Some questions on the Alienware 17R1 1070 upgrade

So using the reset option in windows 10 won’t work I need to reinstall from an USB right?

EDIT: everything done

 

So now everything is set like this do I need to disable the window 8 fast boot? I still cannot find the PEG mode in the bios

 

PEG is only available in the unlocked BIOS, instructions to flash are somewhere in the forum

 

isn't PEG already enabled if I cannot see the intel graphics?

 

PEG is available to ALL rangers regardless of bios.

The available methods to get to peg changes with an unlocked bios is all.

 

I've only seen it here in the overclocking section nothing anywhere else

 

PEG is when its dGPU only, so yes. It should auto enable with the 120HZ screen afaik

 

Upgrade completed, now I have one final question:
- the heatsink I bought (5 pipes the one some use here) came with some thermal paste already on it can I use that or should I apply my own? (temps look good right now)

 

If Temps are good then nothing to worry about. Some people have preference and there's nothing wrong with that either.

 

I have tried different games (the witcher, dmc5, sea of thieves) and they don't go above 70C so it's fine, thanks both of you for bearing with me and helping me get all of this working it feels like having a new pc

 

Goes to show you a little work can fix up a machine from years ago to still do alright, cant believe the ranger is ~5 years old at this point, mine's 5 year birthday according to it's "deployed" date was 5 years and a few months ago

 

Mine turns six in September really a great laptop

 

Next on your list should be to install a bypass switch so you can max the fan when gaming or benchmarking etc as pascal has throttle points based on temp and tdp.

Raising tdp to 130w and allowing for the fan to actually go full speed would optimize core speed thus better performance.

Though just getting the card working is a great milestone and congrats on the upgrade!

 

I've always noticed something was up with the GPU fan in this laptop, when I had the 770M MSI Afterburner would tell me that the fan was going full speed when it clearly wasn't, now that I have the 1070 the fan option look completely different but I can't change them so far, but everything is good for now so I'm not complaining

 

so I've noticed that the HDMI-OUT doesn't work anymore, is there a known way to fix this or should I just buy a displayport adapter in case I need to connect my laptop to an external display?

 

Both hdmi in and out should function just fine.

Which 1070 did you get again?

 

this one, both HDMI in and out are present when I go in the nvidia control panel, I've only tested it once but with a cable that I know works

 

Ah the "dell" variant. I can't recall hdmi signal not working on that model.

 

So, just wanted to chime in here, I would play around with the inf modding till you find a section that does the hdmi. I've had that exact card and it's really fragile. Cap came off just by moving the card. You should also still be able to access bios on that machine, even with the 1070 installed.

Sent from my SM-N950U1 using Tapatalk

 

it is strange because it detects the external display both in the audio panel and nvidia panel but it outputs no video nor audio

 

okay guys it works, it was set to automatically output in 4K which, I guess, is not supported

 

The ranger's HDMI port can handle 4k30 afaik.

 

I had just a short time to test this out today so as soon as I saw it was fixed I disconnected it, I will try to set 4K 30Hz and see if it works later. Do you know if the display port has the same limit?

 

Update: I thought I'd make a quick review for future reference, for those who want to attempt this upgrade.
Parts Bought:
- INNOLUX N173HHE-G32 120Hz gsync 17.3" 8-bit Matte Display
- EDP Cable part number DC02C004000 0N392W N392W
- All Copper 5 Pipes GPU Heatsink
- "Dell" GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 from Taobao (Reseller speaks decent english and can guide you through the process and even mod the .INF file for you, eventhough I did everything myself, price is good compared to ebay)

INSTALLATION PROCESS
I have already talked about the display upgrade process in a previous message so I'll move to the GPU.

Upgrade process with a EDP display installed is pretty straight forward:
- set BIOS in full UEFI (PEG mode is enabled automatically when you install an EDP display)
- uninstall all GPU drivers (I've used Display Driver Uninstaller) and shutdown
- install the new GPU and heatsink, mine had thermal paste already applied on it so I went with that.
- download drivers from NVIDIA's website
- if you start the installation it will ask you where to extract the files required choose a location and when the installation fails don't close it or it will delete all the extracted files, instead make a copy of the extracted folder and work on that to mod the .inf file ( I suggest this guide)
- when you are done modding the file you need to restart windows and disable driver signed driver enforcement ( quick guide here)
- now install the drivers using the .exe in the folder you copied and it should work, windows may alert you during the final steps that the driver is not signed just tell it to continue anyway and you should be good. If it doesn't work it means that you have not modded the inf correctly remember to put your IDs in all the different sections.
- you should be all set!

REVIEW
It works as if this laptop was shipped with it! I've read alot of threads on here where people had all sorts of problems (temperature problems, power problems, fps and performance drops, ports not working) I've had none of that so far, using the thermal paste already on the heatsink I'm getting 45C idle and it doesn't go above 71C under full usage which is good for me. My i7 4800MQ works the same as it did when I had the 770M installed so I don't feel like I need to upgrade it just yet.

When it comes to in game perfomance here's some tests:
- The Witcher 3 - 1080p - everything Maxed and with NVidia Hairworks enabled - 60 to 70 fps
- Shadow of War - 1080p - everything set to max - 60 to 80 fps with 60 being the lowest point rarely encountered.
- Shadow of War - 4K - everything set to max - 22 to 30 fps with 20 being the lowest point .
- Sea of Thieves - 1080p - Maxed - 60 to 120fps depending on where on the map you are.
- Assassin's Creed Unity - 1080p - Maxed - always above 60fps.
- Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy - 1080p - Maxed - rock solid 120fps, not a demanding game but a good one to try this 120Hz panel with an 120fps game with incredible colors.
- Metro Exodus - this is a strange one, I've tried the benchmark tool that comes with the game and most of the times I couldn't even get it to start, when I did I got the results in the image below, in game I get 90fps max with ultra settings just don't enable RTX or it will drop you to 22 fps
- Devil May Cry 5 - 1080p - Maxed - up to 120fps
- Sekiro - 1080p - Maxed - never below 60fps
- Rage 2 - 1080p - Maxed - around 70 fps (no nvidia driver update installed)
- Wolfenstein 2 - 1080p - Maxed - from 80 to 200fps usually around 120-144 fps
- Final Fantasy XV - 1080p - Maxed - from 30 to 60 usually around 45 fps Benchmark test below (very good benchmark for nvidia cards)

I don't usually use benchmark tools and benchmark my hardware through normal use, but I can do some classic benchmarks if someone needs them, I've got more games to test but this is all I've managed until now, I may update it later with other games (suggestions accepted).

This GPU has HDR support so if you connect it to an HDR panel it will work with the games that support it, I've tried Sea of Thieves only.
After the most recent driver update the 10xx series "supports" RTX, that is if you like playing at 20 fps.
I've also made an album with all the pictures I took during the different steps of this upgrade process, you can find it here: https://imgur.com/a/XmCXenQ
I don't know if sharing my modded inf file can help others, if so I'll upload it (driver installed version 430.39).
Even if both the display and the GPU support G-Sync it is not enabled and probably cannot be enabled in any way.
I still haven't tested overclocking, I don't know if I will.
My next upgrade will probably be on the RAM, I'll be upgrading to 32GB 2133Mhz HyperX, I need more RAM to use programs like Adobe After Effects and faster memory should also give me some "free" fps in game .

Once again I would like to thank all the people that helped me. If anyone has any questions I'll be glad to answer them to the best of my knowledge.

 

So this Dynamic Super Resolution popped up out of nowhere, do you guys know why? I know what it is for, but is it any useful?

 

Try it and see if you like it. I dont personally use it much, maybe for older games if I want to increase resolution but otherwise I stick to 1080p for everything

 

it's good to test games in 4K without having to go in the other room and connect it to my TV but that's about as useful as it gets

 

+rep great progress and solid upgrade , with Win7 phasing out this could be a great machine that can max out all the games until now effortlessly (have a local collection of the best tittles dating back to 2010 )

I have a question about this GTX 1070 Chipset. Is it the P5000 Quadro board (Note the Samsung Memory) with 1070 core transplant or Dell ? Buying those Aetina green boards are hit and miss due to the VRM quality plus Eurocom was selling those gimped 1070s as well, asking because I want to upgrade with a proper 3.0b solution without dremel. @Raidriar mentioned these a couple of times. Plus which vBIOS are you using, the MSI 1070 vBIOS works great on the Zotac MXM 1070 GPU.

And I believe you sanded down and polished the 5-Pipe HS as well ? From the looks of those HS ( Which I bought for both CPU and GPU) under the light you can see a disturbance in reflection which means the surface is not even, plus I cannot get them work with my machine, not fitting properly as you can read from that thread.

Thanks.

 

As far as I know it is a quadro P5000 board with the 1070 N17E-G2-A1 core and 8 GB of VRAM removed (the P5000 comes with 16GB of GDDR5), 90% sure.
I have not made any modifications on the vbios but I can give you the info I can gather on what is on this card.
I also haven't made any modifications to the heatsink (I only have the GPU one), the fitting is tight you have to push hard to close the laptop back, but once you do it fits and you can screw everything back.

 

Hello everyone from Italy,
this is my first post after reading for a while and I'm sorry for my bad english. Thanks to all of you, I learned a lot to constantly update my alienware 17R1. Now my configuration is: Bios at 14+; CPU 4930mx; RAM Hyper x 16Gb, display LTN173HT02-D02 and Nvidia Gtx1070 (Dell version).
Last weekend, after modded the Lcd back cover, I tried to install the new Innolux N173HHE-G32 display. The problem is that the screen works very well during the boot and with Windows 10, while when I install the Nvidia drivers, the screen doesn't work, it goes black. If you uninstall the Nvidia driver, the screen turns on. To uninstall the Nvidia drivers I used an external monitor connected via HDMI. What can I do now? Thanks in advance

 

I'll speak italian then: sei sicuro di aver moddato bene il file .inf?

 

Ciao, yes I know that you are italian, Thanks for a fast reply. Yes the diver are right, because I have re insert the old display LTN173HT02-D02 ( is a 120 Hz but is glossy) and it works.
I have tryed all the nvidia driver 430. series.
I have read now your guide.... What do you think if I re install the old gpu (Gtx 860m) with the N173HHE-G32 ?

 

Okay english then; you can try that but it’s really strange that it works with one display and not the other. Maybe it sets itself to output with some strange resolution/refresh and it goes black for that. Try connecting the laptop to an external display and change the settings from the nvidia panel. Maybe somebody hear has a better idea.

 

I hope to solve during the next weekend. Of course, it's really strange that with the Samsung panel everything works properly.Have a nice day

 

For the 1070, what price did you pay for which model? Looking into one of these myself

 

Hi, I purchased the Dell version and paid 480 euros from an Ebay seller. I saw that many people buy on taobao.com, but I get lost at this site

 

Update: after a long day of testing, I couldn't get the Innolux display to work with the Gtx 1070. At this point I have to re-insert the Samsung screen. Too bad because I managed to get the logo to work under the screen.

 

Do you have your old GPU? I would attempt to use it to rule it being something odd with the GTX 1070 and it just simply being a DOA delivery.

 

Yes I have my old Gtx 860. The problem is that the 1070 works great with the previous panel, LTN173HT02-D02, which is always 120Hz but it's glossy. And the Innolux works with the Gtx 860M ....I'm going crazy

P.s. Can I ask you which version of the nvidia drivers you are using?

 

Im using the 430 but like you I am now using the LT panel as I got impatient and broke my N173 panel. However it DID work with it for the short while I was using it. I wanted to properly refit the panel to be flush with the bezel but I had been working on the Ranger the entire weekend at that point after not having it for a month.

 

At this point, I try to contact the seller and ask for his opinion. For the moment, thanks to everyone for the support

 

Hi friend, TheReciever do you have here some tutorial on how to adapt this n173hhe-g32 screen to the Alienware 17 R1? I remember to note that the structure of the laptop chassis is a bit different for this n173hhe-g32 screen model

 

I dont have a tutorial since I never really completed it to my standard (and just recently broke it lol). Though we do have other members that have some pictures of their process. Some of which is in this thread.

 

It would be Very Interesting if Innolux-Chimei will make a Panel adapted to the previous models of laptop, surely would sell a lot !! But while that does not happen I would like to be informed of any positive news about this important update for the new N173HHE-G32 panel..

Thanks for your answer

 

Would be lovely if they had a 5ms 120hz matte ips panel

 

Hi Ryuzaki, besides the excellent work of Uugui shi, you can find some other informations at the post 632 of this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/120hz-3d-screen-upgrade-for-alienware-17-r1. 758,711 / page-64-
Regards

 

Later I intend to read about this topic, thank you ..

 

https://imageshack.com/a/UBel/1

 

I hope it can help you!! Regards

 

Update: only yesterday I realized that my display is the N173HCE-G32 rev C1, instead of the 173HHE. Do you have any suggestions? good day everyone