*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R4 Owner's Lounge

To be honest the quad display is quite bad but not in terms of banding,,, but in terms of everything else LOL. Side by side with my IPS FHD 1080 on my 15R3 I'd pick the IPS in terms of 'screen looks good' at desktop. Have yet to do any real gaming but from a brief stint with the Witcher ... I have to say in game it looks pretty darn OK. I would not return said laptop due to display as I think It's fine for what I need but TEMPS in my case are the real issue.

 

Interesting...

Well, my i7-6820HK GTX 1080 with QHD TN 120hz should be arriving in a few hours... I'll post my findings when it arrives.

If they muck this one up, I'll be sending it back for another replacement.

 

So, I just had the dumbest, worst experience with Dell, and will never buy a product from them again. I ordered an R4 in Jan, it had lots of problems, they sent me a replacement which had all the exact same problems. Which means, there was actually no customer service; no one actually paid attention to what was wrong. They said all the polite things they were trained to say, but didn't actually DO anything.

Then the rep I was working with just plain stopped responding to my emails! In 7 days, I sent 3 emails, he ignored all 3. Finally, on the 7th day, I received an email from someone else, and they said to await a call at 4PM the next day... I cleared my schedule, and wouldn’t you know it, NO ONE CALLED. WTF? I had to go through the internet sales chat rep to get to the right department again, because no one would contact me, and I had to explain the situation over and over again. I finally got in touch with someone in the returns department, they offered yet another replacement... but that just means they’ll send another laptop w/out tending to the problems, and they quoted 10 days or less for shipping time which left me 5 days for the return period. But the last replacement they shipped took 15 days, so I decided not to risk it and went for the return.

But I saw there was the President’s Day sale that day, and the same model was $200 cheaper, so I emailed the rep, asking if I could get the sale price and a new laptop, instead of the replacement, so I could have a fresh return period. They didn’t answer my questions, they just shrugged me off. And they gave me this phone number (800)247-2076, ext 2169555, but the message is on a loop, and it doesn’t actually let you enter any extension. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AT DELL? It’s like they’re deliberately trying to send me to a competitor. It took them another 7 days to email me, and even then, they didn’t answer my question if I could get the sale price, which had now passed. As far as I’m concerned, Dell has utterly destroyed the Alienware brand.

And to add insult to injury, they said the refund period is 46 days! So basically Dell is getting a $2000 loan from me, interest free, for 46 days, not including the time from purchase. That’s just insult to injury. To top it off, I bought an external optical drive from Bestbuy, but the return period there is only 15 days (I just assumed it’d be 30 minimum, didn't expect 15), so now I have a useless $80 piece of hardware, and I’m out $2000 for what will be 3 months, and no laptop to show for it. I’m insanely frustrated, and can't get over how trashy Dell is. And I thought Toshiba was bad. Holy ****! Dell's hardware was garbage, but I can work with that if service is there; but there's just no redeeming service as trashy as Dell's. Caveat emptor! Good luck to you guys who stick with Dell, hope you have a better experience. Now I'm looking at MSI, hopefully they have better service. So ready to be done with Dell!

 

I will do the same if that is the case. the main problem is that the display have banding and horizon line while displaying the static image, and the rep told us the issues is fixed.

 

in the same exact boat. Will be getting my 2nd replacement tomorrow. Good luck to everyone

 

Wow that's bad, I've had nothing but great experiences with Dell support in the UK and my laptop is excellent. Maybe it's because you're in the US?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

The unit you've received is of an earlier production. Get that swapped out to the newer one.

Nice. Yes, the 1TB Toshiba all come with heat spreaders.

Go into bios and reset everything to factory default. Then flash your bios to 1.0.8.

I'd just get the unit exchanged and make sure that they will be sending you a new one. Get them to email you that in writing.

Sounds good. Keep us posted.

Toshiba w/ the Samsung controller ship. It's decent, but nowhere near Samsung Evo or Pro speeds.

Yea for games the current QHD is excellent. The banding lines doesn't affect everyone the same. I actually don't mind it....mainly because my AW17R4's are used for gaming only for the most part....However, that doesn't mean that I don't want the newer QHD screen. Of course!

Sounds good.

I have noted this and logged it. As for your situation, the Dell reps don't know anything, we all know this. You're better off talking to an automated robot. We've addressed the poor customer (communication) service of the call centers in India and Dell US is aware of this. To be fair though, Dell has the best warranty service and will take care of things in a speedy manner. The refund taking 46 days is and "up to," date and often times refunds don't take that long. Some users have reported that it takes a little over a week at most. Search the forum and you may be able to dig those up pretty easily.

The unit that you are receiving is the older unit. Make sure you get them to change it out for the newer one. Also, what you have experienced is not the first....again, they (dell india and often times s.america reps) don't know anything other than what they see on their screen. There are many people who have just received another unit when doing an exchange. On the bright side, with all of these issues getting addressed, lets hope that we can look forward to only receiving newer units as the older ones phase out.

On the bright side, as mentioned, Dell's warranty is excellent so just get it handled so that you end up with a newer machine and am happy with it. I wouldn't make any permanent judgement just based on your situation as it has been seen before...ie...sadly it is what it is, but don't give up....

Have you seen my review on the AW17R4 vs MSI GT73VR? I'd take a deep breath and a step back to think about this, because the MSI will be 10x's worse off build quality wise than the AW. Have you seen my YT videos showing the screen flex and poor build quality? PM if you have any questions, I'd be glad to help.

* Click on my sig where it says MSI and it'll link you to the review.

Cheers

 

But what will Dell charge you for their 1TB Toshiba ssd?

 

While I am awaiting more information from folks on this site on the AsusG701 with 7th gen and gt1080, it is stuff like this that is making me lean towards the AW17R4 that will be available around march 13th. I know that if I get a unit that is having issues, there will be helpful people on here that will help me navigate Dell's support system, or will help me fix it myself.

Well, both the folks here and the gaudy as hell WASD keys on the Asus...

 

I just e-mailed the "Alienware Specialist" who handled my exchange, sending him pictures of the unit...

Does this mean that my system is from last November?



I'm not going anywhere from the Alienware brand... With the black friday/cyber monday deal, the EBATES reward, etc. I got my system for just over $2K... I'm not going to be able to touch any other competitor's brand with the specs that this thing has for that kind of $$$...

I will be patient, and hopefully that patience will be rewarded.

 

Thanks for your sympathy. I'm not sure if its a US thing, it's the first and almost certainly the last time I'm buying from Dell. I hope it was a fluke

Thanks for reporting my experience to them. I've been checking in every other week to see your Youtube vids, really nice of you to put that out there. Yeah, the build quality of the MSI is pretty embarrassing... but if it works, and doesn't break, and I can get actual service, the build quality isn't the thing I'm most worried about after my experience w/Dell. And your vids are part of the reason I passed on the P775DM3 and the Eon17x. A few years back I got a relative a MSI GE72, and other than driver issues, which worked fine after updating, he hasn't had problems, as far as I know. I was just really shocked at how much Dell didn't care about my business, how indifferent they were about it, it almost seemed like they were deliberately ignoring me. I had to deal with the same with Toshiba, and I vowed not to buy Toshiba products. Fresh of the phone call today about the 46 days (I hope it takes only a week, like you said), I'm scared to buy even a USB cable from Dell.

 

So I got my 17 R4 1080 GTX today and off a heaven basic 2k res (1440p) benchmark these were my CPU temps. So I'm guessing this isnt too good? =/

Edit: I'd like to add that there was indeed frame stutters. It would briefly freeze but I had forgotten to switch to performance mode which ultimately fixed the problem. However my GPU stood at 69C but CPU temps hit the 90c mark. Also managed to get a firestrike score in. Scored 15k. Don't know how good that is VS the temps

 

Usually a +350 upgrade. The only reason why I'd even consider the 1TB Toshiba is due to the Samsung Controller that is used on there, but other than that, I would not touch Toshiba SSD's....go Samsung as you know, but for any else reading....Samsung Evo or Pro all the way. It's a no brainer.

There is a lot of truth to that. I would consider Asus over MSI any day. Yes it is a bit more, but saving up the pennies is well worth it. Asus is far better built than MSI all around. Everything from the material choice, construction and the tolerance levels are about on par with AW. The heat sink unit is far superior than AW's tolerance wise, but all in all...AW, Asus, ________, Clevo then if you're held under a thousand spiders about to be poured over your head, msi...build quality wise. Performance wise....still yet to be determined as teh Asus already beat out the MSI and we have to wait and see about the new AW 17R4 Kaby to see what it can really pull off..

To be clear, it's not all about just the bench numbers... what the real deal here is the display of the integrity of how strong the machine are. This Asus G701VI Kaby is really setting the bars high...

There are a lot more factors that go into these numbers than just being numbers. One has to factor in everything from price, build quality, performance, real world usage, warranty, support, fixable and non fixable issues, temps, fan noise, screen etc....

Stay tuned and we'll know soon.

Yea it likely is a fluke, but don't write them off just yet. I'm glad that you're enjoying the YT videos...didn't realize how useful those are haha...I'll definitely start making more for you guys. It sucks sometimes because I stay up all night working on things and so I'm beat tired as you may be able to tell in some of the videos LOL. I usually film like 4-5am in the morning as I stay up all night and work straight through with tuning etc...

Yea I don't buy Toshiba either...There is no reason to when you've got Samsung that is far superior.

 

I checked Dell my self. I know you can get a discont. But still

 

Got my replacement unit in.

Off the bat...No Toshiba 1TB SSD, it's a SK Hynix 1TB SSD.

Banding is still present on 120hz TN panel.

Haven't yet tested the cooling system (e.g., CPU temps, GPU temps, etc.).

 

Hi all, do you have any issues with Alienware 17, beside light bleeding and uneven CPU and GPU temp?

I'm forwarding to order mine in weeks.

 

On some configs, it's +350 to upgrade, but yeaaa NO...$650 for that toshiba? Heck no... One can get a Samsung 960 PRO 1TB for $630 that is LIGHT YEARS better than that toshiba.

You've lucked out. The SKHynix is great memory.

 

Hi guys, I'm new here (but do research here a lot lol) and really want to share my update today.

Since I just had the engineer replacing my screen today (QHD 120hz) which was suffered from the banding ofc, the new screen has no banding issue at all.
So happy now

BTW the part number is B173QTN "AUO1496" http://imgur.com/a/Bue0Z (the old one is AUO1096, right?)

 

Thats great to hear man! Yeah the older one was AUO1096 i believe. Besides no more banding, how does it look compared to the older panel?

 

IMO, the color and viewing angle seems improved significantly, or may be it just dont have any more banding line lol

 

Wherever you twist and turn round on this... The price is anyway $ 650 for this low entry 1TB PCIe SSD. The price will be lower of course if you upgrade from a cheaper and smaller capacity PCIe SSD, but same price steps!! Who is crazy enough to pay this price? All too much and all you get is end low end. Wasted money bro iUnlock.

 

Huh? Why do you make it sound like I would pay for this piece of crap Toshiba? I'm saying the opposite and agreeing with the fact that it is a waste of money.

::iunlock::

 

The option for the i7 6820HK + GTX1080 has now all but removed from the European sites from Dell...

 

It has begun..........

 

I don't say you would pay for it. I only responded on your previous reply to the other guy... Read by yourself Before but!!

iunlock said: ↑
Toshiba w/ the Samsung controller ship. It's decent, but nowhere near Samsung Evo or Pro speeds.

 

deleted

 

7820HK with gtx1080 can be ordered in Germany as of today:

Had a chat with dell rigth now and they gave me the following offer:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7820HK (Quad-Core, 8MB Cache, Overclocking up to 4.4GHz)
17.3 inch QHD (2560 x 1440) 120Hz TN+WVA Anti-Glare 400-nits Display with Tobii IR Eyetracking
8GB, 2400MHz, DDR4 1 1TB (64MB Cache) 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s
Alienware 330W AC Adapter 1 Lithium Ion (99 Wh) Battery
Netzkabel - Europäisch 1 Environmental lot 3 label 1 Regulatory Label
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1080 with 8GB GDDR5X
Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1

They ask EUR 3.450,13 for including VAT

Steep price if you ask me reagrding the basic config without an ssd, especially compared to the ASUS G701VIK.

When I asked when this configuartion will be online on their site I was told at the moment one can order this config (7820HK and gtx1080) only by contacting them via chat or phone.
Estimated delivery would be 30.3.2017 if I would order today.

 

Mine are in! Checked one in the studio (work in Broadcasting), and it looks great! No issues with the screen (QHD), practically no bleed, will check the properties of the screen later when I am home tonight (gotta work!)

 

So I received my 17r4 with 6820, 1080, 120Hz. I got exactly what I ordered, no surprise upgrades to a 7820 or the new display.

HWinfo identifies my display as the AOU, the banding is apparent, I had times while playing BF1 that it was bothering me. Greys make it worse and at times it's like portions of the screen become a tiny grid... I have chat logs indicating this was something I did not desire and the rep assured me it was fixed.

Unsure what to do, temps after 30min of BF1 were:
CPU Max: 80C | Core Variance ~3C
GPU Max: 64C

Build quality is excellent, stunning almost, minimal light bleeding, excellent feel overall. Those fans do get loud, the next loudest thing in my house is the hair dryer.

Overall the unit does pass as a good unit, I'm just so darn upset about this panel and the lack of a 7820HK for the price I paid. Not sure what to do, I will wait for the announcement of the new panel and processor and do my best to decide whether to work with dell on sending back my unit for one of the newer ones.

Would anyone like to throw in their two cents? I see the March 5th batches are the last of the 6820HK's and 120Hz panels that weren't absolutely horrible were sent to everyone.

 

Exactly my point lol... Emphasizing that it's decent due to it having a Samsung controller, but how does that imply that I'd ever buy one? Just because something is decent doesn't mean anything. You've assumed and jumped the gun there...

Maybe you missed the part where I have also emphasized that it is nowhere near a Samsung Evo or Pro speeds.

So with that being said, why would you make assumptions? Rolf... I don't get it...

::iunlock::

 

LOL, I would rather say what it is... Overpriced mediocre. I don't put in the word "decent", if my perception-meaning is the totally opposite. "Decent" becomes exhausted/diluted or could be misinterpreted by the reader

 

To each his own, but you're still blowing it way out of proportion. I would never buy a Toshiba. Period. - Is that clear enough?

::iunlock::

 

I never said that you will or should buy this overpriced SSD from Dell!! I don't know where you've been You said +350 depends on and decent, I said still $650 for this 1TB "mediocre" NVMe ssd. That's the fact. Not that you shall or will buy it or not.

 

Lol the things people get worked up over. Standard everyday use and game loads it really doesn't matter. Benchmarks for gaming loads and performance shows virtually zero difference in using a nvme or standard pice/Sata drive. It's actually known and proven nvme drives in some cases are slower. The real difference for any of this is running virtual machines/servers and databases and the like. This is where the higher end drives really batter. For general use and gaming get the biggest cheapest ssd you can afford. You'll benifit more from the mass storage and speed of a ssd more so than a smaller "pro" series drive.

 

Maybe you missed it as well No offense. Look on what Dell wants to charge for this ssd!! Whatsoever you buy it from Dell or other places... You are still covered with warranty. Why pay Dell +40% more than what it's worth? I don't like throwing my money down the toilet. But that's me. Regardless if the performance is top notch or not.

 

I agree 100% most builders try to retire marking up storage and ram. It is nice having a warranty but sometime not worth their premium. Most drives have a 3-5 warranty nowadays so it doesn't really matter. I do know Dell tech will blame system problems on a drive they didn't provide as "not approved and can cause system stability issues". This has happened to me several times in the past.

So I always buy the smallest generally with the system. I pull it and out in in the box. So if I have to get the system repaired or replaced I pull my bigger drives and stick the little 128 or 256 back in before techs come or sending it off.

 

The point is, that Toshiba 1tb m.2 is way over priced and not even worth half of what they are asking. Now, even at half of that amount, one could afford to go with a Samsung 960 EVO, PM961 or even a SM961 that will walk circles around that 1tb Toshiba m.2 lol... That's the point.



::iunlock::

 

nothing is worth upgrading to on the Dell Alienware. Except the 4k display (mainly because you don't want to do the work)

RAM
Corsair
SSD: Samsung
Wifi: intel
this is all excluding the repaste that iunlock posted which you need to do A.S.A.P.

External GPU: EVGA GTX 1080ti

See nothing, So why do people buy it...... Well I was one of those people and I wanted to be lazy. I didn't look into it BUT then Dell Alienware was like "NO we can't give you UHD on the 6820hk + GTX 1080, you have to buy the ****ty defected TN panel" and i got hulk mad, HULK SMASH.

I started to do my research, found out it was defected thus you needed to fix it. Then I though IF i have to our source the display why don't I outsource everything else and see the difference in price...... not much difference but 10x better. So why? because Dell expects the buyer to be blind and unaware. They wish to pray on the buyers laziness.

 

speaking of which know where I can buy a Sharp 4k display for the Alienware 17 r4. One that will deliver to Canada? Or someplace in Canada, ON Toronto which will swap out the TN panel (if i am forced with it) with the sharp 4k pannel + some extra $$

 

Speaking of price gouging: what is the difference between this Dell laptop and this Amazon laptop? Other than the 6th vs 7th gen thing. I'm assuming on the Dell site, when the 7th becomes available, it'll be around the same price as the 6th.

 

What is your Panel model? the new one is still a AUO panel but with different model number.

 

Interesting...Dell is insisting me to replace my whole computer instead of just swapping out my QHD display because the new display is on backorder separately. Maybe I'll take up on the offer if it comes with the new 7820hk

 

http://imgur.com/6xb3dRR

I just got my exchange today. Here is the Occt after 15 minutes. Any thoughts? Any other suggestions or other tests? the bios is 1.0.9 and the QHD seems to be the same as last time with the banding/watermark issue.

 

Temp seems ok without repaste, what is your model nubmer of QHD?

 

Actually your temps are pretty darn good only because its only running max at 2.8ghz . Your probably hitting the TDP limit and its throttling. Use bios 1.0.8.

 

Your temps are good because they have very low core temp variance. I wouldn't bother with a repaste as you may upset the current setup.
Bios 1.08 or 1.09 are equally good bios as each other. Overclocking will raise the core temps to early 80s-84c but if they stay around 5c of each other you have a great 6820hk.

 

auo1096 same as the older ones

 

Are there any other tests you suggest after i go to 1.0.8?

 

Someone got newer one and the model# is 1496...but it is replace by tech...that sucks... it seems all the new 1080gtx with 6820hk unit are still shipping with the old panel. I suggest you call dell and get replacement and even ask them if you can order 7820hk 1080gtx. the new cpu model should be with the new panel...

 

AU Optronics [Unknown Model: AUO1096]

02/18/2017 02:05:23PM

dacianbear : "Also, I heard there were some issues with the 120hz screen such as banding, has a new panel been sourced or is this the same 120hz panel since launch?"
02/18/2017 02:06:10PM dacianbear: "I had looked at a store display AW17R4 at best buy with the panel and I'm 50/50 on how I feel about the banding."
02/18/2017 02:07:45PM dacianbear: "I apologize for taking up so much of your time, I appreciate your help thus far."
02/18/2017 02:08:45PM Agent (TIP_Dauz H): "Upon checking, the response time of QHD (2560x1440) 120Hz 400-nits is 4-milisecond
while UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS 300-nits is 5-milisecond"
02/18/2017 02:08:53PM Agent (TIP_Dauz H): "No problem, always a pleasure to help "
02/18/2017 02:09:38PM Agent (TIP_Dauz H): "The issue with the 120Hz were isolated cases and has been taken cared of by our Tech and Marketing team"