*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R4 Owner's Lounge

You could also probably get one of these and be ok:
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/alienware-17-r4/CT9511922

Those are quite cool temps. The 6820HK runs much warmer and has very large core differentials in mine. If that is stock 7820HK then it sounds like Alienware has made some great improvements on what they are shipping from the factory.

 

Excellent. I thought that may be the case as with stock clocks I've had 0 throttling issues. When I try to use the OC levels in the BIOS though is where I tend to experience temps up in the mid 80's and 90's and run into issues. My 7820HK tends to like to hang out in the low to mid 70's while benching.

 

He run with single channel ram Or maybe I missed?

 

Why does eveyone ignore corsair? Or am I the only corsair fan

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/vengea...m-2666mhz-cl18-memory-kit-cmsx16gx4m2a2666c18

 

I upgraded my ram, so I have 2 sticks of the micron 8gb I would be willing to sell if you want to pm me.

 

Hey does anyone know if I need to install the Intel HD Graphics driver on a 17 R4 with a GTX 1080 and 120Hz (No Optimus)?

Thanks!

 

Ram settings is locked in Alienware!! Just ask @iunlock

 

Yikes those timings on the Corsair are just as worse as the stock ram timings. No Bueno.

The best 2667mhz ram for the 17r4 is the HyperX w/ 15-17-17-35.

The best 2400mhz ram for the 17r4 is the HyperX w/ 14-14-14-39.

Between the two the HyperX 2667mhz is the better choice.

I have both and have tested them in games and benches.

However, can't go wrong with either or... As most people will never know the difference.


.

::iunlock::

 

Yea, I'm looking for the HyperX Impact 16gb or 32gb at 2400mghz or 32gb of 2666 HyperX RAM. Apparently RAM prices or going up this year?

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

 

The TB3 port is driven by the Intel GPU and will activate if you connect a display. It is probably a good idea to have the latest driver installed just because the HD Graphics is present in the system's device topology.

 

Well, it seems like although my CPU is stable at 44x, the temperatures it outputs (98C-100C) are too much to keep it from throttling. Anyone have any tips for getting the 7820HK to run at 44x or should I try and drop to 43x with less voltage and see if that holds up better? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something.

 

Damnit!
Did a full system reset with a naked W10 iso.
Installed latest nvidia drivers and all the major drivers on Dell's site.

My games still freeze after 5 or 6 minutes playing.
CPU does't go past 83ºC
GPU never above 73ºC (in fact the freezes seem to be ocurring when it is reaching 74ºC, the game freezes for 5 or 6 seconds and when it returns the GPU temps are back to 70ºC)
CPU is not throttling it appears, good minimum clock speeds
PCH doesn't go above 70ºC
GPU core and memory clocks is what's worrying me now, they drop to 1xx Mhz while playing but I can't figure out why.
Turned GSync off, set to max performance on nvidia's CP

Tried every sBIOS.

 

1. I have two 8gb sticks of ram from dell I'm not using if someone wants them. I think hynix (spelling) 2133mzh. I built a desktop instead of getting another alienware.

 

locked? does it mean that if I buy the cheapest aw 17 r4 with 8gb 2400 then I cannot replace it with: Kingston Technology HyperX Impact 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 CL15 260-Pin SODIMM Laptop Memory, Kit of 2 (HX426S15IB2K2/32)

 

@alex333 no it means that you can't change the timings of the ram
you can just plug them in and use them, no problems there
i don't think that a "normal" user will see a difference to ram with better timings

 

With locked, I mean you can't tweak timings and Clock speed. For your mentioned ram, see previous post #5168 from @iunlock

 

Did you DDU the Nvidia driver? Try using a different version and not the latest.

I've addressed the issue about not having the xmp in the newer line up, so it has been made aware.

We may see it available soon. It's not impossible, but for now the HyperX 2667's will do just fine.




::iunlock::

 

i'm almost ready to buy the version with nvidia 1080, 8 gigs of ram and 1tb hhd, replace memory, add 2 Samsung 960 pro in raid0. the only thing stops me is a screen panel. if it were ips i'd go right now. it's not perfect. i'd prefer 18'' screen. but looks like i'll have to wait for it at least a century. I know. "nobody's perfect"

 

If you want a 120hz QHD G-SYNC screen, it will be a TN panel for now. That's just what it is for 2016 and 2017. Maybe 2018 will be the year they move to IPS, and maybe eventually OLED or QLED for 4k res and 120 or 144hz screens. All the 4k screens are 60hz, and all the 1080p 120hz screens are IPS. Pretty sure there's only a couple companies making the 2560x1440 screen and they're using TN panels. I think they look good from what I've seen, fine for media consumption and most importantly gaming. I'd love an OLED, but the 13.9 inch 13R3 only comes with a GTX 1060. If it came with a 1070, I'd have gone for that even with the smaller screen.

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

 

I know. the final solution would be NVidia 1080 + qhd tn panel. ok. for the real video quality - add high-end external monitor. maybe. what I cannot understand nevertheless - you can choose 4k ips panel with clevo. why it's not available in the dell's configurations. I can see that dell marketing decided that customer doesn't need it - you can buy any panel you want, the only one condition - it will be a tn panel. and only one type of this panel.

 

Yes I lose a little bit of battery, think we all do

I have CPU -50mV @ 4GHz with +190/300 on GPU latest BIOS and vBIOS. Power limits fully unlocked in BIOS and XTU

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Are you happy at 4ghz? I've got my 7820HK running at 4.3ghz stable with a -.050 offset. It gets awfulllllly toasty though. Without doing a repaste, I may have to settle for something like 4ghz to get the heat into an acceptable range. 500mhz is still a pretty hefty overclock anyways.

 

Ok I finally gave up
My 17 R4 is totally broken, no hope for this one.
Repasted 3 times, regular paste, LM paste, got nice thermal pads on it, tried with different thicknesses on different spots making sure very single chip is making the best possible contact with the heatsink.
Made one hell of a PCH heatsink mod, looks original, was kinda proud but now I have to remove it because warranty...
Tried every BIOS, system restore, system reset, various Nvidia drivers, no windows update, every windows update, rulled out interferences one by one with audio driver, wifi and ethernet, control center, Alienware OSD, etc... no change...

I can't play any game for more than 5 minutes. After this the system just freezes and hangs, it never crashed once or gave me a BSOD, just the games become unplayable.
Some of them, like Doom, recover from the freeze and I can continue playing, but it gets more and more frequent.
Others, like Overwatch, may recover once or twice but ultimately crash giving "Your rendering device has been lost" error.

I was pretty afraid that Dell Portugal wouldn't take me up on my Premium Warranty with support on site, that's why I have been thru so much troubleshooting before calling them up on it.
Gladly, they were very helpful! It's currently doing a full system extended scan (the quick scan showed everything OK) and I will send them the results.
The guy said they can have a technician at my home next tuesday with all the required parts, which is great! Thank God for that, I thought I had to send it to Spain or something...

There's only one major thing worrying me.
I repasted with Grizzly Conductonaut and it left a pretty obvious discoloration on my heatsink. I'm going to repaste it with normal paste before the technician gets here but I am praying this won't void my warranty.
Anyone had experience with this issue?

Thanks

 

Out of curiosity have you tried playing with the voltage / clock curves on your GTX 1080 via MSI Afterburner (CTRL+F to bring up the interface)? I had to setup a custom profile initially for my Tornado F5 because it would crash in games with the first VBIOS that the machine came with. It is really a stopgap until a fixed bios is released.

 

That I did not. Any hints on where to start?
Think a new vBIOS will fix this?

Here's a video of the issue, happens every 15 seconds or so

 

Well, with mine, it would boot me out of a game after just a few minutes, and I could find a "Display driver has stopped responding" type of error in the windows event viewer. I think the issue was related to a specific GTX 1070 not being able to do the boost speeds / voltages for the stock VBIOS. The fix was to setup a custom profile in afterburner that limited the maximum boost to something like 1800Mhz.

Unfortunately I cannot find the original post that led me to setup the profile. This is what it would look like if it were limited to 1600Mhz, for instance:

 

Honestly man, you should not have any issues like this at all. Having system hangs and freezes is unacceptable.

 

Tested both Clean install of Windoze X Anniversary Update as well the Crematory build?

 

Grizzly Conductonaut says not to use with aluminum... Does the AW use copper or aluminum? Do you spread the paste or use like a dot or x for application?

I was also looking at thermal pads from Thermal Grizzly with like 8.0 w/mk thermal conductivity vs Fujipoly and an Alphacool Eisschict thermal pad with 17.0 w/mk conductivity. The more conductivity, the better I guess?

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

 

Unfortunately yes

 

*
Thanks man.
I made my custom curve on Afterburner, limited it to max 1750Mhz to see how it behaves, but it's still boosting while in games, up to 1860Mhz
How can I enforce my Afterburner clock curve?

*EDIT
Nvmd I restarted and it works.
Limiting the boost to 1600Mhz, still freezing and hanging.
I'm gonna try undervolting the CPU now

 

So just yesterday I just got done writing a review on this machine and it appears I'm now out of nowhere having the same trouble as you are. I've had this thing a week and it literally just started today. Played Witcher 3 for about a half hour and it just started freezing out of nowhere. Every 20 seconds or so it'll freeze and then start up again. This has to be driver related but I haven't been able to pinpoint it yet. The only thing I've logged so far is the GPU stutter causes temps to drop 4-5 degrees in that instant. I'll let you know if I figure anything out.

 

It's freakin weird...
I think I narrowed it down to the GPU hitting the powerlimit and then cutting voltage for a few instants.
I don't know why it's hitting the power limit so soon, I tried underclocking it with afterburner a good -200MHz and no change AT ALL.
I think the only way to mess up the power, voltages and power limit is thru a vBIOS. Mine came with the latest installed so I never even had that option... I can't find a way to get back to a previous vBIOS, or even just try to reflash it with the latest because Dells vBIOS tool says it's already up to date.

I've noticed those temp drops you mention too when the game crashes. When it comes back it's about 5ºC cooler. But i've seen it happen around 74ºC, 90ºC, 85ºC, etc...

What changes have you done recently to the system?

 

None. I usually write my reviews on a stock system. I was actually going to repaste it and keep it but now I'm reconsidering... Hopefully we can get to the bottom of it.

Yes, it does look like the GPU is shutting down. Power levels were dropping on mine. I'm running HWinfo with a bunch of graphs up now and will try again.

 

interesting review

http://laptopmedia.com/review/alien...-box-gaming-experience-you-can-get-right-now/

especially what is related to the quality of the qhd screen

 

Here's my latest screenshot. GPU is definitely losing power. It's only after it gets hot too but I still can;t figure out why. This could be power supply related but I have no way to test that.

 

Hi, just an opinion, might be worth trying. Have you checked the thermal pads covering the FETs, choke and power delivery circuit? Some of them are not making proper contacts with the heatsink thus when you stressed the GPU during games for example, the components get real hot and cut off power to the GPU, causing the stutters. When i disassembled mine, i found the factory monkeys working on my laptop missed putting thermal pads on some of the FETs and some are not even making any contacts! you can actually see a tiny gap between the thermal pad and the power delivery MOSFET.

You can use iunlock's repaste excellent guide as a reference, but i can tell you, even that is not entirely accurate. not all heatsinks are created equal, so you still need to inspect every single contact point between heatsink, thermal pad and the power delivery circuit.

Hope this helps you with your problems.

 

Lots of people reporting the same problem in the past couple weeks. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/..._and/?st=j22n31dx&sh=778d027c#bottom-comments

 

Well I ruled out the GPU being overloaded because the problem still persists even at 60% load.
It also seems to be independent to the CPU load because I disabled turbo in throttlestop and it still happens.
I then used DPC latency checker and noticed that there were latency spikes. Turns out it was the audio, however even when I disable it, the problem still persists. The latency is better but I still get the freezes.

I'm starting to wonder if this is limited to the Kaby Lake processors. It would be nice to hear if some Skylake users have this issue.

 

I also went that route disabling cpu turbo boost, also no change.
When you disabled audio, was the sound center still on?

I also tried overclocking the GPU a little bit but made no difference.

 

At that point I had pretty much everything disabled, software wise. I've also disabled a lot of hardware. It very well might be hardware related and due to temperatures because that's the only thing that's consistent as to when the stuttering occurs. That's why I'm curious if it's a kaby lake/1080 issue because if it's limited to that, I'm returning this thing right away.

I'm calling it quits for the night. Will try again some more tomorrow.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

Frank Azor the bossman of AW said it is ok to use LM. It does not void your warranty.

 

Have you tried reflashing the vBIOS that is on the Dell site?
I have a Kaby/1080 that I can run at 4.5/4.6 with a +140 on the gpu and I do not experience the things you mention.

 

Who has freezes - did anyone try to check DPC latency? Check this: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/solving-dpc-latency-issues/

 

Good point.. I know that historically speaking the Killer Suite and in some cases even the Killer drivers that windows finds has exacerbated DPC latency issues.

 

I ran a check and have no latency after disabling the audio driver. But the issue still persists, be even with it disabled. I'll try reflashing the vbios tomorrow though and then a more thorough check with disabling components one by one. It's just fishy that it's heat related, because it would be more erratic if it were a latency issue.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

What's your wifi card?

 

I have an Intel 8260.

 

Finally got my replacement system and it seems to be working much better, though with a few quirks. Entirely too much work getting it here.

* Fn + F5 to change GPU modes now works!

* It came loaded with 1.08 BIOS. The numbering still confuses me due to Skylake having one # and Kaby Lake having another. They were trying to load 1.12 when it bricked... so I'm not sure where I stand.

* GTX1080 has the new VBIOS. Was getting over 190W on it

* First-boot stock Firestrike score was close to 15,000, Idle CPU was 40s, under load was 60s

* Upped CPU to 42x, idle was 50s, under load with OCCT was low 70s. Firestrike pushed it to high 80s

* Dropped CPU to 40x, upped GPU by +200, got 16,500 Firestrike. GPU was 72. CPU was high 80s - only 8GB of stock ram though

* The replacement system came with a Toshiba 256GB SSD. Temps were 75C after 1 run of Crystalmark. My old system had an SK Hynix but I don't know its temps.

* LCD is the 1920x1080 AUO109D. Some backlight bleed on the bottom left and right. Stable at 75Hz, but gets distorted at 80.

* Quiet fans. Nice stiff keyboard. Decent touchpad. Built very solid.


Now I have some concerns.

The Toshiba SSD runs hot and so should I swap it with the SKY Hynix from my original? Plan to do a full reload anyways.

The screen is also kind of meh. The backlight bleed is distracting. Makes black-blacks not so pretty. But perhaps it will clear up with time? Its also about half the brightness of my Alienware 17 R1s WLED display. This AUO109D screen also flickers/distorts when you display a checkered or moire-type image. Is that normal?

The 4K screens are cheap on ebay so in a few months I might upgrade + repaste. The temps seem fine for what I intend to do now (mostly embedded design, some A/V, some game dev). Before I tripped over and broke my old system, it just couldn't handle all the VMs and never ran right after I upgraded it to Win10.

After I get this thing reloaded I'll investigate where this thing is at with the BIOS. Until someone figures out a bootblock recovery mode or can prove it won't brick again I'm holding the hell off!

 

I just want to post a short summary of my experience so far. I received my new AW17 R4 (7820HK, GTX1080) on Monday. While I was very satisfied with the build quality, the CPU temps while gaming were in the 85 - 90C range. I experienced some major stuttering during gameplay. I'm just a casual gamer and I'm still learning about overclocking and hardware modifications, so I reached out to iUnlock to inquire about repasting my system to get the temps the under control. He let me know about all the services he can provide and it all goes well beyond a simple repaste. He essentially gives the system a makeover that's customized & tuned specifically for the included hardware. I sent my system to him on Tuesday and he contacted me as soon as he received it on Wednesday. His communication skills are excellent and he worked with me to modify the system specifically for my needs. I woke up Thursday morning to find that he worked on my system straight through the night... from a clean windows install all the way to repaste, thermal pad replacement, custom PCH mod, custom OC profile, and more! I got my system back on Friday and I must say his workmanship is second to none! Obviously, my system was brand new when I shipped it out and when I received it back I couldn't tell it had been disassembled and worked on. He wears gloves when working so there's no fingerprints or smudges anywhere and is careful to not manhandle the cables and ribbons. Every game I play now runs super smooth and my temps are awesome! I wouldn't hesitate to tell anyone to send their system to iUnlock so he can work his magic! He's a great guy to do business with and he went the extra mile to exceed my expectations.


Before


After