Yet another AW17 r1 upgrade question

Hi all, really enjoying reading through these forums.

I see that a lot of people here have had success upgrading the GPU on their trusty Alienware 17s, and I’d like to dive in to do the same. I’ve had this beast from new, and I’d like to eek a little more life out of it with a new GPU.

Shipped August 2013
CPU: i7-4800 MQ
GPU: gtx780m
Screen, I can set to 120hz refresh rate in windows 10, albeit it was set to 60hz by default. Does this mean I have the 120hz screen? If not, how do I find out?

I haven’t custom built a desktop or played with over clocking since the late 1990’s. so I’d prefer to keep things as simple/stable as possible. I’m not going to be doing any chassis mods or wiring in a 1080 like some of you geniuses, but I obviously want the most bang for the minimum of effort. What’s the current state of the most “drop in” solution? For preference I’m looking for a kit with everything needed.

 

If you are looking for a kit, you are never going to find a listing like that.

Closest you'll find is to contact @woodzstack he's like our friendly neighborhood reseller. And avoid Eurocom like the plague.

 

Thanks for the mentioning, but yeah if I ma needed I am here. Kits are hard to do because you end up with tons of individual configurations and any user can easily make a mistake, its much easier to do that stuff as a reseller on the back end by simply taking notes as needed and simply gathering the info you need to make it the right custom kit etc..

 

Thanks woodzstack, I’ve seen your name come up quite a bit. So where do I start in figuring out what I need? I gather that dropping in a 980 is relatively straight forward other than some bios fiddling and driver modification. What about for 1060 or 1070?

 

What are the issues with Eurocom?

 

you must be new here HAHHAHA. welcome to the forums !

 

4930mx for cpu and msi 1060 mxm is drop in for your laptop. Youll need modded inf which you can get from @j95 here https://premamod.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/j95-nvidia-inf/

The zotac 1070 is the top upgrade for your laptop but it is hard to get. You have to essentially buy a zotac en1070k and tear it open or get lucky on ebay. Youll need a dremel for the heatsink to fit 100% on the 1070 but its easy. There are also 5 pipe heatsinks and 4 pipe heatsinks for the cpu and gpu but they are not must haves. Good luck

 

Thanks EepoSaurus. By the sounds of that, and what I’ve read, the 1070 is probably more effort than I’m prepared for. I’m happy with the 4800MQ, I’ll hold off on the cpu unless one falls in my lap...

Will the heat sink for the 780m be compatible with the msi 1060 to your knowledge?

 

yes it works well. might need some new screws but I don't think you have to dremel it. You'll need to use windows 8 or windows 10 in full uefi mode or the 1060 wont boot. If your laptop gives you a 120hz option without overclocking then you have the 120hz screen and are ahead of the game.

 

Sounds too easy. I already have windows 10 booting from uefi...

 

It is easy. It's been done so it is old ground.

 

Sure bout that? Mine was of a 680m and needed dremeling.

 

680m was never an option for the ranger so I'm not surprised when it needs additional effort.

 

Yeah the 780m and 880m were the only options for 100watt heatsink or a 3pipe. Shouldnt need any dremel work but might

 

Ok, mine is a m17x r4. Thought the heatsinks were designed the same as 680/780m cards have the same layout.

 

No doubt I’ll be asking more specific questions to correct whatever I do that has caused things to go catastrophically wrong...

 

Ok, Been a while since my last post on this thread, unfortunately my motherboard died, and I had to get that replaced, which I was able to do for about A$250.

I’m ready to go ahead a with this upgrade, but I’m wondering whether to just pull the pin, sell it and buy something new. Given where the Aussie dollar is right now, a GTX1060 from Woodstack’s site would run me close to A$900 delivered.

If I do go ahead with the upgrade, can anyone here advise me what I need to do ahead of time? Current specs are:

AW17 ranger, 4800MQ GTX780M, 16GB RAM, 120HZ screen.

Bios is version 16 (latest) and integrated intel graphics are NOT detected in bios. (Will this cause any issues before I’m able to load new drivers?)

I’m after the simplest, closest to plug and play style upgrade I can do. No case modification or CPU upgrade, if that’s the route to take I’m just going to part with my beloved machine.

 

I'm assuming the integrated graphics aren't detected because you've got the 120hz screen. It can only run on a dedicated card.

I'm in Adelaide and I share your Aussie dollar issues. I'd love to get a card from Woodstack but the cost is crazy. I am going to try the Taobao route as I can get a 1070 for under $700AUD and hopefully they can get it to me without the import duty and GST. The 'Dell' card does not require any chassis modification.

I have been tossing up between flipping the machine or doing the upgrade as well. I have decided on the upgrade. I recently got it off ebay for about $350 including delivery but it had a dead 880M and no memory or HDD/SSD.

 

From my reading on another thread, the R1 never offered an 880M stock. Are you sure it’s the same machine?

 

The 17 originally came out with the 780M but then got the upgrade to the 800 series. It even has the little plaque on the base plate saying 880M. I replaced the dead 880M with one of my 780M's to get it running again.

 

Hi all!

I thought of better clamping along onto this thread than making a new one.
I'm into serious preparation process of upgrading so I will be in need of few answers from you lovely people.

It happens I might be able to get some RAM at fair price. I have 4*4 GB of 1600Mhz samsung now but since I will be opening and unscrewing everything I thought I put in some extra ram while Im at it.

I do CAD a lot so I think it would improve things a bit.

Would these work?

HyperX Impact 32GB 4x 8GB DDR3L PC3L-14900S 1866MHz 204Pin

 

According to the provided specifications they should fit, but you would be better up going the 2133 MHz route directly.

Though in theory there is much difference between all the DDR3/L RAM speeds, in practical it's much less.

What CPU do you have actually?

The r1 actually had both options, with the 880m succeeding the 780m.

According to the info you provided, you have a 120 Hz display, that makes it somewhat easier going the 10xx route, no Optimus, no messing around with Intel and nVidia drivers.

 

Ive got 4710mq.
I was after 4910mq, as I can get it new for around 200usd.
There are 4930 used ones around 250.

As for ram, I see that some have 2133mhz on aw17r1. Thought its ddr4/uncompatible or if compatible than its just not straight plug and play. Cost would probably be higher ofc.
How much better would I be off with 2133?

 

No not DDR4 that's incompatible, there's DDR3L RAM clocked at 2133 MHz.

Don't have exact numbers, but probably around 3-5% i assume, vs. 1866.

Beware, as the 49xx ones need super good cooling in the AW17, and the xms even more.

 

What are the optimal slots to place 2x8GB 2133mhz DIMMs? Slot 1+2 or 1+3?

 

Slots 1+2 didn't work for me on my 2133 MHz upgrade, so I had to use 1+3.

 

I got worse results with 1+3 since I also thought that was correct dual channel population.
Just confirmed with the schematic that Slot 1 & 3 are Channel A and Slot 2 & 4 are Channel B.

That explains why my performance went down! (4x4GB @1600mhz vs. 2x8GB @ 2133mhz) @M18x-oldie you should likely swap back to dual channel and down clock the memory to work in dual.

Going to place populate 1+2 or 1+4 later today.

 

@2CPU Are you talkin bout m17x r4 or AW17 r1? Mine is the m17x r4.


Slot 1+2 didn't work for me, only resulted in beeps everytime, so I tested 1+3 and it worked.
Had done Aida64 bench with both 1600 and 2133 MHz, there was improvement bout 25-30%, but never double checked that in real life scenarios, it's running dual channel btw.


Bench 1600 --> 2133 MHz:

Read: 22850 --> 31100 MB/s
Write: 24200 --> 32150 MB/s
Copy: 22600 --> 30280 MB/s
Latency: 64,5 --> 53,3 ns

 

XTU is a synthetic "lump" benchmark.

Yeah R4, you are running single channel @ 2133mhz. You should set in the BIOS 1866mhz and populate Slots 1+2 and I bet you would get even better performance (real world)

My CPU/board/dimms will not do 2133mhz on slot 1/2 but did on single channel slot 1/3. There was another member that used Corsair 4GB modules that did say he got 16GB @ 2133mhz. I am using 8GB modules of Kingston.

 

I have 4x4 modules now, so all slots are pretty busy but when i had started with the 2x4 modules i couldn't get any POST in slots 1+2.

Downclocking is no option

 

Well jeez. Now I am thinking it is a single rank vs dual rank DIMM issue. Only post I saw where R4 was doing 2133mhz turned out to be on 4GB module. Just popped my 4x4GB (1600mhz) and set them to 1866mhz @ CL10. Working fine. The 8GB units are dual rank with double the memory chips on each DIMM.

Going to return these 2133mhz 8GB Dimms.

 

Card finally arrived, tackling the upgrade on the weekend. Any good reading / YouTube videos to recommend to minimize my chances of stuffing this up?

 

Pretty straightforward, just be a bit careful.

Check this one for example:

 

Ok, this has not gone as smoothly as I would have hoped.

On the hardware side, no problems, smooth as silk. The problem is I'm struggling to install drivers. I see a few possibilities here:

1. It's a dud card
2. I installed it wrong
3. I don't know what I'm doing on the driver front. (This seems most likely to me)

I am encouraged that after installing the card, my machine boots into windows and the monitor is working.

I am less encouraged that the device shows up as "unknown PCI device" in device manager, although this does at least suggest that I actually succeeded in plugging it in. GPU-Z shows blank fields across the board...

I downloaded 436.15-DESKTOP-WIN10-64BIT-STANDARD-WHQL-MOD.EXE from
https://premamod.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/j95-nvidia-inf/

and running that gets me past the compatability check, but then about a quarter of the way through the install, it fails and reports driver failed to install.

Any suggestions of what to try next?

Oh, one other thing, when I go to run diagnostics from the bios I get the dell 8 beep error code, which is meant to suggest a dud LCD, however, the LCD is running just fine when I boot the computer normally. I'm confused.

Edit: BIOS (A16) shows integrated graphics not detected, discrete graphics 1 = NVIDIA gfx

 

Did you disable the driver signature enforcement before trying to install the driver?

If you have the 120hz display then your machine would not boot at all if the card was dead so you should be safe there.

Your integrated graphics is automatically disabled with the 120hz display so that's nothing to worry about. It detects the nvidia card so that's the good thing. I'm sure it's just a driver issue which we'll sort out.

 

Thanks. It’s showing up as 3D video controller under unknown devices in the device manager. I can’t see any other display adapters in device manager.

 

I'm assuming it's called that since the GPU controls the 3D screen. Did you disable the driver enforcement? Just to get things moving, I'd suggest to download the modded driver on the Eurocom website. I think they list it under the 17 R5 and see how that goes.

 

Aw Yisss... Turns out that even though I had driver enforcement off, Windows Defender was automatically shutting down the installer without asking me if I wanted to proceed. Turned off real time protection and all went smoothly.

I followed this guide: https://null-src.com/posts/nvidia-notebook-driver-inf-mod/post.php To modify the latest driver version.

I'd like to profusely thank everybody on this amazing forum for your support and assistance.

 

Awesome. Never heard about having to turn that off so that’s some new information that could help people in the future.
Looks like I sold my 13 R2 today so I think it’s time to invest in a 1060 for my 17


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