BurritoMeow

I also bought my M17X R4 with a GPU issue, Solder issue which I revived it using the oven bake method, Although it's temporary. If you end up replacing the speakers and it doesn't fix the issue, then it would be a sound card issue. Have you run the Dell ePSA diagnostic utility? It will detect most problems.

There's a E-GPU enclosure made by Vidock, Not sure if it's still around but they do it in both mpcie and Expresscard. Using a 1060 will experience quite a bit of bottlenecking with the limitations of the pcie/expresscard port and you'll probably see lackluster gains in performance using a second gen intel laptop CPU. Just think about this before you go through with it.

I'm sitting running my Gigabyte HD7970, which is still chugging along in most games I play. Unless I see an actual need to upgrade(or my computer blows up) then I'll be sticking around with my 2012 build for a couple more years.

Did you get the replacements off dell or a generic one? Also, I misunderstood something you said, Has the issue occurred since the day you bought it or since you got the replacement parts? Since the laptop has a small surge of power which levels out after it turns on, the battery may not be able to push enough power to turn it on. That's the only explanation I can offer since it runs fine on battery after it's turned on.

Have you tried reinstalling the drivers? Configuring the EQ in the sound blaster settings? If you've tried that and the headphone and left speaker sound is working as it should, then I'd say it might be just the right speaker which is defective.

I had a friend with the same model and issue, it just turned off and wouldn't turn back on with the 8 beeps, I fixed it using the blind flash method since it was a corrupted bios, if you want to give it a try, here's the link for the guide http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m17x-r4-bricked-bios-recovery-not-vbios.683080/ EDIT: Also, @naightmehr You'd be able to take the dedi GPU out and run the intel GPU through HDMI