*OFFICIAL* Alienware m15 R4 / m17 R4 Owner's Lounge

What about undervolting with new 1.5.1 BIOS, is it still working?

 

I tried the 1.5.1 bios and it messed with the fan profiles and caused the battery to drain faster. I reverted back to 1.3.1 and all is fine. Didn't try undervolting so I don't know about that.

 

My AW 15R3 ended up dying, so I bought an m17r4 10870H 3080 144hz display model off the outlet since I needed a replacement quickly. I was a little worried about the display since I was having a hard time finding reviews for it, but I am pretty satisfied with it. I'm posting the model number in case anyone else is looking for it.

Not a huge fan of the high pitch fans and thermal profiles. The fans seem to come on under basic tasks more than I'd like. I tried the liquid metal pads with the 0.1mm copper shim and even with an undervolt my temps will spike in to the 90s. I'm gonna check my repaste for problems and see if I can improve it. I looked at some other laptops, but with all the long waits and price gouging I'm not sure what else to do. Definitely a crappy time to buy.

AU Optronics AUO449D, B173HAN [DELL P/N: 5YKTJ]

 

I love this thing! New 10870/3070/1TB/32GB/144hz G-SYNC owner here. This thing kicks my R5's ass!

 

I have tried this adapter 3 times and noticed gpu or cpu speed and throttle from not getting enough juice with 3 different adapters. Blue light comes on and sometimes a power down happends.

 

I found some of the high pitch noise was coming from the little wires running across my gpu fan (cpu fan seems to be much quieter). I was able to reduce it a bit, but its still a lot whinier than my 15r3. It seems like some of it may be related to the bottom cover as it is much more pleasant with it off. Has anyone had any luck dealing with the high pitch noise?

I'm trying to decide if I want to try and get dell to replace my fan, but I have had bad experience with their repairs before. Still have a couple weeks to return, but I haven't been able to order anything else to try out.

Edit:
Seems like much of the remaining whine may be from the bottom cover, so I don't think a replacement would help all that much.

 

I love this laptop. I can't get over how much I like it. I went from being rather disappointed with my R5 to being over the moon with my R4. I wouldn't trade it for any other laptop. Can we all just appreciate the R4 for a moment?

 

I do think it is their best of all the ones that came out this year (2021). That being said, the 51m line has so much better potential than all these but that ship has sailed so R4 is certainly the one to go with if you buying right now.

 

A new Area-51m definitely would have been the way to go this year for performance, but it didn't happen. If you want top-of-the-line performance and a premium chassis, which has been refined to absolute perfection over the course of 4 generations, the R4 is where it's at. If they kept everything else the same and just upgraded the CPU and maybe display options for the R5, the R5 would have been a better choice than the X series. That's why they had to downgrade the R5 in almost every way, lmao.

 

I have already written about my m17r4 with RTX 3080 16 GB in this branch. I bought it at the end of April with a discount of 2500 before taxes. Now with the 3080, you can only buy the x17r1, but it is $ 600 more expensive. at the same performance. and I have 3 m.2 disks, and only two can be installed in x17r1. so far, I'm happy with my laptop. yes, during the games, all the cores, judging by the monitoring, reach 100 degrees, but in idle time it keeps about 60. I am satisfied. there are no problems, no shutdowns, no freezes. prices for competitors are still high in stores. lenovo, msi, asus are much more expensive. It was a good purchase. I pass games on an external monitor in 4K - https://www.youtube.com/c/LongPlay4K/videos Now we can only wait for new laptops on the RTX 4080 Laptop.

 

Sup, Ill be getting a m15 R4 (3080, OLED, 10870h, 32gb) in the next days so I have being reading this thread to get some info regarding temps, undervolting, and power management; really great advice all around.

On a different note, I found the source of the guy who enabled mux in the x17 and found out that he just did another thread regarding the m17/m15 r4. Seems to be about unlocking more power budget to the CPU/GPU and RAM OCing. My chinese skills are worse than 0 so all this info is from google translate.

Here is the thread for anyone curious. ** This uses ru.uefi to modify a bios image**

 

i tried the software ru.efi and found the written example but not the entries for RAM and CPU. i used www.deepl.com for translation and you have to use the us layout for the shortcuts in ru.efi.

 

This is pretty exciting! I'd love to be able to unlock more power from my m15r4. The training wheels need to come off. If anyone with some skills and chinese chops want to throw into it I'd be willing to contribute some clams to the cause.

 

I red some further ru.efi subs in reddit and now i am a step ahead. My max frequency is 3200 now

but the following bits aren´t right i think. i didn`t found them in my susetup. the 0x3 is too high, my list ends with 0x2

n 0X3修改为46，0X4修改为05（此项需要修改连续两个参数，意为内存电压，修改为1.35V）
n 0XE内存倍频，12*133*2=3200，修改为12 作者：标标带你玩电脑
https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv12184193?from=search&spm_id_from=333.337.0.0 出处：bilibili

 

New Updated from aug to september VBIOS for 3070 3080 i wonder what it does. Its the same image just this one came out sep 9th.

If you could please send me this file as i cannot download it since im from the us. Please pm me it or megaupload or zippyshare or whatever lol im grateful

 

Do you want, or the ru.efi exe, my picture file or the original blog text from the chinese "colleague"?

 

I need the actual file the guy posted on the site. I cannot download it because im on us. USa cant register

 

The link only seems to contain the version 5.28.0397 (Beta) of ru.uefi; here is file if you still wanna take a look: https://we.tl/t-xZEaAa0Fll. Pass: 3709180014499

I tried to flash my m15 Oled 3080 to m17's 165w and suffered catastrophic errors twice by using the dell.drivers method (really messy to fix). Tried it again using the 9 Sep release and it was a success, which is weird since I was using same intel+nvidia drivers as before.

 

Well, i succeeded this weekend. I red the Q&A after the blog post. 0X3 means 0003, 0X4 0004 and 0XE 000E in the bios.
Now the ram works after a longer boot sequence with two restarts on 3200 very well. But the latencies had automatically set from 21-21-21 to 22-22-22 by the laptop. So i will test it the next days.

Edit: Latency drops from 84 to 74. I think it is a good option to get more power out of the m17 r4. But at the moment, it is not possible for AIDA anymore to read the modul informations like you see in the picture above. So i cant check the real voltage......

 

Was having some bad Temps all of a sudden in my M17 R4, decided to send it off to HID to have it repasted. Turns out the heatsink wasn't making proper contact so they're replacing it with a new one. Interesting. I'm glad they were able to solve it.

 

Got a few weeks with the laptop already, this is where I am right now by playing with ThrottleStop, flashing 165w vbios, and cleaning up windows a bit; also tried an external display just to see what I am missing, but it would be a waste to get an OLED just to use an external monitor.

Could probably hit the GPU higher on Afterburner, but I am happy with the clocks to temps ratio. All these scores are gaming stable while playing MonsterHunter World and Shadow of the Tomb Raider for multiple hours.

GPU stays around 68-72C & CPU around 75-81C while gaming.
GPU: 0.8v @ 1710mhz core & +500 Memory clock by using MSI AB curve option and flatlining on 0.8v.
CPU: all 8 cores @ 4GHz consumes about 72-75w with current undervolt and settings.

A decent-ish machine overall, wish I could have spent all that time doing some nice overclocking instead of all of this just to keep the temps at check, but OLED is one hell of a drug and the other option was the AERO 15.

As expected and feared, forced optimus ****s with performance (5-10%) and some settings in games, like VSync, behave differently. Worse of all is that HDR is completely ****ed when using the internal display, as CPU performance completely tanks with it on. Automata randomly gets stuck @ 40fps, while MHW and SottR becomes a stuttery mess even when locked @ 60ps; all of these issues are gone when using an external display with HDR On, where it only has a 5-10% performance hit which is expected on Nvidia cards. **** optimus and whoever created that **** should burn in the deepest part of hell.

TimeSpy Results:
(External Display - LG C7)

(Internal Display -- OLED 4K)


ThrottleStop Settings -- all C-States disabled minus C1E. SpeedStep disabled and SpeedShift enabled on BIOS.



LatencyMon -- after some webbrowsing in Firefox while watching youtuss videos.

 

hi
@Prema please need your help for a Bios to P750ZM, can you menssage to me ?

 

Anyone lose their keyboard lights in command center? The are still on my last profile but keyboard is no longer detected to change. I have tried uninstalling and reinsatlling command center to no avail.

 

Hey guys,

Can someone let me know why 1440p resolution is not available on the M17 R4 4k displays?

 

I wonder if there is a way to enable the mux switch on the m15 r4 and m17 r4. I bet all the motherboards have them. We need to crack open this bios

 

The m17 r4 has a software switch. It's a pain though in that occasionally windows updates break it and you get stuck in whatever mode you were last in.

 

Any idea how to fix it?

 

As of right now, it's been working for me on windows 10 update 20H2. To get all the pieces to work you need you also need a windows app (Alienware On Screen Display) from Dell that gets loaded through the Microsoft store. If things are working correctly pressing FN + F7 switches between iGPU/optimus and full time nVidia GPU. Sadly, my iGPU seems to have decided to fail after a few months use. Not completely, but it ghosts whatever windows are on screen and just displays it shifted down by a few hundred pixels on and off in a rather distracting manor. For now, it's not worth losing the machine while Dell fixes it. I'm attached to a wallwart 99% of the time anyway. And I have an inverter in the vehicle if I really must take it with me.

 

I just ordered an R4 3080 and a R6 3080 for my kids. I was curious if they are LHR because when my kids are not using them (nighttime) I planned on mining with them.
Has anybody received a 3080 that has reduced hash rates?

 

I doubt it. I haven't tried mining with it yet but it's unlikely theyve bothered.

 

The R4 3080 is not LHR. I have mined on mine and the hash rates are about 61Mhash or equivalent to a non LHR 3070. A word of caution, the GPU and memory will run super hot even with max fans. Over the long term it may end up destroying your motherboard. Don't ask me how I know...

 

Thanks for the heads up.

 

You did undervolt and bring the core clock speeds down when mining on that 3080, right?

 

hello everyone. I have a laptop r17 m4 3080 + 10870. recently, I noticed that the upper part of the screen began to blink or flicker somehow. this does not happen often, but periodically. nothing flashes on the connected monitor via the HDMI connector. I installed the newest drivers on the graphics card, and it didn't help. in general, the laptop works. no complaints. before this blinking, dots or rectangles appeared on both screens. when trying to reboot, the laptop freezes. after switching on, I updated the graphics card driver and there were no more dots. I do not know if blinking a small part of the screen is a warranty defect. but a little annoying. blinking is noticeable when there is a light picture on the screen. this is not visible in the dark image. I met a video of one owner on the Internet, where the screen blinked entirely and very often. I don't have that. I have the upper part of the screen blinking slightly, about 2-3 cm high. blinking does not depend on the processor temperature, blinks at 50 degrees Celsius and at 100. has anyone encountered this? or can you recommend something?

 

The blinking and artifacting you are seeing could be a problem with your panel or with your graphics card. It could be as simple as a driver problem but since you replaced them it may not be. I recommend completely removing your drivers with DDU and then installing the latest drivers. Then if it's still happening make sure the lcd isn't damaged. If it keeps happening and nothing seems to change it, it is time to use that warranty and they will find the problem. This isn't normal but it also may not be a big deal. Good luck with it

 

So my kids used my backpack as a footstool when my laptop was in it and my lcd didn't make it. I took it as an opportunity to buy a 144hz panel and see if my laptop with a 300hz panel has a mux switch. It may not work but I'll report back if it does allow me to enable advanced optimus or if it does not. The panel i ordered is a B156BAH08.0. I don't think it is the exact panel in the other m15 r4s. I guess we will see if it was a waste of dough.

 

The b156bah08.0 screen was a bust. Turns out the panel connector on my m15 r4 is a 30 pin and the panel uses a 40 pin connection

 

So as an update if anyone cares. I bought an alienware 7ms 144hz 1080p panel and popped it into my laptop. It turns out that my previously equipped with a 300hz alienware m15 r4 has a mux switch built in. Which likely means alienware has locked out the mux switch option for 300hz panel users. UHD 630 graphics can enable advanced optimus on a 1080p 360hz panel so this must be intentional. My laptop has a mux switch and it is the top end version of this laptop and so they likely built them into all of them. If anyone else decides to do a swap then be aware that the 300hz panel is a 30pin edp panel and the 144hz 7ms or 3ms is a 40pin so you will need the appropriate cable for each. So if my small sample size is reflective of most m15 r4s then you probably have a mux switch and your daddy dell alienware doesn't want you to have reasonable battery life. I will say that the 7ms panel seems to be noticeably slower in twitch shooters but not enough to get in a twist about for a reasonable person. so obviously I've gotten in a twist about it and I am in the process of trying to source a 3ms panel. I'll update if you guys are interested.

 

Here are some pictures of my laptop in dgpu mode



Here are some screens of my laptop in igpu mode and what it says when you press fn+f7



No i'm not ashamed of having Haydee installed. I like puzzles?

 

Looks like what I have on my Alienware m15 R4 as far as setup on display

 

Trying to decide between 144hz gsync vs 300hz screen options on m15 r4. Dont care about battery life
Is gsync worth sacrificing 300hz screen?

 

No but I will say that you will rarely hit 300hz on games. I don't play valorant or CS so It made more sense for me to have the mux switch option. If you only care about the faster hz then you have your answer. Gsync is not a big deal really. I barely notice it if at all.

 

I play overwatch primarily so high hz is probably i’d like. Also i thought gsync makes difference only at lower refresh rates

 

I guess it helps across the spectrum but you won't notice it if you are running at higher refresh rates. The 300 hz panel doesn't have gsync. So if you get that panel it won't matter which it seems like that is what you want.

 

Curious if any Alienware m15 R4 users have upgrade to Windows 11?