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

I have tried overclocking specially since my 880M doesn't go beyond 73-74C while gaming but while testing the overclock it crashes out on Unigine heaven. I don't know if it's because I'm on the latest nvidia drivers and I do remember a while back they limited the drivers from overclocking. Or it could be from the card itself not being very overclockable. I've overclocked +50 on core and +100 on memory and that's as far as i got before crashing.

 

My oldest son has a gtx880m in his MSI GT70. Overclock like crazy. But his gtx880m has only 4GB of VRAM and not 8 gb such as the Dell cards. He can nicely run the card on +1085/1665. Which driver you are on now? Have you ever tested Mr Fox mod desktop drivers and oc your card?

 

I have not tried Mr Fox mod desktop drivers. The drivers im using are 353.30 and even with +45 on core it crashes which then makes it throttle.

 

Try these:
Finish moded. https://mega.co.nz/#!IgAk3JQR!gQ3RbiPZHpV6LTudV3qGq0jzZ5Gl4RLrmyBiYT7ugA8 same as http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...od-for-780m-880m-and-980m-mobile-gpus.767644/

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...d-for-alienware-and-clevo-mobile-gpus.772018/

 

I just finished trying these drivers and to no avail even +50 on core makes the drivers crash, im suspecting it could be a voltage issue? I do have an external mouse and keyboard plugged into the laptop as well as the cooler master stand, although my CPU is undervolted to not run higher than 80C.

Also i've noticed when overclocking the minimum voltage goes from 0.981 to 0.956V

edit: After playing around with the OC settings the drivers keep crashing and just aren't stable, this has me deterred from overclocking in fear I might mess up my system =(

 

OCing was virtually impossible for me on stock vBios... After flashing svl7 vBios I reached the OC in the sig with stock voltage

Btw at what voltage are u running the 954 core clock and what voltage are u running the 993?

 

What is the thickness of the ODD caddy?

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How are the viewing angles on the 120Hz panel? Can anybody post some screen shots of some dark-coloured game shots from the bottom looking up?

 

I sit directly in front of it so they're fine straight on.

I will start up GTA 5 in a few minutes and bust out the DSLR and take some pics for you.

 

http://imgur.com/a/c3biu

OK, not exactly what you wanted but I did some pics of just the desktop with a colorful wallpaper. The color loss is pretty minor to the sides and top but the views from the bottom get washed out and dark pretty quick. It definitely doesn't keep the color as accurate as my IPS displays do but for a TN panel it does surprisingly well, the pictures really don't do the panel justice. Its very bright and colorful.

I can do pics in game if you want.

 

Thanks.

 

So a change of vBios might be what's needed. I'm running 954 on .981V and 993 on 1.006V and i've seen it sometimes go up to 1.012V. My temps are good, practically never going beyond 75C which is why I think i have room for overclocking.

 

OK guys, with my 980M overclocked I'm pulling ~235W at the wall and last night my charger overheated... I'm looking to go up to the 330W charger and found these on Amazon. They've got good reviews and seem to be the real deal at a good price. Any other place I should get them instead? Thanks!

The unlocked vBIOS certainly won't hurt and, from what I remember reading before I flashed my 780M, there is a good chance the card will become more stable. That and it will give you voltage control up to 1.1V.

You're welcome, if you have a specific image in mind let me know and I can take more pictures.

 

What's your room temp and what games are we talking about?

Games that push lots of vRam usages turns the gpu into a frying pan like dying light and shadow of mordor on these games to maintain 75c I have to maintain 23c room temp and undervolt to 0.975 at 954 core clock

Take care that custom vBios really heats the card because the card doesn't throttle a bit

 

To give you a rough idea on the custom vBios you score at 3Dmark11 graphics around 8600ish at 954 and 8900ish at 993 vs the usual 8500 on 993 with nvidia crappy vBios

 

i got mine off ebay but it was from a discontinued model but it works

 

How much did you pay for it? The $100 one on Amazon is looking good to me because I can have it in two days.

 

Same price but it was a bit more from conversion and customs tax, but it was still cheaper than buying it directly from dell Canada.

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Ended up getting a Samsung pro 256gb SSD cos I don't think I need 1.5tb of storage for games. Gonna move one of my 750gb HDDs to my PS4 and use the 500gb HDD as a spare.

EDIT: will get another 256gb SSD to complete the transition from HDD to SSD.

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gonna order some replacement CPU and GPU fans with higher CFM so hopefully it'll give better cooling.

 

thinking of buying 8gb (2 x 4gb) and use half of it for samsung's rapid mode for their SSDs and make it load apps even faster. so I would have 24GB but 4GB dedicated to SSDs.

 

Samsung RAPID rarely uses 4GB RAM, it normally only uses about 1GB RAM all the time, and then when you write a lot to your SSD (like installing a program, or updating a program) that's when it caches it in RAM up to 4GB on a temporary basis to speed up the writes. I think it mainly just speeds up writes, review sites have tested it and it doesn't speed up application load times even though Samsung says it does. I don't think you need to buy more RAM just to use Samsung RAPID, it normally only uses about 1GB RAM. I have Samsung RAPID enabled on my SSD for a number of months now - no detrimental effects seen - if you update to Windows 10 make sure you disable RAPID first as at the moment RAPID is not compatible with Windows 10.

 

oh ok, was just thinking but thanks for the input. still might get a 512gb ssd for larger games like GTAV and Witcher 3 while leaving the 256gb for games under 15gb (when installed not the compressed steam back up file size).

EDIT: probably not gonna update to windows 10 at this point.

EDIT2: just picked up a 512gb SSD...fun times!

 

I personally keep all my games on a 512GB Crucial MX100 SSD. So I can just move it from laptop to laptop, without having to re-install. And I keep the OS on a separate, smaller SSD.

I really don't see the need for regular HDDs unless you have a massive video/music library.

 

gonna install it soon....what to do with the HDDs? i have 2 750GB 7200RPM HDDs and i put one in my PS4, using the PS4 old 500GB 5400RPM HDD for game backups, so that leaves the 2nd 750GB HDD.

EDIT: should save some cash to get @woodzstack to upgrade my CPU

 

So i'm the proud owner of a 17 now, which needles to say needs a bit of explaining:

I recently sold my trustworthy M17X R4 since someone really gave me an offer I could not refuse. Aside from that I wasn't really using it anyway, way to busy with studying and working.
However a few weeks passed and I acquired another R4 that I just could not let me pass by. In a mint condition like it was never used and it was dirt cheap. So I ended up with another R4 and upgraded the beast a bit. However like the other R4 that I owned the hugely reflective screen always annoyed the crap out of me.

At that point I was thinking of removing the plastic glass cover and replace it with a custom lasercut bezel. However that was plan A and... there was plan a B which involved getting either a cheap precision m6700/m6800 and upgrade the GPU or get a 17 ( both are 17 inch premium build machines with matte screens).

And a few days ago I found a dirt cheap in mint condition 17. So plan B worked uit pretty well (although I have to admit plan A would have been more fun but I tend to switch machines every six months or so and the R4 would have been a lot harder to sell with a modded screen)

So these were the specs when I bought it:
-4710MQ
-32 megs of ram! ( and I actually already removed 16gb and sold it already since 32 megs is just pure overkill for me)
-m290x
-500GB ssd ( sold that one as well and replaced it with a 250gb 850 pro, I will get a second 850 in the future and put those in raid)
-1080p screen ( aou panel )

Please keep in mind that I'm not a hardcore gamer and don't mind lowering some settings to get 60 fps+. All of my R4's had a 7970m which was plenty enough for me (GTA 5 ran with mostly med-high setting with 50-90 fps on 1080p). The m290x is just a bit faster but benefits from the extra 2gb of vram, and when running without enduro it runs like a charm (7400 points in 3dmark11). The 780M might be a bit faster but I don't overclock anyway and to my surprise the m290x runs a lot more quieter than the 7970m did in the R4 ( and that thing was already way more quite than a 780M in a 17 ). Infact the CPU fan makes more noise than the GPU fans does in the 17 with the m290x. This due to a less agressive GPU fan profile than the one on the R4, the m290x runs 4-5 degrees hotter than the 7970m does.

Alright but how does it compare to the good old mighty R4 aside from performance?

The good:
-No annoying reflections!! huge improvement
-Build quality is better (more sturdy, less flex)
-Less keyboard flex and a better layout
-Way more quite than the R4 was

The bad
-I like the older design a bit better, but that is just a matter of taste
-Palmrest isnt that comfortable to use
-The sound is better on the R4 due to the somewhat troublesome Soundblaster card (altough I never had any real issues with my R4's )
-Worse battery life ( Ivy bridge still is superior than Haswell ).

So it's a bit of a tie but for me the matte screen gives it a huge bonus finaly I can now work and play games at day without staring at my own buttface. But I still think a modded R4 would be a better machine due to not having a locked down bios (although as said before I don't really overclock) and the better design and ergonomics. So perhaps in the future I will revisit plan A, however this particulair R4 will be sold. It's just to mint to chop up the display assembly and modding it.

So having said all that here they are together for know, both great machines and the last of the true Alienware's (and with the stupid bga crap the next machine will either be a clevo or a desktop)

 

a 780m is more powerful than the R9 M290X.

 

Jup as I said it's a bit faster (depends on which game, stock vs stock the m290x isn't that much slower, around 10-15% however the 780m as you know can be overclocked quite well and then runs around the m290x with ease). I was more talking more about the extra noise the 780m gives in the 17 compared to the m290x (and really the difference is a lot more than I expected)

 

i don't think it's that loud, it might be the fans trying to keep it cool

EDIT: anyone tried this in the ODD bay?

http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=387&area=en

 

The 290X definitely was loud. Once I upgraded to the 970M the noise went down dramatically.

 

Weird, mine is really quite as said before even the cpu fan makes more noise

 

GPUs don't make noise, the fans do. i have a custom fan table so i control the when fans spin up and down and i got used to the fan noise.

 

Next time just get an x% anti-glare film; much easier (and removable). Or a face-lift, of course ...

 

Hello, I try one of this in my R1 and works perfect. Use for copy steam backups.

 

How do you keep it in place?

EDIT: Ah, I see, it's the same dimensions as a slot load drive so i can use the existing ODD caddy.

 

Tried one of those, works really bad since it isn't applied to the lcd itself (so there is a gap between the anti glare film and the lcd which makes everything extremely blurry)

 

Ah, that makes sense; damn AW glass is in the way. Never understood their reasoning behind those things, except cosmetics (and annoying its owners, of course).

 

bought the silverstone tek 12.7mm caddy

EDIT: currently testing it and it works nicely, the laptop booted so quietly because the DVD drive would make noise.

 

Hi guys,

I wonder if you can help me with a quick question about our AW17 R1. I remember at some point (probably before my last format to get Win 8), there was an option in the battery settings to have the battery charged only when dipping below 50%. Now it's not there anymore, but I thought it might be useful. Do you know what piece of software handles that? How do I get it back? Thank you.

 

Anyone had any problem with Win 10 Upgrade ? I am having "unknown device" in device manager ?

 

Does it allow you to click on the Unknown Device and view the Properties of it? You might be able to view the Hardware ID's of the Unknown Device & then google those Hardware IDs to determine which device is the Unkown Device - or do you already know which device it's referring to?

 

waiting for anyone with aftermarket GPU upgrades to come back and see if there's problems.

 

did a fresh install and no win 10 icon in the taskbar still

 

The windows 10 icon comes with updates. Have you ran Windows Update yet?

 

yes, i have installed all the updates to date and nothing.

i resorted to just downloading the iso through the creation tool. will use my win 7 key.

 

I'm just going to stick to Win8 for a while, let others beta-test Win10 for me.

Once a few months have passed and all is working well (and if there's a valid reason to migrate) I will.

 

How'd it go? Your system is interesting because you've got that non-standard GPU in there.

 

It was showing before with the non standard gpu.

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Ah, I misread your post, thought you meant you'd updated to Windows 10. I'd like to hear how your Windows 10 install went on your non-standard laptop.

 

i'm still on win 8. want to wait till after upgrading the display before installing win 10.