*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R4 Owner's Lounge

Thank you for your detailed post, I appreciate your attention. Though I know about "Power Saver" and switching to integrated graphics card on FHD\UHD, but with 1080 that's not an option

Maybe Dell finally will add to their software an allowance for QHD to switch from 120hz to 60, but maybe there are some kind of hardware restrictions, which I seem to doubt.

 

Just got my hands on my new laptop, and I have to tell you, with reading everything here, I have been quite worried about how my laptop was going to arrive to me. I am happy to report that my laptop is better than I ever imagined. I have the GTX 1070, 6700HQ, QHD model and there is absolutely no light bleed, like literally none, and no banding. The CPU would not turbo boost out the box until I changed the power plan to high performance but after I did it was fine. I have not undervolted it yet. While running Uningine Valley and OCCT for 15 minutes I came up with a spike of 78c, then it leveled out to ~70c for the entire rest of the time. The highest differential in cores I saw was 12c for a split second once, but for the most part they stay within 5-10 of each other at the worst, which I am more than happy with considering the thermals I have at the moment. My idle temperatures are in the low 30s. The fans seem to ramp up and die down at perfect times and they do not bother me at all. The speakers sound amazing, better than I imagined in a laptop.

https://i.imgur.com/I1Tj49c.png

Can't wait to see what happens when I undervolt and overclock the GPU. If anyone is thinking about getting this laptop or is second guessing your order, don't worry about it at all. This laptop is a beast with top of the line cooling and Dell seems to have it under control.

 

PM sent.

 

The lock you need is called a "Noble Lock" as opposed to a Kensington.

 

It has been confirmed several times by separate Alienware reps (Frank, Paco, & Umar) via twitter.
&
It was confirmed with the conference call that we (Team LHz) had with Dell with two engineers.

 

There are too many sources of confirmation for them to deny any claims. I think we can all agree that we as the consumer shouldn't even have to be taking this into our own hands to address the issue, especially when a replacement early on wasn't even a fix.

 

Well, what I have seen it has been talked about in a way that could be interpretated by the reader as such, but I have yet to see some kind of official statement from Dell/Alienware about it. Remeber that we are talking about a company that considered the user getting electrical jolts from their computers a "tingling sensation" not that many years ago.

Sent from my ASUS_A001 using Tapatalk

 

don't worry this generation the computer will lethally shock you so there's no need to worry about all the other problems!

 

Well, at least the ordering and delivery process came close when Dells ordering system collapsed and I was bombarded by extra PSUs and backpacks, each with its separarate delivery of course. So far I've received 17 pages of invoices etc via snail mail, and of course the same via email. And thats before I've started to return eveything. The only thing that wasn't delivered as promised was....the laptop itself

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After enabling the OC3 level i BIOS, I notice that the fans are constantly running and also running with a quite noticeable noise as well. This even when the computer is idling and CPU thus is is mainly unused. Is this normal? Did not change the fan profile settings from default in BIOS. Running 1.0.8 bios BTW.

 

Just run the prime95 benchmarks with OC3 level activated and the results were a nightmare. Only after a few minutes 2 of the cores throttled after reacing 99 degrees, despite the fans running as loud as the Aours X7 V3 I compared it to (know to be a hair dryer). And over 20 degrees difference between cores My units should have been built after 6 December bases on when it was finally delivered.

I've had it with all these problems, going to schedule a return now

 

can't you repaste?

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i think so as mine does it also

 

I know it sucks but you really need a repaste. Ever thought about doing that or perhaps give it to one of team LHZ to do it for you? Its such a shame because besides that really, this thing runs like a dream.

 

I probably can but won't. That is not ok on a computer in this price range and just because Dell can't do their job.

 

I agree -it's unacceptable. However, for those who are comfortable doing the repaste, the total package ends up being well worth the total outlay. I honestly cannot argue with either those who return the unit on principle or those who keep an otherwise excellent product.

 

My principle is that my last 3 attempts to buy Dell products have all been plagued by a total lack of Quality Control and it is starting to piss me off. If we as customers are not worth more to Dell than this, I really don't wont them to have my money. Sure, a few errors in the begining of production that were taken care about, no problems but again and again. And I don't want to spend my precious free time do redo what I paid them for. And some tweet from Mr X and Mr Y means nothing to me when the reality seem to be something else. Sorry, just speaking my mind here, it's ok to disagree.

Edit:
It should be added that I am unsure if a repaste by the customer wouldn't void warranty in Europe. I know that customers in the US seem to have more freedom here but don't think it applies to all markets.

 

Yeah the repaste with LM was a help of a job. Hours of research, £100 and balls of steel is what it takes! Well worth it though

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But, I don't disagree with you.

 

It was more of a general statement although having quoted you, I can see it might not have appeared that way. Sorry

 

Id return it, with 20c differentials you not going to even get proper results with a repaste. Im waiting on an exchange on mine for the same 20c temp differences. Even after a repaste i still have 10c between my cores. The overall temps dropped, but the top cores still ran warmer then they should. They should be within 5c out of the box even before a repaste if the heatsink is on correctly.

 

So when you mean it's really worth it, is this unit as good as let's say an msi gt73vr in terms of performance and cooling with the hk / gtx1080 combo?

Envoyé de mon SM-N915FY en utilisant Tapatalk

 

The R4 is definitely a bit of a pita to repaste, especially with LM, but I look at it this way -I have superior cooling with the conductonaut and fuji pads, I shouldn't have to repaste every 6 months like I did with AS5, and I took the opportunity to replace the Killer garbage with an Intel network card.

 

Then you didn't perform the repaste properly. That doesn't mean I blame you for returning it, just pointing out that a proper repaste and a mild tweak of a bracket is all the unit needs to provide an excellent cooling solution.

 

Congrats mate. My 6700HQ/GTX1070/1080p IPS machine is also perfect. Not a single complaint. Even with the stock paste. I think this is also because we have the 6700HQ, whereas the 6820 is a whole other thermal monster (but that's another, already existing thread).

Regarding the temps when stress testing? I've found that when I start a stress test, at the very outset, my temps might spike up to 80C or so ... but that's simply because the fans take a few seconds to slowly ramp up ... like you said, once the fans get up to speed, even with Prime95, my CPU temps hover around 70c to 75C ... I have zero issues with this. And the great thing is that even at top speed, the fan sound is of the very unoffensive type.

Glad you dig the QHD panel; I opt'd for the 1080p IPS and love it ... I don't game on the laptop screen, pretty much at all, but when I do, the fact that it overclocks to 100hz is totally bad ass.

What do you think about the build quality, BTW? Personally? I've never seen anything like it ... so solid. And the keyboard is ridiculously good ... I thought I wouldn't like the flush style keys as opposed to the "chiclet" variety but man, after acclimating? Best keyboard ever. Easy 100wpm for me.

Have fun ..

j

 

No i repasted it correctly, its just that dell decided to attach the wrong thermal pads to my heatsink. I had 20c degree differences while people who received theres 2 weeks later are looking at 2-5c all because they have .1mm pads in one spot. Im sure everything would have been in check if i received a heatsink that actually made proper contact. Its one thing if you get one with a 10 degree difference, but 20+ is just unacceptable not for 3k. Yeah i could go and remove the pad and buy some paste to fix the difference but whats the point when i can just get one with the proper size pads and repaste it again with better results. Id rather fix a 5-10c difference then spend time screwing around with something with 20+.

 

What needed to be addressed by those interested in doing the job themselves was made clear from the beginning, at least here on NBR. The first thing I did was order LM -right before I ordered the fujipoly's. Again, no criticism to anyone insisting upon Dell getting it right, but the quantitative results of the consensus procedure are well documented.

 

Mine arrived around 27/12 and has al the same problems

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My exchange is supposed to be here on the 16th so im hoping for some better results. I plan on repasting that one too and seeing how it stacks up to the one i have now.

 

Only reason im really doing an exchange on mine is to see how it stacks up compared to the newer models. I repasted mine with kyronaut and fuji pads along with bending the arm. It made a hell of a difference (dropped the temps 20-25c+ and removed a good 15c from my core differentials) but i just feel like it would have made more of a difference if mine wasnt on the extreme end of things. Mine was in the 85-90's at stock and had a 20-25 degree temp diff so i definitely got the **** end of the stick with mine. I agree that you need to get under the hood with these and tweak them, its a must. But for the people who are seeing 20c+ core differences, i think it may be worth doing an exchange just to get a better base to work before they dive head in with spending all the money on pads. Especially with reports of people getting laptops with somewhat normal temps in the past few weeks.

 

So, I recently ran the Diagnostic you can run by pressing F12 and choosing Diagnostic. and its says my CPU fan is not working normally. When the computer is on I can see it dynamicly spinning up and down with how hot it gets so Im sure what its talking about.

Can someone else run this test and see if they get the same error.

 

The same happen to me

Disable CPU OC and FAN PERFORMANCE on bios.

 

If you request to Dell support to replace it, tell them they have to completely change the heatsinks + Cpu/Gpu fan. The Cpu and Gpu fan are soldered to the heatsinks. I reported it to Dell support and they came to change it last week on my 17 r4. I did not have that diagnostic error again.

Not only sent the Cpu/Gpu Heatsinks, also sent a complete Motherboard in case the problem was the motherboard. At my request, by replacing the Heatsinks, they used Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut in the Cpu/Cpu and Fujipoly Thermal Pad (All as indicated by @iunlock in Disassembly + Repaste Guide) Obviously the Fujipoly Thermalpads and Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut provided by me.
The support of dell Argentina is great. Very professional.

 

Anyone knows if it's better to set raid or ahci in bios (defaut : raid) with a single 256Go SSD (toshoba) and a HDD ? I saw raid doesn't support trim but i don't know if it is important or not.

 

With a single ssd, you should use ahci..

 

It's better than raid or nothing change ?

 

RAID supports AHCI, but If you don't plan setup RAID, leave it set to AHCI. (You need at least two, somewhat similar drives in the system to make a RAID array)

AHCI's purpose is entirely for SATA operation. It is what is responsible for the extra features of SATA such as hot swapping and NCQ as well as TRIM support. RAID mode on the other hand activates the chipsets firmware RAID. If you aren't actually going to set up a RAID array there isn't much point in enabling RAID mode. In fact it can actually be limiting in some ways, such as TRIM not working properly on SSDs.

Set to AHCI if you aren't planning to run a RAID array. Set to RAID mode if you are running a RAID array

 

ok thank you, I will change it on next windows install.

 

It is not necessary re install.
It changes to boot into "safe mode from msconfig" and re-starts Wndows. Before it starts in Safe mode, it switches from the Bios RAID to AHCI . Save the changes and let the initial be completed in Safe mode. From Windows in Safe Mode, use msconfig to disable Safe Mode. Reboot and that's it.

 

Thanks I just restart in safe mode without msconfig and restart again and it work.

 

Has anyone actually received there dell rewards credit yet? Says 30 days but im on day 40 now and it still says pending.

 

I haven't received mine either. Asked Dell about them twice but they keep saying wait a few more days.

 

I got the same response. I called them on the 31st day asking about it and they told me 3-5 days. Just called again last night and now there telling me 3-5 days again.

 

its been 35 days and counting for me I think they are waiting for all the sells to be over.... so far the hard drive I was going to buy with them went up 20$ was 50$ off now its only 30$ off its really starting to piss me off to no end

out of the 10 times I called it was always wait 3-5 days the last time I called Friday was told the 11th

 

When I got my alienware 17 a few days ago it had an Alienware Audio application where I could fine tune the settings. Well, sadly I had to reformat the HDD. I have reinstalled everything except that piece of software because I cant find it anywhere. Does anyone know where I can download this application?

 

Doesn't the alienware command center also include the sound app?

 

No, It includes AlienFX, AlienFusion, Alienware TactX and AlienAdrenaline but not the sound one.

 

Anyone tried the 1,09 BIOS yet?

 

Yes for me I get 300 points more in firestrike, but tobii doesn't work anymore.. So I'm back to 1.0.8

 

I am stalled it as soon as I got my laptop and everything's been running pretty well. Still runs a bit hotter than I'd like but its ok