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[Rant]

I've been a laptop gamer since college. This buying cycle I thought I'd treat myself to an upgrade, so I picked up an Alienware 15R2 a year and a half ago. I have now realized you'd have to be a total idiot to buy a high-end gaming laptop.

Timeline of madness

• Right speaker stops working - 4 months in
• Laptop starts overheating because of dust in fans... which are impossible to clean (To access the fans you have to remove the SSD, HDD, RAM, Battery, screen, motherboard, and then reach the fans. Then you have to re-apply thermal paste and do the same in reverse, total time taken ~30 minutes). - 12 months in (I expect this will be recurring, yearly)
• A dead column of pixels appears in the 4K touchscreen - today. 

I'm in a table flipping mood. From now on, I'm only buying gaming desktops, this is infuriating.

Plus points of the Alienware 15R2?

• Aesthetically the thing looks phenomenal, I mean it.
• A couple of games change the laptop's backlight based on in game events, which is cool

Nowhere near justifying the downsides. 

Stay safe, just buy a PC instead, it's way cheaper as well.

[/Rant]

I've never thought laptops were very good for gaming due to overheating issues unless you're playing something old and non-graphic intensive, like say the Geneforge series.

I had a "gaming" laptop for awhile and the only way I could ever run the thing was by having a Vornado fan directly underneath it on full blast all the time.

I used to travel a lot for business before going indie, so a gaming laptop made sense at the time. The CYoA option was buy a cool new one or a REALLY cool new one. I regret my choice. In its slight defense, I did knock out atleast 2,000 hours of gaming on it including the Witcher 3 complete, MGSV in glorious 60fps, and a couple other phenomenally intensive games. I just never realized Alienware employed a 3rd grader to do the internal layout...

I can feel for you on this. Alienware products are pretty bad especially based on the price they ask for it. They're basically showmanship first with extra cost for the brand name, with functionality and hardware quality seemingly less important to them. I rarely recommend high end gaming laptops due to potential heating issues and handling the internals if anything is acting up. You're also paying more for less, because compressing all of that performance into smaller components raises the price without raising the performance compared to a desktop PC.

That being said I can understand your logic for getting it at the time though. If I was traveling a lot, I'd probably get a middleground gaming laptop that can play things solidly without breaking the bank, while leaving high performance gaming for my PC. That way if anything happens to the laptop, it's not a big deal, but you can still do some gaming on the go. I mostly reserve my laptop for work and writing these days.

Thanks for that, brings things back into picture. Will get this one repaired, and then shifting to the Surface series for future laptop replacements. 

Really? For all the shit I give my little Toshita, the office laptop I have has been running games pretty well for almost half a decade. (And then it started running games tolerably to this day which is a very different thing.) I mean, sure, it was never up to the task of playing max graffix at 6505439862097fps, but I've never had to deal with damage, overheating, clippy audio, and all manner of hardware bullshit. Just some various viral ailments I got from looking for stock music for a game I was making and totally not surfing for porn.

Granted, this is a 9-10 y/o jobbie, so they probably don't make 'em like they used to.

They don't make em like they used to... My old Inspiron 600m which is outperformed by a $50 smartphone these days is still working remarkably well. For a premium gaming laptop, the newest member in my laptop family has become a deep disappointment.

Dude, build one yourself. Cheaper by far. 

^ eh...mine cost the total of 4000 for all the parts xD It really does depend on if you were trying to make "The Best Laptop Ever!" though xD

Got mine for around 2k USD, it was a fairly good deal at the time in value for money amongst higher end gaming laptops

Already have a built desktop, but the Alienware fit a mobile gaming need I had at the time. Considering getting a new desktop in December when more is clear about Ryzen and the nVidia 1170/2070 (whatever they call it) is out. By then will also know whether DX12 games become big or not. 

Oddly enough, the dead pixel corrected itself after a few days. To balance my lot in life apparently, today my battery has now experienced a 'permanent error' and needs to be replaced. The laptop is now a desktop. Oh joy.

You live a hard life. 

I'll probably have to shell out to get it all fixed now... better a laptop than a desktop.

Yup, a laptop is much more convenient for me as well.

Wait, I just re-read the opening post. 

You need some chocolate m8.

Nah, mango season just arrived, have a dozen of 'em in the fridge. Atleast there's that...

Wow. There are 0 mangoes where I live. You're lucky you have some comfort fruit to cope with your losses.

Yep, had a few laptops turn into permanent "desktops" before.

Amazingly enough, I hadn't till now. Their batteries may only last 30 minutes, but one's never just pulled an Exit Stage Left on me till now. Infuriating. Was just checking my playtime / usetime on my laptop, probably used it more in 1.75 years than a 'regular' user would in 3, perhaps that's behind some of my woes.

Apparently I was wrong on one of my initial assumptions, it wasn't the fans (alone) causing the overheating - it was the low quality thermal paste they were using. The more you know. I'm off gaming laptops and Alienware anything for life.

My laptop reaches 90 degress cel when playing Resident Evil 6... I wonder if it will burn off itself.

Get the thermal paste checked (replaced if needed), and clean out the fans (I hope yours are in an easier to access location than mine) > first order of action. At those temperatures, burnout is a very real risk. 80 degrees is the last line of safety.

Nah..it is because I play it on intergrated graphics (Intel Hd 4000). Moral: Never buy a lappy without dedicated gpu.