*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 Ranger (2013) Owner's Lounge Thread

i think it might just be the 359.06 driver. it only fails some times and often a reboot will fix it. it's more of an annoyance than a hardware failure or anything.

edit: i wonder if it is because of the screen shutting off after x amount of idle time?

EDIT2: downgraded to 359.00 and disabled the display from turning off...lets see if that does anything.

 

haven't repasted yet. i have mx4 that should be good enough eh?

 

It's worth a go to see if you get better temperatures. Tests by review sites show that there is not much difference in performance between pastes, unless you go for the more dangerous & conductive metal based pastes like Liquid Ultra; Gelid GC Extreme is often shown to be the best non-conductive paste, but MX4 is only gonna be a couple of degrees off that at the most.

 

CoolLaboratory Liquid Ultra, ICD, Grizzly Kryonaut or Gelid Extreme. In this order
@Robbo99999 Longevity is almost as important as good temperatures. Did not get this with Gelid Extreme on my Hotwell Extreme. Max a week with benchmarks. More like 3 days Tests done on desktop hardware is not as relevant to laptops. This is been proven many times.

 

this thread looks interesting if it can work with the R1.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ctor-an-external-pci-e-x16-box.407071/page-29

 

added more ram: now with 24gb of ram goodness.

 

You should be glad you did not purchase Aw17R2. 16GB limit aka 2 x 8GB Not to mention full BGA

 

Hey guys

Hoping someone can shed some light on a (very) peculiar issue I faced last night.
So I started experimenting a bit a couple days ago with a dedicated setup (I used FN-F5, installed modded nv_disp) and so far everything was working fine. The only issue I faced was a black screen upon trying to install the 361.43 drivers. So I ended up using 359.12 instead. So far so good.

Last night, I decided to tinker a bit with the Alien CC and put back some custom lighting effects I had before my last format. As soon as I changed the lighting color of the first zone on my keyboard, I got a black screen. The light did change on the keyboard but I couldn't see a thing on the screen except the mouse cursor that kept flickering. I had to do a hard shutdown. When I started the computer, I got a white square in the middle of the screen... 2nd hard shutdown... 3rd time was the charm and I was able to log in to Windows.
First strange thing I noticed was an icon on my desktop for Nvidia 3D. I quickly went to device manager and somehow saw the 980m driver downgraded to 344.48 (!!!). I had to clean everything with DDU and reinstall 359.12

To be honest I haven't tried setting the AW CC since then but I still don't understand what the heck happened! If strange things keep happening with dedicated, I just might go back to Optimus...

 

So Hi Everyone,

My name is KB and for a year now I have been running a Stock Alienware 17R1 with a 880m , 16gb 800mhz ram and a Intel i7 4910MQ. After somebody told me this system is an excellent system for overclocking I started looking into it and now i'm hooked. My Alien's CPU is now running 4,0Ghz and my GPU memory is now running +700mhz which gives it a Firestrike score of 6257 and it is exactly fine tuned without any artifacting. What I am looking for right now are mods. EASY mods,
I'm not a technician and what I want is my CPU to be cooler now its running into the 90-100 range and I want to cool it down. I've heard about new CPU Fan's and GPU fans from older models but I don't know which one EXACTLY to order because it is so confusing. I hope to visit here more often because I never knew this existed

-KB

 

For the processor I can recommend Liquid ultra. The best paste on the market. You can also use the manuel fan control in Hwinfo64.

 

Hey guys

So my 980m died (if you're interested in the full story you can check the threads where I posted the details on the sad sad demise of that GPU...The memory on it died... can't find a single instance of that happening online but yeah, that's my problem) and I am back on using my 880m while I sort out the warranty stuff with Eurocom...

When I first bought my AW17, I was getting temps of 39-40 idle and max of 85 (low 80's with a cooling pad) under load. I reinstalled it now using Gelid Extreme as a TIM... I knew that stuff was good but not THAT good. This is science fiction. I am currently getting idle temps of 32 and max of 71...

Anyway I had a small question. Considering I don't really care about that GPU, I am trying to OC it a bit... While I am able to change and apply settings for Core clock, as soon as I change memory clock and try to apply it, it resets to 0. This happens with both NVInspector and MSI Afterburner. Any idea on what could be the issue? I am on slv's vbios and 359.06 drivers (optimus)

Thx!

 

Oh wow, thats a shame. It was 81%+ ASIC. But there have been known issues with SLV's overvolting burning out cards. Not everyone, but a good 5 cases. I do not recommend overvolting that high.

 

???

Dude, are you mistaking me for someone else again? I am the guy with dead VRAM. I never overvolted a GPU in my life...

I am using SLV's vbios on my 880m. On the 980m I got from you I only ever used Prema's vbios and I never OC'ed that card.
Like I wrote above, I am only messing with the 880m because I don't care about that card much...

Back to my question regarding the 880m, any idea why I can't change memory clock?

P.S: ASIC for the 880m is 86% by the way.

 

your right, I confused you for someone else. My bad. Sorry been up for like 18 hours losing my mind at this point..lol

You know what makes it particularly hard, when a dozen people send me private conversations instead of using a thread to talk to me, and in the header it says 980M or something... I go in circles and confuse people.. so bad...
CC me on support, so I can help, and know when convo starts. Because of the conventions in vegas right now, an RMA could be a bit slower then usual, and I just want to help if I can. (probably some sleep would help too..haha)

I went 6 months without a single card I sold having an RMA, but nowadays there's about 1 every month or so, half the time its physical damage from things like over tightening, on occasion - just a dead card with no signs of why, but its all in the numbers, still less then 1% overall.
I just don't want you to think I threw you a lemon or a dud and ran away, I stand behind it, and the quality of it, even if I'm too tired and loopy at this point to remember who is who (lol, sooo tired...).

 

so skylake lets you have 64gb of RAM but in the R2 and R3 they only let you have 25% (16gb) of it......WTF?!?! at least with the R1s while haswell only has access to a max of 32gb I can at least access all of that 32gb.

 

R3 can unofficially use 32Gb ram(tested). But Dellienware would not or will not provide support for more than 16GB ram High end of 2015/16. LOL

 

so dumb! just as dumb as BGA!

 

Perhaps soldered memory in the next round of the destruction of this brand... Perhaps also no internal Nvidia/Amd graphics and focus more on the graphics amplifier

 

Lucky me, I am part of the 1%... Like I mentioned in my posts, the card was fine for almost 2 months now. I didn't touch it since installing it. The one thing I did 2 days before the vram died is switch from optimus to dedicated. But I seriously doubt this alone could damage the vram! I really want to focus on "vram" because the GPU itself is NOT dead. I can still install a driver (before rebooting), flash a vbios and see basic details about the GPU in HWInfo and Speccy. The one thing that keeps popping up is the 0/unknown GPU memory....

Anyway Kevin from Eurocom replied to my email asking me to try some different drivers... Do you think you could intervene as I honestly tried everything already and altough not an expert, I am fairly certain by now that it's a hardware issue.
Thanks!

 

yeah pretty fast service, which is good. We'll see where it goes. I think I already had those drivers linked in the thread we were chatting in before, so no surprise they didn't fix the issue.

 

I'm not sure if this would really help, but in your 880m have you tried switching to dedicated and then insert your 980m? When I had my 980m, I could not make it work properly for optimus+dedicated without driver failures. It seems you need to forget the other one, by the way this is just my own experience

 

Hey man

I am done experimenting. I must have tried every single tricks in the book. I am not wasting any addtional mg of Gelid Extreme swapping GPU's till it magically works again.

This is not a new installation. The 980m was working perfectly for almost 2 months. Even if it was an issue with switching to dedicated mode, it DID work in dedicated for 3 days. During these 3 days I didn't do any driver installation, not even a modification to any profile/GPU setting.

The BSOD issue is extremely annoying as Windows does NOT always recover from it and I am honestly done formatting and doing clean installations...

I am just waiting for an update from Eurocom to send back the GPU and get a replacement. I just hope it doesn't miraculously work for them and they insist on sending it back to me "as is"....

 

So I just read about Windows 10 killing Alienware monitors ? Should I fear this because I have been running Win10 since launch. 2 days ago I did the CPU fan mod and I couldnt be more happy for 10 euro's I got a 5-10'C drop in temps on the CPU and it doesn't go higher then 90 while benching so that's fantastic. Now I contacted Dell to get the GPU fan too because that doesnt require any modding. And I never repasted so I'm gonna try that out aswell. Are there any other mods I should know off on the R1 ranger ?

 

Considering mm m17x r3 there have been no noticeable downs on windows 10, I even think the performance inside windows got a little faster compared to windows 7.

 

Well the only upgrades you could do are either to go for a 980m mxm (you will need to mod your drivers though. Easily done), upgrade your hard-drives (mSata SSD, replace optical drive etc...) and if you're feeling adventurous upgrade the screen to the 120Hz one.
I have done all those except the screen upgrade as I am planning to replace my setup with a desktop within a year. The only reason I got a gaming laptop was for lack of space at home, not because I need it to be portable...I am moving to a new house so as soon as I am done with the move I will focus on building myself a decent beast...

 

you don't need to repaste the CPU/GPU when replacing fans.

other things you can do:

• ditch the DVD drive and by and HDD/SSD caddy
• replace all HDDs with SSDs
• Upgrade the GPU: bit more technical but very doable (speaking from experience)
• Upgrade the CPU: also doable but i haven't done it
• Upgrade the screen: very easy (speaking from experience) but the hard bit is getting the parts....when got the screen it was plentiful but the cable was a tough find and took forever to arrive. so if you can secure the parts then definitely doable.

 

Hi everybody!

I could finally upgrade to the 980m (purchased from woodzstack) and trying to make it work on my Alienware 17 R1 (2013 model)
It is there a way to install the video card "without" removing the 120Hz all over and switch to the old 60Hz panel? (like a I read some time ago)

Yesterday night I've did the DDU uninstall but as asks me to go in "SAFE" mode then when restart under "SAFE" mode the screen goes all black... maybe that's because the 120Hz panel?
I had to "refresh"/reset or reinstall windows every time that happens. I don't know if that happens to to you as well.

Using windows 8.1 in 'pure' uefi (uefi + Legacy Option ROM and Fast Boot disable)

By the way does somebody has the proper file to apply to the drivers?

This is the Hardware id of my 980m:

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D7&SUBSYS_05AE1028&REV_A1
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D7&SUBSYS_05AE1028
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D7&CC_030000
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13D7&CC_0300

 

Hey guys first time asking a question to this group but anyone know why when I plug in an hdmi cable to the port my machine locks up and forces me to do a complete system restore?

 

Well I don't know what to tell you, it seems the latest drivers are even worse that the previous offerings by Nvidia.
If I am not mistaken, @thegh0sts is facing exactly this issue when trying to install the latest drivers. He has the exact same setup as yours (120Hz). In his case I believe closing and reopening the lid "fixes" the issue.
He was not getting the issue on the previous driver. I'll let him confirm that now.
In my case, with the 60Hz screen I was getting a black screen no matter what driver I tried on Optimus. The only thing that worked was swiching to Dedicated....

 

361.82 HF is a bust: causing a black screen when loading windows. this is not a problem with 361.75.

initial thought is that the hotfix driver is crashing or ejecting the GPU before it gets into windows. it is definitely a driver issue as going back to 361.75 does not have this problem.

 

Hi! Yes I could find a way thanks to @thegh0sts and @Mr. Fox

So for people like me with an Aw17 R1 with the 120Hz panel always using UEFI and no Legacy Option Rom + no Fast Boot/protection mode

I just had to do a "new" disable of windows driver enforcement + installed modded drivers of 361.75

No problems so far

Most important do not ever go into safe mode.. you'll have to reset/reinstall windows if that happens!

 

no, you can go into safe mode....that's how i do my DDU clean out before installing drivers.

 

Yeah, normal safe mode works fine.
The only rare issues I faced in the past, is if you do a hard shutdown at the windows login screen 2-3 times in a row. It will automatically get you the advanced startup screen and it happened to me in the past that safe mode in these conditions would fail. Same for system restore. I was forced to do a clean install of windows...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Well it didn't for me.. and had to use DDU without going into safe mode.

Going into safe mode get my screen all black and eventually show the safe mode letters in the borders if I move the mouse.

 

God this is awful, so many issues with pure uefi.

Have a doubt, If we use the below cmnds with an elevated cmd prompt and restore the old F8 mode and safe mode from that, would it boot fine ?

Code:

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

Does the optimus + maxwell work or broken ? Multiple reports are very confusing...
@nick81 , shed some light on this if you don't mind, thanks !

And for installing card,
First I should get the Windows8.1.1 Installed onto full UEFI, GPT drive, then plug in the card ?
Or
Can I do it with card plugged in with UEFI boot on, then proceed with UEFI win8.1.1 usb installation ?

I presume for 120Hz machine we need to have the UEFI boot OS (Win8.1.1 / win10 )installed ?

 

What GPU are you getting?

 

980M (Don't have it yet, but getting things prepped)
For OS, I'm going for Win8.1 Update 3 Enterprise (+ Metro bloat removed)

 

install the OS first then the card make sure the OS works first

 

Hey man

Regarding your queries, Optimus "should" work fine but as I mentioned, it stopped working altogether with my 2nd 980m and the only way I managed to avoid black screens on reboot, was to switch to dedicated mode... I am positive it is an issue with DDU which must be missing some files (i am running it as admin in safe mode) and could be resolved with a clean installation of Win8.1. But I am taking a break from this as in a single month I have done 5 clean installations on my AW and 2 on my work laptop after a failed installation of the latest build of Win10...

As for the installation of the card, definitely go for the 1st method. Install Windows 8.1, install all windows updates without exceptions, latest driver for your intel integrated gpu and THEN install the 980m...

Anyway, I am getting tired of PC issues in general... As Danny Glover said it so well : "I am getting too old for this s***!"...
I can only find about an hour or so to game every night and I've been playing AC Syndicate for the past 20 days or so. So it took me about 3 weeks to reach practically the end of the game (80% completion or so). So I boot the game last night and I get some strange error with Uplay's cloud syncs... And this marvel of cloud technology decides to overwrites my saves... The latest backup I had was from Feb 2nd when I formatted my OS drive .... So I am back at 9% completion now.
So I am taking a break with that now and started playing Rise of Tomb Raider.
This hobby is starting to be more infuriating than fun so I might very well decide to stick to console gaming and forget about PC's for good. I already work in IT so I don't need the additional "Fun" when I am home...

 

Found this interesting information. Why Win7+ UEFI won't work on AW, as-usual M$ mafia. Mr. Fox posted this, now I remember when I was reading through this...GOP.
src

 

You don't need any of the Intel or nvidia drivers to switch to dedicated, just the OSD in order to switch.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Yeah I know that but whichever boot mode I switch to upon disconnecting the PSU the OSD warns about that optimal battery to switch to a switchable GPU environment.(After this 860M gone dark)


So I'm unable to know which mode is it in.

 

device manager is where you go! if you see only 1 then it means dedicated, if you see 2 it means optimus.

 

Well my GPU is dead, it doesn't show up anywhere .
I think the dGPU / iGPU mode doesn't matter much with a new GPU install. Guess tho

 

then it means you're in optimus mode then. you don't have a spare DGPU to test?

 

nope...

EDIT : Waiting for the cash to come in..

 

oh....ok. then unfortunately you're SOL till a DGPU comes. hopefully not long and the install isn't painful.

 

the latest drivers are garbage!

OK, so i've installed these drivers into my laptop which has a 120hz panel and I was recommended to set it to 60hz before uninstalling the nvidia drivers. I did, wiped the old drivers and installed the new drivers with no issue.

BUT

as soon as I set my display back to the full 120hz and rebooted I was greeted with a black when transitioning from UEFI into Windows 10. To make sure the previous boot wasn't a fluke I set it back to 60hz and again it loads fine.

I have no idea why but now I can't use the full refresh rate of my panel and I think nvidia broke something between the 361.75 and the 361.82 hotfix driver cos I believe it is the same problem.

So now I can't use the full 120hz. Thanks Nvidia!

 

Are other 120Hz screen users reporting this bug, I'm wondering if it's related to the fact you're using a non-standard GPU and we already know that the setup of the system has to be very exact to get 980M to work in dedicated mode? I'm definitely not saying that you haven't set up your system correctly for 980M - you have, otherwise it wouldn't work at all, but I'm just saying that maybe the system is 'finicky' when using a 980M in dedicated mode & more open to NVidia driver install problems.

 

One of the reasons I ordered Clevo P870 is that I can not stand the problems with Gtx980m + Aw17 + every new Nvidia driver. I had to pay +$ 1,100 for such problems aka upgrade to Gtx980m. Nvidia, micro$haft and Dellienware sucks .