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

Change of plans! both the 17's will be sold (infact the m290x one is already gone) and just bought a spare m17x r3/4 lcd assemby so I don't have to butcher my current one that's mint:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121717639019?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

Custom bezel no glare R4 goodness time, let the modding games begin!.

So yeah I can't seem to get used to the 17, although it's a great machine I just like the older design better.

 

Different strokes for different folks. That's the beauty of choice...which AW seems to be in the process of taking away from us.

Luckily Clevo is here to save us.

 

CPU fan arrived

i wonder if i can line the cavity with foam sheets?

 

I am having no luck with this cable business.

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Just did my method of keeping the CPU fan firmly seated.



Simply enough, after cutting off the posts (and that one pesky case screw) i cut a strip of a foam sheet that you can get from any craft store. i then taped any loose areas of the fan's case i taped the foam strip to the outside of the fan, slipped it and it's a nice and snug fit. the screws are there just so i don't lose them.

total cost: $1.49 CAD for 1 foam sheets from Michael's + $0.66c for a roll of electrical tape from home depot.

 

That's the 10.4CFM M14X fan right? How are your temps?

 

batman is staying within the 50 deg c mark but i didn't take any data with the old fans to be sure

 

Oh man, how can you install a fan mod and not have any previous data to compare against, that would drive me insane not knowing whether my effort to improve the cooling had indeed actually done so or not!?

 

Hello all, please correct me if I'm wrong, but is the above picture (Post 5436) of a Alienware 17 with a M14x CPU fan instead of the standard issue Alienware 17 fan?

Why do this? Is the M14x fan more powerful than the Alienware 17 CPU fan?

Do any of the older Alienware model GPU fans spin faster than the Alienware 17 GPU fan - I got a GTX880 that of course is giving me high temp headaches

 

I bought a bulk lot of Alienware laptops a few days ago and got one of each on the new Aliewnare 13's and 17R2's (Man the 17R2 is a absolute joke compared to every other previous model)
I had to do a motherboard replacement on both the 13 and 17, while repasting the 17 I come across two small round "stickers" attached to the GPU diode, I didn't think much of it at the time until I was repasting the 13 motherboard and found a long thin oblong sticker attached to the CPU diode.

Whats the go there, are they trying to overheat and blow the units to make us buy again (I don't really think that, but)

Here are some photos.




AW17R2 GPU Diode



AW13 CPU Diode

 

Yes, the fan you see in that post is an older, more powerful fan. I believe it is around 10CFM vs 2CFM or so for the default fans in the Aw17.

 

what's the best way to measure?

 

Yes the M14X fan is 10.4CFM while the stock 17 R1 fan is 1.66CFM for the CPU. The stock GPU fan in the R1 is 1.7CFM and there is an older model available from the R4 that is 11.4CFM. I have the 11.4CFM fan and it keeps my 980M at about 65C running 1200/1400, I see ~70C running it at 1345/1400, but my fans are able to spin at their max RPM (4700) so that would help too.

I have never seen that before, that is totally bizarre. How thick are they?

 

If anybody here has the GTX980M with the 100w heatsink, I would appreciate it if somebody could post pics of the thermal pad placement on the heatsink. Not sure if I did it right.

 

eurocom should have pics on their site.

 

I'd measure ambient room temperature when doing a continuous benchmark like Heaven Benchmark (if a GPU fan) or Prime95 if CPU. I'd run it with fans at max fan speed for 30mins, and then see what temperature it stabilised at. If it's your CPU fan I'd probably also measure the frequency it stabilises at too.

 

What - your kidding, why would Dell reduce the fan strength when the GPU size jumped from 2GB in the M17xR4 to 8GB in the AW17 - That's just downright STUPID

Dam cheap asses..................

Looks like it is "glass tape" or that's what we call it in AU.
It's the see through orange/gold/brown tape you find on the X-fire cable connections and sometimes on LCD connections, not sure what the actual name of it is.
It's very thin, but still I don't imagine it's doing the temps any good

 

Dam just checked and your absolutely right.

 

Those fans are identical; the part nr. is what matters, cfm report is a matter of where-to-measure (and its housing). Does not mean they'll run the same on a different system; one laptop may be software-limited (due to crappy fan table), then it would never run at full rpm. Result would be earlier throttle, but ... a quieter system ... of course, you might as well have gotten a slower, cheaper cpu instead. That's marketing for you; i7-system with 25W cooling capability ... brilliant.

Errr ... no. It's interfering with proper heat-transfer and whomever put it there was clearly having a bad day or more at home in a kindergarten cut/glue/paste class.

 

The fan from the M14 was used to cool the CPU& GPU, so it needed to be more powerful.

Not sure why they'd reduced it from the M17 to the AW17, other than noise concerns.

 

Yeah, the fact it's on several different components is really weird. The extra thickness means you'll have bad contact, and will need to apply more TIM. In a perfect world, you'd never use TIM anyway - it's there to accommodate imperfections in the surface contact between the die/IHS and the flat surface of the heatsink.

 

when did prema put the new vbios up and what's the difference between it and v1.1?

 

I Don't see how the the one fan is supposed to put out ~7x the cfm if its physically the same. The bios still limits it to the same RPM. I put one in mine and didn't notice any difference.

 

do you notice on the higher CFM fan has more blades than the low CFM fan?

 

Just counted them, both have 37 blades. Really wish I could get more airflow to the GPU, the air coming off the heatsink is pretty hot so it definitely would benefit from more flow.

 

i wonder if the CPU needs a special screw driver to remove it?

 

You need a screw driver with Torx head. Think it's No. 9 or 10.

 

I knew it looked like a torx screw head.

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hi guys! I'm gonna buy an AW17 for my friend, How can I check the laptop to make sure everything is good?

 

well firstly, and most obvious - does it boot.

 

Test hardware with Wprime 1024(8treads), Cinebench 11.5, 3DMark 11, 3DMark Sky Diver, 3DMark Vantage. Remember to monitor temperature and that everything works as it should. All functions should operate properly. Etc.
If you can; Avoid gtx880m. Select either gtx780m in AW17.

 

Yes, the one that I'm about to take comes with gtx765m .
How can I know that the mainboard is ok? I could disassembly it but you know, sometimes we may not see the tiny problems.

 

Test all the ports on the laptop with different hardware and as I said earlier; Test with benchmark tests.

 

Dell has a built in hardware test as well. Press F12 at boot and select diagnostics. It will do a check on all the hardware, you should still run some games but it will test all the other stuff.

 

if you buy stuff like this through classified ads or whatever and you go to pick up you don't usually or ever run benchmark tests: they take too long. basic function tests like booting and it reading your inputs is enough.

 

I do not know where he buy the laptop. If the laptop is purchased by a private or unknown sale place then I'd make sure that it functions as intended. Regardless, it is smart to test the laptop with benchmark tests so I know that the laptop work properly. But that is me . You know as I; Even if you buy brand new so it is not always that a product functions as intended . Pretty boring to discover that the laptop does not work properly until after a few months use. Some do that.

 

So I've got a weird problem with my Alienware 17 and I wanted to see if anyone had any input. If I overclock my 980M to 1350/[email protected] my power supply turns off, both my genuine 240W and 330W do it. I've checked with a kill-a-watt and I'm not overdrawing on the 330W. Anyways, with that OC my charger will turn off in 3-10 minutes while in game, the charger just cuts off and the light will slowly dim while the laptop switches to battery. With my 980M at 1200/1250 I am fine and can game for hours at a time. It doesn't seem to be temperature related, I was just playing Crysis 3 and my 980M was only 76C.

Is there some kind of limit in these boards that cuts power when the GPU draws too much? Is it just an unstable overclock? Is it a motherboard problem?

 

How high wattage can you use all time from the 330W psu before you getting this issue (measured by kill-a-watt)?

 

In Crysis 3 just now, took about 4 minutes to happen. Peak wattage was 242W@1350/1250/1.1, it hovers right around 239 constantly. At 1200/1250/1.05 I see ~227 normally with spikes to 236 and drops to 218ish.

edit: Can anyone else confirm with a kill-a-watt or other power meter whether they can exceed 240W power draw on an AW17R1 for extended periods of time?

 

Only takes 5mins to do a 3DMark11 run, and another 5mins for a Wprime1024 run - I'd let the buyer know before turning up that I was gonna spend 10mins testing it. Both of those tests would allow you to monitor temps to see if they were satisfactory too, as well as being able to compare the CPU & GPU scores with other similar models.

 

So I've been playing around with my laptop to try and figure out this power problem. If I disable turbo boost on my CPU I can clock my GPU to 1339/[email protected] and run Crysis 3 and Valley no problems. As soon as I turn turbo boost back on and the laptop draws over 240W the charger shuts off. Unplug the charger for 5 seconds and plug it back in and it works fine until it goes over 240W. With the CPU turbo disabled I'm only seeing ~220-230W which seems to be why it isn't shutting off the charger.

Looks to me like I've got a limit of 240W total draw before the laptop shuts the charger off, even if using a 330W.

Can anyone else confirm this?

 

i had mine shut down (and reboot into the intel GPU when using a 60hz panel) during the heaven bench when i pushed the GPU over 1300 on core even though i have a 330W PSU. try downclocking the core clock.

 

It is not an optimal solution but have you tested Furmark a short period? I know that you should not use Furmark but maybe try a short period and monitor the kill-a-watt.

 

The power supply turned off or the laptop turned off? Do you have a power meter so you could see what your max wattage is?

 

I have not... I'm a little hesitant to try it, I'll think about it. I flashed the Prema modded vBIOS 1.1.1 and it said something about never running Furmark on them...

 

the PSU was still on, just the laptop reboots. the only thing that was different was the GPU clocks and voltage. anything over 1300 and/or the voltage to 1.1v and it just shuts down.

i don't have a wattage meter.

at first i thought it was a fault in the GPU but there was no graphical issues present at the time of shut down so i think it's safe to think that it was just drawing too much power.

 

Odd, could have been an unstable OC or something, mine does the same if I push the core or vRAM too far but if I pull 241W or more it will just turn off the charger. The laptop keeps running the game and just downclocks the GPU. I'm pretty sure these will force the charger off if they exceed 240W. At 1228/[email protected] I'm seeing ~220W in game.

I've noticed a few of my game crashes happen when the laptop draws 236-239W as well.

 

I know. But if you want to try so follow temperature carefully and not run Furmark very long. A short period and ok temperatures should go well.

 

not sure if i can find a wattage meter at a home depot or something

 

I will download it now. I just finished running Crysis 3 @ 1228/5300 and got a wattage spike to 241W. Charger shut off and everything locked up... ugh.

They should have one. I just want to know if someone else can verify the 240W wall, yet another limitation with the AW17R1