Finally received my 2nd 17R3 replacement! :)

I never thought I would be able to say this: but I have literally received a perfect working brand new (2nd) 17R3 replacement.

After expressing my frustrations to my system exchange rep; he truly went above and beyond to speak directly with the factory assembling my machine & insist that they test it thouroughly to ensure that it is #perfect.

The feeling I have right now is priceless. After running all the tests and everything passing flawlessly, I feel like I have just seen an angel for the very first time in my life.. The 7th brand new Alienware laptop that I have received is finally, 100% perfect in every way imaginable. WOW! This kind of feeling actually exists!!

The 4K screen doesn't have the slightest amount of backlight bleed anywhere, no dead pixels, no static sound coming from the machine, absolutely NOTHING wrong with it. I'm literally a little teary eyed, overly happy with this experience. Finally, it has happened. I have received a perfect mothership.

If only I could have had this pleasant experience with my very first machine, how much more would I appreciate the company as a whole.

Evidently the 4 week delay on the 17R3 motherboards is well worth the wait, because they took all of our complaints very seriously and have fixed the flaws many of us have experienced. To those of you who are frustrated with the delay in your orders, I have a good feeling that you will be thrilled with what you receive.

Many thanks to Denys (my system exchange rep) for going above and beyond to make sure I am very happy in the end.

If anyone is curious the system shipped with BIOS 1.2.8.

Now my OCD can comfortably kick in so the re-pasting and upgrades can begin!

 

ALl bioses after 1.2.8 have been pulled. SO you actually have the latest one now.

 

Do you know which call center you dealt with lol?
Glad it worked out for you.

Also what exactly were the problems you had before? List?

 

The problems I had with the previous 17R3 before have been shared here a lot: Machine would randomly power off without any warning usually within 2-3 hours of use. It was not due to any overheating issues, I made sure of that. There was a very annoying static sound coming from the left side where the two USB ports are, the sound manifests when the trackpad and keyboard are used, any window is minimized or maximized, and gets even louder if a USB stick is plugged in. The top left side USB port would NOT read data, just keeps on connecting and disconnecting -the data read attempts resembled that of abroken USB controller (nothing wrong with the USB's I used as they work on other machines). The odd thing is that same USB port works fine with a bluetooth mouse dongle, just not data. The 4K screen had a line going across the bottom of it when booting and rebooting, also it had a noticeable amount of backlight bleed. I think that about covers it.

This new replacement is night and day difference. It's literally like a completely different machine. Zero backlight bleed (orgasm) on the 4K screen, no static buzzing of any kind, all USB ports work, the performance is #proper, heck even the keyboard feels much better. I have also noticed that opening and closing the lid on this one feels so much better, more firm, where as the previous lemon it was so easy/loose feeling when opening & closing the lid. VERY noticeable differences between the machines. I have never been happier with any prior machine than I am with this current one.

Installed the Corsair Vengeance 32GB RAM, trying to set up Raid 0 on it now; which is very difficult to accomplish but hopefully my persistence will pay off.

Not sure which call center I dealt with, but it is safe to assume that 80% of the employees have my name, address, and phone # memorized by now LoL.

It feels so damn good to have a perfectly functional machine!! Deep, deeep, deeeeeep down inside; I knew this was possible and could happen one day. About as rewarding as going out on a perfect date with a nice hottie. Rofl

 

@JerseyBoy I can't get the PCIe RAID 0 to work, have tried many countless attempts. Called Alienware Support for help, they tell me they don't support this configuration unless you ordered the machine from factory with Raid 0.

Can you please shed some light on how to configure this properly since you got it working on yours? If you could post links to instructions that I can follow, that would be greatly appreciated.

 

There's a couple of threads on this matter in the first few pages on this forum. Are you downloading the drivers and putting them on a USB drive? When you go the initial Windows install options you must select "have disk / drivers" depending on which version of Windows you're working with.

 

From reading your thread here, it seems like you're saying Alienware has modified the system boards for the 17 R3, is that correct? They are sending me a replacement an I'm wondering if I'm getting old stock or the new board (based on my assumption above).

Here is the part I'm getting:
SVC,PLN,I76820,GX,4G,W8P/10H/P

 

Thanks, got it to work by cloning to raid 0.. Using the load driver method has never worked for me, it installs the driver during windows setup (100% correct driver) but does NOT see raid 0. Cloning was the only way I could get it to work. After cloning I did a clean OS install, after disconnecting additional drives. Works flawlessly now.

 

I cannot tell you for a fact that they have newer better boards, but I know that the new machine I received is absolutely perfect. Performance is exactly where it should be, something I couldn't say about the previous R3 at all. Personally, I do believe they have refreshed the boards, but I don't know that for a fact. Someone else would have to confirm this.

 

I dont think they refreshed the boards. There was nothing wrong with the first batch of boards. But there are always some boards out there that have problems due to a manufacturings error.