Alienware 17 R3 storage configuration

Hi everyone,

I'm about to buy an AW17 R3 for photo editing purposes, and I have some questions:

1) If I order the configuration with only the HDD and no SSD, will it have the SSD slots available?

2) Can I fit 2 Samsung 850 evo M.2 SSDs, along with a Samsung 850 evo 2.5 inch drive? I want to avoid PCIe ssds because of the heat. I want to keep temperatures and noise at a minimum. I think I've read somewhere, that you can only use one SATA drive and the other two have to be PCIe. I want to use 3 SATA drives, all 850 evo, in a non RAID fashion.

Thank you,

John

 

Hey there

In answer to your questions:

1- Of course. The motherboard is the same, as well as the actual chassis of the laptop. So all slots will be there. So if you're comfortable disassembling a laptop yourself in order to install components then by all means, order the strict minimum from Dell and procure the extras from other sources as you'll be able to save some $$$ that way.
The one thing I cannot guarantee is how easy this would be in the new AW 17 R3. Most people here will tell you that the new laptops from Alienware are unloved by many as they made it impossible to upgrade CPU and GPU (both BGA/soldered) and I believe I read that even accessing components like the RAM/Storage drive is more difficult now.

2- I wouldn't worry too much about the heat as Alienware laptops usually have good cooling. In all cases, I suggest you get yourself a good cooling pad. The two M.2 slots in the R3 are NVMe so definitely consider getting a NVMe SSD, 256GB should be plenty for your OS and photo editing apps. A second drive, sata SSD or 7200rpm hard drive could be used for storage. 1 TB SSD are kind of affordable now I believe.

Just out of curiosity, why are you choosing a gaming laptop when your main purpose is going to be photo editing? Why not get a light ultrabook instead? (like the ASUS UX501 or Dell XPS 15)

 

Because at the moment, the AW17 R3 has the best 17 inch display available (i'm talking about the 4k version). The only other laptops that have this panel are the Precision and the Clevo, which are much more expensive.
As for the storage, I will have one 256Gb sdd for the OS, one 120Gb for the Lightroom catalogue and Photoshop scratch/cache, and one 512Gb for my photos. I just want to use 850 evo for all three, to cut down cost and fan noise/temperature.

 

I would choose 2.5" Sandisk Extreme Pro for your photo. The best 2.5" ssd you can get.

 

Well using m.2 sata SSD's for storage would definitely help you save a couple hundred bucks but if you're looking for a long term investment I personally wouldn't hesitate getting a NVMe m.2 SSD.
As for your photos, getting a good storage hard drive would be cheaper, like a Samsung M9T.

And again, using a mechanical hard drive or NVMe instead of an SSD wouldn't impact fan usage as far as I know.
Reviews of a NVMe SSD like the Samsung 950 pro DID show that heat could lead to some performance drops, but this was during heavy read/write, which shouldn't be an issue if you use that drive as an OS drive.
And that heat, again isn't enough to trigger the fans anyway...

For peace of mind, just get a decent cooling pad and you really really won't have to worry about heat at all...

 

Thanks for your help, can you suggest which thermal pads are good (some particular brand maybe)? I have no idea about this stuff.

 

Currently using a Notepal U3 plus and very happy with it. I had a thermaltake massive TM previously which did cool the laptop a little better but had poor build quality and died after 6 months...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Take a look at my U3 mod http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...lienware-laptops.593626/page-46#post-10208973
U3 is probably the best cooler you can buy.