainstream” games but I can run what I have and download some things as well.
From what I can tell, it was done simply to make room for an m.2 slot. I haven't torn down an R1 unit (kind of want to get one to check out) so I can't confirm if there's an m.2 slot in there or not. But for the R2, the m.2 slot is right where the second SoDIMM slot would be for the RAM.
@@BrokenNoseGaming I've got the R1 and I was so impressed by how well it can still run modern games, I went out to get the R2. Boy, I am very disappointed by the R2's abilities. I'm considering a teardown of the R1 and R2.
Hi , I had yellow light and lived with it by just by removing the plug a few times or leaving for an hour with power adapter off and it turned on without yellow light , but now nothing works resetting bios with jumper and giving new bios battery
I got mine from eBay. My particular listing no longer exists. But, search using the term “Alienware Alpha R2 RTC CMOS Battery” and there will be similar listings. I believe I paid about $10 for mine.
The GPU is integrated on the board so you won’t be able to upgrade the GPU in the Alpha. But you could operate an external GPU. I believe Alienware sold something for that purpose.
Yeah that sounds exactly like my model. It came with only 8gb of RAM originally. But these are the same specs as mine. My R2 has done pretty well gaming. I’ve had good results at both 720 and 1080p. It currently acts as my Stepmania Streaming machine for when I stream to Twitch. The only things I’d look at upgrading is storage. If it only has an m.2 then you can add a 2.5” SSD inside. Also at its age I’d look at possibly repasting and cleaning the CPU and GPU fan/heatsinks.
@@BrokenNoseGaming well I clicked on it to finally order and it was gone sadly. But I did find a R2 with a I5 6400T 2.2hz and 8gb of ram. 500gb hdd. Which I was hoping if I convince the guy to let me buy instead of bid. Then could I upgrade the processor to the i7 the ram to 16gb and the hdd to a ssd.
Sorry for the delay, I have no idea what's going on with the comment section. But the i5 version would be okay, but I would definitely look at upgrading the CPU. The 6400T is only 4c/4t, where the i7 6700T is 4c/8t. Which IMO would be the minimum you'd want, especially with a lower power CPU. You could still do all the upgrades that I've done on mine. But you definitely need to look into pricing on the CPU. These 6700Ts are still in the $100-$150ish range, so you'd have to add that on to whatever the price of the R2 costs. If the 6400T R2 isn't considerably cheaper, I'd keep looking.
hello, when replacing the thermal paste under the gpu you did not replace the thermopads, they were good? do you know what their thickness is if it would be necessary to replace them? Thx
Unfortunately, I decided to leave the thermal pads alone. They didn't look too bad, and I didn't see any major damage to them. I didn't have any spares on hand, nor did I have any measurements done to them. The R2 is still in current use as my wife has taken it as her own personal PC (for both schoolwork and gaming). If I need to tear it down again, I'll do some inspection and measurement.
The 6400T model R2 with a GTX 960 meets the minimum system requirements for the game. I can’t tell you what fps you’d get, but I see references of about 40ish. Your experience may vary.
So far the only way one could do this would be with an external graphics option. Alienware did make one (Alienware Amplifier). Outside of that, the GTX 960 is in the actual board.
Unfortunately the 6000 series is the last generation. Even though the socket doesn’t change in the 7000 series, the board won’t accept it. A few of us have tried and the unit wouldn’t boot. Now. Theoretically you *could* run a regular CPU in this thing instead of the 35w 6700T. But you’d need to come up with a *much* better thermal/cooling solution. But I’m obviously not going to endorse that.
I haven’t been able to verify this, but supposedly 16GB is the most the single slot can handle. Also due to the limitations of the BIOS, I do not believe there is an XMP option, so unfortunately you’ll be stuck at 2133mhz. My R2 has 2400mhz RAM in it, but it still clocks at 2133. These are a couple of the downsides in this system. Single Channel RAM and bare stock RAM speeds.
I kind of want to get one purely as a software development box but the thing that gets me is how hot the GPU gets in small form factor computers
I have the Alienware amplifier connected to mine with a 2080 ti so awesome
If you use the amp does it not utilize the onboard Gpu at all? Here it sounds like that 960 gets hot in there
Also yeah? 2080ti? How does that run with the 6700t
i have been running my R2 since it came out. i have the i7 with 16gb, 1TB SSD + 128GB M.2 and GTX 1660 Ti in the Graphics Amplifier. Next im looking to upgrade the CPU to the i7-7700T. sucks that im stuck with 4x PCIe and single channel RAM which does effect performance but it still is a beast
Let me know if the 7700T works for you. Most (if not all) research I’ve done has led me to the 7th Gen series not being compatible with the Alphas. If it is, I may go and get one.
@@BrokenNoseGaming the i7-7700T should work just fine as the Alpha R2 has the H170 chipset which supports 7th gen.
After checking the prices I may make it a back-burner/“if I score a deal” thing. At $140ish it doesn’t seem too appealing to me-yet. Maybe if it can dip below $100, I’ll pull the trigger.
Does look like I could get DDR4 2400 speeds if the 7700T and BIOS play nice together.
Looks great! could you post some gaming benchmarks? Thanks
I can get a small variety of synthetic and game benchmarks for a follow up video. I don’t have a lot of “mainstream” games but I can run what I have and download some things as well.
I have good news for you, search modified laptop CPUs, you can put up to series 10 mobile on your lga 1151, with a BIOS modification tool :)
I got my R2 hooked up with an RX 5700 XT on the amplifier. I tried putting an RX 6750 XT on it but it would not fit on the amplifier, too thick.
Someday I’ll track down a functioning amplifier for a reasonable price.
Why did Alienware switch from dual channel in the R1 to single channel in the R2?
From what I can tell, it was done simply to make room for an m.2 slot. I haven't torn down an R1 unit (kind of want to get one to check out) so I can't confirm if there's an m.2 slot in there or not. But for the R2, the m.2 slot is right where the second SoDIMM slot would be for the RAM.
@@BrokenNoseGaming
I've got the R1 and I was so impressed by how well it can still run modern games, I went out to get the R2. Boy, I am very disappointed by the R2's abilities.
I'm considering a teardown of the R1 and R2.
Hi , I had yellow light and lived with it by just by removing the plug a few times or leaving for an hour with power adapter off and it turned on without yellow light , but now nothing works resetting bios with jumper and giving new bios battery
Where did you get that battery thing for the clock?
I got mine from eBay. My particular listing no longer exists. But, search using the term “Alienware Alpha R2 RTC CMOS Battery” and there will be similar listings. I believe I paid about $10 for mine.
@@BrokenNoseGaming Thanks, I just left it for now as it's still working but if it stops that's what I'll do
Nice
whats the most gpu i can upgrade?
The GPU is integrated on the board so you won’t be able to upgrade the GPU in the Alpha. But you could operate an external GPU. I believe Alienware sold something for that purpose.
Hello. I was looking at the alpha r2 with a i7 gtx 960 16gb ram 2.80ghz processor speed. Is this a good one to go with? For couch gaming mainly.
I forgot to add it comes with a 1TB HDD but I’d probably upgrade that to a ssd.
Yeah that sounds exactly like my model. It came with only 8gb of RAM originally. But these are the same specs as mine. My R2 has done pretty well gaming. I’ve had good results at both 720 and 1080p. It currently acts as my Stepmania Streaming machine for when I stream to Twitch.
The only things I’d look at upgrading is storage. If it only has an m.2 then you can add a 2.5” SSD inside. Also at its age I’d look at possibly repasting and cleaning the CPU and GPU fan/heatsinks.
@@BrokenNoseGaming well I clicked on it to finally order and it was gone sadly. But I did find a R2 with a I5 6400T 2.2hz and 8gb of ram. 500gb hdd.
Which I was hoping if I convince the guy to let me buy instead of bid. Then could I upgrade the processor to the i7 the ram to 16gb and the hdd to a ssd.
@@BrokenNoseGaming but let me know if I get this downgraded one. If it would be possible to do all those upgrades.
Sorry for the delay, I have no idea what's going on with the comment section. But the i5 version would be okay, but I would definitely look at upgrading the CPU. The 6400T is only 4c/4t, where the i7 6700T is 4c/8t. Which IMO would be the minimum you'd want, especially with a lower power CPU. You could still do all the upgrades that I've done on mine. But you definitely need to look into pricing on the CPU. These 6700Ts are still in the $100-$150ish range, so you'd have to add that on to whatever the price of the R2 costs. If the 6400T R2 isn't considerably cheaper, I'd keep looking.
hello, when replacing the thermal paste under the gpu you did not replace the thermopads, they were good? do you know what their thickness is if it would be necessary to replace them? Thx
Unfortunately, I decided to leave the thermal pads alone. They didn't look too bad, and I didn't see any major damage to them. I didn't have any spares on hand, nor did I have any measurements done to them. The R2 is still in current use as my wife has taken it as her own personal PC (for both schoolwork and gaming). If I need to tear it down again, I'll do some inspection and measurement.
NEED HELP So wats better 2133mhz or 2400MHZ?????
Theoretically the R2 will only run at 2133. I'd buy whatever is less expensive. The 2400 will run at 2133 as far as my experiences have shown me.
@@BrokenNoseGaming thanks dude I ended up gettin the 2133mhz coz it had a lower cas then the 2400mhz
I have the 960m i5 r2 can it play horizon zero dawn m
The 6400T model R2 with a GTX 960 meets the minimum system requirements for the game. I can’t tell you what fps you’d get, but I see references of about 40ish. Your experience may vary.
Are you able to upgrade it for example with an Nvidia RTX 2080?
So far the only way one could do this would be with an external graphics option. Alienware did make one (Alienware Amplifier).
Outside of that, the GTX 960 is in the actual board.
hey bro, what is latest Gen intel processor support for alienware alpha R2?
Unfortunately the 6000 series is the last generation. Even though the socket doesn’t change in the 7000 series, the board won’t accept it. A few of us have tried and the unit wouldn’t boot.
Now. Theoretically you *could* run a regular CPU in this thing instead of the 35w 6700T. But you’d need to come up with a *much* better thermal/cooling solution. But I’m obviously not going to endorse that.
@@BrokenNoseGaming i7 6700T + thermal grizzly soung enough for me.
Hi man, just a quick question, can I upgrade R2 32 g on RAM At 2660 mhz? Thanks!
I haven’t been able to verify this, but supposedly 16GB is the most the single slot can handle. Also due to the limitations of the BIOS, I do not believe there is an XMP option, so unfortunately you’ll be stuck at 2133mhz.
My R2 has 2400mhz RAM in it, but it still clocks at 2133. These are a couple of the downsides in this system. Single Channel RAM and bare stock RAM speeds.