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

throttling seems to still be for SLI and i haven't seen anything on a single card setup.

 

It had been fine with fans that worked as they should. Now is the max speed/profile of the fans crippled. The fans run with over 13% lower speed than what they are designed for. Thank you Dell. A fan profile which is designed for mini laptops that are intended for email or web browsing. An unlocked bios/Ec is preferable .

 

Unless someone can figure out how to flash a non-Dell BIOS we won't see any improvements, I'll be very surprised if we see any BIOS updates after A14. The fans can be fixed with $3 of materials and 30 minutes of your time if you can cut holes with a dremel and do basic soldering.

 

i thought someone over at the tech inferno forums had, maybe it was svl7, i can't remember.

 

AFAIK the only option is a new BIOS chip that has to be soldered in. Once the MX CPUs drop in price I'll be picking up a new CPU and I plan to look into the new BIOS chip assuming the soldering work isn't too difficult.

 

i would like to get a 120hz panel

 

This does not help on the max speed on the fans and the fan profile. The speed and the fan profile is crippled with bios/Ec.
The only consolation is that this problem is much worse in the new crippled Aw laptops aka trottle machines .

 

The BIOS chip only unlocks the BIOS, I really doubt we'll see any mods for the EC and its easier to just bypass it anyways. My switches wired into the PWM wire let the fans run at max RPM, my GPU fan runs at 4300 IIRC and the stock CPU fan runs at 5300.

 

Nice. What about the fan profile? 0 or max speed in varied use?

 

With the switch on it sends the PWM signal fine so the fans run from the automatic table like normal. Otherwise with the switch off it stops sending PWM which means the fans run at 100%. Works great for my uses, when I play a game I can turn the fans to 100% and they stay there until I flip the switch back on. I've run them for 7+ hours playing GTA 5 and have no problems except more dust in my heatsinks.

 

I have opened my Aw17 again for dust cleaning for the first time after 5 months use. I know the length of time since I did this job last time because I remember the date when I flashed a new vbios and applied new thermal paste on gpu. It was February 10, 2015. I realized before I started this job that there was no dust in my laptop; because the processor and gpu keeps the same cool temperature as always. I use homemade fan filters from my wife's used nylon stockings. This works brilliantly. So these filters costs nothing.. Lol. Posts some pictures so you can see the heatsink and fan before cleaning. There is almost no dust in the laptop because of the cooler and fan filters. Genius. This is the best solution against a dust problem in any laptop. Remember I have a large dog(Dobermann) and also a cat so it is difficult to keep away dust at home. Such a cooler and Liquid Ultra paste is the best thing that you can use to keep the laptop cool and almost dust free. My laptop is turned on 16-18 hours a day so it was odd that I not find any dust in the laptop. The fans are of decent quality. The processor, gpu and fans ar decent overclocked LoL. 12v fans overclocked to 15v if I run them on maximum speed. 2X140mm and 1x80mm. Some of the best fans from Noctua. They are expensive but of very very good quality with high air flow and static Pressure.

 

Sexy use of your wife's stockings! ;-) That's a cool mod though! I've noticed the same thing with my laptop cooler - I don't have sexy nylon lingerie based filters on it (not any filters actually), but because the air takes an indirect path from the cooling pad fans to the underside of the laptop, then the dust collects in the cooler & not in the laptop - similar to you I just clean out my cooler & the dust hardly collects in the laptop because the cooler is trapping the dust instead. It's a good approach!

 

Will try these mods soon, have u3+ already

Spoiler: custom BIOS chip

Regarding the Svl7 BIOS chip mod might need some serious soldering skills and the things that it might fix/add should be...

-M17x R4 type PEG/SG switch (maybe?) & Some other bios options from the similar machines with InsydeH2O bios like M18xR2, Stupid NVRAM bios crap goes bye bye, welcome to OC friendly BIOS and CMOS reset will actually work..lol

-It cannot (?) fix that Maxwell full-UEFI requirement (very sad as the Optimus only is fine, PEG throttles. Prema's magic should only fix that (WIP) ) as it the needs a UEFI-GOP certificate to support the new GPU for the InsydeH2O VGA for Legacy BIOS boot.

-EC values are hardcoded, thanx to retarded Dell Private corp. for killing Alienware..

 

I'll just have to find a modded vBIOS to see what kind of OC I can get.

 

There are still some small benefits with a wife/partner . The only thing I avoid is using her mesh stockings. These do not work equally well as a fan filter. These fit best on my wife. LoL

 

Try TechInferno, I can't remember what GPU you have, but svl7 did Kepler unlocked vBIOS as well as 980M/970M unlocked vBIOS, and Prema has done Maxwell unlocked vBIOS too.

 

Haha, exactly!!

 

I have the GTX 970M 6GB. I'll take a look there.

 

is this panel compatible with an alienware 17 R1 provided i had the right cables?

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/NEW-A-17-3-F...051?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e74d45bbb

 

damn, can't buy the cable i need from aliexpress cos they don't like my visa debit card

 

Too bad.

I'm still on my quest to find an IPS panel for my Ranger. Seems the new panel on the 2015 R2 won't work.

 

URGH! I had to pay twice as much on ebay for the cable so that was something i didn't want to do but it was necessary. so will order the 3d panel soon though i don't care much for the 3D part of it - just the 120hz bit.

 

What's the best place to buy the 120hz panel and cable? Search eBay or are there sites that sell the panel and cable


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Aliexpress has a few listings but I couldn't buy them as I don't have a full credit card, only a visa debit card.

www.laptopscreen.com has the panels but no cables. The screens are a plenty it's the cable that's the hard bit. I might order a panel soon.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

That's good. The 3D won't work with your 980M anyways.

 

I haven't ordered the panel yet so will probably do that tonight.

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You won't regret it. The 120Hz Truelife is literally the nicest laptop display I've ever seen. It beats out 99% of the desktop monitors I've seen as well.

 

I wonder if it's a TN or IPS panel?

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It's TN. 120Hz+ IPS displays are just starting to come out and from what I've heard they still struggle with the usual IPS problem of higher response time.

 

the new IPS panels in the R2 are 30-pin and won't fit the R1's 40-pin sockets.

might order the panel now

Here's a history of my upgrades:

(+) means added, (-) means removed, (*) means sold

AW17 R1 system
(+) Windows 8.1
(+) 120GB MSATA SSD
(+) 2 x 750GB HDD
(-) 500GB HDD
(-) Windows 7
(+) Blu-ray drive
(-) DVD drive
(+) GPU Fan
(-) GPU Fan
(+) 256GB MSATA SSD
(-) 120GB MSATA SSD (*)
(+) GTX 980M
(-) GTX 780M (*)
(+) 330W PSU
(-) 240W PSU (*)
(+) 2 x 8GB Corsair RAM sticks
(-) 4 x 4GB Samsung RAM sticks (*)

soon I'll be adding to the list...

(+) Display Cable
(+) 120Hz panel

You can kinda guess how much i have spent on this thing! it no longer resembles the stock system.

 

It does not matter what this has cost you. Is the C******* Aw17R2 an alternative? LoL

 

just hurry up and get a 980m already LOL

 

I'm not the big gamer. Goes well with my oc gtx780m yet. But it tempts with gtx980m. It's just that the price of this graphics card is higher where I live. About 20-25% higher than what you paid i think. The Norwegian government charge a high tax on everything over $ 50 purchased in foreign/overseas countries .

 

oh,

EDIT: anyone dare try the 10240 build of windows 10?

 

That's what I found out also. I'm really wanting an IPS panel for this, since I have a really hard time with the colour-shifting on even the best TN panels. But it looks like that will never happen.

 

gonna see if using a 120hz, which forces the AW17 to run in dedicated mode, will force windows 10 to not break.

 

Got my 980M today, just played GTA 5 for an hour and a half, max temp with my GPU fan running at 4700 RPM was 52C!

Gotta get me that unlocked BIOS and see how far she goes!

 

Wow amazing temps! I'm tempted to snatch a 980M myself for the performance upgrade but I got a feeling I'll need to get a 330W PSU because this 4910MQ is so troublesome.

I'm also wondering how windows 10 is gonna work with our systems, I'm not a big fan of windows 8 so i'm drooling for the new OS update.

 

does a higher CFM fan actually reduce the temp if so i might get a higher CFM fan?

I haven't dared to try going from previous builds.

 

Excellent, some good upgrades. (I think you do know that you can't use Optimus with 120Hz, and given you've got a 980M that means Windows 8 (check), GPT partitioned disk, and 'pure' UEFI (no legacy boot)).

 

I meet all the criteria. Just got to order the panel. The cable got shipped so just waiting on that.

Though honestly if someone figured out how to get gsync panels to work then I'd buy that over the 120hz panel.

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I think after so much controversy with this Insider preview / Tech preview, the Win 10 seems to be a greater compromise in user control and CPU performance (haswell to be specific).
Win8.1.1 is much much better over the 10 ATM (Full UEFI is there alr for Maxwell, DX12 games are not going to come any soon, even if they do the DX12 CPU perf boost will be not much useful on our i7 CPUs)

 

So i guess i'll be sticking with win 8.1 then

 

That link is very disheartening but thank you for posting it, I wasn't going to upgrade immediately but was hoping sooner than later. Now I'm reconsidering upgrading at all, at least until it seems more stable with performance. I don't understand how performance can be that much worse, what the hell is Microsoft doing...

 

this is my guess / a fact tbh...

Spoiler

 

Got my 980M flashed with the modded svl7 BIOS and been running 3DMark Firestrike a bit. Best OC so far is 1337 MHz Core/1400 MHz memory @ 1.1 volts. Max temp thus far is an amazing 72C. Here is my latest Firestrike run along with my best 780M OC run, 1050 MHz core/1400 MHz memory. 780M got 6382 GPU core while the 980M gets 11096.

780M: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/5002479
980M: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/5431406

 

Wow amazing OC. I haven't ran fire strike in a while but here are my scores with 3dmark 11 http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9640830. I'm hoping 980Ms drop a bit more in price and then i'll be looking to grab one cause the performance is almost double. Also ghost has me intrigued with a 120hz panel.

 

I'm going to download 3DMark '11 demo and I'll post my score in a few minutes. The big thing for me with the 980M is temps, I had to struggle to keep my 780M cool and usually ended up running it stock with an undervolt... which wasn't bad. Desktop watercooling has really ruined my tolerance for high temps.

As for the 120Hz panel, I'd definitely recommend getting one they are amazing displays!

edit: 3DMark 11 results: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/10063546

 

if you can find the fracking cable first!

EDIT: Panel ordered!

Here goes nothing!

 

Aw17R1 and your former old gtx780m could do better than this http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/5002479/fs/4951101

Your Aw17R1 and gtx880m should run a better 3Dmark11 score. Put on a little Overclock then this becomes better... http://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/9640830/3dm11/9860543