The diffrence with the M17x R2 , R3?

[masterjack]

i got lucky and scored a M17x alienware laptop but i dont know what is the diffrence between them, i see some of you have a R3 or R4 how do i know wicht i have

 

[MattyB]

Hopefully you still have the service tag sticker on the bottom of the laptop. If you do, enter it on the Dell Support site and it will tell you everything you need to know about your machine. You can also post a picture of the machine and let us know what CPU/GPU it has and it's pretty easy to work it out.

 

[masterjack]

Hopefully you still have the service tag sticker on the bottom of the laptop. If you do, enter it on the Dell Support site and it will tell you everything you need to know about your machine. You can also post a picture of the machine and let us know what CPU/GPU it has and it's pretty easy to work it out.

alright i found out its an R3, and iv been looking for a keyboard replacement but only ones i can find dosent match the one i have, but the description shows it works on R2,3,4 is this accurite ?

 

[masterjack]

 

[MattyB]

The R3 and r4 keyboards are almost 100% compatible. I have heard that if you use an R4 keyboard on an R3 (and vice-versa) it will work fine for a while and then it will go a little crazy after a while. You will have compatibility issues using an R1/R2 keyboard. It is getting harder and harder to find R3 and R4 US-International keyboards. Is it only the few keys that you are missing? They can be replaced rather than replacing the whole keyboard

 

[masterjack]

Some keys are missing but almost half of them isent working, like if i press m it dosent work.. but ill see what i can do,

 

[MattyB]

If you remove the keyboard you will find that the ribbon cable will have a blue or green tag on it. I have heard that they aren't 100% compatible. I think a few guys on NotebookReview have some keyboards for sale though. In my experience it's a pretty safe place for buying and selling. I got my GTX 1070 from a guy on there. I have an R4 keyboard here but I don't have a working R4 to test it on.

 

[MattyB]

You can also try removing the ribbon cable to see if it's connected properly

 

[masterjack]

Okay cool ill try that, newer done anything like this but ill try lets hope its a bad connection. You said you bought a 1070 for your laptop, do you mybe have a link were i can buy gpu's for laptops mine has a 540 or somthing navidia its not bad but i need more power

 

[MattyB]

You'd have a 560M or 580M. Unfortunately the R3 is limited to the 780M while the R4 is capable of the 980M and 10 series cards (even the possibility of RTX cards). The 780M was a great card and I would highly recommend grabbing one if you can. Yeah, it's not that powerful these days for new games but it's probably 4-5 times stronger than your 560M or twice as strong as the 580M.
Laptop MXM cards are still very expensive, even for 6-8 year old cards like the 780M (probably around $170-200USD). To get the 780M to work in your laptop you'll need the M17x R3 unlocked BIOS and then you'll need to run the card with a modded Nvidia driver. The unlocked BIOS is really only available though TechInferno and you have to make 5-8 posts before you can download for free. I have the BIOS on a USB somewhere but I think it's lost somewhere.

 

[masterjack]

alright thanks for your help mate, i love this laptop but the isue's it has i might sell it and just buy a diffrent laptop and sell this one for parts i think ill get more out of it then selling it hole

 

[MattyB]

yeah you usually get more for the individual parts but it just takes longer since you have to wait for someone who wants the part.