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

Interesting idea, as I’ve been considering upgrading the GPU to a 1060, however I can’t even get into the BIOS.

 

Might be worth trying to boot it without the GPU in the laptop anyway, to see if it will run ok off the iGPU.

 

Do you have the 120hz panel?

 

Yes I do

 

Thats why you cant access the BIOS, the HD 4600 doesnt support eDP straight to the panel.

The 1060 should work nicely but you will need a GPU to alter some settings to work correctly with the eDP panel (120hz). I would personally go for the 1070 so you wouldnt need a shim for the 1060 as the die sits a little low. It will still work fine with a shim but the temperatures will be a little higher than what should be expected for that kind of card. Either way you will need something cheap that supports eDP so you can adjust for Pascal. IIRC the quadro version of the 660m was what some people used to accomplish that.

I use the 1070 with the 5 pipe heatsink from ebay and load temps are 56c usually, depends on the game of course and if you have a legit cooling pad you can take it lower especially if your not at full load.

 

I was thinking that the 1060 was less effort than the 1070. Moot point however if I can’t boot! Removing the 780m appears to be more challenging than I thought. I’ve unscrewed the GPU board, but I don’t appear to be able to remove it as a unit without removing the 3 pipe heat sink first. I don’t have any spare thermal paste at the moment, so I don’t want to go down that path just to check if removing the GPU helps me boot...

 

If you are careful you can remove the graphics card from the MB with the heatsink still on.

 

Yeah want to be careful removing the heatsink with the GPU still holstered.

Upgrading is a process, and more of a labor of love that CAN test you at times. But now you can get a standard size 1070 as opposed to the beginning with only the MSI 1070n which is non standard.

 

Well that's a bit of a bugger for testing whether or not the problem is that the GPU has died or not - because like TheReceiver says you can't boot using the iGPU when you have a 120Hz screen. Buying a whole new GPU and going through the bother of installing it just to check if that is the problem with your non-booting problem is a bit extreme! Does anyone know if Primate23's boot problems he described earlier are definitely due to GPU death, I thought it was likely, but wasn't sure?

If worst comes to worse I suppose you could buy that quadro version of the 660M that TheReceiver was talking about to test whether or not the GPU has died, but I don't know how much that would cost, and I also don't know if that's the right GPU for you to get in terms of compatibility. You could then follow TheReceiver's advice for a GTX 1070 GPU upgrade if it does indeed turn out that it is your GPU that is dead.

 

Alas, repair shop confirms motherboard is caput.

 

Well, might be cheaper to get a replacement mobo than a new GPU! What you gonna do?

 

Looks like I can get a new motherboard for under A$250, so I’m embarking on that adventure.

Can anyone recommend some good YouTube tear downs to follow? I’ve built desktops before, but never a laptop.

Also, should I do the GPU concurrently? Or get the new mobo working with the stock 780 first?

 

You will need to change some settings first before pascal will run (or likely to be the case) so I wouldnt do that until you get the motherboard running. Minimizing unknown variables is also probably for the better...

 

Anybody experienced backlight failures after replacing the panel on their Ranger? I can see the pixels when I shine a light through the display but the backlight won't come back on. I uninstalled my GPU drivers, ran a DDU, then the backlight comes back fine, but when I want to install the nVidia drivers it decides not to play ball.. Not sure what to do! Anyone had this problem before?

 

So, I just did a clean install of Windows 10 on my R1 as well as swapped the OS drive to a Samsung 840 and moved the HDD to be a spare. Since I did a clean install I no longer have any of the AW programs like control center, and everything I’ve downloaded from dell hasn’t worked. I also ran a benchmark test that said my CPU is functioning at about the 8th percentile, and the GPU isn’t doing much (4900 and 770M). I was going to try and overclock it and try again, but can’t without control center. Any tips?

 

There is no need for control center to overclock, MSI AB can handle that along with ThrottleStop for CPU tuning.

 

Okay, I was able to find the right control center so at least I have that back up for controlling RGB. I’m going to try over clocking with MSI AB and ThrottleStop and see if my benchmarks improve any. Thanks

Edit: seems like any over clocking pretty much crashes it. Topped out at about 31 FPS and averaged in about the 20s

 

I think the correct version is 3.6, let me link it
https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=9t1fg
Also considering you have a 840 series drive, make sure to update the firmware

 

Hi all!

I was eyeing gpu upgrade r9m290x =:> 980m, so I saw on ebay few china bidding 980ms that eventualy go for cca 100 euros. Thing is I dont know why they list them as "Not compatible with 3D 120hz screen".

https://www.ebay.com/itm/nVidia-GTX...500239?hash=item56c7fe028f:g:o9wAAOSwTFRdOC~t

I was interested in what would the final cost be of doing such an upgrade.
As I see it, apart from gpu, I need the 120hz screen, edp cable, perhaps cpu upgrade 4710 =:> ?
Im not into overclocking, just a decent upgrade from what it is now.
I was also eyeing selling the ranger and going clevo but I really like ranger a lot better (looks and feel) then anything out there.

 

If you want to get the right panel, must be the D02 revision ( https://www.ebay.com/itm/183692600507), the right eDP cable ( https://www.waresphere.com/store/lcd-lvds-cable-dell-alienware-m17-r5-dc02c004000-n392w.html), the 4710MQ ( https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-l...994551?hash=item44421d5477:g:fOEAAOSwdAJdPIxn) and the 980M on top of that you may be looking at around 400-500 USD getting it all upgraded. Not sure why the listing for the 980M says its incompatible with the 3D screen but if you want to take that chance on chinese hardware then thats up to you!

 

I have the 4710MQ, thought of upgrading that.
Chinese hardware? Is there any other?

 

I've made a Ranger version of my GPU VRM cooling mod.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-17-r1-ranger-gpu-vrm-cooling-solution.830251/

 

Assistance required please! The MOBO in my ranger died a little while back, and I finally have my machine back after getting a replacement, however I have a couple of issues that I can't seem to get past.

1. The battery (which was fine before the mobo failure) appears to be stuck on 78% capacity and not charging, nor does the machine work without the adapter plugged in. The bios and diagnostics both say that the battery is detected and working fine.

2. The BIOS on my new board is stuck on version A09, none of the dell update utilities seem to be working however, I run the executable, the machine thinks for a second and then nothing happens...

any tips?

 

GTX 880m and earlier will support 3D. Any 9 or 10 series cards will not support 3D

After reading about 120 hz screen upgrade I am now aware why obviously the 980 is "Not compatible with 3D 120hz screen"

And also aware that I'm not interested in 3d infact=)

 

Its not compatible with 3D but will work fine with 120hz.

 

I have a quick question, yesterday evening windows could not detect my second hard drive, I could see it in the bios but not in windows. So I disconnected it and connected it via usb and then put it back in and it worked again. Now the question is: is my HDD dying or could there be a problem with the ranger (sata port, adapter etc.)?
I ask this because I was already planning to replace it with an SSD but I want to be sure there won't be the same problem.

 

My guess is your HDD is dying. A similar thing happened in my M18x. Some days the machine would recognize the drive and other days it wouldn't and then one day it stopped completely. I tried it in another machine and it wasn't detected.
You can try the Dell pre-boot diagnostic. It may pick up an error.

 

Potentially something useful to have for all of us chasing those temperatures down.
My U3 mod experience:
Modding My Cooler Master NotePal U3 PLUS

EDIT: Well, live and learn
I was apparently overexcited with the thing.
Its all about the cooling pad angle, if its angled with the bottom sitting on the table it makes a difference in the airflow obviously.
You can lift that part and while it makes the thing less noisy and has better airflow you kind of lose comfort of the keyboard. So I'm gonna use this setup, pull the laptop down like shown.

 

What's up everyone, i have an alienware 17 (2013) with windows 10 installed. I'm tryin to have my sd card read by the computer but nothing worked: re-installing the realtek sd reader driver, trying to create a new partition, uninstalling and reinstalling usb drivers and so on.

The laptop just doesn't recognize the sd card inserted. It doesn't ever appear in the partitions.

When i go to device manager and select the sd reader, it tells me that the driver is known to have problems with windows so i should contact the producer (error code 48).

Any suggestion to fix this?

 

""The driver for this device has been blocked from starting because it is known to have problems with Windows. Contact the hardware vendor for a new driver. (Code 48)

Click 'Check for solutions' to send data about this device to Microsoft and to see if there is a solution available.""

Same thing
Only mine went BSOD couple of times about a year ago. I had win 8.1 and then moved to win10. I did not get any more BSODs but the Device manager lists as shown. I even bought SD card daughter board to replace it as suggested by someone here but did not get to do it yet. I was about to do it these days but I have a feeling I wasted my money buying since I suspect its a driver issue. I could not find one that works nor did anything else I googled worked.

I also since that time have the following for "Unknown device" in Device manager:

The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28)
There are no compatible drivers for this device.
To find a driver for this device, click Update Driver.

Hardware ID says
ACPI\VEN_CPL&DEV_0002
and I think its alienware osd

As well the Fn+F5 does not work.

 

Bump!
Perhaps if someone kind enough with a working Ranger and WinX would write down what driver versions for the following they have
realtek sd card reader driver
alienware osd

 

I dont think I use either driver, as my card reader doesnt work and didnt feel the need to try to get OSD working

 

Hi,
Download drivers directly from realtek.
I had the exact same problem and official drivers from realtek solved the problem

 

The old AW17 Ranger is still alive. Newer and modern doesn't always mean better! @Ashtrix @Mr. Fox ++

https://hwbot.org/submission/4284821_papusan_cinebench___r15_core_i7_4930mx_880_cb

 

That's from back in the day before everything totally went to heck in a hand-basket and the legacy morphed into a fairy tale.

 

Look at this bro Fox.
The successor 17R2 that Dell launched in 2015 delivered downgraded CPU performance vs. what you were able to get from their 2 years older machines. And i7-4980Hq was the big BGA boy in 2015.

Talk about running everything into Hell. And Dell didn't offer a single thought about offering their new customer base raid support for their new and shiny(no need for that in a gaming book as Dell tech support so nice said). The biggest downgrade of features and performance from any Dellbook in History! If it wasn't for the 980M we would need to go back to 2011 to see equal performance as they offered in 2015. Just sad. The picture says it all...

 

Unfortunately, you are as right as rain, bro. Tragic.

 

What kind of mods are you pulling off for that stunt? Curious

 

I'm guessing none. That was back in the day when laptops were still made (mostly) right, and there was still such a thing as an "Intel Extreme CPU" in the land of laptops. They were unlocked exactly like a desktop enthusiast CPU and firmware wasn't infected with tons of cancer planted by the likes of today's brain-dead half-assed retards that manufacture laptops.

 

That's great but ignoring reality, you are. Anyways.
@Papusan LM+Cooling pad and higher CFM fans?

 

LM, lapping and cooling pad. Fans at max with Hwinfo. Yeah, need 3rd party software for the fans. Dell wasn't interested fix their flawed fan tables

 

Lapping of the die? And did you use the stock fans or mod in some of the higher "turbo fans" that some of the other members rave about?

 

Die and heatsink. Stock fans.

 

Just to confirm, the optical drive port is indeed SATA III?

Also, has anyone had issues with using an mSATA as a boot drive?

 

Yes and no

 

Good day and Happy New year everyone. It appears my 17 display has died and now I am getting the 8 beeps on startup. What concerns me is, when plugged into an external monitor via hdmi I am still getting 8 beeps. Is there a way to bypass the bad display and go straight to an external monitor? Also I looked into replacement displays and got confused on what to buy. Should I stay stock or upgrade to a 3d screen. I currently have an ATI R9 290x and dont plan up upgrading the GPU. Many thanks in advance.

Sent from my HTC U12+ using Tapatalk

 

It might be a corrupted EDID, in which case the display would be fine and only need an new/clean EDID flashed. You won't be able to boot to an external display because of how Dell made their BIOS. If the BIOS doesn't find a specific EDID the system will not POST. You could try connecting it to another laptop and flash the EDID. If that is the problem, the display will still work other than it not playing nice with the Dell Nazi BIOS. Or, if you have another display you can borrow, install it on the AW17, boot to Linux desktop, then disconnect it and reconnect the corrupted display and flash it with the tools @t456 provided a few years ago when that was happening frequently.

 

Thanks Mr. Fox for the quick reply. So after a power drain and cmos clear I was able to get the display to work but with no backlight. Sadly on restart the screen died again and the 8 beeps started right back up. Just for kicks I tried a display test (held down D on power on) and nothing but 8 beeps.

I suspect the LCD may just be bad and may need to be replaced. Would this be heading on the right track? Many many thanks in advance.

Sent from my HTC U12+ using Tapatalk

 

It could be a bad display, or corrupted EDID. A corrupted EDID (firmware) will behave like a bad display. If you don't have the ability to tinker as I mentioned, replacing it should cure the problem regardless of whether it is an actual hardware failure or EDID corruption unless it is the display cable. That can also cause the same 8-beep issue on Alienware laptops.

 

Broken GPU, all AMD cards are lucky to get a few years out of them. Take it out and use iGPU.