*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M17x-R2 Edition Owner's Lounge - Part 2

There are no drivers needed for esata......it was most likely just a low quality case

As long as your storage controller drivers are loaded, the computer sees esata attached drives as another internal drive. I used to boot from esata all the time when benching on a different hdd

 

well i know that. i cant describe the issues i had with the previous e-sata case. shortly it was detected under default windows drivers (not intel matrix nor intel rapid storage), only disk was detected without having access on it even from my computer or disk management, then i should uninstall driver for the e-sata disk, then i should install intel matrix storage (no intel rapid) and it was detected. then after restart again not detected. and couldnt make it being recognized again even with the way above. looks like drivers conflict. the seller said that its for win xp, 2000, 98 etc, no word for vista or win7. I assumed it would work on win7 but it didnt. My bad. the whole story looks like drivers conflict. I ve contacted Dell about this. They also talked about drivers conflict when online accessed my machine.

 

There must be some sata-usb-esata controller in the enclosure then. Shame. because for true esata.....it is a straight SATA pass through from the drive to the motherboard. Glad you got it working though. I have been using the Antec MX-1 enclosure with good success on several different computers so far

 

even the previous e-sata case that didnt work with M17X R2, it worked on an asus desktop with win7. thats why i am talking about driver conflict with intel motherboard of M17X

 

Would not be the first time that there was an odd problem with the storage controller in the R2 (ATA mode issues and ssd performance issues)

 

I know I'm almost a year late to the M17x party, but I will officially be an M17x owner in 2-3 days!

Specs will be:

Lunar Silver
1920x1200 RGB LED Screen
4gb of ram

and now the fun parts:

Core i7 920xm
2x Crucial RealSSD C300 256gb in RAID 0

 

Yea... fun parts. Only if you go back to BIOS A07 or run TS and Dell decides to improve SSD performance, not to rain on your parade or anything. lol

But welcome to the club, tis an awesome system overall. The RGB screen is absolutely superb. What video cards are ya getting?

 

yeah, forgot to add that.

Dual 5870s

BTW, what's wrong with Dell/Alienware's SSD performance because I'm going to swap out the original ones for the Crucial SSDs I got from Newegg. I know A08 limits the 920xm and 940xm CPUs, but does the Dell BIOS or chipset limit SSD performance or RAID 0 performance in some way?

 

OK this caught my attention, I am at A08, how would A07 improve my SSD , and what is TS ? And can I flash back to A07, assuming I can find it

 

I guess I should have been a bit clearer. A08 essentially nerfs extreme procs so thats why I mentioned A07. The SSDs still have not been touched to try and increase performance. And TS = ThrottleStop. A great little program that many use to OC their systems beyond what the BIOS allows or to make the extreme procs run as they did under A07 and older. If you want to see more involving the extreme proc and A08 since I see you have one, check out the A08 thread and have a read.

 

REading now..UG....is it possible to flash back from A08 to A07 ?

 

Yup you can flash back. I've been back and forth between A07 and A08 several times to perform tests. I think you can find it on the drivers site located within the A08 link, should be another link leading to older versions. If not I can email it to ya, if you want to go older then A07 I can't help ya though since A07 is my preferred BIOS choice. If you end up needing it sent to ya, just PM me your email.

 

Just found a copy of A07, flashed and wow........runs a bit hotter under load, but thats fine....its on a laptop cooler so not worried.

 

Alright cool. Was having issues with the emailing thing anyways. Just ignore that PM reply then.

 

After reading that and flashing to A07, just looking at CPU-Z I see a huge diff

 

so apparently my r2 came with dust clogged on its fans or so it seems.

ive just vacuumed out all the dust on the vents and covering the fans and cpu temps are 10 degrees lower on idle and load than when it was brand new 4 months ago.

 

Hi Guys,

I'm getting a dell technician out next week to replace my LCD screen, will I need to put back in the original processor, hard drive etc or will he not check that stuff?

 

Oh sorry to hear your LCD is dead already? Whats wrong with it? So soon.

You'll be alright. They won't check your CPU or hard drives. No need to take them out and put in your originals. Only if there is something wrong with them then you will definitely need to put back in your original parts.

Cheers.

 

He will not check those. They know nothing about your system except what they are fixing (and sometimes not even that)

 

There is nothing really wrong with the LCD, I'm typing this and looking at it now. But it arrived with a very slight chip in the glass and when you spend this kind of money on a system you want perfection really. So they've agreed to replace it

Glad to hear I won't have to take anything out.

 

OK, anyone know why I just noticed all my touch strip (the eject button etc...) above the keyboard isnt working, no lights or anything, but the alienhead is working.....ideas ?

 

I've had that happen before. Either disabling and re-enabling the lights or shutdown/restart normally fixes it. In order for them to turn off when you turn the lights off you have to make sure "Keep status lights on during go dark" is not checked on the taskbar status icon.

 

Yeh that happens sometimes. Give the notebook a restart and see if it comes back.

If not shutdown again take out the battery and then hold down the alien head for 30 or soo secs let go put bat back in and start up.

Cheers.

 

Disabled and re-enabled all lights, Keep status is on, and rebooted...nothing. still touch strip dark and not working

 

That did it, the battery pull for 30 seconds.

 

Glad to hear it. Was about to say to make sure you try what reborn said as that's the next step.

 

Yea.....shouldent have to but oh well.......little inconvienance...freaked me out at 1st though

 

That happens to me on my R1 as well, must just be some firmware bug (we know there are many with the AlienFX - like the head on the lid flickering)

 

Well, daddy got some upgrades and I wanted to brag. What better place than here?

The goods:

From i5 520M to -> i7 720QM
From DVD drive to -> Blu-ray drive (pain to install)
From Dell Wireless card to -> Intel Ultimate 6300
From Win 7 home premium 64bit to -> Win 7 Pro 64 bit

Cheers!!!

 

Hey, congrats on the upgrades.

I put in the Intel Ultimate 6300 card in to my beast a few weeks ago and for the life of me I couldn't figure out if there was an ideal order to put the cables in.

I settled on, left to right: Black, Grey, White.

What did you go for? The card works fine but I'm just wondering if there would be any difference by changing the order!

 

The order is irrelevant really......as long as you go in order (for less than 3) it will work fine. For example, I have 1 and 2 occupied on mine because I only have 2 antennas

 

There are actually pictures of the color for each slot. The order from left to right is:

Black, gray, white

 

So I have a conundrum here need some advice on. I have, before I had a ssd drive, always had system restore enabled, for those oh crap moments with a driver or something. Now that I have a ssd, I understand, system restore is a bad idea.

My set up is

C drive =SSD
D drive =Normal old drive.

If I have system restore turned OFF for C, but ON for D, will my C drive settings be saved there or am I just SOL when it comes to system restore on my SSD ?

Also, regarding defrag, I have auto defrag off, but that turns it off for both drives, was thinking about a defrag program for the D (non ssd) drive...opinions ?

Also, what ya think about keeping my page file on the SSD or moving it ?

 

You're probably SOL. I have a feeling that system restore only makes copies of files on the same drive, so if you turn it off on C: drive you'll lose system restore for your Windows directory.

 

What I do to get around the system restore problem is I somewhat regularly just create a backup image of my ssd and store it on the mechanical drive. It takes a fair bit of space, but that is why I got the bigger drive (used to just have a 320)

As for the Defrag. You can run it but only do so sparingly and manually (not automatic). I also have not looked into it, but you may be able to initiate a defrag on only the mechanical drive?

 

Thats not a bad idea, I have a 1TB external usb here and I could schedule it at night.....

 

Yeh wwoods you can dl any other free defrag program and just select single folders, files or which ever drive that you want to defrag and do that from time to time. The one I use is Defraggler.

Cheers.

 

So, what ya all think about moving the page file to the mechanical drive or leave it on the ssd ?

 

Or just disable it

lol

 

I just use the regular windows tool under "backup and restore"

 

Yeh I just disable it. I have no need for it. LOL.
I see you have 8gb of ram too so that will be fine to disable it.

Set it to custom 16mb max and min restart. Then go back and disable it. restart. Viola.

Cheers.

 

I have read conflicting ideas here, some say its ok to remove, smoe not....

 

I just set mine to the minimum 200mb size and ignore it. I have seen some tests where it does speed the system up just slightly in some benches.

 

Got my notebook today and already installed the 920XM and the Hard Drives. Couple of observations

1) It is unnecessarily tedious just to replace the CPU?!? 20 screws just to get access to the CPU. Wow

2) It's heavier than the Asus W90 I had

3) Screen is very nice

4) System is kinda loud when fans are nearing full power

Overall, nice system. Going to finish installing my stuff and do more testing

 

Yep, it is loud, heavy, hard to open up, and beautiful!

lol

Welcome to the club! And on the cpu installation, first time is always the hardest. I can do it quick now lol. The W90 and M17 spoil you for sure on component access

 

Hi Gang, Just got my M17X R2 from the outlet. Had problems with the PS, but Dell sent me the 240 PS. Everything seems to be running fine. Ran the 3dmark06 and got around 15.7K. I have a I7-820 with Dual 5870s. Does this sound about right or is it low? I am running the latest version of the Bios (08). Windows score was around 5.9. Does this sound about right? Any other tests I should do to make sure everything is working ok? Thanks!

 

Not only should you move it there, but as Scook9 says, you should simply disable it, as you would have enought RAM with 4GB for windows to work with no pagefile, imagine with 8GB, which is what you got...

I've worked with XP and Vista with only 4GB of RAM, and NO PAGEFILE, and never had any memory problem.

I would just fire the pagefile up big time !

Cheers !

eYe

 

5.9 sounds right (disk bounded, 5800 rpm I think)

you can run HD Tune if you want, but people typically run that for SSD's:

HD Tune website

 

1. I'm currently using the latest Dell certified driver [Driver Packaging Version 8.692.2-100203a1-095371C-Dell] and the A06 BIOS. My question is, should I consider updating any of these?

2. I'm having a ton of micro-stuttering in games like Just Cause 2, Sacred 2 and Sims 3, just to name a few. Are those related to the crossfire setup? I tried disabling Catalyst A.I. but has no effect whatsoever (only a slight drop in fps) for Just Cause 2. Sacred 2 stutters significantly lesser on Advanced.

3. Are the stutters related to throttling? Will throttlestop help?

 

So I just ran 3dmark06 on my new system......

And these are the results:

The green test is "My System", specs below

The blue "previous system" is my wife's, specs below.

Those look about right ?