Alienware M17x R4 vs Alienware 17 R1 Ranger

Hi, I have been wanting to get the community decision on what you guy's think is the best 17 model between these two and comment why you think it's better. Enter your vote in the Pole above.

One has better performance/upgrades (mostly the same in terms of GPU), one has better design, overall quality, etc. Lets see where the votes go.

 

Ranger because it does not have the audio issue the M17x R4 has from what I know.

 

Some will say R4 because the Rangers NVRAM, but oddly I have had no issue with it or resetting it so its seeming to be more of a straw man to me.

I prefer the Ranger, as the R4 is too gaudy for me personally. I prefer the keyboard, and the chassis for what it allowed for me to mod into it.

 

The Ranger in theory has the CPU advantage, assuming you can cool it, aside from that
Ranger:
-Less external ports
-NVRAM to reset (honestly not that bad)
+Internal ports are all Sata 3
+better iGPU (if you use it)
+all CPU's with a turbo boost can be OC'd without BIOS modding (XTU/Throttlestop)
M17X R4:
+regarded as better built
+CPU is regarded as running cooler (IVY vs Haswell)
+more external ports, seperate HDMI in
-iGPU is worse?
-ODD and MSATA are Sata 2?
-/+ older AW keyboard? (haven't used it so can't compare)
Thats all I can think of, afaik they all support the same GPU's so if you get one and upgrade it to the top config youll get similar performance anyways.

If you're actually considering buying one now a days, I'd ask you to take a step back and look at something like a Nitro 5, sure its a lot more plastic-y and its got the red gamery look to it, but the performance is on par CPU wise (2500U) and the dGPU is much faster than any of the stock options of the AW17 R1/M17X R4, as well as having M.2 and being newer/

 

I don't mind the plastic-y case as long as it's strong enough (and not super flimsy) and brings the cost way down to deliver better specs for less, Clevo is a good example for that (Metabox for Australia). I buy broken Alienware systems now and then to fix up and just looking to see who thinks what over each of these two systems in general, Acer certainly has one thing over Alienware... Custom fan control. :-D

 

I personally like the AW17 R1 over the M17X R4 despite its flaws, but the one downside to me is that it lacks a couple of ports (VGA, HDMI IN as seperate, and a spare ESATA/USB)
If you don't mind the "flaws" I listed above, just go for the the 17 R1.

 

Thanks for your pole vote, even though the pole is just starting it's all towards the AW17 R1 atm, interesting.

IMO regarding the joint HDMI IN/OUT port, in what scenario would you be using HDMI IN and OUT at the same time on the M17x R4?

 

Idk, just a thought.

 

I prefer the m17x, why?
Very hard to cool the top spec Haswells properly and the EC control is finicky, no proper control over the fans.

Both have about the same CPU power, both can be upgraded with about the same GPUs.

And me like the oldschool design.

Have had a ranger myself, so had a direct side by side comparison, chose the m17x and sold the ranger.


Btw, never had any sound issue with the recon 3Di.

 

Im hoping to bypass the onboard audio with a DAC that should be arriving today.

 

I prefer the R4. I just bought a perfect condition with no hard drive and PSU off eBay for $260 , total $280 shipped. I am about to get creative with it ...lol

 

Nice find! I've got a Ranger coming in the mail I got for $160AUD shipped, apparently it works fine but has a dead 880M. The reason for my curiosity in creating this thread as I'll own both systems now.

He was selling an i7 4910QM and I asked him what system it came from and it turned out to be a Ranger so I made him an offer.

 

I've owned them all. I put my vote to M17xR4.

The M17x/M18x days were AW best. The newer 17 R1/18 R1 series had worse quality components. I had no issues with AW 17 R1 or M17x series but I like the ports on the M17xr4.

I prefer the design of the M17xR4. I prefer the sound of the M17xR4. Both are easy to upgrade. M17xR4 can use more power than AW 17 R1 although I think @Rengsey R. H. Jr. ran into some issue with 1080.

CPU wise, M17xR4 should be able to clock the 3920/3940XM higher than a 17 R1 running 4930/4940MX.

I've had 3 3920/3940XM series CPUs and 2 4930/4940MX series CPUs. All of the 3000 series clocked much higher (Each 39XX can do 4.4Ghz easily, 4.6Ghz was doable on all whereas 4930MX, 4.1Ghz eas easy but 4.3Ghz was a challenge, 4.5Ghz was done on a single one).

 

We're at 50-50 for each system atm, interesting... keep them votes coming

 

Honestly, at this point, you should choose which one looks best to you (looks wise) and also whichever you can get with a better config /price.

For example:

M17xR4: i7 3840QM | 32GB RAM | 680M | 3D Display | 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD
AW 17 R1: i7 4800MQ | 16GB RAM | 765M | 60Hz Display | 1TB HDD

In this situation I'd go with the M17xR4 so basically whichever one you can get in better condition with better specs and a better price.

Personally I liked my M17x over my AW 17.

You really can't go wrong with either. They both have basically the same upgrade path with the 120Hz 3D Display.

 

The AW17 I got for $160AUD arrived, I've cleaned it up and installed my GTX 770M and it runs great, it appears to run much cooler and have better fan profiles (fans start up earlier) than my M17x R4.

The GTX 880M does display and the driver installs but the GTX 880M shows an exclamation mark in device manager with code 43, any ideas?

 

If you installed the driver for the 880m and still has that exclamation, it's most likely dead.

I would try to change vbios first to rule out a dead card.

 

I gave that a go as you suggested and used a few different ones for this card but after the flash it was still the same.

I used GPU-Z to make a backup at the start and found that it doesn't show a few of the spec values like memory and such.

 

It mean the vbios is not the proper bios when it is missing some information of the card.

 

This is weird, I tried an older version of GPU-Z I had on my flash drive and it shows some different results.

Edit: I've picked up another cheap AW 17 with another dead 880M but has artifacting and it has the same issue with the yellow triangle, code 43 and missing info in GPU-Z, so I would put this down as a common result of an 880M failure.

 

I have both. I prefer my m17x r4 as its design is best imo. Both have awesome keyboard layout and better build quality compared to later Alienware models (except the area 51m).

 

M17x r4 definitely.
It can handle some serious modding.
Mine has 3920xm running 4.3 GHz at gaming and 4.6 GHz when working alone.
The graphics card is msi gtx 1070 with watt limit sat to 220w.
The whole thing is water/air cooled and powered by 2x 330w PSU connected with a dual psu adapter.

The reason I don't like the Ranger is the fact it can not support a dual PSU adapter because of bios limitations.

 

How did you get past the power limitation of the mxm slot? Common knowledge states its only slightly better than the ranger in that regard.

 

Start a thread and post pics and how to!

 

I too would like to see what you've done Henrik9979.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-m17x-r4-extreme.830546/

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-m17x-r4-extreme.830546/