LVNeptune's Alienware M17x R3 Review ... A long time coming

I figured it was finally time I wrote a review for this, having owned the product for a few months and ran it through many tests and usage cycles, swapping out hard drives, memory, and in 2 cases, motherboards, I am bringing you here this full on review on the product.

But first, a little backstory:

I am a VERY impatient person, any of you that have seen some of my posts regarding waiting on a product I want you will normally see I'll have it overnighted, etc. I DO NOT WAIT, or I should say, I DO NOT LIKE TO WAIT! Which brings me on to my next point. I preordered the R3 in early Feb and then the Cougar Point chipset recall (aka to some of you as the Sandy Bridge recall) happened which caused hundreds if not THOUSANDS of orders to get delayed for about 2 months. In the interim I am fuming about the issue, I wanted the machine NOW. I remembered seeing a bunch of sellers on eBay selling their preorder units and figured this recall would have caused them to get cancellations, it did, I ordered one from a guy and had it overnighted to me. FINALLY 3-4 weeks later after my initial Dell order I received my brand new Alienware M17x R3 with the following specs from the eBay seller.

Stock 16GB RAM
750GB Seagate 5400 HD
3D Enabled
2820qm Processor

My original order from Dell was spec'd a lot lower in the Hard Drive and memory category because I already had replacement Hyper-X and a Western Digital Black 750GB HD on order. Grand total out of pocket was more than anyone on these forums paid, I cringed and paid it anway. I wanted this damn thing BAD!

Grand Total: $3,000 and some change.

When I received it I unboxed it and made sure everything was in there, it was. Build quality was perfect, no scratches, dents, etc., etc.

The keyboard didn't have remotely any flex like what was being posted by a few people however the plastic part around the keyboard wasn't clipped down all the way, I pushed it down all around.

Zero dead pixels on arrival, there is like a .025mm speck of dust in the top left corner'ish of the LCD which is BARELY visible (you can see it with the laptop off though)...I didn't bother about it, this is a great screen, no reason to jinx it

Fired it up and it was zooming on the drive it came with. It came fully charged which I thought was weird. My battery life is and has been about 2 hours with the screen at full brightness and WiFi on doing casual browsing and forum posting.

On Day 1 I created a respawn USB drive with a newly purchased 16GB flash drive because I planned on installing the 750GB and switching out to Raid-0 which I did later that night. The performance was a bit better but still not to my liking, having a desktop with a RAID-0 setup has made be a bit spoiled.

The system has ran EVERYTHING I have thrown at it PERFECTLY in 3D minus a select few games. However, I have it hooked up to a 720p 3D projector sometimes and with the resolution cut from 1920x1080 to 1280x720 I run everything perfectly fine at max settings. Even Crysis 2 @ 720p runs on its Extreme setting in 3D great!

Since my initial purchase I have swapped out the drives with a Vertex 3 120GB MaxIOPS Edition SSD and a 500GB Hybrid Momentus XT drive. The SSD is zooming, definately not going back to HD anytime soon. All my future purchases will be SSD only...All this power can only be unleashed with SSD unfortunately.

Now onto my negatives/issues with this:

The 3D is great but the emitter was placed in the WRONG PLACE! It only has 2 IR LED's on it and it was placed right at the bottom of the LCD close to the bottom left corner. It's great until you realize that depending on the angle you are sitting at your hand can block the IR beam. I find myself using an external emitter a lot, unfortunately. The external emitter has like 15 IR LED's on it which have better sight and distance coverage.

The audio jacks are defective on pretty much every board. I have had mine swapped out twice now. After using the optical port or any of the headphone jacks it will not switch back to the onboard speakers. The grounding ring/pin for the audio jacks gets stuck after being pushed in when it "detects" a cable being plugged in. It never detects it being unplugged. I truly believe this WILL affect everyone eventually and there will be a mass recall on the boards again. Such a stupid issue IMO but it has affected 2 boards of mine and I see threads popping up daily with "no audio" and it's ALWAYS related to the audio jacks.

Alienware doesn't support the 485M GPU which is the FASTEST card AVAILABLE as of this writing, this is VERY upsetting especially since I use 3D. 3D's FPS gets chopped in half due to the double image output. The 485M would let me run everything at maximum settings without 3D and most games at max with 3D-on @ 1080p. An aftermarket 485M does work in the unit NO PROBLEM except NVIDIA is driver locking the machine to ONLY enable 3D on the 460M. NVIDIA is refusing to unlock 3D with the 485M stating it's an unsupported configuration...Whatever.

The latest Clevo model is 3D, is running the 485M, has a 92% gamut panel whereas this R3 3D model's gamut is a lowly 72%.

Alienware's tech support is pretty shoddy. It's definately hit or miss, or in my case, miss, miss, etc., etc...

It took 3 months for my warranty to get transferred properly into my name. Dell's service system was down for ONE WEEK, which caused a TON of people not to be able to get parts replaced, etc. I personally filed a BBB complaint regarding it especially since they kept giving me the runaround switching the warranty information into my name. That has all since been resolved.


If I were to do it all again, unfortunately I would not be purchasing this system. I am happy with it, don't get me wrong, but I would rather support a company that allows for better upgrades. The Clevo supports the 2920XM out of the box and allows you to set the Turbo time, the Alienware does not. The Clevo supports the 485M in 3D with a higher gamut. The Alienware does not.


All-in-all, I am happy with my purchase but I definately don't think it was worthy of the $3,000 I spent on it + the $600 in aftermarket upgrades I did to it. You won't see me arguing anyone with a "You could have spent the money on a desktop upgrade that was a million times better." I have, what I consider, to be one of the best desktops currently running a 3x GTX 580 setup, I just wanted something to take to and from my office and play with.

Thanks guys!

EDIT:

I forgot to touch on the LCD panel really quick. The 120hz panel I have is about 100nits brighter than the 60hz panel that is being sold, it requires a brighter screen for 3D mode, but the gamut is also higher. The 60hz panel is around 50-60%, this is 72%.

In the NVIDIA control panel, if you bump digital vibrance to 100% it looks SO MUCH BETTER. I do it to all my displays now !

AMD's Catalyst Control Center has the saturation option which is the same, I don't have any values on that so you will need to experiment on your own on that one.

 

Thanks, LV, definitely a good read from a person that actually experienced the system, this should answer some questions to people that want to follow a similar path as you did; Tell you what and don't take it wrong but patience is sometimes a virtue.
Sorry to hear about your bad experience

+1 for taking the time to share!
Take care

 

Cool review I like reading people's opinions like this. I have to say though if you couldn't wait.. You do know r3 went on sale in January right? $3k is alot really and for that price I feel the same way that it needs a strong nvidia gpu option with 3d and a better screen. Sucks that some people are getting 3d configs off Dell outlet for around 14-1700 nowadays. If you spent half the price would you be happy?

 

I'm not UNHAPPY, I just think the power for the value wasn't really worth it...Had it been a 485M I would be happier. No integrated subwoofer kinda sucks too

 

Wow. My machine with slightly lower memory/hd specs is on outlet for about $1700 right now. Almost HALF of what I paid...I thought these things held their value? :'(

 

Just me but you sound unhappy about your purchase. GL with your next system purchase.

 

I like the unit, not the cost, especially after outlet's pricing lol

Dell makes their own prices so resale value depends on what they sell products at.

 

Good review. A maxed out R3 costs as much as a maxed out R2 from the Dell Outlet.