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

I have to make confession....
I did it ...I jumped ship
I bought Lenovo Legion Y740 Gaming 17.3" FHD 144Hz i7-9750H 16GB 256GB SSD + 1TB RTX 2070...On route now to Japan

Heres looking at you Ranger...we will always have skyrim

 

Why not an Alienware Area 51M ?

 

Time to use some one else's overpriced garbage for a while.


Price basically...it was refurbished from lenovo..this model had bad light bleed when first released.

 

Hi Guys... Can anyone help me about my Alienware 17 Ranger .. If any of you guys you any idea on how to solve the 8 beeps on my Alienware 17 Ranger... It boots up to 8 beeps..


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The LCD panel probably has the EDID corrupted. See this thread. If not a corrupted EDID, the cable going from the motherboard to the LCD, or the LCD itself could be bad.

*** Windows 10 + NVIDIA WHQL Drivers are Killing Alienware and Clevo LCD Panels ***

And, this thread...

***EVGA Precision X and Windows 7/8/8.1 and especially 10 bricking systems***

Do you have the 120Hz eDP (3D) panel or the 60Hz LVDS?

Have you tried connecting a monitor or TV over HDMI? Some (very limited number) have had success booting that way without 8 beeps to flash the EDID in Linux.

However, see this post for details on a potential fix.

Dell/Alienware thought it would be brilliant to design their laptops in a way that causes the POST operation to halt if an LCD panel is not detected, and that is the cause of the 8 beeps. Clevo was smart enough not to do that. They simply boot to a black screen if the EDID is corrupted and you can generally fix them using an HDMI connected TV or monitor.

 

Reset NVRAM

 

Definitely worth trying.

Easier said than done with the Ranger and Viking. The dumb-dumb control freaks that built them made it unnecessarily difficult. Removing the CMOS battery isn't enough.

Here is how to do that on a Ranger or Viking: Alienware 17 (Ranger) /18 (Viking) Owners** - How to 'Un-Brick' Your Mobo

 

Oh Wow... Thanks for all the reply... I got the 120hz screen


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The other weird thing I never had to do that super involved list of sequences for my machine.

My battery was tossed day 1, since i used the space for additional storage. However I did power drain the system with the CMOS battery removed to get the 5 beep code which then allowed for me to reboot into the OS.

 

The main reasons for doing that ridiculous NVRAM reset procedure with the Ranger and Viking was not being able to boot after trying to undervolt the CPU too much or setting RAM timings too aggressive (probably the 5 beeps, but so long ago now that I don't remember).

The way Alienware designed it to save everything to NVRAM and refuse to turn loose of it unless you used that sledgehammer approach to force it into pooping all over itself was pretty silly. I don't know what they could have been thinking. Any "normal" laptop can have the NVRAM cleared by removing the CMOS battery.

 

5 beeps is the system telling you its ready to boot and re-attempt to POST. When you are having issues elsewhere that is the golden sound to be able to restart your machine lol

Thats what was weird for my system, I never needed to take those drastic measures in order to reset the system.

That all being said, I messed with the Bus clock and killed the audio on the board before I finally threw in the towel for the Ranger.

 

Maybe they changed something after the initial release or fixed that problem with a BIOS update. It was happening to a lot of people in the beginning and Alienware was replacing perfectly fine motherboards under warranty that only needed the NVRAM reset. I cannot imagine how much money they wasted replacing motherboards that had nothing wrong with them.

That's really odd about the BCLK killing the audio. I wonder if it caused some kind of weird voltage spike or something. I've never seen that happen before, but there have been some pretty strange things with certain models. They try so hard to make everything proprietary that it ends up biting them in the butt.

 

The NVRAM screw up for Ranger and Viking was just a light prelude to what would come from this company. 980M, Hybrid bios and the all to weak 180w Psu dropped in with a big bang with their worst move in history.

 

Hi guys
I've got a Alienware 17 R1.
I was hoping someone here my know part number for the ribbon cable, the one that goes to the power button.
I circled it in white on the picture below. I think I damaged it.


What part number are for other ribbon cables. Good to have a spare.

 

Also I was thinking about upgrading CPU.
What's the best I can get for a Alienware 17 R1?
Will I see any difference while playing games?

4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ processor (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/ Intel® Turbo Boost)

I mean, I get like 50%-60% percent CPU load in most games but never 100% but the games sometimes lag (I've got a 1070. So I find lagging games strrange).
So I'm thinking it might be due to CPU. Then then again all 8 cpus show well below 100% load.

 

17 R1 is 4th Generation, I dont think you can get a 7th gen anything to function, if so then I would want to know how and where to get it lol

 

But what's the best you can get? Do you think it will make a difference for games?

 

i7 4930MX/4940MX are the most powerful CPUs you can put inside the Ranger but you may need a better heatsink to keep them under control especially if you want to overclock. The difference in games will vary from game to game as some games are more CPU heavy (such as the ubisoft games), you will surely have some trouble running some VR games on the 1070 without the MX chips (and even with those some games will have trouble), but I think that the difference in game isn't enough to justify the price of this almost 7 years old chips. What I can tell you from my personal experience is that the 1070 with a i7 4800mq was getting me good performance in basically every game with the exception of some VR titles.

 

i7 4930MX/5 pipe allCopper heatsink/LM, 32gb HyperX 1866, turbofans with pwm wire cut mode switch ready for deployment....BUT I cant get stable windows now!

I had legacy BIOS on mbr os disk so wanted a clean install of win10 in full uefi before I would do unlocked bios and all that other wonderful upgrade stuff...but! - no show.

After clean install I have unstable windows that keeps bsoding on me.
Went reinstalling few times over with this and that options...finally I even went for dell site bios 17.
I am exhausted and pretty pissed off

it would bsod even in process of installing windows

then it works, but not much so...keep hearing like usb plug/unplug sounds(its dooing it right now as im writing this) ....my network cards wifi and ethernet goes beserk...bsod
Changed the disk = same s++t
bsod viewer says that mostly the culprits are:

e2xw10x64.sys
Netwbw02.sys
ntoskrnl.exe
ndis.sys
Wdf01000.sys
e22w8x64.sys

googled the HELL out of it but still nothing meaningful
Scanned in every possible way I know of but nothing.

then when it restarts my gpu is nowhere to be seen, not in bios, device manager or else..hidden, yes, but not connected. It appears the next day until bsod, then again the same.

The thing is, I have this pc since 2014 and I just love it and would not trade part with it for anything out there if I dont have to. Some two years ago it started bsoding like this (I was on w8.1) so I went for win10 and it was stable and ok (just lost the realtek card reader, alienware osd) but was working and I was ok with it. Then last summer I started buying few things to eventualy upgrade it a bit and just now I was about to go ahead with it when this came up.

The best thing about it is this virus thing happened so I did not yet go ahead and bought the 1070 and 120hz screen and whatnot so its not full damage.

I am so frustrated obviously right now I cant even explain whats going on
Any ideas would be appreciated

 

I have two ideas.

1. Did the LM leak onto anything?
2. Are you installing windows 10 using a USB flash drive? If so, have you tried using a different drive to install windows?

 

No LM at all, I was gonna do that later on 4930mx, maybe...
USB? Yes, that was my concern too, going for the other one tonight.

 

so ok, dont know if its too soon to tell but seems stable now after finaly amd gpu driver properly loaded.
the trick seems to be loading it while network is offline, go figure....the solution came by chance, i was unintentionaly offline
it even reads properly as r9 m290x gpu in device manager now
i have done all kinds of combinations until that, installing and reinstalling windows, drivers, whatnot...
hope that is it and that it remains stable...ill let you know in few days

 

Hello!
I wanted to ask a quick question, as maybe someone has encountered similar strangeness - from time to time my disc drive is making initialisation noises, with no rule when it comes to frequency. There is no disk inside, it just puzzles me. Any clues?

 

Maybe it's just coming out of sleep?

 

I'm considering unplugging it, since it wakes up during gaming, watching movies and so on.
EDIT: the Ranger has one or two m.2 drive slots? The Dell specs aren't helpful :/

 

One.

Edit
https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/...aptops/alienware-17_reference guide_en-us.pdf

 

Yes the reference guide doesn't even mention the first m.2 I've looked through it. Gonna have to clone the drive from 256 to 1TB

 

Ok, do I've plugged in a second m.2 drive via B&M adapter to the empty SATA slot and it's a no-go. The SSD is only showing a red diode, and it's not even visible in BIOS. I'm gonna check SATA settings later and/or attempt to clone the main drive with external SSD adapter, but so far it's kinda weird...

 

Still no success with the m.2 drive, it seems that my version is before m.2 support, all I have is MSATA. However, what got me curious, what exactly is this port, circled in the picture below? It's labelled DMC. Some sort of multimedia card, or what?

And, furthermore, is it possible to get the card reader to run? While installing it says that this device was disaster prone and that it will not work. Was anyone able to get it running?

 

Dont get it.
Ranger has Interface SATA 6 Gbps
its mSATA*1 & up to *3 2.5-inch hard drives, not m.2
Why would you want to put m.2 over some adapter?

btw, handy pic, im about do dissasemble

 

Picture taken from the NBR manual

The thing is I didn't have time to disassemble and check before orderng, hence I got a fairly decently priced 1TB m.2 SSD. Too bad it won't fit.

I guess the way to go would be to put this drive in the Alpha R2, since it has only 256 or so.

 

oh, sorry..looked at earlier posts

dmc seems to be display mini card - whatever that is
ill soon find out if its there

no, no working card reader here for ...hm...two years now!?
the same time i switched to Windows10, thats probably why
I have another one which I bought that long ago thinking of replacing mine
Ill replace it now but I dont think it will work either.
Dont use it that much, only when copying from camera and I got used to the cable now or sometimes i pop the sd card into the ex monitor which has a slot

 

I've done some reading about this long abandoned Display Mini Card, and it seems that it was supposed to substitute PCIe. So... Is it possible to plug an mSATA drive into it?

 

You will have physical obstruction issues with msata, but I had ran a USB 3.0 adapter which I plugged in a USB powered hub and had 3 additional drives running off of it for a bit.

 

So... It happened by some unexpected coincidence that I'm getting a CLEVO 1080 Mobile. Can anybody point me in the general direction of Ranger hardware mod to fit this beast in there? I've seen Khenglish mod for CLEVO, but that was electrical modification, I wish to see a road already travelled on th Ranger. I believe I've seen it somewhere around this forum, but can't find it now :/ or, if it's too difficult or annoying, I am also willing to sell to anyone looking for a 1080Mobile for around 400$.

 

The people that have tried were unsuccessful.

This is due to a few things, the 17 R1 can only output about 118w on the MXM slot before the system board throttles it back.

Your best bet is going to be looking at the GTX 980 DT MXM mod, you'll have to google for it I dont have the link anymore. In on some alienware.de type forum.

 

If I remember correctly, that exact mod involved diverting some of the power from the internal power supply cables to the supplementary power connector on that GTX 980 MXM module, effectively bypassing the 120 watt GPU power limit on the Ranger's motherboard (I think the TDP of that card was 200 watts). I'm assuming something similar could be done for the GTX 1080.

Having said, that, fitting the Clevo GTX 1080 into the Ranger will require extensive chassis modding and definitely a custom heatsink. I'm not trying to discourage this mod or anything, it would be very interesting to see the end result, but I personally think it's better to wait for the standard form factor Turing MXM modules to come out this november (this is a big maybe, but may happen).

 

I have definitely seen one somewhere. I remember pictures of grinded down parts of chassis and the radiator to fit the tard-form-factor. And cutting a small line in the MXM slot, since the CLEVO is asimmetrical. I am extremely tempted by this idea...

EDIT: dang, looking at the bottom of an M17XR4 I think it might've been this one. 17 R1 has less space, this one has some room on the side of the card that is pouring out of the 3.0b form factor. Since this laptop (with 120Hz screen, of course) supports Pascal+, I am inclined to try. Chassis mod won't be too painful for me, since I have 3 or 4 of them now, there is no divider between MXM compartment and the HDD caddy, but gonna have to say goodbye to the second HDD, the only problem may be power throttling, I don't know the exact output specifications, but maybe, maybe... Even getting it to run would be a success, not to mention a fairly satisfying challenge gonna need to get the eDP cable first, can't find it anywhere :/

 

40 pin eDP cable for the Ranger? Yeah they're pretty hard to find nowadays, but you can usually find some with the correct keywords. The R1 was marketed as the m17x R5 as well. The part number is N392W.

Link: https://www.amazon.com/ZHENHUIYOUYUE-DC02C004000-CN-0N392W-N392W-0N392W/dp/B074V4ZQCJ
Another link: https://www.amazon.com/HK-part-Screen-Alienware-Display-DC02C004000/dp/B07DK81PPB
Yet another link: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=N392W&_sacat=0

 

Not necessarily, but you will have to say goodbye to 2.5 Inch drives. Might be able to get away with a msata or m.2 SATA drive with an adapter.

 

I've got one got one for the Ranger, I need one for the R3/4. None of my usual suppliers seem to have it or even respond due to covid :/

EDIT: unless these too are interchangeable? Has anyone tried the eDP from the Ranger in R3/4?
EDIT 2: yeah, that was a dumb idea, R3/4 uses 50 pin eDP, while the Ranger uses 40 pin...

 

Hello
I have this laptop with a 765m and I just ordered a 970m.

I've read this thread and others but still not sure if existing thermal pads will be fine or if I need to buy new ones and what thickness, maybe some 1mm and 2mm to be on the safe side?

Thank you guys

 

All depends on the distribution of the card, as different ones have different layouts, for example Aetina has memory chips on both sides, while MSI has them only on top. As a general rule, if thermals were used for a couple of years it would be wise to change them to new ones, especially when there is a lot of dust and gunk on them; they also lose their efficiency over time. Switching to a more power hungry card with more heat it should be good to replace them with more 'pro' pads. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut/Conductonaut combo is my go-to solution.

 

Thanks for your reply

yes but it's thermal paste and liquid metal not thermal pad with a certain thickness like for ram modules ?

 

Kryonaut or IC Diamond can be used as a pad supplement.

IC Diamond is perfect for that, while it's somewhat difficult to apply due to its consistency, it has marvellous thermal transfer capabilities. I've read around the forum that the trick to get it less solid is to seal it in a plastic bag and pour warm water over it to get more plasticity out of it. Be careful not to get it set though, for obvious reasons

 

Thanks for the infos, TDP between 765m and 970m according to wikipedia is only 10w difference (65w versus 75w) and since I'm not an expert I may end up repasting the gpu die only. The cards looks pretty similar too, a 780m versus a 970m on this video, the one I ordered looks exactly the same:

 

Rather use K5 Pro who is intended for this use.

 

Very interesting product again, but I'm not sure I would know how much to put but more importantly isn't it any risk of short-circuit between components.

 

No risk an there is guides on YouTube.