New soon to be Alienware 17 owner. I have questions.

So I finally decided to get a Gaming laptop and while I had a hard time choosing I decided to go with the Alienware 17. My only really big disappointments was that there was only one option with a 3D screen (yes i want to watch 3D Movies and play 3D games) doesn't come with a blu-ray writer... I assume I will just buy an external blu-ray burner it will still be a really big annoyance to have to reach for it from time to time.

My expected delivery date is June 17th
Here are the specs of what I did

4th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-4710MQ Processor
Windows 7 Ultimate Edition (my previous laptop I actually did make a windows 8 and considered it the worst thing I ever did to it. If I had a touch screen I could understand windows 8 but only then)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB GDDR5
16GB RAM (WILL be installing 2 more 8gb ram cards to make it 32GB RAM when it arrives)
1TB 5400 + 80 mSATA HDD (this was a very poor choice for me and it's just going to be a secondary drive anyhow, I've already ordered a SAMSUNG 840 EVO MZ-7TE1T0BW 1TB SSD to be my primary drive)

accessories that I have ready for it
Cooling Pad offered at dell
Trend Micro Titanium Maximum
Logitech G502 PROTEUS CORE Gaming Mouse
Logitech G930 Wireless Gaming Headset
Logitech F710 Wireless Gamepad


Ok so is there anything in particular with this set up that i'm missing? How well will it handle the games out today? I'd prefer to max everything out when playing games but I hear it might be impossible with Crysis 3 which has me worried about the future. Will it visibly outperform a playstation 4 to me?

I wanted a serious gaming computer I hope this will do.

 

You can buy a bluray burner to exchange the bluray reader inside the machine. If you want specifics I can give you the model do mine. Otherwise the machine is excellent.

 

Well I've never installed a cd/dvd/blu-ray drive before... would it be easy enough to do with the alienware laptop?

i guess i should say this machine doesn't come with a blu-ray drive at all, it's a DVD drive.

 

You can get the manual for the notebook from Dell

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Will I be able to download the software if I did replace and put in a blu-ray drive? I think I will do that but are there actual blu-ray writers for the Alienware 17 or are they just readers?

 

Should be plug n play

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did any of them do Blu-ray 3D?

are you able to recommend any that can write and play 3D Blu-ray?

 

Some have installed the Panasonic UJ265 BD drive.

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The software is what makes the 3D work. The drive itself has no relevance to 3D Compatibility. You can use either the UJ-235 or UJ-265.

 

Anyone know it the Blue Ray player form a XPS15 will work ( screw in ) to the Alienware 17?

 

So if i installed either of those drives will the outside of the alienware still look the same as it does when it arrives?

 

yes, all you need to do is remove the facia / bezel and install it...no problem.

 

Thank you, I've already ordered the UJ-265 so hope everything goes smooth with that.

 

Now is there an expansion slot for video drive? Anything i can do to make it run Crysis 3 at max without even a wink of problem? Even though i'm not interested in Crysis 3 I still want to future proof as much as possible.

 

There is no thunderbolt port to plug in an external GPU, besides even a GTX 880M cannot play Crysis 3 with maxed out settings @ 60fps 1080p (that's why SLI configurations exist for notebooks, even the fastest mobile GPUs cannot match a very high end Deskop card), you may have to wait for a newer (Maxwell ?) GPU and upgrade your MXM card.

 

Thank you all for the answers.

Well I just received my Alienware laptop though Dell never updated my online order status so I didn't know it was coming and was surprised when I walked by it today... I did order the blu-ray drive and the 32gb and SSD drive have not yet come though I'm waiting for the mail now just in case the SSD drive does show up...

 

Probably will need to play it at 900p cos the 880m is an oc'd 780M and I've oc'd mine and it still has difficulties getting a smooth 60fps while I can get a rock solid 60fps with bf4.

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Well starting the internet for the first time on my Alienware 17 But been playing with it for about an hour and a half. My first impression is everything is running really smooth and i'm surprised for such a powerful laptop the battery or bottom isn't hot at all... it is barely even warm. My previous laptop which was an HP laptop about 5 years ago would heat up like crazy in about 30 minutes.

But i been playing with the Canyourunit site and while i'm not all that interested in Crysis 3 I'm already really disappointed that it cannot run Wolfenstein The New Order on recommended settings. Is it better to buy it for this laptop or for the playstation 4?

 

Ok so I installed the UJ-265 and while the computer is reading it, I don't yet have the software to actually play blu-ray movies and it didn't install any software for the drive. So what should I be downloading for this drive?

Next I have found installing the extra two memory cards confusing so I'm probably going to take it and the SSD card (I don't have the cables to do it myself) and I believe bestbuy can install the both of them, i've never gone through bestbuy for this stuff but I'll give them a try. .

 

vlc can do basic blu-ray playback but the best options are usually paid like total media theater (a much better alternative to powerDVD).

 

congrats on your new Alienware! Welcome!

i just have a point to make
you want to make your laptop 32 gb, your current config is 16gb

as far as i know and from what i have, alienware configures 16 gb as 4gbx4 not 8gbx2, and only 2 slots can be accessed from the back cover, the other two can be accessed by removing the keyboard
correct me if i am wrong, i have the R4, not the AW17
you might want to contact alienware and get this cleared up

other than that, you perfectly fine to go!
enjoy!


as far as your gaming needs, 780m blows everything out of the water
except for a few games like crysis 3, metro LL, even desktop cards have a hard time keeping up at max settings(well cant have everything in a laptop huh?)
anything else, no worries
you can even use nvidia geforce experience to optimise your games

 

most likely the RAM config will be 4 x 4GB rather than 2 x 8GB sticks so you may end up buying 4 x 8GB sticks instead of 2 x 8GB sticks if the config is 4 x 4GB.

 

All of the configurations with 16GB now come in a (2 x 8GB) configuration, and they will be installed just beneath the cover. If it's easier for you, it's easier for Alienware to get out of production. People still hand build these systems. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Getting beneath the keyboard is easier than it sounds.

 

Mine came with 4 sticks of 4gb

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Yeah, they used to. They changed recently. Not sure why. Maybe it's cheaper from the supplier.

 

Great! It's gonna cost me if I move to 32gb

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Yeah i opened up the Memory yesterday and after all that work i was shocked that it was only 4 4gb RAM's... I was annoyed cause I had everything prepared as far as I knew to max everything I could.
Well I did mess up putting the memory in and I hit a power attachment. I took it to a repair place this morning and while they said it looked at least like I knew what I was doing I missed that part.
I should have it back tomorrow WITH the SSD card installed and the original Hard drive as my data hard drive.

But I do want to bring up my RAM to 32gb anyone got any recommended RAM sticks? I think I'd like to do two of the gaming RAM sticks any compatible ones you can link to?

 

corsair is a good brand: i hope to make some upgrades once i get paid work flowing.

EDIT: you don't need to open it up, you can just load the BIOS and it'll show which slots are loaded.

 

Any other recommendations on Blu Ray software? Just got my player ordered. Is there alienware player able to download for free?

 

VLC is free but very basic playback aka no BD-java integration.

The only two (2) real options are Total MediaTheater and PowerDVD. I went with TMT because:

a) it didn't block/override/bypass on-the-fly region decoding apps like AnyDVD HD (which I also recommend). PowerDVD was known to bypass apps and get region information directly from the drive.
b) HD-DVD playback: not much of a big deal now since HD-DVD is practically dead for years but I stopped using PowerDVD because many felt that the removal of HD-DVD support was a backwards move.

So while reason b is no longer an issue I'd still get TMT....i think i am a few versions behind

 

Congratulations man!! I'm hopefully getting one in the next week let us know if you have any suggestions.. How long did it take from build to delivery??? It seemed pretty fast. Any other thoughts on your experience ??

 

I already purchased TMT for the blu-ray drive however I have one question about that... Can I put it on two computers with only one license or do i have to purchase a second license?

As i mentioned i took my Alienware laptop in for repair and they haven't given it back one of the things I asked them two do was install the SSD drive and put the already installed HDD in as a secondary Data drive and this is what they've been having a problem with.
They have installed the 1TB SSD drive just fine however everytime they put in a second HDD drive even they tried other HDD drives it always ends with a blue screen, they said they are going to be or they might have called dell about it. (the guy working on my laptop doesn't come until later this afternoon so they can't give me the answer yet as to weather they called or not). So i'm just waiting for this till i can pick up my laptop but at this point i'd rather just say screw the 2nd HDD.