Upgrading my Ranger, Questions and Recommendations

Good day everyone;

I am taking the leap and upgrading my Ranger (AW17 R1) and want to replace the RAM and GPU. I am going with a recommendation from @TheReciever and getting the HyperX ram from Amazon found here. To be honest for the speed and price difference is probably the best I have seen. I also want to upgrade my GPU to a 980M with the primary factor of price. Unfortunately, I have spend the last couple weeks researching the 17's forums looking for information on the upgrade and to be honest it brought more questions than answers. Do you guys mind shedding some light on my questions or at least pointing me in the right direction?

Here is my current specs for my Ranger

i7 4700QM, 16GB RAM, ATI R9 290m, original screen (not 120 or 3d), Stock A17 BIOS, and 240watt PSU.

GPU Upgrade Questions:
1. First looking for MXM cards I found these options from Amazon and Aliexpress. Would either of these two work?

Amazon Nvidia 980M Dell Replacement
AliExpress Nvidia GTX 980m​

2. Are the GPUs simply Plug and Play?
3. I am currently on Win7 legacy, can I stay on that or do I need to go WinX, UEFI?
4. I am currently on a three pipe heatsink, do I need to buy the modded heatsink or mod/upgrade the fans?
5. How do I tell if the GPU has GSYNC?
6. Do I need to install the modded BIOS?

Many thanks to everyone, while I love to game on my system, I am not a FPS chaser but just want to be able to run and play modern games.

 

A lot of those questions are covered by the GPU mod guides posted. Just pick a particular card and follow someone else's post.

 

Thanks for the reply, but that is kind of my dilemma. I have read several threads posts here, Tech Inferno, and Eurocomm and I have seen different methods and answers. I was hoping those that have done it could give their $0.02.

 

Maybe PM these folks:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-17-r1-980m-upgrade.832694/#post-11009162

 

1. Looks good, but pricey.
2. Anything not 7xx or 8xx or R9 M290X will never be plug n play for a variety of reasons
3. Might as well be the time to move to a newer UEFI W10 environment anyways
4. Not necessarily, but it results in better thermals
5. GSYNC Doesn't work properly and won't afaik, I think someone here may have gotten it working but /shrug
6. No but it helps

 

Try the HyperX 2133 variant, if you can find a pair, they are becoming more and more scarce for some reason (I'm currently running 2x8 DDR3L 2133MHz and there is a noticeable difference).
120Hz screen is good to have, although you need a certain version (LTN173HT02 revision D01, it's the only one that works, I've got one spare C01 revision and it works fine while on 60Hz, but gives black screen when switching to 120Hz)

UEFI ain't that bad. Boot time is significantly faster, and most advanced cards will work with it, while on Legacy you get 8 beeps. With Win10 you get a proper driver support and in my opinion it's just much less of a hustle to set everything up, but I'm getting complacent with age, I just want it to work. If you switch to Win10 say goodbye to the card reader though...

If you can spare a few more bucks try a Pascal card, with Quadro you don't need to worry about the heatsink, the temps are crazy low.

As to plug and play of the 980M, one just needs a glance at the topic titles on this forum that it ain't so easy, this card seems to cause a lot of issues.

If you want I've got two M4000Ms on sale, can't deny that isn't far weaker than 980M, but it's adequate and extremely low temp. There is a guy around here selling an M5000M, maybe try that one instead of the 980M?

 

Never had a issue with a 980M in a Ranger. From memory afaik it was plug n play.

If you add a 3D 120hz screen, and get a 1060/1070, then yeah that’s a PIA. But it will work.

 

I just did the 980m upgrade in my Ranger. Fairly easy to do. Through the research I did, I stuck with an MSI version of the card, to ensure compatibility.

I didn't have to flash the vbios for it work, but you do have to enable UEFI. I made the mistake of not setting the BIOS to UEFI before installing the card and ended up with the 8 beeps error. Plugging in an HDMI monitor got it running again so I could adjust the BIOS settings. After that it was a simple reload of windows 10.

Once windows 10 was installed, I had to modify the INF in the latest nVidia driver before installing the driver, and then I was smooth sailing. Honestly, I found modifying the INF to be the easiest of the mod.

In terms of card replacement and compatibility, I chose the 980m for the simplicity of the upgrade, vs the 1060 and 1070. Eventually I may try my hand at a 1070, but for right now I'm happy, coming from the 860m and then a 780m, the performance increase using the 980m is satisfying.

Cooling the card? I like stuff to run as cool as possible. Prior to upgrading to the 980, I did a PWM fan override switch modification, and upgraded the fans to the 11CFM R4 fans, and the CPU and GPU heatsinks to the cicichen all copper units with the extra heat pipes. Hardware lasts longer when kept cooler.

 

Thank you all
this still a very valuable post and infos

 

How do you know which revision do you get when you order it? In terms of the screen.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

It's usually labelled on the sticker on the back of the screen. You can see an example in the attachment