*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R4 Owner's Lounge

22 out of 1,450 posts in the thread aren't many.

 

Lol. U looked that up..!! God save up man!!

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Good scores! Strong performer out of the box. And yes, the CPU will almost always limit the combined overall score vs todays GPU's.

Will also confirm the power stage difference between the 1070 and 1080 plus which memory modules are used in the GTX 1080. Looking like it'll be Micron GDDR5x memory.

Grizzly Kryonaut came today. So I'll re-paste using that and the Artic 6.0 W/mK Thermal pads. SAve the expensive but good Fujipoly pads for when the Conductonaut comes in.

Was shopping Amazon for the part and looking to get a replacement quickly. Couldn't find the 8265 for sale. Can always upgrade this in the future if need be.

RIGHT!!

 

Thanks to everyone for doing so much research on this laptop, I’ve been diagnosing my alienware 17 r4 and the information has been very helpful.

Just got my alienware 17 R4 3 days ago. Unfortunately, it showed a 18-26 Celsius temperature differential between core 0/2 (higher) and core 1/3 when running prime95 (screenshot attached).Called tech support who tried to tell me that the chip was designed for two cores to run hotter. What a joke. I’m just finishing my Ph.D. in engineering and my lab used to do consulting work on transistor development for intel. They finally agreed to send a technician with a new heatsink and paste after I flatly told them I disagreed.

One day latter, I opened my laptop and it wouldn’t post or display anything on the screen after a few dozen attempts. Fan would turn on for a split second and then stop but no LEDs. Just a blinking error core of two flashes of blue then two flashes of red. Called intel and they said the error code indicated a motherboard failure and they agreed to send me a new mother board along with the original heatsink replacement.

Several hours later, I managed to power on my laptop. Apparently, the motherboard isn’t fried but I have no idea what the issue was. The laptop inexplicably had a motherboard failure and so I’m worried what the implications are for the future. Being that I’m a grad student, data integrity and reliability are a must.

Anyone have any thoughts? Should I try to get the tech to replace the motherboard or anything else even though the problem is intermittent? I appreciate any guidance you can provide.

Alienware 17 R4: 6820HK, Nvidia 1070, 1080p.

 

I have noticed with Skylake laptops that they are very sensitive to getting a corrupted EC. Usually the first thing I try is removing the battery and unplugging the CMOS battery (not hard to get to on the AW17 luckily) then hold the power button down for 30 seconds or so to completely drain any capacitors in the motherboard. Usually after that if you still get an error code its either badly seated memory or a faulty motherboard.

I am using the AW17 for my work machine, and because of reliability I actually decided to just have a backup machine with a lesser graphics card and processor. If one dies for any reason, I can just swap my HDD and be back up and running in 15 minutes. Even with the business grade machines with a next day onsite warranty it doesn't get that good - and those machines are actually more expensive (with less performance) than two AW17's...

 

Guys, I am still waiting for dell to replace my screen because of the red line. I called them on Monday, they told me that the screen will be here the next business day. The week passed and still waiting for the screen to arrive, I called them again and they told they dont have this new screen in stock as replacement part so I have to wait. I asked how long and they dont know. I am very disappointed , can I ask them to replace the whole system instead of the screen only? I don't like the idea that the technician will tear apart my new laptop that I paid so much and I dont like also to have any signs of repair.

 

That's a great suggestion, thank you. I'll try it next time I have this issue. The only thing tech support would recommend was that I remove the memory and try to connect two copper contacts underneath the RAM with a pair of pliers. The tech support guy couldn't explain what he was asking me to do so I said no thank you haha.

I'll probably ask them to just replace the motherboard if I can't manage to confirm the issue.

 

Dell's System Manual says its a BIOS and ROM failure. If it were me I would have them replace the board if it happened again. If you can duplicate the same things you did the other day before it died or run it through a stress test or such overnight.

Having a customer short terminals on a system board without jumpers is very unprofessional and deserves reporting to their manager honestly.

 

OK. Baseline results prior to tear-down and re-paste.

CPU hits throttling and 97C during the start of an OCCT test. Temps settle to OK range after boost stops and runs at about 2.8GHz with temps around 65-77C. Still have un-even temps showing the cold-plate is not mounted flat as is.

TimeSpy hits Throttling FAST!!! Like on...90C! Firestrike ramps a little bit starting at about 84/85C then quickly hits 90C. Idle isn't great at about 48-54C. Something is wrong with that mounting for the GPU die area.

SSD testing with CrystalDiskMark 5.2.0

Firestrike

TimeSpy

OCCT CPU 30 Min test

 

I guess they didnt teach you that in school would have loved to hear the rest of that conversation. Seems like Dells decline is still in progress. I've already decided to order an Aorus but havent yet cancelled my AW17 order.

 

Honestly, I do still love the AW17 though this experience is definitely testing my resolve. If you can't afford to be plugged in often, switchable graphics/decent battery life is a must. I'll take that over g sync, especially if you can avoid the issues associated with optimus by turning it off on the AW17. According to OWNORDISOWN on youtube, piping a 1070 through optimus causes performance to take a major hit ( ).
That plus the eGPU sold me. People say that Pascal killed the need for eGPUs but I don't believe it. Until people can play any game at 4k 120Hz with a good framerate, future proofing a laptop as much as possible is a must. Loved the aorus, no thunderbolt 3 support though

That said, their tech support is awful. People having issues should not need to know more than Dell's tech support in order to get a proper fix. Situations like that are why my girlfriend always pays more for car repairs.

 

Hi iunlock,

Great job, I love reading your posts!

I am getting my AW 17gtx 1080 on Monday.
Do you take in some more for a repaste?
If yes, please send me a note [email protected]

Thank you so much

 

Email sent.

I believe they are pretty much the same cards except that the 8265 has Mimo, which is not really widely used yet. @Mobius 1 can comment on this as well.

I too have just ordered the 8260 since I don't need the extra features.

The 8260 is about half the price as the 8265, not that it's expensive or anything, but since I won't be using mimo on the 8265, the extra expense is not needed in my case along with others.

 

@ashknani - the 8260 and 8265 is identical, except that the 8265 has the MU-MIMO feature, BUT that requires ALL DEVICES connected to the wifi network to be MU-MIMO (incl a MU-MIMO router)

if even one of the devices connected to your router is SU-MIMO then the entire advantage of the MU-MIMO is gone


8260AC and 8260NGW is the same, they are just different styles of naming. if you need specs look up ark.intel.com (don't trust what sellers say otherwise)

 

I would skip on GSync in a heart beat if anyone offered it with a 1080. I mainly need a powerful workstation and when I do find time to game on it I would use something substantially bigger than 17" anyway.

 

Really excited for the cpu fix. Additionally, do I need to replace the thermal pads upon repaste? I haven't bought any...and my unit gets here Monday. D:

 

I would recommend replacing the thermal pads while you're at it. Especially due to the poor quality that Dell offers.

 

Would I just take scissors and cut them to size? Is there a pack of em you'd recommend, and do I need an adhesive for them?

 

Am I the only one finding it crazy that on at 3000 dollar laptop you would have to repaste and apply thermal pads yourself just to get it usable? And that the designers doesnt even know how to attach a CPU properly to the MB?

 

no laptop, no matter how expensive, will actually perform as good out of the box compared to after you use LM and fuji pads

 

You should not expect the best temperatures with stock OEM thermal paste, but way over 90C and closer to thermal shutdown is unacceptable regardless of brand. And this is not the norm from any brand either.

 

In my case it's "make it super fast-itis" that's the fault I'm current doing a tear down with iunlock and some others following verifying iunlock teardown instructions (no chnages needed so far) and found the idiots who built my system didn't pull the covering off the thermal paste in the GPU die side. Iunlock had the suspicion and it's confirmed.

Also just looking at the pads for the CPU power phase side, they didn't pull the covering either. So right now there's a QC issue in production that any competent Dell tech can fix just by doing the basics right. Super stupid and makes my baseline tests invalid since it's not working as designed due to some really stupid simple mistakes.

Still taking high resolution pics and about to verify thermal pad thickness. Then more high res shots of the board and component layout.

I'm following this up with a re-paste using Grizzly Kryonaut and Artic thermal pads. So re-paste this go around will be with slightly better than stock thermal pads and compound.

 

Are...are you serious? Experiencing a lot of "I can't even..." after reading this post. Can't wait for your results, though.

 

Has anyone experience problems with the 1080 or 1070 stuttering/FPS drops during gaming with a USB headset? I've also noticed it seems to happen when watching video as well. I have done everything I can think of from a software side to diagnose the problem. Installed drivers, reinstalled the OS, bought another USB headset, etc. Still the symptoms persist with both headsets. It seems to run fine otherwise, although I've had more freezing than I would expect (3-4 times now). The only thing I havent been able to do is get the latest drivers from Nvidia since all the guides i could find wernt accurate in the proper modifications for the driver. Could this be a hardware issue? I would assume if this was software, more people would have experienced it. I'm not even sure how to debug the issue deeper either. Any thoughts??

 

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/New-for-Dell...500988?hash=item465453fc7c:g:WdQAAOSwgmJXzUQR

Found the GTX 1080 heatsink on ebay...verified it's the exact part number for fans and everything. So far it looks like this could be a direct drop in upgrade for GTX 1070 owners for even more cooling ability

 

The MSI GT73VR Titan still has the mux to switch between IGP / DGP even on the GTX 1080 model. If you had the model with the 1080p screen and limited yourself to a single SATA SSD it could probably get over 6 hours of battery life.

 

I know it's a dumb question but how do you make the pads stay in place when you put the heatsinks back ? I never replaced pads before, only the paste... I believe thickness of the pads are the same as in the teardown of the 15'' by iUnlock ?
Also, would you recommend Arctic or Fujipoly pads ?

Thanks !

Edit:
Oops! Nevermind...

 

I've never replaced pads on a laptop before but I've replaced them on Waterblocks on graphic cards which is the same thing. The pads are sticky, not to the point where they will be stuck for good once you place them, but just enough so they won't move once they are on. I've never used the fujipads before but unlock seems to swear by them and I purchased them for my 17 which is coming on Monday.

 

Re-paste went very. Stock was a drunken Monkey running out the building on a Friday night for Beer-30. They left the plastic cover on the GPU paste...so that's why I went straight to 90C and throttled.

Right now CPU temps dropped to about 70-75C from 97C. GPU doesn't throttle and I'll have to take note of temps when firestrike finishes. EDIT: Temps are way more stable. 68C and sits around 1800 on the GPU clock.

Currently thermal pads are the same as in the iunlock re-paste thread EXCEPT the...1 strip is suppose to be 1.0mm vs 0.5mm. Need to find out if this is a difference or a mistake somewhere when he did the original teardown/re-paste thread.

 

Do you still experience uneven core temps even after repaste?

 

This is what I mean when claiming that the QC on Dell these days are just not there. Which would perhaps be ok for a cheap budget laptop, but not for a premium laptop. No way.

 

Can someone upload an image of the larger heatsinks on the 1080 gtx vers.?

 

Well, I have to say I'm not happy with my first AW laptop. There is a really bad CPU throttling issue, my temps go as high as 95C while Prime95 test and 89-90 C while playing GTA V with huge discrepancy between the cores too. I did a repaste with what I had at home (Arctic Silver 5) and saw about 5C decrease, but Holy Cow there were like trillions of screws, it took me half a day to repaste it! I so much regret I've already sold my 7970M Clevo 170EM, it was so easy to maintain with zero issues in 4 years. Undervolting CPU by -150mV gives great decrease in temps (like literally 20 degrees) but it cannot maintain it crashing after 10 minutes of gaming. The same with 125 and even 100 (though it remained stable for an hour and then crashed). I will try 75mV and less, but at 100 the temps were already not too good (80C at GTA V). I would love to return it, but having bought it from US I don't live there, so shipping will cost a fortune

 

"Fan Performance Mode" does indeed max the fans ... at all times. It's way to noisy for me.

I personally use "CPU Performance Mode" ... which seems to be a slightly more aggressive fan profile than the stock one. I never see my CPU over 82C .. and this is with stock paste.

Really no issues at all with CPU or GPU heat ... lucky Best Buy unit ... LOL ..

 

Wow, Hurik that sucks...
I understand how you feel as I don't live in the country where I will order mine as well (my parents will ship it to me). That is quite a risk too... I can't imagine if I have to return it.
I'm waiting for the full report of richiec77 to place my order. But I'm optimistic as it seems that a repaste solves issues in most of the cases.
Fingers crossed...

 

That sucks!! Hopefully everything works out in the end when you use better thermal compound. I wouldn't gone through the hassle using the oldest thermal paste like Artic Silver 5. Other thermal compound could of net you 5-10C better.

 

sold out ((((((((

 

If you're ordering 17 version, there is a much higher chance of a good product and be sure to get good thermal paste too. Also, each CPU is a rather unique unit, I've been reading people undervolting -150mv easily and if have a good one, undervolting will do marvels! Anyway, all the lucks to you!

Yeah, in my country it's really hard to find something good for thermal pastes, so I'll be ordering it from elsewhere. I know AS5 is not good, but imagine what paste did AW use to be so much worse than even this old piece of junk? Why wouldn't they just use a good one in the first place especially since it's so cheap compared to other components? So sad.

BTW, I used THROTTLESTOP for undervolting and did it for all FIVR options (CPU core, cache, iGPU, etc.) by the same amount. I wonder if I should be doing only the core and cache and if so, get better stability?

 

Does any one know when exactly the kaby lake will be announced for AW?

 

Return it and take the loss. What good is it to have a not fully working expensive laptop?

 

When repasting, do you replace all the thermal pads on both CPU and GPU?

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I believe the -150mV that people are referring to is only the core. The other two are typically much more sensitive and don't tolerate much of an undervolt.

 

These are my scores with a +200 core + 330 mem overclock with stock voltage. Do you you think the GTX1080 will have more overclocking headroom? I am also dissapointed from the 6700HQ cpu, its less powerful than my old 3920XM and I need a fast cpu due to 3dsmax vray rendering I am doing for my job. Does the 6820HK in the alienware 17 has any overclocking headroom or because of the already high temps in stock is very limited? I am saying this because the 6820HK without overclocking has practically the same horsepower as the 6700HQ.

 

Yes if replacing thermal pads, best to just do them all.

Correct, the core under volt can not be treated the same as the cache. The cache is much more sensitive and is often best left alone unless one has the patients for some major trial and error turning.

The 6700HQ is much lesser than the 6820HK. If you need CPU power, it is highly recommended to opt for the unlocked 6820HK. There is a good amount of head room on the 6820HK to yield you enough power for your rendering. I work with encoding and rendering myself and it does a fine job on the 6820HK.

 

Dear iunlock, could you please send me an email for getting in contact? I wanted to send you a pm here but somehow I just couldn't find how I can do that (I'm normally definitely not thaat stupid ). I'd like to get in contact with you for a repasting job. My email: [email protected]. Thanks a lot and thanks especially for your amazing work here!!

 

I thought we just had to replace thermal paste ? now we have to replace thermals pads too ? which thermal pads r good ?

 

Email sent

Replacing the thermal pads while you're at it with the repaste is highly recommended as the stock pads will eventually dry out....

I'd recommend Fujipoly thermal pads.. Please refer to the repaste thread for more details.

 

You don't HAVE to but I think what people are saying is that since you've already got it taken apart, doing the pads is relatively quick and an easy way to lower temps just a little more. I wouldn't open up just for the thermal pads if you already repasted though.

 

iunlock
I to need to get in contact with you can you email me as well .. I tried to send you a message not sure it works. My email is [email protected]

 

Yes. There's still a discreptency between cores 0/2 and 1/3. About 10C and gap widens are temps go up. There definitely is an issue with the CPU coldplate mounting truly flat across the CPU.

Very true and at this price point I should not have to tear it down just to get it to function as designed.

Undervolting like overvolting you have to find the balance. It's also a function of the silicone lottery to see what CPU does what. They are not all equal. Sucks to hear your having issues.

Re-paste for me solved alot of issues. GPU only hits 57/58C during Firestrike or Timespy benchmarks. CPU dropped considerably and with iunlock's help, it's currently running at 4.0GHz with temps being 88C on the Core 0 and 74C on Core 3. So YEAH. Still not a total fix on the CPU side. BUT GPU is MUCHO MUCHO cooler!!! Only hit about 57C during Firestrike benching and Timespy would touch on 58C at a few points in the log. This is with fans at full speed.

With fans at normal, temps rise about 10C. Will need to test again to re-verify.

It's a good idea to do so. But during the tear down, the pads were mostly in good shape. Seems very feasible to just re-paste without replacing the pads but there is still the chance of the pads tearing when seperating the heatsink assembly from the motherboard. So best practice is to have some replacement pad available.

My re-paste was with Arctic Thermal Pad which is a 6.0 w/mK material. Could have re-used the stock pads in my case, but since I was doing a verification of information for iunlock's teardown thread, I needed to pull the pads and measure them. Noticed 1 change in thermal pads (GTX 1070 vs GTX 1080) and it might be an error in the original information. Can't say for sure but could be a possibility. But so far it seems like the GTX 1080 heatsink can bolt on to any GTX 1070 board. Still need to verify that by actually trying the mounting.

Paste was used and it is Grizzly Kryonaut. I like it!! I can easily recommend it over Gelid as it spreads much much easier and temps are very good. Price is very comparable to Gelid so it's easy to say for the same $$ get the better product.

The 2 attachements posted will be Firestrike as is STOCK after a re-paste. The 2nd will CPU OC to 4.00GHz and a 100MHz Memory and GPU bump added to the GPU. Still figuring out the GPU side as there seems to be a hard limit with overall power in the package. IIRC Nvidia stated the TDP for the Laptop GTX 1080 would be 165W...and I bump into that fast. So there's room for more...it just seems the card is capped.