Any Point Resurrecting My Alienware 17 R1?

Many years back I somehow messed up the GPU and the original 60hz panel. I upgraded to the 120hz panel and then figured out that the GPU was most likely overheated and I would need a new one.

I'd need a new charger too since my dog chewed the old one a few years back.

I was wondering if there would be any point in trying to fix it considering that it would be more of a passion project as I don't really have a need for it.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

 

You can still install 1060/1070 which would make it quite viable but it comes down to cost naturally if you can personally justify it.

Also debating if I should rebuild my 17 R1, probably will sooner or later...

 

Thanks for the reply, I think a 1060 would be great for some gaming on the go.

You are right though about justifying the cost, the notebook has no chance of competing against my desktop.

Just curious though, are there any extensive modifications required to install a 1060/1070?

From my understanding, these are the GPU form factors I should be looking at right?
1060
1070

Also any considerations to take for the power cable if I choose either of these options?

 

I would just stick with the 240w, 330w would be good if you were doing a lot of OCing but you would have to work really hard at it.

I had to use a shim when I had a 1060, later sold it and grabbed the MSI 1070n

For a card I would look in the marketplace for a better deal. I was able to get my 1070 for sub 400 USD

 

I see, I'll keep an eye out for a better deal.

So installing the 1060/1070 would mostly just be a plug-and-play procedure? I've seen the other posts mentioning stuff like bios modifications and etc when upgrading to their new GPUs.

Thanks for all the info so far

 

Unlocked BIOS makes things a little easier but isnt explicitly required

Full UEFI and Legacy Boot disabled, 120hz eDP panel, Win10

Make sure to keep the 780m, as with pascal installed you lose access to the BIOS so you will have the 780m installed while you make the preparations and then switch it to Pascal card.

From there you will need to modify the .inf of the nvidia drivers. I had help from the members here regarding that last part as I didnt understand it well enough to do it myself.

Depends on the type of card you get to whether its plugnplay, most require some modification but there are cards in the wild that dont require it.

 

Alright, thanks for the clarification.

I think the first order of business would be to find a new power cable/charger so I can actually boot up the notebook.

Will update in the future if I ever decide to go through with fixing the notebook.

 

Is this a Ranger thing? I still have access to the BIOS in my M18x with the 1070 in UEFI.

 

I suppose it could be, but it also could be that you are on SG mode as opposed to PEG. Maybe you can try and get around this with external monitor, not sure, never bothered as I had limited space in my room at the time.

 

Yep, that would be it. Hadn't thought about that

 

I'm able to access the BIOS fine with my 1060 installed, so I went ahead and sold my old 860m. This is with the 120 Hz screen installed so the machine is running in PEG mode. I'm using pure UEFI boot settings as well. The only thing that changed for me is that I can't lower the screen brightness when in the BIOS anymore.

 

I would say probably not unless you have some sentimental attachment to that particular machine. New stuff will blow it away fairly easily.

 

That is very true. A 1200 dollar laptop especially with a newer CPU and gpu will blow anything with 4 cores in very cpu intensive games out of the water. You are better selling it and saving up for a newer alienware. Especially now with the RTX 3000 series and the new ryzen/intel cpus that are coming out in 2021. These will come to laptops very soon.... I actually sold my M17x r4 that I had with everything after building it completely up to only realize that I sort of regretted building it after the 3000 series were announced.

 

I dont think RTX 3xxx has even been teased yet for mobile, plus rtx 3xxx is very power hungry. Its probably safer to temper expectations until we see some numbers.

If the 17 R1 worked with 4980hq I might be more inclined to rebuild my Ranger, but at present the CPU is the weakest link. That all being said I hadnt run into any title I couldnt play well when using it with my 1070 I had at the time.

 

Well, We can almost expect it to come in mobile form. And yes, the 1070 is still quite powerful in mobile land even keeping up with the RTX cards OC'ed. But my main problem was the CPU these old laptops have max up to. They will in some games bottleneck the card down to oblivion. Gta 5 is a great example how how much bottleneck these cpus are. I was averaging about 40 fps on the highest settings and about 50 on the lowest and the 1070 was sitting at like 30 percent usage. For the price I paid to build my laptop, it was not worth it

 

Its why I wanted the 4980hq to work, but sadly it doesnt. That CPU has potential to hit around stock 7700k speeds but sadly it was not meant to be.

That and I never played GTA5, wrote off the IP after GTA4 had GFWL which rendered it unplayable so it was never considered as an issue to me, but everyone has their own use cases. That being said I had no issues at all playing R6: Siege when I used to play that even at full saturation across all cores. Based on what I am reading about GTA5 though it seems to be a bit of a mixed bag performance wise.

Not saying were not going to see RTX 3xxx, just saying the power consumption is quite high for what we have available currently, maybe the 3070 will show a better performance/power balance, we'll know more once that drops, and then likely another 6 months on top of that.

 

I get what you're saying. Maybe we will see better performance/power balance on the 3060/3070. I know alienware likes to run their harware to the max so I'll keep my hopes that they won't massively thermal throttle on the newer models. Worst case scenario, personally, I'll just go for a area 51m r2 with a 2000 series GPU only at a reasonable price.

 

I dont really have any interest in that platform, its devoid of anything I want from a machine like that, but as you can see I use SFF desktops now, looking to add 4 more drives through the nvme slot, RX 6800XT and maybe 5xxx ryzen pending performance and price of course.

Though I have been working with someone on a different laptop, a thread will be made eventually. 13 R3 had the aesthetic but optimus renders it a paperweight, my t440p sees orders of magnitude more use. I have more interest in building a W541 than using the 13 R3 that I already have. Alienware is a ship that has long sailed, considering all the dead GTX 1080 equipped laptops showing up this past year. Thinking of giving it to my niece for christmas, dont want to deal with buyers on ebay lowballing me or sending me back a broken laptop.

 

I think arguably, the golden era of alienware has long sailed away

 

Hi guys, thanks for all the replies.

Just an update, I decided to install a new 780m in the laptop instead as I don't see myself gaming too much on it anymore.

https://imgur.com/Lpui0zq

 

Hey there, for the past few months I've been also looking into resurrecting a Ranger that I've had laying around for a few years, I'm new to this forum and cant quite find out how to create a new post, if anyone could help me out that would be great! I apologize from diverting attention from Cryometheus, I just thought this thread would be the best place to ask.

 

Hello. Just click on the Alienware 17 and M17x heading and there will be an orange Post New Thread button just to the left of your Avatar.