Planning on Upgrading Alienware 17 suggestions

I have an Alienware 17 with the following specs:
Intel i7-4700mq
16GB Ram (4x4GB)
Nvidia GTX 770M 3GB gpu
480GB SSD
2x 750GB HDD's (7,200RPM)
1920x1080 matte display

Timeline: now to the end of the year, it won't be all at once most likely, unless I have the cash and find a good deal.

Budget: fairly open, but want to keep it best bang for buck I guess you could say.

Area of difficulty: this can be up to opinion. I've built desktops before so I'm not a stranger to thermal compound, but this would be my first laptop I've upgraded past the Ram and HDD.

Parts needed: Everything to make the upgrade happen. Including any possible special tools for removing cpu and/or gpu.

Location: United States

Suggestions on what I could upgrade to on the cpu and gpu fronts as well as how much performance I would expect to gain would help. Like I said, best bang for buck.

The games I currently play run ok on the GTX 770M at 1080p and on "High" or higher, but I know that the 770M is starting to get long in the tooth. Some of the future games well start pushing it further.

Also note: I have my 770M oc'ed +135 core and +576 on memory. I don't wish to do a vbios mod of any sorts for fear of bricking the gpu.

I prefer to keep away from optimus. While it's the lesser of 2 evils (AMD Enduro just plain sucks), I keep my Alienware in Dedicated gpu mode.

One other thing, is it really worth the cost of upgrade or would it be better to sell my Alienware and buy something else new down the road? Can the Alienware 17 that I have be upgraded to the GTX 980M without hassle? Short of maybe a new heatpipe or whatever.

Links to where I can buy any suggested components would be greatly appreciated, as I stated, this would be the first laptop I have upgraded pass the HDD and ram.

Sorry just so many questions and still may be more to come, I understand cpu's, gpu's and all that, but a laptop is a new front for me when it comes to upgrading parts. I can't just order that stuff from Newegg or Amazon and it's not something that happens all the time.

Edit: Added Location.

 

I would start with a 980M or 970M GPU depending on ur usage & ur budget. You have various options to buy the card from & the most notable sources are Eurocom, HIDEvolution & UpgradeMonkey.

Someone who actually bought the card could chime in & provide you with their experiences/prices based on your location.

But personally I would always start with the GPU as it has the most significant impact on performance if gaming is your main concern

 

Actually doing that would be the only thing I would do. Also a SSD should help a lot.

 

Got an SSD already in it a 480GB mSATA SSD. Would it be hard to replace the gpu? Any BIOS modifications or anything?

 

Have fun ...

 

Wait a minute, from what I read, you can only run the laptop in optimus mode? Or does it need to be in optimus mode before installing the new gpu and then you could switch to dedicated mode?

 

As far as I know ... you have to switch to iGPU mode and fully uninstall & clean your previous driver installation after removing the Nvidia card ... then you go back normally to Optimus after installing the card.

And yes Optimus mode works fine.

 

optimus mode works perfectly. Dedicated mode may work if you succeed to intstal drivers because some drivers may give you a black screen. Switching to optimus or dedicated will always result to first uninstal with DDuninstaller and then installing back the driver, modded. You can mod yourself or using laptop2video premodded. About performance, 3dmark 2011 result better in optimus than dedicated, for about 1k points. In dedicated mode you may result with throttling issue, not in optimus.
If you feel to upgrade to 980m, here my video tutorial with all informations:

 

What I meant is you can't use Dedicated mode with the 980M? I don't care too much for optimus, as I kept reading that it got in the way of certain games and sometimes affected the performance of the dedicated gpu. I've been running my Alienware in dGPU mode since I got it. Optimus is the lesser of 2 evils though so I guess if I have to the trade off's would be minimal, Enduro just plain sucks in my opinion. (I have an Sager that I gave to my fiance. Has an 8970M in it, but I hated enduro so much.It wouldn't recognize over half my games and I would have to manually set it to the dgpu. It didn't use the dgpu when you set the global settings to it. Ugh.) If I recall you could tell optimus to use the dedicated card all the time or igpu. Sort of a sudo dgpu button. But I never gave it a try. Another note, do you NEED to use a moded driver? I've just been downloading Nvidia's drivers for my Alienware's 770M lately. I would think downloading the latest driver from Nvidia would work wouldn't it? Sorry, I have so many questions, but as stated, this would be my first upgrade on a laptop other than ram and hdd's.

 

1. Dedicated mode is the sure way to have random throttling... I have no idea tbh though
2. Optimus is much better implemented then Enduro... Maybe 1 out of the 20-30 games I have installed required the NVIDIA GPU to be selected in control pannel.. AMD was like 50%..
3. You need modded drivers.. J95 has modded infs over on the techinferno forum and honestly it's like 1 mins work to replace the inf and install..

 

Ok, cool, I wasn't trying to be lazy or anything about it. I have installed modded drivers into laptops before so I know it doesn't take long to do. lol. I had an Asus ROG that I had to do this with for the longest time until Nvidia put the 460M into their driver packages.

And yeah Enduro is a b$%^& compared to Optimus, I will say that.

Will at least I know I can upgrade my Alienware to the newest and greatest gpu!

That will be my first upgrade.

Any ideas on where I can order one? I live in the US.

Thanks!

 

M8 you have at your disposal what may be the last good 17" laptop AW made ... Get the utmost mileage you can from it

Check my 1st post for the places you could get the card

 

Yeah, I realized that, and plan on doing that. lol. My bad, I forgot you posted that in your first post. Sorry.
Can I get cpu upgrades from any of those places as well? If so when the time comes what would be a good cpu to upgrade to?

Thanks again for all the help. When the rep system is back I will make sure to rep everyone who has helped me so far.

 

You can either get top of the line Haswell normal i7 like mine the 4910MQ or go extreme with the 4930MX. Once again depending on your budget & will to overclock the CPU.

That being said, I believe with the extreme option if you are planning to go on overclocking frenzy + the 980M, you may need a 330W power brick cuz the 240W may not cut it anymore. Hope someone can chim in on that.

 

I don't know if i'll be overclocking any cpu, so it looks like the 4910MQ would be the cpu to save for. At most I see maybe overclocking the gpu. And that's a big maybe. So the 240W power brick I have should do for an upgrade to a 980M and 4910MQ correct?

 

Yup a 240 would work fine with this setup

 

240W with 4910MQ + 980M is pushing it especially if you OC... Personally, I would go for 4810MQ as with 4910MQ, the silicon lottery get's even worse... Also with the Hotwell systems, reaching 4.1GHz ++ which the 4810MQ does is usually the most possible.. paying more for 4910MQ to reach that is pointless...

As for GPU, you can buy it from Eurocom, Hidevolution (where I got my 970M from.. They've had a lot of lemon 970Ms so I'd stay away.. My 970M has been perfect though), Powernotebooks and RJ Tech...

 

I ended up looking up all the cpu's of interest including the 4700mq I have currently. ex: 4910mq, and 4810mq, and don't understand one thing, all of then have a TDP of 47W so how would the cpu matter as it seems the gpu itself would only matter. The 770M looks like it was a 75W part, where as the 980M is anywhere from 100-123W so yeah that's a big difference. 25-almost 50W. Now I know I'm not a pro at this, so I would keep to the suggestions of what is said here. It's not like I'm working with a desktop that has a 750W psu.

But I thought I would point out that the cpu's are all the same TDP. So does that make the higher end one's more efficient?
I don't plan on OC'ing, as the 980M looks a beast in it's own rights. I mean, the 770M has been playing all my games really well still. I just know it's a matter of time before it will be out of date for my personal uses and wanted to have a shopping list on what to buy for upgrades.

I've dealt with powernotebooks before, bought a Sager from them. I didn't realize they sold parts. I've talked to them before, so I may have to give them a call to find out the cost of things and any suggestions from them and let them know what everyone has said on here as well for suggestions.

Man I can't wait for the rep to return as I plan on repping everyone on here who has helped me! Thanks guys!

Edit: Powernotebooks doesn't do parts. Will At least I know.

 

Hello dude, that tutorial was quite simple and good .
Can I know more about that heatpipe MOD you had done with AL foil and that GPU heatsink copper mod too...curious about the results
Thanks !!

 

Yeah he need a 330 w psu. If he buy a i7-4930/4930mx. I'm use over 250w under 3Dmark11 benchmark test.

 

Ok,well i lost my files of result about the Al foil, but if i remebered well, it change nothing in a non OC system. I did it because for CPU because i fix a copper and to transfer better the heat to the fan. Maybe the result was 1 or 2 degrees while gaming. Nothing in idle. If i play a game with my i7 4900qm, i got Max temp 72*c sometimes for bf4 or farcry4 i got max 67. It's hazardous i think. But i put Liquid Ultra so my system in idle never use the fan, thats great so while working on documents, with SSD, the system is quiet.

About the GPU, i use an old r4 heatsink of 100W. i did it by security because new r5 heatsink are black and this affect the temperature too. So to be like equal, i put lots of pads and transfering to fan as you seen. I think doing this mod with a r5 heatsink might give better results. For me with gtx980m, any games, i never beeing more than 70*c, but i think with a r5 heatsink the result is allready lower. And the gtx980m is knew for not beeing high in temp.

 

Will I've made up my mind, I'm gonna shop around for an i7 4810MQ, and a 980M for my Alienware. I may not be pulling the trigger immediately, but knowing a price range to save for will be a major help. Who knows, by the time I can get either (gonna try to save for the 980M first) the prices may come down a tad. I don't plan on overclocking as I am fairly certain the 980M will take me far into the future. Heck if the 770M lasted me this long and I'm really not having any issues as of yet I can only imagine how long the 980M will last me. The cpu upgrade is really secondary as the 4700mq is still ticking along happily. I'll probably save the 4700mq in case something happens to the newer cpu down the road. But then again I may sell it. Same with the gpu. Never know and I am paranoid.