Upgrade Confusion

So, why does Dell have many things wrong about the M14x?
I purchased mine in September of 2011. At the time 8 GB of ram was the "max" however, according to other threads I have found that you can actually go up to 16 GB. I ordered Newegg.com - CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory Model CMSX16GX3M2A1600C10
As suggested in the fourm. Why does dell still have 8GB as the max for my Service tag?
I have the i7 (dont remember base clock, but it goes to 3.6) option with the 3 gb graphics card.

Dell also screwed me out of getting Bluetooth installed by them, so I had to do it myself.

 

i would get dell to install the bluetooth and take your module out. From my experience if anything is wrong with your system dell insists on the factory installed parts. If you have anything extra they refuse repair until your computer until is is returned to the purchase state. this is a possible future pain in the .

on the amount of ram, what are you doing that requires 16 gb??

 

I already added the bluetooth module. I was just wondering why the computer would support 16 GB of ram and Dell not say it on the site. I like to game and I am a firm believer in maxing out your system. Go big or Go home.

 

Well if you were going to max out your gaming, why'd you go for the m14x? Although the max is 16gb for the m14, it really has no practical benefits other than boasting that you have 16gb of ram unless you do some graphical work, in which case the GPU would bottleneck it.

 

an ssd upgrade would be yield higher returns. you don't want to be a ram fetishist

 

yea 4 gigs is enough for gaming. An SSD is pretty nice for faster loading times but are very expensive for one with a lot of storage and don't speed up FPS at all. Most games are GPU dependent these days more than anything else.

 

Dell offers 16gb now, but a year ago they did not. 8GB sticks were not cheap/popular yet, they are as of a few months ago man. Its all cool, I would just call Dell and see if you can get it changed or something..

 

16GB of ram won't do anything in the gaming world.

4GB = Gaming
6GB = Electronic music production
8GB+ = 3D/Maya/Heavy Adobe

Go big or go home doesn't apply to ram.

Get an SSD for the best results, but after-market; Dell overprices it.

 

I ordered a 256ssd with my m14x, is it just as good as others you can buy elsewhere just more pricy?

I think the price in the link you posted is not far off what I payed to upgrade to 8gb ram when configuring, so not too bad xD

 

yea the samsung 830 which the m14x ships with is a great drive, Dell just charges an arm and a leg for it.

 

A 256GB Sata III (500+ write/500+ read) SSD when on sale is going for about 280$<

Last time I checked, Dell charges a significantly higher amount.

The key thing to remember is never customize ram or hard drives and always do them yourself (it's very easy) In the end, you save big (especially with Dell).

 

Ah cheers for letting me know!
I just configured the Dell how i wanted it, didn't think to order the more pricy parts elsewhere, hindsight is a ***** :
I got a good price using the Dell deal page, 10% coupon and 8% student discount though =) hopefully more potential alienware customers will come across this forum and thread to find out its cheaper to DIY!

 

Actually I was thinking of getting 16 GB. I ran out of RAM running simulations in MATLAB and had to repair windows. It's never a graceful event!!!

You can do some sick stuff with the parallel computing toolbox, have all 8 threads running 100 % while using the NVIDIA CUDA cores to run parallel floating point calculations. The M!4x is portable super computer! lol

Anyone recommend some good 8 GB RAM modules for the M14x?

PS I noticed appreciable but slight FPS boost in BF3 and a nice bump playing FSX the short time I had a SSD before I bricked it. They're definitely less annoying to play with an SSD so there's a psychological boost as well.

 

Yeah they screwed me on Bluetooth too. Apparently only the base configuration allows you to add it. FAIL.

Anyways, did you get the Dell Bluetooth 3.0 module or something else? Did you get a good price for it? Im thinking of doing this as well. I have a Bluetooth dongle but really dont wanna tie up one of the USB ports especially since I keep them all in good use (WD Passport, Nano Mouse Receiver, Cooling Pad)

 

Is Bluetooth a whole separate module or is it included on the wireless card? What wireless card you got?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S2 using tapatalk 2

 

Its a seperate module. I have the Killer Wireless N card. SOME NICs do come with bluetooth but I dont believe any of them offerred with the M14x do. I dont know that for sure though.

 

I believe my card has it built in. Once I get around to getting a killer wireless card ill let you know if I still have bluetooth or not.