m15 R3, power adapter upgrade

There's no harm in using a higher-wattage adapter (the system will draw only as much power as its design and current load dictate).

That said, I doubt you'll find much advantage in going beyond the 240W the system shipped with.

Hi @ToeKnee welcome to this user to user discussion forum. This is not Dell Support. 

The m15 series of laptops have Hybrid Power Design, and battery discharge is an expected behavior of hybrid design systems to maintain full system performance under extreme heavy loading conditions. Consequently, playing graphically intensive games will drain the battery.

On the back of the Alienware 15 R3 Laptop, is the proprietary external graphics port for connecting to an Alienware Graphics Amplifier (AGA), the best solution to enhance graphics performance. There is also a Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C) port with Power Delivery, which can be used to connect to an external GPU (eGPU) enclosure. Alienware Graphics Amplifier Review - Faster than Thunderbolt 3 eGPU? 

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In simple words, yes.

it will benefit you in case your battery is draining faster than it can charge but I would recommend you drop the cpu clock speed a bit to save some power cause making the cpu go faster than it’s regular clock speed doesn’t really benefit the games anymore since it’s already fast. I had a 15 r1 that has a 4710HQ at 4.2Ghz and a 980M both overclocked so the issue was that the laptop kept dropping its speeds because the power limiting kicked in with the 180W adapter. I used 240W and 330W which both were perfect with it.

in short, just upgrade the adapter to 330W and it won’t harm your system. Also If it still drains while playing I would recommend a full battery drain and recharge to fix it.

Thank you all for your replies, they have been especially helpful. I have just a couple more questions.

@crimsom So your saying it’s actually common for the battery to drain during heavy conditions and that’s it’s normal?

@Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006 Will upgrading to a better adapter have any benefits (stop the battery draining during gameplay) or will everything still be the same? My battery drains at an extremely slow rate but I would prefer that it didn’t because it causes unnecessary wear and tear and may reduce the battery health.

Hi @ToeKnee  my Alienware 17 R5 laptop and its 240W ac adapter is included in this hybrid power design group.  Graphically intensive applications are running on ac adapter and battery. I also have a high specification workstation which is also used for graphically intensive applications. Both 17 R5 laptop and workstation consume more power when working hard. The laptop tends to run hot because its in a small enclosure. The workstation has a very good air flow and many fans in its large enclosure, so just gets warm. 

There are lower specification, general purpose laptops and these are used when I am creating documents and surfing the internet. Included is laptop designed to run and is used without any batteries. 

Rechargeable battery chemistry is continuously active and degrading ability to retain maximum charge. Replacement of laptop battery in inevitable, even when laptop is not being used. 

The NAS (Network Attached Storage) is good at retaining common access to data and providing data archive. The HDD is slow, but good at retaining little used data for long durations. The SSD is fast, but poor at retaining little used data for long durations. 

Power management of all devices is a priority, so that my energy bills are not excessive. 

Thanks again everyone for all the helpful tips!

@Alienware Area-51 ALX 2006 I will definitely try reducing my CPU speed and any unnecessary overclocks to see if that gives any improvements. I play on a gaming monitor that is 144hz, I’ll try reducing it to 120hz. I’ll let you know my results when I try them.

Hey dude thanks! The reason why i recommend doing a lower 

clock speed is because your CPU is way better than my CPU and that’s why yours can be at a lower clock speed and mines has to be higher to atleast try to be similar in performance. My CPU is a i7-990X and my other one is a X5690. Both are at 4.3Ghz but are extremely cold due to the room I keep them in and liquid cooling. My GPU for the i7 is a 1070Ti and the X5690 has a 1080Ti. The Difference between the i7 and the Xeon is that the Xeon has more IPC than the i7 and also supports more modern instruction sets. But the i7 is still good in case you wanna over clock it to 5.8Ghz maybe? But idk why anyone would do that.

So basically your CPU is more modern then mine and that means the newer the chip, the less power it has to consume to execute those same instructions as my cpu needs to do at 4.3GHz while you can do it at 3.2 or even lower.