The Alienware 17 R4 service manual available on support.dell.com indicates that this system has a 2.5' SATA bay and an M.2 slot that accepts a 2280 size SSD, which is the normal size. Alienware 17 R4 - Specs CPU Intel Core i7-8750H 29 Intel Core i7-7820HK (@ 3.8GHz) 22 Intel Core i7-7820HK 44 Intel Core i7-7700HQ 46 Intel Core i7-6820HQ 338 Intel Core i7-6820HK (@ 4 GHz) 198 Intel Core i7-6820HK 326 Intel Core i7-6700HQ 266 Alienware 17 R4.

Alienware 17 R4 Setup and Specifications. Slots Two SODIMM slots Type DDR4 Speed 2133 MHz, 2400 MHz, and 2667 MHz. Solid-state drive (SSD). The Alienware 17 R4 (starting at $1,299; tested at $1,949 and $2,599) now packs a 7th-generation 'Kaby Lake' Intel CPU and Nvidia GTX 1070 or 1080 GPUs that are perfect for virtual reality.

In this guide, I will disassemble an Alienware 17 R4. I will remove the bottom cover to upgrade the SSD, HDD, and RAM.

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There are two different types of screws, and I circled them with different colors.
Remove six screws (red) that securing the bottom cover to the laptop.
Loosen one screw (yellow). Insert a pick to pry up the bottom cover.

Under the bottom cover, you can get access to three M.2 SSD slots, two RAM slots, and a hard drive module.
From the picture you can see, Alienware 17 R4 comes with two M.2 2280 SSD slots (support SATA and PCIe SSD) and an M.2 2242 slot.

Here’s left the cooling fan.

The Alienware 17 R4 comes with two 8GB DDR4 2667MHz RAMs. According to Dell website information, it supports up to 32GB RAM, so you can replace it with 16GB DDR4 2667MHz RAM respectively.

Here’s hard drive module, it is securing to the laptop by four screws.

Here’s Toshiba 256GB PCIe SSD.

Source 1: http://laptopmedia.com/highlights/inside-alienware-17-r4-disassembly-internal-photos-and-upgrade-options/

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Source 2: http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/Alienware-17-R4.htm

1. Removing the bottom

This is fairly easy to do and it requires little unscrewing to do. Just remove all the screws and the cover will pop right out.

2. Storage

Once again, the laptop offers a good amount of storage options. The motherboard holds three M.2 PCIe NVMe-enabled SSD slots with one in our unit taken by a Toshiba M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD with 256GB capacity while the 2.5-inch HDD slot is taken by an HGST drive with 1TB capacity. The other two M.2 SSD slots are also PCIe NVMe-enabled but one of them is 2260 while the other supports the standard 2280 sizes.

3. RAM and Wi-Fi card

Usually, we are used to seeing high-end gaming laptops with four RAM slots but interestingly enough, the Alienware R4 holds only two of those and in out case, they are both taken by 8GB DDR4-2666 chips by SK Hynix.

The Wi-Fi card is Killer 1535 and can be found right next to the left cooling fan (with the notebook’s bottom facing upwards).

4. Full disassembly

Ready yourself with some patience because this will get tricky. Before doing anything, remove all the screws holding the black plate. Then, unscrew the two bolts holding the back, pull it out gently and remove the rest of the screws. You will see that near the two edges, where the heat pipes end, the Wi-Fi antennas, which go along the LED strips, are held by two screws. Remove them and gently pull the whole black plate.

5. Battery

As you can see, it’s quite the hassle to get to the battery but we were surprised to see that it’s the maximum allowed capacity you can bring on an airplane – 99Wh.

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6. Cooling system

The cooling system is neatly designed with two fans and several big heat pipes. The right fan draws cool air from the side vent opening and pushes it towards the left fan, which in turn, pushes the hot air through its own vent opening. However, the rear radiators are responsible for most of the cooling.

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