*OFFICIAL* Alienware 17 R4 Owner's Lounge

Obviously that would be better, and if you wait another year ,you will get the volta gpus . But our discussion is about the current options available.

 

Memory speed makes practically no real world difference in performance... and if you always wait for the next new version you'll be constantly waiting and never upgrading. Eventually you need to pull the trigger because the next new shiny is always on the horizon.

 

So very true...and you can count on it....

"Oh look there's Volta..."

 

So the 1080/6820 combo with 1440p display could take some time to reach the Norwegian market. After going 200 rounds with myself and finally landing on Alienware I got a newsletter today with 10% off on Aorus x7 dt v6, thats like 300 usd... I think of buying it, repaste the hell out of it and look at the potenial... Worst case scenario I have to resell it down the line when Alienware relase the config I want, if its not performing to my expectations. I'm mostly worried about the build quality and heat/noise ratio.

 

interesting i compared it against my r3 (stock) and EVGA 1080 FE (stock) in the AGA, plus a result i got from one of my 1070 desktops builds and pleased top see the r4 1070 beats a Gigabyte 1070 G1 Gaming desktop card, that's pretty good!

Did you overclock the GPU at all?

 

HWINFO reports the following for the 1080p IPS panel: LG Philips [Unknown Model: LGD0513]

 

Been wrestling with the whole 1080 IPS/1440 TN question ... and the more I use the IPS, the more I'm thinking I should keep it. It's sitting next to my work computer monitor, a 144hz Asus TN panel and the difference in color and contrast is startling (in favor of the AW IPS screen).

Another HUGE factor that's pushing me towards the 1080p IPS factor is that this LG panel, can in fact be easily overclocked to 100hz refresh rate. I've been gaming on it for about an hour at 100hz and it's far far more enjoyable than playing at 60hz ... not quite the liquid joy of 120/144hz ... but still, downright *BUTTERY* feeling compared to 60hz game play ... anything above 100hz shuts the monitor down, though so that's the ceiling for this particular machine.

I had to hit FN-F7 and restart in order to make the Nvidia GPU the only one recognized so that I could get to the custom resolution settings in the Nvidia control panel ... but otherwise, the 100hz custom refresh rate tests just fine at the UFO animation page.

I'm thinking I'm going to be far happier playing at 100hz with a perfect IPS panel than I will be at 1440p TN 120hz ... just can't get over the "pop" that the colors have. I use a very nice 1440p 27" IPS screen at home and have always thought it to be on the bright side of things but the AW IPS is quite noticeably brighter.

So moral would be? If you have the 1080p IPS? Overclock that sucker! Huge difference...

 

The LG IPS panel from AW is awesome.
However its not just an issue of refresh rates. The one downside from most IPS, or any laptop panels for that matter is 99% of them are 25-27ms response times.
This is not idea for gaming but that is just the way it is.
That is why the 120Hz panel is so attractive. It is the only panel on the market currently that is 4-5ms response time.
There are pros and cons of each and every panel. There is no perfect panel. One simply must decide which downsides they want to live with.

 

I saw a comparison between 1600mhz and 4000mhz the difference was 12fps so incase I got 3000mhz over the 2667mhz that would be about 2fps plus u can get them cheaper on amazon u can get the 3k speed 32gb cheaper than 2400mhz 32gb that the alienware offers

 

You will notice no real difference at all 2400 and 3000 just get what evers cheapest and has the lowest latency ;

http://techbuyersguru.com/gaming-ddr4-memory-2133-vs-26663200mhz-8gb-vs-16gb?page=2

 

My point is I can get faster rams with higher gb's for much less than what alienware is offering

 

yeah i get that, but you will save even more if you get the 2400 option from amazon and save even more and not be able to tell the difference..... just sayin

 

Well Ill have to measure what im going to gain against what im going to save but u have a point there so thank you

 

Personally I'm either going to get the lowest Cas Latency 16gb kit i can with a minimum speed of 2400mhz or if I'm lucky I'll be able to pick up a single stick of 8gb same as what the AW17 ships with and just add that.

There probably going to be a few single 8gb dell sticks crop up on ebay as there will be a few folks upgrading straight away..... maybe i will buy yours lol

 

This just arrived under RMA. The one i had had those bad VRM chips (not the overheating ones) so they sent me a new one in about a week.

I'm immediately applying thermal pads to the trouble areas that are overheating and once I do I will be running some tests with the graphics amp!

Last time I ran tests before the old one stopped working it was working beautifully (long story short it was working, then it stopped so i filed an RMA with evga - and it was a verified evga issue, not an issue with the graphics amp itself).

Going to play around with some REALLY high CPU speeds as well by overvolting the CPU and using this card to see what the limit of this laptop is when using a single EGPU.

a Titan X would push it to it's maximum limits, but I didn't want to spend $1200 on a video card that doesn't even fit in the graphics amp (yes the FTW does fit with some customization into the graphics amp itself).

 

Question...
Do you know of a quick way to check my FTW if it is one of those defective ones?

 

What a tease...Literally scratching 6000's ....for a GTX1070, not too shabby....

http://www.3dmark.com/spy/670331

 

Whats your OC now?

 

@Mr. Fox seems like they need to do a pressure test as you did somewhere with a laptop ... with that estrange tape

 

Not bad not bad...

* Note: For future reference, when running Unigine Heaven please make sure your settings are maxed out at 1920x1080 with 8xAA and Full Screen. Preset should be - Custom, Quality - Ultra, and Tessellation - Extreme.

 

I have the high end industry grade pressure paper and will be testing this myself this week on a 15R3.

 

really nice !!! seems like we can have good reviewers yet since we lost MR fox from the laptop side

 

I didn't bale on notebooks, but almost did. Brother @Prema pulled me back from the edge just as I was about to defect for good. I decided to give notebooks one last chance before pulling the plug.

I should soon be doing a review on an EVOC P870DM3 (finally have a tracking number) and a Tornado F5 (tracking number pending).

I was able to do a short remote control test run on the P870DM3 for just a few minutes last night.

 

I don't know of a quick way, mine literally didnt work out of the box, but this new one is a beast!

 

@Mr. Fox you ordered a monster !! i would like to see the temperatures .. but correct me if i am wrong, i saw that the gap between the vapor chamber of the gpu's and the gpu's isn't enough tick to use liquid metal

 

This was ran earlier at only 4.2GHz...sitting at 2nd, but I know I can take the 1st place spot for this on hwbot.

 

I spoke to an Alienware tech at Comic Con London asking about TPM, he said that currently there is no TPM in the laptops however there is a hardware refresh planned for early 2017 to include Kaby Lake (I presume the ones to be released in Jan 2017). He suggested that TPM might be included then as there has been demand for it. I'm also hoping they actually include four RAM slots too rather than just two.

 

Just received my AW17 (4k, 6820, 32r, 1tb ssd, 1070) and these are my initial impressions:

First thing i notice is that the screen suffers from back light bleed (probably nothing wrong with the lcd, just how it was put to place, will call dell later about this) quiet bad QC when buying a 3k laptop. Otherwise sceen is superb, text is very crisp.

Build quality is very solid and robust (its heavy and gives off an expensive impression) but.... when i put the laptop on a plain table i notice that the laptop isnt completely flat, i.e. if i press with one finger on either side (where your wrists rests when you write) it swings/bends which means that the computer isnt completely flat, anyone else notice this?

Quick run (20min) of OCCT (everything stock settings):
Highest recorded core: Core 0 = 77c
Lowest recorded core: core 3 = 63c
Is it normal that it differs more than 10c between highest and lowest, or could i use this to tell dell that i want a repaste?
Note: i live in a nordic country and my room remp is about 18-19c atm.

One weird thing is that my CPU seems to loop between 800-1800-3000 staying on each for about 0.5 sec (when viewing the CPU window in HWiNFO, or in OCCT), should it behave like that?

 

Could anyone with liquid Ultra experience comment on it's long term durability? I can re paste with either a standard, high quality non conductive paste or Liquid Ultra but not sure if I'll have to reapply the Liquid down the road or if it will last 3 years or more? Not interested in tearing the laptop down every six months so I'll go with normal paste if longevity is an issue...

??

 

Liquid Metal will be your best bet hands down.

1. Grizzly Conductonaut
or
2. Cool Labs Liquid Ultra (CLLU / CLU)

 

The temp differential is due to the multipliers being set all weird in the BIOS.

Enter BIOS and set your multipliers all to 36x and set your PL1 and PL2 to 100000. Save and boot...

Then run OCCT again.

Your ambient temperature is going to be lower than the average so it'll have a positive affect on your overall cpu and gpu temps.

Screen bleed is almost inevitable unless you buy a Apple like a Macbook Pro etc..

No wobbles here...mine sits flat.

Most major QC issues are being reported from Europe. It has been a common trend.

Thanks for sharing your results!


::iunlock::

 

If your heatsink makes good contact Liquid Metal is your best bet! It's literally fire&forget; once applied you don't have to worry about temps anymore!

 

Not gonna happen If this was possible, must internal hardware + MB being completely redesigned.

If you put multipliers likevise and the temp difference is the same in bench, Re-paste. If the problem is there still... Return your machine.

 

Yeah I know, just wishful thinking. I would say "I can't see me needing more than 32GB of RAM" but I remember a time saying "I can't see a reason for more than 4GB of RAM".

 

Thanks ... not too experienced with it and was afraid that it might need to be re applied regularly ... I recall reading somewhere that "supposed" daily use, heating and cooling, etc. ... would "dry" the substance over time ...

 

Thanks for the advice, i will set those settings and rerun the test first thing when i get back home on sunday. Any idea why the stock settings have those weird bios settings?

Yes, mine wobbles a bit . I havent had such an issue with light bleed on any of my previous windows PCs. See my screen shoot of my asus g73 and AW17 next to eachother. The asus has no light bleed whatsoever. however the AW17 sceen is waaay better in all other areas.

Screen bleed seems to depend a lot on how the screen is angled
Angle 1
https://postimg.org/image/t67rsrdcr/

Angle 2
https://postimg.org/image/vnd05kxdd/

 

That is an unacceptable amount of bleed..

 

Seems pretty good compared to others.

Anyone with tech support experience with Alienware, I called about the 1400p striping and they submitted a exchange request, when will I hear from customer service to set up the exchange? I'm tempted to just ask for a 15" with a 1080 screen, it appears to be the best setup after repasting.

 

Taking my Best Buy loaner back ... sadly, cause I'll miss that perfect screen if my new order is worse in that regard ...

Just ordered a custom build from HIDEvolution ... $3100 ... LOL .. (that hurts) ... but even though I don't *technically* need it? The machine is just so well put together that it seems almost *necessary* to buy it; good design, man ... gets me every time be it computers, audio or cars ... LOL .. main cost came from 1TB M.2 RAID 0 boot array and the 3 year extended warranty ... I did lots of price calculating to see if simply pimping out the Best Buy "base unit" would be more cost effective but believe it or not, came out about the same total price every time I sourced parts (and I can get the first re paste done by somebody else more experienced than myself in dismantling entire laptops by going with HIDevo). In fact, I contacted Dell to see what it would cost to *add* the extended warranty to this Best Buy machine and they quoted me something INSANE like 500+ dollars for a 3 year extension ... so that sealed it for me. Just hope they can pick me a IPS 1080p panel that's as gloriously perfect as the loaner machine...

They are doing IC Diamond on CPU/GPU ... if I do liquid ultra, then I'll do it myself in the future and use some of the great guides/videos posted around.

RE: liquid ultra application? What do experienced users think about using liquid electrical tape instead of standard electrical tape when it comes to insulating the electronics around the CPU heat spreader?

 

You can even use your girlfriends varnish,.... gets the job done!

Maybe @iunlock has some experience with liquid electrical tape?

 

LOL ...

Seems the liquid electric tape option would create a better seal around the exposed electronics ...

 

It's depends if you use the whole bottle from your girlfriend or not

 

Are there any thoughts of if the AW17 R4 is as much affected by light bleed as the AW15 R3s are? There seem to be a lot of problems with light bleed on the AW15s and mine is no exception. It does however seem like the real problem isn't the LCD but rather the plastic bezels pressing on the screen, ie a design fault. Could be different with the AW17.

 

The particular AW 17 I'm currently using has no lightbleed worth mentioning ... really good panel.

I'm taking this one back to Best Buy some time this week but have a new AW17 coming from HIDevolution in the next 2 to 3 weeks ... not really sure what their turnaround time is. When it comes in, I'll let you know how the panel is on it ... hoping for another good one ...

 

As mentioned my AW17 suffers from this and as u said, seems like it is the pressing causing this. Also, someone at a swedish forum mentioned the same with their AW17, and another one with AW15. I think it is a design/construction flaw :/. I think i will return mine, if i had one which didnt have any i wouldnt send it back (just saying), seems like a lottery where the odds are against u.

 

Suffers from?

 

Which AC adapter I need for the 6820hk? I can pick either the 240W or the 330W at no extra costs..

 

If it's the same price go for the 330W.

 

I ve got the 15 with 6820hk and gtx1070... my highest consumption was 211W. So i guess the 240W Adapter hasnt much left...
Def. go for the 330W if u dont Plan to travel much

 

Anyone with 17 R4 has weird clicking sound (like clickable mouse pad) that happens randomly when clicking and loading stuff?