*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R4 Owner's Lounge

We have had our hands on many of the systems that now come standard with the new vBios and we do not experience such issues.
This even with a daily driver overclock of 4.4Ghz on all four cores.

 

Retracted read up and know how to do it. thank you and everyone for there help.

 

Agreed. I am a little more stunned than I usually am (I thought these heating issues/heatsink design was enough); this vBIOS release sure seems to be an abject disaster to such a degree, it seems to be evolving to the rank of a form of sabotage/malware as the days go on...

 

...not to dismiss your assessment DeeX; ...maybe one really needs to install this thing carefully and orderly...or else.

 

NO, instead i'll buy a new Ferrari every 3 years. BUTTTT, now dell usa HAS IPS panel with nvidia 1080. so - patience, patience and patience again and you'll find your holy grail. at least my dream came true.

 

Hey guys I have two dell outlet systems coming both with 7820hk one has a 120hz and the other is 4K ips which should I go with ? I was think the 4K because I can use the amplifier to the monitor in the future and just replace it with a 120hz screw for now .. the 4K system is 250 more . Any advice?


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well, as it was already said 1001 times - 'it depends'. if you need your system mainly for the gaming, then of course - 120hz. if (like me) you want 'universal' system - a little bit for the gaming, a little bit for the software development and a little bit for the photo editing then i'd select 4k ips. so - throw a quarter in the air and let the probability decide

 

The only reason I wanted the 4K was so I can use the amp with the laptop display. I was gonna swap it out with a 120hz from eBay but I'm think I'm better off just getting a new laptop at that point


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I think amp is too much for the laptop. it kills the whole idea. so if you want to attach amplifier then I think the laptop's screen is not so important. again i'd select the ips panel because it's just 'better'. so if you decided to go this way you always can add ANY external monitor with ANY level of the quality and the price.

 

They are both great bits of software. For me as a "regular old dude" user, gamer, music collector? Macrium is better ... and yeah, precisely ... because it's free.

Best!

joel

 

I'll wait for Macronium version 7 to try. With Acronis I never had any problem. Several times I need to return to an image and I could do it without problems. I create an image per day and I keep a 60 backups of history. Acronis is very simple to use.

Macronium have any functionality that does not have Acronis True Image?

 

@Cerreta28 - Hey man, go here ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...l-for-alienware-17-r4-no-lines.802599/page-11) for some good discussion re. the QHD. From what I have read throughout here every day, the 4K IPS isn't anything to write home about...and granted, I am biased to the QHD that I have as it is pretty darn sweet for a TN. iunlock, for an example in his compare/contrast assessment, doesn't hesitate in preferring the QHD over 4K IPS for this system since the TN's only downside might be extreme viewing angles that he argues as an absurd characteristic to qualify anyway...

...regardless, unless you are going to focus on video/editing in a mobile environment, there really is no argument for supporting it over the QHD.

 

@Cerreta28 - Here's iunlock;s latest commentary in comparing the QHD with 4K-IPS - ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-you-need-to-know-now-and-later.799020/page-7)

 

I agree I have the sk hynx 512gb in my Alienware 17 and while I'd rather have the Samsung pm961 it's better then the Toshiba. My read speeds are 2050 and write 925 and it runs cool (32c). Read speeds on the Toshiba was about 1650 on a a13 r3 system I returned.

On another note I'm about to do my 1st repaste on my a17 r4 laptop, what screw driver is recommended I.e do I need a precision screwdriver or will a standard Philips screw driver be sufficient for all the screws? Are the screws all the same sizes ?

 

Hi All,

I have an Alienware 17 R4 with 2xNVME and single SSD, I was planning to RAID1 both nvme and remove the small SSD, does the SSD data/power connector need removing from the motherboard or should it be removed and possible port cover placed on port instead?

The laptop I am running has a 6820hk with a 1080 GPU, the cooling comes on a few times, every when ideal, I believe that the fan management in the BIOS is hidden, does anyone know which tool Alienware recommends to managed this.

Thank you in advance for reading. Have a good day/evening all


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Philips is all you need but getting the right size can be a pain. I ended up using one that is larger than it should have been. Just have a selection because some of the screws may be randomly tight and you want the right fit.

Also i would reccomend getting some good thermal pads for the chips around the cpu/gpu. It will make a difference. Kryonaut works great on these systems too.

 

Yeah my AW 17 R4 has the AUO IPS 1080p panel, is grainy like you say with pretty poor light bleed, very poor showing from Dell to be honest, not the kind of screen you would want to sit in front of for hours on end, also have inferior Toshiba SSD so i'm gonna return.

Also not sure if AW 17 R4's from Dell Outlet come in the original Alienware box but mine didn't, just a plain box.

 

yes I got Kryonaut thermal and artic mx2 (non silver).
1 more thing, do you really need to take the motherboard off the Alienware 17 r4, can you just carefully take part of the fans off, leaving the motherboard attached to the laptop?

 

On the 17 the MB needs to come out on the 15 you can get away with the fans


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Yes dell outlett come in dell brown box not the black box etc with graphic on.

Unlucky with the screen, it's pot luck if you get 1080p chimei, lg,Phillips although it's the lg that usually is supplied with skylake design. They moved on to using auo with kaby lake.

 

After my repaste on the Alienware 17 R4 the right side USB stopped working.... can anyone find a solution to this or did or forget to plug one of the wires back in.

Could it be due to short circuit (liquid metal) I used tape sooo I was wondering.

Btw it goes at 4.4 at 64°c now XD

 

Highly unlikely that it's due to short circuit.
Probably you forgot to connect this USB cable (or poorly connected): http://imgur.com/xN5dopw

 

What's different with the 17, reason I ask is I noted another post re just moving part of the a17 fans here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ssembly-repaste-guide-results.797373/page-108

 

Hi,

I have configured nvme to ahci not Raid mode, should this cause issues with performance?


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The heat syncs does not come apart like the 15


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I think the problem is an English vs Metric sizing issue. NO, there are all different types and sizes of screws... but the Craftsman Phillips #0 seems to work nicely.

 

Thank you soo much. I finally got it like 1 day ago and I was on it all day. I was getting paranoid after the person who was delivering it showed me the uneven heat sink.

I tested it at 4.1 higest was 75c

After repaste today at 4.4 it was 65c (sure some times at 100% load there was a random change in temp for like 0.1 sec between lowest and higest temp by 10c (core 1 and core 3) but in general when not at 100% load all cores are at near the same temp. ) so i am happy or should i check it again? higest temp are around 2c difference overall.

So yeah I was sweating because this guy was on my tail saying how this was a really really REALLY bad purchase.

So thank you Niarus

A special thanks to iUnlock aka DeeX for his guide and the guy who has someone thowing up as a profile pic... Papusan yeah thats his name ..... now what is a safe overlock for GPU lol

 

For those repasting I recommend testing with a cpu benchmark and hwinfo to see if you have uneven core temps. I experimented with mine (uneven cores so uneven heatsink contact) repasting it 3 times and the best results for me were the x and line of paste on the gpu and cpu respectively. And using the heatsink pressure to spread it. This way the air pushes out the sides and you get the whole gap filled. Worst results were from painting on the paste.

Also you may want to just take the whole thing apart as in the service manual and iunlocks guide. When you put the heatsink back on is a crucial moment and you dont want the thing shifting pushing the paste around.

With arctic silver 5 i was able to get the same results as the stock stamp and pads and with kryonaut and fugipoly pads i was able to get -15c. Still with the 10c core differential but 74c is my peak temp now after hours of gaming.

The 10 series have boost 3.0 so they adjust along a curve untill they either hit the power limit imposed on them or their voltage limit. When you overclock you change the frequency that can run at each voltage point. So the same mhz will use less power and the voltage and power limits wont hit as soon. Basicly if you overclock it, your limit is when you boost the frequency past what a voltage point is stable at. And some overclocks will give higer actual performance. You may find that 150 mhz overclock gives less performance than 120 mhz. So try to find a stable value where your games dont crash that gives a good performance boost. I use +120 mhz core for my 1070.

 

Uneven HS is also not a huge deal if you're doing a repaste, as you can bend the HS arm a bit. Mine 17R4 also had 10C differences between 0-2 & 1-3 cores, but the bending solved it, temps are all even.

Btw, iunlock and DeeX are two different guys Or maybe I don't know something

 

lol I though they were the same person. lol i apologize >< i need some sleep.

 

No, Macrium doesn't offer me anything that Acronis doesn't as well; they are both great. For my rather simple imaging needs, however ... I've found the process a bit more intuitive/easy with Macrium ... and again, it's free. I own Acronis, the older v.13, but I never use it ... Macrium is just more intuitive to me. And yeah, I image religiously too ... best thing anybody who is serious about system longevity can do if you ask me....

Best!
Joel

 

Bartender Chick: "Do you need me to plug your laptop in?"

Me: "Plug in? Me? Oh ... silly, silly girl ... MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

...



...

Man, that never gets old.

Course, when working, that goes down to about 6 hours ... but still ... after having to plug in every laptop I've ever used when out and about on the town? The AW17 GTX 1070 machine is a god send in regards to battery life once one switches over to the Intel GPU ...

Happy Mothers Day!

;-)

joel

 

Not true...

I did mine yesterday and just undid the screws on the top cover of the fans.

 

So I got the Samsung PM961 up and running (after getting the Toshiba SSD exchanged) and while it's running cooler, it's still reaching 67c which actually also causes throttling on the Samsung PM961.

Some others are getting <50c on their PM961's, not entirely sure why this one gets so hot. Anyhow, it's faster than the Toshiba so it's still all good.

I was thinking of smacking on a heatsink on the SSD, I found some heatsinks that are about 2.5mm high. Anyone have any idea how much room there is between the SSD and the chassis?

Does it also matter if it's in slot 2 or 3 ? The Toshiba was in slot 3, so I put the samsung in slot 3 too.

 

Thanks, yes just unlucky i guess, must of got one of the last skylake's as they transfered to using auo panels, might try another skylake 6700/1070 or just go for a QHD kaby lake with 7820/1080 with new panel.

 

Ok so I repasted my skylake 6820hk a17 r4 and did not remove the motherboard I just took the small 3 screws out of the top of the heatsink and carefully lifted it off, see images.

Put back together and all working fine with temp drop of aprox 10c (cpu) .. gpu didn't improve although 68c is fine.. (bios 1.0.12) although I will be taking bios back to 1.0.8 or 1.0.9 which runs cooler and gives slightly better performance then 1.0.12

 

Or you could try 6820hk 1070 1080p off the outlett also. Price wise you don't pay much more over the 6700 cpu... and don't worry about scratch and dent / cert refurbished I just get the cheapest, scratch and dent usually look like new..

 

WTF!? Out of nowhere I turn my 17 R4 on and I get a BIOS warning saying the battery isn't an official Dell one and it won't charge or even say the charge level.

I used it on battery until it had about 10% remaining, then plugged it in and left it on and charging for about 4 or 5 hours.
Yesterday I downgraded the vBIOS and it was working flawlessly all night. Today also no complaints until this...

What do?!

 

Have you tried soft BIOS reset? Or hard, by disconnecting main and CMOS batteries (yeah, requires another disassembly..)?

 

Yes... No change.
Also updated BIOS to latest and still no change.
I think it actually fried. No way my issues are only due to VRM... My mobo is cursed

 

Yeah, that's sucks.. Anyway a new one is on the way, so a bit of patience.

 

That's true for the mobo. Now I wonder about the battery...

My Alienware experience so far:

 

@Da_Teach. I have a 960 Pro. There is a lot of space, more than 5mm in slot 3 (I prefer to use slot 3 because it is away from the heat of the cpu/gpu heatsink). I use a copper heatsink of 4mm and thermal pad Fujipoly 17 W/mk of 1mm thickness. Holding the ssd and heatsink by elastic bands. I also tried other thermal conductors like thermal adhesive, but the best is the thermal pad. With this solution work for me, the temperature does not exceed 55 -58 degrees and you will avoid the thermal throttling. You can use thermal pads of lower thermal conductivity too. I only had to hand 17 W/km

I use this HS http://www.ebay.com/itm/M-2-NGFF-22...593450?hash=item3f7b7aedaa:g:Sk8AAOSwKytZESva

 

Jajajajaja (risa en Español)

 

looks nice

https://www.amazon.com/HXM-Heatsink...494771443&sr=1-5&keywords=copper+heatsink+4mm

 

Some keys don't work after creators' update WASDF4567.
I got an extremely annoying Windows Update loop!

Aw17R4 - I7 7700HQ
Gtx 1070
128 Gb Ssd Hynx
And last and most strange, they have send me a 130W PSU!



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So it appears I'm having some kind of throttling issue while playing ME:A. This did not express itself during my first round of stress-tests and benchmarks, and I really haven't done much in the way of gaming so its hard to say how widespread it would be. But it expresses itself as a 2-5 second pause that starts after about 15 minutes of gameplay, and occurs more and more frequently the longer I play. No overclocking is present.

When I look at GPU-Z I see the clocks zero out completely every time the pauses occur. So I suspect something (power perhaps?) is hitting a limit and throttling down. The CPU was in the 80s so I undervolted it by -0.1V and got it back down into the 70s. The GPU sits around 76-78.

Early on folks were saying they were seeing their battery drain while gaming. I wonder if Dell "fixed" that but the result is these micro-pauses?

I'm on K5_S12 BIOS, not the latest K9_S14). Might that be the issue?

my VBIOS is showing as .92... which is newer than the 8F Overclocked BIOS listed on Dell's site. I wonder if this is the problem?

For now, if I use VSYNC and turn off AA it stays just below the throttle limit so I can generally play. But this isn't a good long-term fix. Any insight would be helpful.

 

Have you repasted/applied new thermal pads at all?

 

No, I am not convinced this is a thermal issue given how lowering the temps by 10C with the undervolt did nothing to help the issue.

I'm not overclocking either. And I have to imagine this thing is capable of moderately-intense game at stock settings. 1080p w/ 60fps VSYNC is not terribly stressing to a GTX1080...

 

Alienware 17 R4 GTX1080 in game random Stutter & Freeze
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...gtx1080-in-game-random-stutter-freeze.804499/

Check this thread