The Frustrating World of CPU Overclocking with Alienware R13 XTU

CPU overclocking can be a complex and nuanced process, but for those who are not familiar with the intricacies of this topic, it may seem like a straightforward process. However, in the case of the Alienware R13 XTU, things are not as simple as they seem. The system's BIOS is riddled with limitations that make it difficult to achieve optimal performance.

One of the main issues with the Alienware R13 XTU is its lack of advanced overclocking controls. There is only one slider each for CPU frequency, voltage, and voltage offset, which ignores the fact that voltage is not just a single entity, but rather multiple voltages that must be carefully managed in order to achieve optimal performance. Furthermore, there are no power limit controls or throttle stop, which makes it difficult to adjust the system's performance without risking overheating.

The Child Safety lock feature, which prevents users from adjusting certain settings, is also a major inconvenience for those who want to unlock the full potential of their CPU. To overcome this limitation, enthusiasts have resorted to downloading Intel's XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility), which allows them to freely adjust all of the missing settings, including PL1 and PL2.

However, even with XTU, there are still limitations that make it difficult to achieve optimal performance. For example, the system's CPU voltage regulator module (VRM) is under spec, which can lead to instability and overheating issues. This means that even with overclocking, the system may not perform as well as expected.

The problem of the Alienware R13 XTU is further exacerbated by its proprietary nature. The motherboard and VRM are designed specifically for this system, making it difficult to reuse or replace them in another system. This means that if you want to overclock your CPU, you will be limited to using a custom-built system with these components.

One possible solution is to use a Micro ATX motherboard, such as the one mentioned in the video, and build a new system around the Alienware R13 XTU. However, this requires a significant amount of creativity and technical expertise, as the biggest possible case available will limit the size of the motherboard. The user will also have to use creative methods to route cables and make room for front IO components, which may require specialized tools or electrical wiring skills.

In addition to the technical limitations, there is also an economic consideration to take into account. Even if you are willing to invest in a new system with a custom-built motherboard and power supply, it may not be worth the cost. The Alienware R13 XTU can often be purchased for a discounted price on eBay, sans GPU, which may offer better value for money.

In conclusion, while CPU overclocking can be a rewarding hobby for enthusiasts, the Alienware R13 XTU is not a system that should be attempted without careful consideration and planning. Its proprietary nature, lack of advanced controls, and technical limitations make it difficult to achieve optimal performance, and the economic cost of building a new system may be prohibitively expensive. As such, we would recommend avoiding this system unless you are willing to invest in a custom-built solution with a Micro ATX motherboard.

The Fix: Upgrading to a New System

If you're determined to overclock your CPU, one possible solution is to build a new system around the Alienware R13 XTU. However, as mentioned earlier, this requires a significant amount of technical expertise and creativity. The biggest challenge is finding a suitable motherboard that will fit in the available case space.

Using a Micro ATX motherboard is one possible solution, but it requires careful planning and execution. The user will have to use creative methods to route cables and make room for front IO components, which may require specialized tools or electrical wiring skills. Additionally, there is also an economic consideration to take into account, as building a custom system can be expensive.

Another approach would be to purchase a pre-built system with a Micro ATX motherboard and the Alienware R13 XTU CPU. However, this may not offer significant improvements in performance, as the system's limitations are still present, even if they are hidden behind a new motherboard.

In any case, it is essential to weigh the pros and cons of building a custom system versus purchasing an off-the-shelf solution. While overclocking can be a rewarding hobby for enthusiasts, the Alienware R13 XTU is not a system that should be attempted without careful consideration and planning.

The Ram Problem

Another issue with the Alienware R13 XTU is its limited RAM capabilities. The system's RAM slots are narrow and may require specialized RAM modules to fit properly. This can limit the user's ability to add more RAM, which can be a problem for systems that require large amounts of memory.

Furthermore, the RAM slots on the Alienware R13 XTU may also have limitations in terms of speed and capacity. The system's default settings may not allow for maximum performance, even with high-end RAM modules.

This limitation is further exacerbated by the proprietary nature of the system, which makes it difficult to find compatible RAM modules outside of the official Alienware channels. As such, users may be forced to purchase specialized RAM modules that are only available from authorized retailers.

In conclusion, while the Ram problem on the Alienware R13 XTU may seem like a minor issue, it can have significant implications for system performance and user experience. Users who require large amounts of memory or high-speed RAM may need to consider alternative systems or workarounds to overcome this limitation.

Conclusion

The Alienware R13 XTU is a complex system that presents several challenges for enthusiasts who want to overclock their CPU. Its proprietary nature, lack of advanced controls, and technical limitations make it difficult to achieve optimal performance, while the economic cost of building a custom solution can be prohibitively expensive.

While there are some possible workarounds and solutions available, such as using XTU or building a custom system with a Micro ATX motherboard, these options require significant technical expertise and creativity. As such, we would recommend avoiding this system unless you are willing to invest in a custom-built solution with the necessary components and skills.

In any case, it is essential to carefully weigh the pros and cons of overclocking your CPU and consider whether the benefits are worth the challenges and limitations imposed by systems like the Alienware R13 XTU.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enokay today we're going to take the trash out of the trash and try to I should not be holding this this way although it's not worth anything we're going to try and save this Alienware r13 computer that we recently reviewed we said it was the worst pre-built gaming PC we've ever worked on uh and actually it got even worse after we filmed that video and we started inspecting it further for how can we save this computer is there a way we can lightly modify this and make it better we found out it gets worse so uh our goal today is going to be changing as few things as possible and pretending we're Dell so we want to maintain this aesthetic such that it exists uh because that's alienware's brand but at least make it cool properly and run at the right power limit let's get started before that this video is brought to you by be quiet and the silent base 802 case the silent base 802 got High accolades in our review for its high build quality and its versatility in both silence focused and airflow focused build the 802 comes with swappable mesh panels or noise damped panels so you have options for either approach the silent base 802 case is able to fit larger builds as well without being overbearing and it stands out for its mechanics quality and assembly quality learn more about V quiet's new case at the link in the description below so this was a highly requested content piece from our patreon backers the patreon Discord and also in the comment section where people were saying that was a pleasant sound people were saying is there a way you can save this computer and the problem with it very quick recap is everything but the the smaller piece is that the 12900 KF equals a 12700 KF and that's because Dell has put exhibit cooler in it Exhibit C right here very small coil 120 mil short tubes and it's a high power CPU that they're dropping from 240 Watts down to 160 Watts so you lose a lot of the performance that's the key problem there are other issues with this not going to go through it all again today like proprietary uh motherboard power supply everything else but what we're going to try and do is set some some rules I have to make this a fun challenge so the rule here is going to be it has to be as close to Dell's original Vision such that it exists as possible and we think that if we pretend we're part of Dell's design team here uh probably they're saying no the look has to stay that's the Alienware look it needs to look like this so we're not going to change the case the the easy answer to can you save this is yes you buy a new motherboard to new case and then you build a computer that doesn't really count though it's not as fun so we're going to see what we can do uh with as few mods as possible and then we're going to get a little more creative as we go through it and add some more modifications to it from the perspective of the cooler I think my options are going to be the best would be put a 240 in here I'm trying to do as few changes as possible so that if someone is misfortunate enough to have bought this uh this is maybe a path they can take to get it up and running without investing too much in it so 240 maybe if it can fit would be the quickest fix another option I thought this would be really fun is a tower cooler here with this as intake and this as intake and these as exhaust so the reason for doing it that way would be that the cooler would have immediate access to cool external room ambient temperature air right here and right here uh unfortunately the top of the case is extremely blocked off here not great as intake but it's a last blocked off here and here then on the front of the case and pushing all the warm air out the front is going to be an easier uh like lower resistance path for flow than the opposite way that they've got it now that's one option I don't think a 120 mil Tower cooler is going to be enough for 12900 K to sustain 240 Watts really stretching so we're going to try with the 240 first another option is maybe cutting a hole in the side panel that might be altering too much but it would give us the biggest increase in performance for the least amount of changes is beyond cutting a hole in the side panel so that's an option as well our AC is broken and this is my solution to the server room it's only broken in the server room though so all the people are fine air coolers here liquid coolers some of them are here so I want a 240 um not going to be too picky about this one's pretty nice let's see I think that h100i Elite is very new this is going to be kind of an expensive solution um you're mostly just paying for the the reason it's expensive is because you can do this with the pump cap so as far as performance it's the same as as a significantly cheaper one but you can't you can't make a significantly cheaper one do can we just make sure they they saw it at home this but I do think that that particular image is perfect o nice for the Alienware computer okay time to see what will actually fit I don't think the 120 Tower is going to be enough so the 240s are best bet one other thing we can modify this has got like the double honeycomb mesh going on where you know it's it's plexy it's not even glass blocking air flow obviously air comes in around there and then it's this honeycomb plastic behind it maybe you could show better this way and then behind that is this metal honeycomb so you double filtering is always a great way to block a ton of air flow and really hurt the performance so a mod maybe Mike could do would be to cut a big giant hole in all this and see if it improves things so just as a reminder we have a full review on the channel already and a tear down you should definitely go check those out if you haven't CU that will explain a lot of context I'm not going to explain today like the insanity of how this is all assembled so the best of my memory I'm going to disassemble this now so can we fit a 240 radiator okay this is going to be so stupid if a 240 can fit Dell's really good have no excuse like they can do this it's just that's just ace attack they make 240s I'm a little worried about the cooler Mount cuz the mount so we didn't talk about this too much before that screws into the case that's special I don't know that that really is going to Exist Elsewhere I could get another acitech cooler that that would allow me to reuse the screws here on the standoffs I might have to do an acch 240 we're going to try this though corer has since moved on from acch um only for small reasons like you know lawsuits and litigation but we're not going to be able to use a attack with Corsair that is so stupid that that's going to fit will it fit with the video card in it's actually going to work wow okay it'll still have GPU support too so remember it's got that's GPU support helps in shipping they could also just package it with some foam around it but that's GPU support that's GPU support and this is GPU support we don't need all of them so we're going to stick with just one I'm going disconnect this one I just I just like this stack of plastic plastic appendages little known fact this table lowers all the way into hell which is where it's oh it's stopped where it's already here time to take this back out can't forget to disconnect the standard 7 pin RGB cable I think it'll work okay cool the Height's not going to be correct with this um that's unfortunate oh maybe we'll get lucky maybe we can thread these into doll's proprietary case and just happen to have it work well it's kind of hard to center it exactly but pretty close well hopefully this is making contact oh okay right that explain that makes okay all right cool it's better this is going to be a lot of fun oh nice okay there is enough clearance cool wow that looks pretty damn good man if we can fix this thing with just a 240 mm cooler and then Dell's going to go and implement it and be like look we fixed it and we're going to be like no that was just like that was us trying to spend less than an hour fixing it so I hope I hope if D is like hey we should Implement that then they'll be Happ I just want it to be clear that I will not be happy I will still be upset so just to save everyone the time now I require assistant does the assistance involve any tools spring nope okay and by assistance I mean I don't want to do it okay okay it's worked out shockingly well mostly shocking because D didn't do this I thought it can't possibly just fit right yeah I I assumed that it would be two separate 120 mounts and that it wouldn't did you oh okay it's even got the holes like for radiators yeah it really I was not expecting that at all it's completely upfitted for it cuz they didn't even attach the did they attach both of the front fans directly to the case or did they have like um they were attached no they were clipped okay with the spring so they're not even using these no okay so um I think that and this is the best this is the best cooler that is on their website so I don't know so we're assuming that they use this for other stuff yeah I'm going to let Patrick take over the cabling if we do further modifications it will become a mic job where it might be cutting holes and things but for now this is like kind of a boring solution but it also fulfills the criteria of do and spend as little as possible so if you're a real end user who bought this thing then doing a 240 might be it I'm actually going to take the power supply shroud off because I can and it might be in the way this just holds the cables it looks like these plug into the power supply but you take this off and these this is just to hold loose cables these don't go into the power supply the okay um well let me put a couple screws back in so I don't lose them it looks like there is some SATA power down here that we can unearth um that would be intended for a drive down here I just need to decide if we're going to put this fan an RGB controller in the case now do you think there will be any normal USB headers on this board if you have a cable like this something has gone wrong great connector works works perfectly there's nowhere to put cables they all have to stay on this side of the case this is where all the cables go so that I don't have to think about them anymore I'll never bother anyone again it's not the worst cable management job in the world it's not the best but it's not the worst we've got a big exclamation point on this schooler I think it probably means that it's not plugged in via USB because it's not it also has this gigantic like I don't know it's like uh 20 24 pin something like that um it's got this big cable coming off this has a USB connection coming out of it and then that goes into the Hub at the other end this USB connection here is going to nothing because there are no connections on the board and then the SATA connection coming out of the Hub we can plug that in to power it um but there's also another USB connection coming out of the Hub that we can't plug into anything because there's no USB headers all of that is very confusing and over complicated the summary is that these fans are connected to the hub for RGB but the Hub has no way to be controlled because we can't connect the USB so without control it looks like these fans don't light up sometimes you'll run into RGB systems where if you're not controlling it they'll have like a default Rainbow Lighting pattern um Corsair has defaulted just having all the LEDs off so potentially we could plug this into a different system and then change settings if it's safe to Firmware and then plug it back in here but it's not worth it um that would tempt me to just take out the Hub entirely since we're mostly just using it for RGB which isn't working but we need the Hub to be there because that's what the pump plugs into and is powered by which is very annoying because it means we're using this entire Hub that's the size of a bar of soap and has wires coming out of it everywhere just to run a pump because coarse hair and because RGB and because Dell they're all coming together um I think I might put this CPU fan back in the back here uh just to try and improve thermos a little more and prevent one of the many errors that will pop up when we try and turn this on um but I'm going to go ahead and move this into the thermal testing room and we can get started with that in a moment so with the fix done it's time to test this thing again our goal is to turn the 12900 K after that Del puts in here back into a 12 900k not a 12700 K that it's become and for this process we needed this an external power supply in addition to the internal power supply and a fan controller because Alienware stock software and bios doesn't allow any fan control uh or even monitoring of the fans beyond the predefined thermal profiles that was the first roadblock we ran into of many this means that it's difficult to just simply drop in a new cooler and plot an improvement our compromise was to keep all the original bios and performance settings but tune the fans in our new config to roughly match the stock noise noise level under sustained load or about 46 DB for lawn workloads to noise normalize like this that meant locking the front radiator fans to 1500 RPM and the remaining stock fans in the rear of the case to, 1600 RPM but we had to use an external controller and that's dangling out of the back the case because Dell can't be bothered to ship a complete BIOS with basic ass functions like controlling the fan speed now to our credit it's not like this looks much worse so we've done okay there we used afterburner to lock the GPU fan speed we had to do this because Alienware software was incapable of doing that either and uh this is where we discovered a new problem which is the power supply so the power supply sufficient though it is it is actually a reasonably built power supply it comes from the server division so go figure uh it is still problematic which is that it has two tiny fans that start screaming as soon as you take away the really high flow of the bottom intake fan so without that strong positive air flow from the front of the case they're bad here take a listen so with no way to directly control those fans we were forced to ignore power supply noise as a factor as much as we could for more permanent mod we might cut a vent for the power supply in the bottom of the case and reposition its fans but at that point we're now replacing a cooler we should probably replace the motherboard for a better bios and we'd definitely be modifying the case and if you replace the motherboard you also have to replace the power supply because this power supply has proprietary connectors that will not socket into a normal motherboard anyway let's Forge ahead with what we got here's a noise normalized result as plotted against an auto fan result from the original test CPU temperatures were instantly improved by the new cooler there was a chance that thermal performance at the beginning of the test pass would be worse since the stock configuration fans were free to spin up and scream at 50 DBA for 56 seconds here we'll drop that in a but even during the initial 241 pl2 period the new cooler performed better with Peak core temperatures of 86° C that's down from 96 so we were nearly at TJ Maxx with alienware's stock configuration in the original test and now we're actually reasonable just as in the original test there's a sharp drop in CB temperature with a move to pl1 followed by a linear decrease as pl1 dropped steadily to its minimum the 240 mm CLC at noise normaliz set ran a 70° C steady down from our sustained 88° result of the stock test so that's 16° cooler for doing less than an hour of work if you count Patrick's RGB cabling that's like half of that anyway so Dell has no excuse here we didn't have to modify the case it had the holes for 2 40 mm radiators they're just not using it this was a $5,000 computer it was the max spec we didn't choose the 120 mm liquid Co cooler that was their best one that's the crazy part so actually nothing really had to be done to just get the CB thermals under control it's still not fixed there are a lot of problems we're going to get to in a moment but shoving a 240 cooler in the front you could buy an acch unbranded cooler stick the alien head on it and it' probably be pretty cheap not much more than the 120 that asex already making with the custom radiator size certainly the custom tube length and it'd be it'd be halfway fixed except for the motherboard the power supply and the case but that part would be fixed on to frequency the fixed r13 plots its frequency at about 4800 MHz during the initial boosting window holding at 4500 to 4600 through the Decay period and landing at 4350 MHz for steady state its ecore performance ran at 3,400 MHz dead for the entire test showing a flat line thanks to Thermal compliance the original system decayed much faster for frequency with a sharp falloff as we hit 96° C in the initial window it fell to 4,300 to 4400 MHz so that's consistently 200 MHz lower during that decay window and the clock ultimately settled about 100 MHz lower than the peores in our updated version of testing and that's with the turbo limits still in place ecor performance on the original test was far worse bouncing around erratically and unpredictably this was resolved with the cooler upgrade GPU thermals are next during the original stock test GPU fans Rose to a maximum of 69 % duty cycle and for the most part it remained there for our 46db noise normalized test we manually locked the GPU fans to that speed from the beginning however we had the powerful and Loud stock intake fans in the case replaced with the radiator and fan combo it makes sense then that temperatures were slightly higher in the new configuration for the GPU leveling now at 75° for the GPU instead of the original 72° C unfortunately the proximity of the GPU to the power supply and we did remove the Shroud because it was just creating obstructions means that there's not much room for us to get creative and improve the air flow fortunately however 3° here doesn't hurt performance and the GPU was the best cooled part in the system anyway the 16° of the CPU is worth a lot more than the 3° of the GPU so all that Force didn't take out the bottom of the case including the duct that directed it although yes it benefited the GPU a bit the frequencies haven't moved much on the GPU core just if you're wondering a lot of that was designed for the power supply is what we've gathered cuz the power supply fans they start screaming with the removal of all that guided intake so it was less GPU and more power supply with that done we could then increase the power limits to match the proper stock behavior of a 12900 KF as soon as we tried though we ran into problems first the overclocking menu completely disappeared from bios we plugged some fans back in and it came back we unplugged the same fans again and it stayed we still don't know what specifically made the menu disappear but it encompasses almost all CPU and memory settings including XMP so losing it was a major problem Dell has tied its bios menus to the fan headers which seems actually insane and reinforces that a true fix would involve a new motherboard this likely ties in with the unders speec vrm they probably know it's UND speec and know it'll blow up if it's not protected in BIOS once in the menu we found that we weren't allowed to increase power limits above 241 Watts for PL 2 or 210 Watts for pl1 which are the original limits that the system shipped with and Below Intel guidelines with the 12900 KF which is infinite turbo to or the time limit could not be altered at all in Dell's bios to be clear these settings don't technically break any intel rules they just suck they're not good and Intel itself has now moved on to infinite turbo at high power limits the rest of the OC menu was irrelevant to our purposes but we couldn't help but notice that the options were pathetically threadbear with two OC profiles defined only as level one and level two with no way to work with eor and PES separately we're having to rely actually on Keegan's old b-roll footage from the original review because that menu has since disappeared once again we gave up the BIOS as a lost cause and we moved on to Applications the particular piece of bloatware we started with was Alienware Command Center the command center offers a choice of three thermal profiles with zero explanation or the option to create a mysterious custom profile with no settings maybe that's because we disconnected the stock cooler or maybe that feature was always broken we don't know CPU overclocking offers one slider each for CPU frequency voltage and voltage offset ignoring the fact that voltage isn't just a thing there are multiple voltages those are literally though the only options there's no power limit controls there's no tow which is what we needed there's no Advanced controls so in order to get the Child Safety lock off of the BIOS and get the grown-up controls we had to download intels XTU XTU allowed us to freely adjust all of the missing settings including pl1 pl2 and to unfortunately however we found that pl1 would always drop below 210 Watts under sustained load anyway regardless of what we configured so for anyone stuck with an r13 XTU is the most reasonable option for CPU tweaking it will still perform like a 12700 even with thermal performance improvements uh at least in things that are entirely CPU bound like in chromium and blender and anything that CPU workload you're getting a worse CPU even though you're paying for the good one and Dell has made it impossible to resolve that from anything short of a motherboard replacement and just to be clear what we're doing all the stuff we're talking about it's not overclocking Dell will pretend like it's overclocking and they are going to sit there and watch this video and think about how we're so unreasonable because we're enthusiasts who want to overclock it that's not what we're doing we're just trying to get it back to the expected clocks which happen to be over the clocks that Dell ships with that is not however overclocking it's just increasing the clocks to stock and I know this is what they're thinking because we've worked with a lot of companies like this the fix then if we wanted to go a step further and we talked about this it would basically be to get something like a Micro ATX motherboard like this one this is AMD though and put it in there the problem you run into is because this this is the biggest possible case they could make with the smallest possible size for a motherboard you'll probably have to use microatx and you might have to use creative use of a Dremel to get it to fit and then you're going to lose your front IO so you'll need to buy something to shove up there or if you're able to do electrical wiring on your own you can probably reroute the ex well no you can't because they're attached to the motherboard I for a second I forgot that uh they attach that to the board and I thought it was just a weird non-standard cable but it is in fact never mind you can't use the front IO so you need a new case also if we're being reasonable here unless you really want the look of the Alienware one in which case okay I guess but you have to buy something to shove up in the front for front iio so again we keep coming back to you're basically harvesting the CPU and the GPU and you're building a new computer around those if it's a steep enough discount then okay but if not you should just avoid this uh we've seen some of these sold on eBay sans's GPU for a lot cheaper the only real value there is the CPU unless you're willing to have a severely underperforming system because of things like the motherboard and the vrm is also under spec which we think is why they're limiting this so hard because as we've seen from photos sent by our viewers in the past some of these Alienware motherboards the vrm blows up with a high-end CPU in it honestly any further modification beyond all this just isn't worth the time uh we tried pretty hard to get further but even if you do manage to circumvent the firmware limits that are in place the hardware just isn't up to the task of one actual overclocking or two stock clocking apparently so and most of this is proprietary junk that can't really be rehoused or replaced uh in another system so that's the end of it for those of you who ask can you fix it the answer is it's too far gone the closed loop liquid cooler change helps we could Brute Force this and hack our way through it but you start looking at what's reasonable and once you get to a new new motherboard a new power supply a new case a new cooler it is no longer reasonable and the Ram's not good either so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more go to store. Gamers access.net and grab some of our coasters mod mats for PC Building and modification like we worked on in this video or toolkits to help us out directly as we buy more systems like this and try to find good ones or go to patreon.com Gamers Nexus for bonus videos thanks for watching we'll see you all next timeokay today we're going to take the trash out of the trash and try to I should not be holding this this way although it's not worth anything we're going to try and save this Alienware r13 computer that we recently reviewed we said it was the worst pre-built gaming PC we've ever worked on uh and actually it got even worse after we filmed that video and we started inspecting it further for how can we save this computer is there a way we can lightly modify this and make it better we found out it gets worse so uh our goal today is going to be changing as few things as possible and pretending we're Dell so we want to maintain this aesthetic such that it exists uh because that's alienware's brand but at least make it cool properly and run at the right power limit let's get started before that this video is brought to you by be quiet and the silent base 802 case the silent base 802 got High accolades in our review for its high build quality and its versatility in both silence focused and airflow focused build the 802 comes with swappable mesh panels or noise damped panels so you have options for either approach the silent base 802 case is able to fit larger builds as well without being overbearing and it stands out for its mechanics quality and assembly quality learn more about V quiet's new case at the link in the description below so this was a highly requested content piece from our patreon backers the patreon Discord and also in the comment section where people were saying that was a pleasant sound people were saying is there a way you can save this computer and the problem with it very quick recap is everything but the the smaller piece is that the 12900 KF equals a 12700 KF and that's because Dell has put exhibit cooler in it Exhibit C right here very small coil 120 mil short tubes and it's a high power CPU that they're dropping from 240 Watts down to 160 Watts so you lose a lot of the performance that's the key problem there are other issues with this not going to go through it all again today like proprietary uh motherboard power supply everything else but what we're going to try and do is set some some rules I have to make this a fun challenge so the rule here is going to be it has to be as close to Dell's original Vision such that it exists as possible and we think that if we pretend we're part of Dell's design team here uh probably they're saying no the look has to stay that's the Alienware look it needs to look like this so we're not going to change the case the the easy answer to can you save this is yes you buy a new motherboard to new case and then you build a computer that doesn't really count though it's not as fun so we're going to see what we can do uh with as few mods as possible and then we're going to get a little more creative as we go through it and add some more modifications to it from the perspective of the cooler I think my options are going to be the best would be put a 240 in here I'm trying to do as few changes as possible so that if someone is misfortunate enough to have bought this uh this is maybe a path they can take to get it up and running without investing too much in it so 240 maybe if it can fit would be the quickest fix another option I thought this would be really fun is a tower cooler here with this as intake and this as intake and these as exhaust so the reason for doing it that way would be that the cooler would have immediate access to cool external room ambient temperature air right here and right here uh unfortunately the top of the case is extremely blocked off here not great as intake but it's a last blocked off here and here then on the front of the case and pushing all the warm air out the front is going to be an easier uh like lower resistance path for flow than the opposite way that they've got it now that's one option I don't think a 120 mil Tower cooler is going to be enough for 12900 K to sustain 240 Watts really stretching so we're going to try with the 240 first another option is maybe cutting a hole in the side panel that might be altering too much but it would give us the biggest increase in performance for the least amount of changes is beyond cutting a hole in the side panel so that's an option as well our AC is broken and this is my solution to the server room it's only broken in the server room though so all the people are fine air coolers here liquid coolers some of them are here so I want a 240 um not going to be too picky about this one's pretty nice let's see I think that h100i Elite is very new this is going to be kind of an expensive solution um you're mostly just paying for the the reason it's expensive is because you can do this with the pump cap so as far as performance it's the same as as a significantly cheaper one but you can't you can't make a significantly cheaper one do can we just make sure they they saw it at home this but I do think that that particular image is perfect o nice for the Alienware computer okay time to see what will actually fit I don't think the 120 Tower is going to be enough so the 240s are best bet one other thing we can modify this has got like the double honeycomb mesh going on where you know it's it's plexy it's not even glass blocking air flow obviously air comes in around there and then it's this honeycomb plastic behind it maybe you could show better this way and then behind that is this metal honeycomb so you double filtering is always a great way to block a ton of air flow and really hurt the performance so a mod maybe Mike could do would be to cut a big giant hole in all this and see if it improves things so just as a reminder we have a full review on the channel already and a tear down you should definitely go check those out if you haven't CU that will explain a lot of context I'm not going to explain today like the insanity of how this is all assembled so the best of my memory I'm going to disassemble this now so can we fit a 240 radiator okay this is going to be so stupid if a 240 can fit Dell's really good have no excuse like they can do this it's just that's just ace attack they make 240s I'm a little worried about the cooler Mount cuz the mount so we didn't talk about this too much before that screws into the case that's special I don't know that that really is going to Exist Elsewhere I could get another acitech cooler that that would allow me to reuse the screws here on the standoffs I might have to do an acch 240 we're going to try this though corer has since moved on from acch um only for small reasons like you know lawsuits and litigation but we're not going to be able to use a attack with Corsair that is so stupid that that's going to fit will it fit with the video card in it's actually going to work wow okay it'll still have GPU support too so remember it's got that's GPU support helps in shipping they could also just package it with some foam around it but that's GPU support that's GPU support and this is GPU support we don't need all of them so we're going to stick with just one I'm going disconnect this one I just I just like this stack of plastic plastic appendages little known fact this table lowers all the way into hell which is where it's oh it's stopped where it's already here time to take this back out can't forget to disconnect the standard 7 pin RGB cable I think it'll work okay cool the Height's not going to be correct with this um that's unfortunate oh maybe we'll get lucky maybe we can thread these into doll's proprietary case and just happen to have it work well it's kind of hard to center it exactly but pretty close well hopefully this is making contact oh okay right that explain that makes okay all right cool it's better this is going to be a lot of fun oh nice okay there is enough clearance cool wow that looks pretty damn good man if we can fix this thing with just a 240 mm cooler and then Dell's going to go and implement it and be like look we fixed it and we're going to be like no that was just like that was us trying to spend less than an hour fixing it so I hope I hope if D is like hey we should Implement that then they'll be Happ I just want it to be clear that I will not be happy I will still be upset so just to save everyone the time now I require assistant does the assistance involve any tools spring nope okay and by assistance I mean I don't want to do it okay okay it's worked out shockingly well mostly shocking because D didn't do this I thought it can't possibly just fit right yeah I I assumed that it would be two separate 120 mounts and that it wouldn't did you oh okay it's even got the holes like for radiators yeah it really I was not expecting that at all it's completely upfitted for it cuz they didn't even attach the did they attach both of the front fans directly to the case or did they have like um they were attached no they were clipped okay with the spring so they're not even using these no okay so um I think that and this is the best this is the best cooler that is on their website so I don't know so we're assuming that they use this for other stuff yeah I'm going to let Patrick take over the cabling if we do further modifications it will become a mic job where it might be cutting holes and things but for now this is like kind of a boring solution but it also fulfills the criteria of do and spend as little as possible so if you're a real end user who bought this thing then doing a 240 might be it I'm actually going to take the power supply shroud off because I can and it might be in the way this just holds the cables it looks like these plug into the power supply but you take this off and these this is just to hold loose cables these don't go into the power supply the okay um well let me put a couple screws back in so I don't lose them it looks like there is some SATA power down here that we can unearth um that would be intended for a drive down here I just need to decide if we're going to put this fan an RGB controller in the case now do you think there will be any normal USB headers on this board if you have a cable like this something has gone wrong great connector works works perfectly there's nowhere to put cables they all have to stay on this side of the case this is where all the cables go so that I don't have to think about them anymore I'll never bother anyone again it's not the worst cable management job in the world it's not the best but it's not the worst we've got a big exclamation point on this schooler I think it probably means that it's not plugged in via USB because it's not it also has this gigantic like I don't know it's like uh 20 24 pin something like that um it's got this big cable coming off this has a USB connection coming out of it and then that goes into the Hub at the other end this USB connection here is going to nothing because there are no connections on the board and then the SATA connection coming out of the Hub we can plug that in to power it um but there's also another USB connection coming out of the Hub that we can't plug into anything because there's no USB headers all of that is very confusing and over complicated the summary is that these fans are connected to the hub for RGB but the Hub has no way to be controlled because we can't connect the USB so without control it looks like these fans don't light up sometimes you'll run into RGB systems where if you're not controlling it they'll have like a default Rainbow Lighting pattern um Corsair has defaulted just having all the LEDs off so potentially we could plug this into a different system and then change settings if it's safe to Firmware and then plug it back in here but it's not worth it um that would tempt me to just take out the Hub entirely since we're mostly just using it for RGB which isn't working but we need the Hub to be there because that's what the pump plugs into and is powered by which is very annoying because it means we're using this entire Hub that's the size of a bar of soap and has wires coming out of it everywhere just to run a pump because coarse hair and because RGB and because Dell they're all coming together um I think I might put this CPU fan back in the back here uh just to try and improve thermos a little more and prevent one of the many errors that will pop up when we try and turn this on um but I'm going to go ahead and move this into the thermal testing room and we can get started with that in a moment so with the fix done it's time to test this thing again our goal is to turn the 12900 K after that Del puts in here back into a 12 900k not a 12700 K that it's become and for this process we needed this an external power supply in addition to the internal power supply and a fan controller because Alienware stock software and bios doesn't allow any fan control uh or even monitoring of the fans beyond the predefined thermal profiles that was the first roadblock we ran into of many this means that it's difficult to just simply drop in a new cooler and plot an improvement our compromise was to keep all the original bios and performance settings but tune the fans in our new config to roughly match the stock noise noise level under sustained load or about 46 DB for lawn workloads to noise normalize like this that meant locking the front radiator fans to 1500 RPM and the remaining stock fans in the rear of the case to, 1600 RPM but we had to use an external controller and that's dangling out of the back the case because Dell can't be bothered to ship a complete BIOS with basic ass functions like controlling the fan speed now to our credit it's not like this looks much worse so we've done okay there we used afterburner to lock the GPU fan speed we had to do this because Alienware software was incapable of doing that either and uh this is where we discovered a new problem which is the power supply so the power supply sufficient though it is it is actually a reasonably built power supply it comes from the server division so go figure uh it is still problematic which is that it has two tiny fans that start screaming as soon as you take away the really high flow of the bottom intake fan so without that strong positive air flow from the front of the case they're bad here take a listen so with no way to directly control those fans we were forced to ignore power supply noise as a factor as much as we could for more permanent mod we might cut a vent for the power supply in the bottom of the case and reposition its fans but at that point we're now replacing a cooler we should probably replace the motherboard for a better bios and we'd definitely be modifying the case and if you replace the motherboard you also have to replace the power supply because this power supply has proprietary connectors that will not socket into a normal motherboard anyway let's Forge ahead with what we got here's a noise normalized result as plotted against an auto fan result from the original test CPU temperatures were instantly improved by the new cooler there was a chance that thermal performance at the beginning of the test pass would be worse since the stock configuration fans were free to spin up and scream at 50 DBA for 56 seconds here we'll drop that in a but even during the initial 241 pl2 period the new cooler performed better with Peak core temperatures of 86° C that's down from 96 so we were nearly at TJ Maxx with alienware's stock configuration in the original test and now we're actually reasonable just as in the original test there's a sharp drop in CB temperature with a move to pl1 followed by a linear decrease as pl1 dropped steadily to its minimum the 240 mm CLC at noise normaliz set ran a 70° C steady down from our sustained 88° result of the stock test so that's 16° cooler for doing less than an hour of work if you count Patrick's RGB cabling that's like half of that anyway so Dell has no excuse here we didn't have to modify the case it had the holes for 2 40 mm radiators they're just not using it this was a $5,000 computer it was the max spec we didn't choose the 120 mm liquid Co cooler that was their best one that's the crazy part so actually nothing really had to be done to just get the CB thermals under control it's still not fixed there are a lot of problems we're going to get to in a moment but shoving a 240 cooler in the front you could buy an acch unbranded cooler stick the alien head on it and it' probably be pretty cheap not much more than the 120 that asex already making with the custom radiator size certainly the custom tube length and it'd be it'd be halfway fixed except for the motherboard the power supply and the case but that part would be fixed on to frequency the fixed r13 plots its frequency at about 4800 MHz during the initial boosting window holding at 4500 to 4600 through the Decay period and landing at 4350 MHz for steady state its ecore performance ran at 3,400 MHz dead for the entire test showing a flat line thanks to Thermal compliance the original system decayed much faster for frequency with a sharp falloff as we hit 96° C in the initial window it fell to 4,300 to 4400 MHz so that's consistently 200 MHz lower during that decay window and the clock ultimately settled about 100 MHz lower than the peores in our updated version of testing and that's with the turbo limits still in place ecor performance on the original test was far worse bouncing around erratically and unpredictably this was resolved with the cooler upgrade GPU thermals are next during the original stock test GPU fans Rose to a maximum of 69 % duty cycle and for the most part it remained there for our 46db noise normalized test we manually locked the GPU fans to that speed from the beginning however we had the powerful and Loud stock intake fans in the case replaced with the radiator and fan combo it makes sense then that temperatures were slightly higher in the new configuration for the GPU leveling now at 75° for the GPU instead of the original 72° C unfortunately the proximity of the GPU to the power supply and we did remove the Shroud because it was just creating obstructions means that there's not much room for us to get creative and improve the air flow fortunately however 3° here doesn't hurt performance and the GPU was the best cooled part in the system anyway the 16° of the CPU is worth a lot more than the 3° of the GPU so all that Force didn't take out the bottom of the case including the duct that directed it although yes it benefited the GPU a bit the frequencies haven't moved much on the GPU core just if you're wondering a lot of that was designed for the power supply is what we've gathered cuz the power supply fans they start screaming with the removal of all that guided intake so it was less GPU and more power supply with that done we could then increase the power limits to match the proper stock behavior of a 12900 KF as soon as we tried though we ran into problems first the overclocking menu completely disappeared from bios we plugged some fans back in and it came back we unplugged the same fans again and it stayed we still don't know what specifically made the menu disappear but it encompasses almost all CPU and memory settings including XMP so losing it was a major problem Dell has tied its bios menus to the fan headers which seems actually insane and reinforces that a true fix would involve a new motherboard this likely ties in with the unders speec vrm they probably know it's UND speec and know it'll blow up if it's not protected in BIOS once in the menu we found that we weren't allowed to increase power limits above 241 Watts for PL 2 or 210 Watts for pl1 which are the original limits that the system shipped with and Below Intel guidelines with the 12900 KF which is infinite turbo to or the time limit could not be altered at all in Dell's bios to be clear these settings don't technically break any intel rules they just suck they're not good and Intel itself has now moved on to infinite turbo at high power limits the rest of the OC menu was irrelevant to our purposes but we couldn't help but notice that the options were pathetically threadbear with two OC profiles defined only as level one and level two with no way to work with eor and PES separately we're having to rely actually on Keegan's old b-roll footage from the original review because that menu has since disappeared once again we gave up the BIOS as a lost cause and we moved on to Applications the particular piece of bloatware we started with was Alienware Command Center the command center offers a choice of three thermal profiles with zero explanation or the option to create a mysterious custom profile with no settings maybe that's because we disconnected the stock cooler or maybe that feature was always broken we don't know CPU overclocking offers one slider each for CPU frequency voltage and voltage offset ignoring the fact that voltage isn't just a thing there are multiple voltages those are literally though the only options there's no power limit controls there's no tow which is what we needed there's no Advanced controls so in order to get the Child Safety lock off of the BIOS and get the grown-up controls we had to download intels XTU XTU allowed us to freely adjust all of the missing settings including pl1 pl2 and to unfortunately however we found that pl1 would always drop below 210 Watts under sustained load anyway regardless of what we configured so for anyone stuck with an r13 XTU is the most reasonable option for CPU tweaking it will still perform like a 12700 even with thermal performance improvements uh at least in things that are entirely CPU bound like in chromium and blender and anything that CPU workload you're getting a worse CPU even though you're paying for the good one and Dell has made it impossible to resolve that from anything short of a motherboard replacement and just to be clear what we're doing all the stuff we're talking about it's not overclocking Dell will pretend like it's overclocking and they are going to sit there and watch this video and think about how we're so unreasonable because we're enthusiasts who want to overclock it that's not what we're doing we're just trying to get it back to the expected clocks which happen to be over the clocks that Dell ships with that is not however overclocking it's just increasing the clocks to stock and I know this is what they're thinking because we've worked with a lot of companies like this the fix then if we wanted to go a step further and we talked about this it would basically be to get something like a Micro ATX motherboard like this one this is AMD though and put it in there the problem you run into is because this this is the biggest possible case they could make with the smallest possible size for a motherboard you'll probably have to use microatx and you might have to use creative use of a Dremel to get it to fit and then you're going to lose your front IO so you'll need to buy something to shove up there or if you're able to do electrical wiring on your own you can probably reroute the ex well no you can't because they're attached to the motherboard I for a second I forgot that uh they attach that to the board and I thought it was just a weird non-standard cable but it is in fact never mind you can't use the front IO so you need a new case also if we're being reasonable here unless you really want the look of the Alienware one in which case okay I guess but you have to buy something to shove up in the front for front iio so again we keep coming back to you're basically harvesting the CPU and the GPU and you're building a new computer around those if it's a steep enough discount then okay but if not you should just avoid this uh we've seen some of these sold on eBay sans's GPU for a lot cheaper the only real value there is the CPU unless you're willing to have a severely underperforming system because of things like the motherboard and the vrm is also under spec which we think is why they're limiting this so hard because as we've seen from photos sent by our viewers in the past some of these Alienware motherboards the vrm blows up with a high-end CPU in it honestly any further modification beyond all this just isn't worth the time uh we tried pretty hard to get further but even if you do manage to circumvent the firmware limits that are in place the hardware just isn't up to the task of one actual overclocking or two stock clocking apparently so and most of this is proprietary junk that can't really be rehoused or replaced uh in another system so that's the end of it for those of you who ask can you fix it the answer is it's too far gone the closed loop liquid cooler change helps we could Brute Force this and hack our way through it but you start looking at what's reasonable and once you get to a new new motherboard a new power supply a new case a new cooler it is no longer reasonable and the Ram's not good either so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more go to store. Gamers access.net and grab some of our coasters mod mats for PC Building and modification like we worked on in this video or toolkits to help us out directly as we buy more systems like this and try to find good ones or go to patreon.com Gamers Nexus for bonus videos thanks for watching we'll see you all next time\n"