*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x Owners Lounge - Part 2

i do that every time i install a driver but still the same

 

anyone else tried the 195.62 drivers by nvidia besides batboy? any stuttering with sli on with the usual games (borderlands,l4d2,mw2 etc)?

im getting pretty sick of switching drivers almost every other day so im gona wait for some feedback before i do anything =)

 

i did. with a clean install of win7 with raid 0 hard drives. i benched with 3dmark 06 and it was horrible. i got 10k with 260m sli and Q9000. there were times when the FPS dropped down to 5 and lagged for 5-7 seconds.i haven't benched with any games yet but i won't be able to till monday. I'm working on my m15x instead.

 

it's your cpu that is why your score is low.

 

he still had the stuttering though don....

 

guys anyone found how to make dirt 2 work in sli with nhancer? nothing that worked with previous games works now with this game.

 

i just added the dirt2 exe and forced alternate frame rendering 2 in the nvidia control panel. frame rates increased slightly for me so i guess it doesnt help much.

 

Well, this is uncool. My computer usually never runs over 54-55C when playing DoD for several hours at a time, and the fans of course are screaming. This time, my keyboard got physically warm, which caught me offguard because the whole palm wrest is USUALLY cold to the touch. I minimized quickly to check temps in GPU-z and they were at 79c!! The fans were NOT on full blast. Temps quickly came down as the core/memory downlocked, but they should never have gotten that high to begin with, as the fans were blowing.

Looks like I'll have to run a hardware diagnostic when I boot up next time.

 

wow 79??! thats really high.. is the enviroment really warm? the highest ive seen my cards go is about 75 when oced and underload for an hour. they often go into the 60s though.

 

I notice the fans kick into high gear around 80-83. At 79 I don't think there is a problem. If it was 99 then yes.

 

Well, this is just weird because the fans usually hit full blast in the 50's. Like I said, I've been playing DoD everyday since I got the system, and this is the first time it's gone to 79. Usually no higher than 55.

 

79 seems well within limits I really wouldn't worry especially without perfmance issues

 

I dont know hank... we are at the start of a cold wave here, its raining heavy and I have the ambient temp sitting at about 78 degrees. Just finished a 2 hour wave of Left4Dead 2 and checked HWMonitor.

Fans just now kicked into low while responding to this post. GPU temps did not go above 65c. What's the temp there?

 

No higher than 70. I just don't understand why the fan sometimes kicks in and sometimes does not. This would mean something is wrong with the BIOS or the fan itself. I wonder if running ccleaner so many times yesterday maybe screwed up something in the registry...

 

Nope - CCleaner wouldn't have messed with fans IMO.

Check the bottom of the laptop - do you see a light dust layer buildup around the fans. If so, wipe it off with a lightly damp cloth and perhaps try an airblast. See if that helps.

One thing I keep reminding myself when viewing temps posted here is that with my M17x its propped up on a Logitech Alto Stand. Basically, there is about 8 inches of open space between the bottom area where the fans are and the desk. Lots of free airflow.

 

Like every DTR notebook though it needs maintenance. I've gotta clean my fans about once a week MINIMUM if not more, because they collect dust FAST. I also think my temps would go way down if i had the airflow shown above and I'd avoid certain slowdowns. Sometimes borderlands starts slowing down, and I lift the back of the computer and as it cools down my framerate comes back to normal (smooth.) Short of dropping 70$ on a Cryo LX, some way to keep the back raised might be helpful. Every laptop is plagued by heat though and the M17x isn't an exception!

 

@Hank I had this problem with my laptop when i first got it and i called alienware after a few weeks of troubleshooting. The fix for me was to open up the coverplate on the back and unhook the cmos battery then hold the power button down for 15 seconds to drain the excess power, this will reset your bios and should fix the problem. leme know if it works

 

Which one is the cmos battery exactly? When I took off the coverplate last week I saw a couple batteries.

 

you only saw one and i have a picture in my overclocking guide

 

Lol, yeah it's just one. Its accessible right there which is very cool if you ask me (unless the bios password can be reset that way? Then theives also find it cool!!! Not sure though.)

Easy to remove. Give it a reset ! Thanks for the info cheeseborger, + rep for you

 

dont think it will

but a flash of your BIOS in DOS would

 

you're about the 4th or 5th person coming here asking. Dell uses a Service Tag and/or Service Code. No serial number and neither are 8 characters.

 

Thanks a lot Nick! Fans seem to be running normally again. Do you know what caused this to happen in the first place? Something I'd oviously like to prevent.

 

Mine did it a couple times I think the driver doesn't load right or something. I could never pin it down ... It just went away

 

And boom! the topic is derailed. Feel free to bring it back

 

NIce !! But you left out the front left speaker

 

Nevermind, I lied. Fans are not on full blast.

 

Very nicely done sir!

+rep for the hard work

 

Yeah, clearing the BIOS definitely did not fix the fan problem. Game got up to 75C today, and fans didn't sound louder than idle speed.

 

Beat. I'd be careful about declaring a problem though and getting involved in some huge project.

You are covered by warranty right? And performance is fine?

IMO just let it go.. I STILL Think that number's within limits. Batboys numbers are with the back raised. You don't have a cooler right? It's sitting on a desk? Mine gets really hot ( can't read GPU temps on my ATI's though with HWMonitor so..) and my keyboard gets slightly warm when gaming for a while also. As long as performance is ok I wouldn't worry.

That said, I'm sure you're going to worry anyway, so good luck haha. Call tech support.

 

This is a lose-lose for me. I have warranty; I have a cooler; I have it propped up. As I said, it's not the fact that it's "within" good temperatures that bothers me - remember this line of reasoning three years ago with the m1730? "Oh as long as it doesn't hit 110 degrees you'll be fine." Then we started getting cards failing left and right. Well, my cards never EVER exceeded 80 degrees, and still failed 6 months out of the box. Well, we can blame that on the poor nVidia defective g92 chips right? That was a one time thing...except it wasn't. The G84/G86 ALSO were crap and overheated and died on people left and right in people's 8600GT's. So where does it end?

Anyways, I digress. My point wasn't to attack you, but to hopefully make you reevaluate the situation, and hopefully you don't actually feel as safe in your mind as you say here:

---------------------------------------

The cards did NOT exceed 55C last week when I would game literally for four hours at a time. I think the highest was 61? I would often minimize the game mid-marathon to check it quickly while the clocks were still maxxed in GPU-z, and it'd be wavering around mid-50s. You can ask batboy - I game a LOT. The fans would screem after about being 6 minutes in-game, and would perhaps slow down every five minutes for about 30 seonds then go back up to full speed. Now, I can't even get the fans up to top speed anymore. It simply does not make sense, and being that this is a computer, there must be a logical concrete reason for this, and I want to nip it in the butt now. Sure I could format/reinstall W7, but that doesn't tell me what I did wrong.

This will be the THIRD laptop in a row I have from Dell in three years. The prior two had massive video card problems, and also happened to be nVidia products. I have no reason to believe nVidia somehow stepped up their game and decided to build products that don't die in 6 months out of the blue. I have every right to freak out right about now. I never freaked out before in my life, I think I'll exercise the right. I am FREAKING OUT.

 

Hank,

Dont stress - give Dell a call and report the issue and see what they advise. There have been cases of M17x owners having bad GPUs. Not saying this is a definite, but its not unheard of.

Give em a call.

 

"I have no reason to believe nVidia somehow stepped up their game and decided to build products that don't die in 6 months out of the blue. I have every right to freak out right about now. I never freaked out before in my life, I think I'll exercise the right. I am FREAKING OUT."

I agree regarding the nvidia issue and that's why I dropped 170£ on my replacement m17x to get the crossfire cards. They've lot my trust ages ago and many gpu replacements ago.

Don't freak out. Just call tech support. This forum can only help so much but it's up to you to keep your emotions in check. It's just a machine after all . I know it's hard but if you stay relaxed you will think better and deal with things better.

I would suggest if you haven't done so already to reinstall windows before opening up the machine.

 

That's what we thought about our 1730, remember?

 

rinse and repeat fan cycle.... remember that one?

 

This is the 260m GTX that shipped with the system. I have yet to stick the 280m's in it yet. I really don't see a point to calling tech support. They're next to useless. I've run the diagnostics and they work fine there.

I'm going to take the comp apart tonight hopefully, and stick the 280m's in there and see how they act. I should add I am using 186.64.

What do you guys have in your BIOS for the two options below the "hybrid and integrated" options? I don't remember what they say, but one is like, "pci gen...." Maybe that has something to do with it..

 

PCIGen2 support enabled
Adaptive Power State Management (or something to that effect) disabled

That's how it was default for me. I haven't changed it at all...

 

Can't give ya' anymore rep Zath, but thank you. *Edit: I reset the BIOS with the cmos battery in this time. Fans seem to be back to working, and sound normal now. Max temp during gaming is 60 degrees. Very happy now. Now to test out if the zalman cooler will do anything for this bad boy with its fans on. With the XPS, it atually made it warmer by 1-2 degrees.

 

In total randomness,I've decided to 'build' my M17X in the Dell US website instead of the UK one as I was curious about the price difference if I chose the same specs.

I noticed today that for the graphics card,only NVIDIA's are available but I clearly remember there being ATI Radeon options before. :S What happened?

Below are the only graphics card I can now select.
Single NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 260M, 1GB [Included in Price]
Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 260M, 2GB – SLI® Enabled [add $300]
Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 280M, 2GB – SLI® Enabled [add $600]

 

haha thats funny. curious to see what happened. maybe theres no stock of ATIs for now.

 

I see the ATI's on the USA site just fine..?

 

Well, the fans are doing it again. Played DoD and they didn't even come on at all, and temps shot up to 80 degrees. I did have the computer on for like 8 hours though. I wonder if keeping it on that long and cycling the fans on and off so much messes with the BIOS or bugs it out. Gonna' sleep now and see if it does it again tonight after a cold boot and playing.

 

No, it's bugging out. Mine has no issue with cycling the fans after long periods of use. Though my ambient temps here are likely lower than yours anyway (New Zealand) I have never come close to hitting 80 while gaming.

With the 186.64 I barely ever get above 60C, with some of the newer drivers I have gotten into the mid 60s but that's it. My fans always come on hard around the 50s / 60s.

 

Awwww I have finally Officially made it to the Owner's Lounge! My Sweet M17x came in yesterday! I unboxed her and booted her up and she is gorgeous!! Haven't had the time to go thru and do all the tweaking necessary, mainly I dropped Win7 Home Premium and loaded up Win7 Ultimate, reinstalled Dell drivers and installed Dragon's Age. I tested audio, video, online streaming and gaming. Everything passed with flying colors except for the gaming. I installed and booted up Dragon's Age and while it is freaking vivid and crisp with the graphics...no more than 5 to 10 mins in the fans came on and didn't turn off until I shut down for the night. The fans are LOUD!!! So loud I had to bump up the volume to full blast. Are the fans suppose to be this loud or should I be concerned. Like I said, I haven't install any of the diagnostic tools, overclocked, benchmarked or anything like that. I kinda wanted to see how it performed right out the box so to speak. (minus the switching of the OS). Anyways, I'll dive deeper into it over the weekend which I blocked out all activities to dedicated to fine tuning my machine so I wont have to worry about major tweaks afterwards.

 

Get some good headphones and don't complain about the fans, they're what's going to save your laptop in the long run. Yes they're loud but they keep the M17x far cooler than any DTR I've owned.

 

KracsNZ...I have good headphones and I normally jack my laptop into my sound system when I'm not gaming on my PS3 or watching TV. However, I was just a lil shock that they were so loud. I had not read much about complains about fan noise, only a couple mentions of it which I assumed were isolated events. Nonetheless...whatever it takes to keep my new addition to the electronics fam happy and safe I guess I can put up with! LOL

 

Lol, I think I had the opposite response when I heard the fans for the 1st time, was like 'finally!!!'. After the pain I suffered with the GPU failures on my M1730 and it's lack of independant / adequant thermal control for it's GPUs, to hear the M17x working overtime is allot more reassurring.

 

Which Dell portal did you come in through, Home/Home Office or Small Business? I bet the latter cuz you can't configure the M17x w/ATIs via small biz. Coming in through Home/Home Office allows you to choose between nVidia an ATI.

I have no idea why the difference exists.

 

Amen brother. At least you can hear your fans Mine are being Benedict Arnolds.

 

Hank, I didn't read all the posts you made but I did notice you've already tried clearing your BIOS settings. Have you also tried reflashing the BIOS and resetting the BIOS to setup defaults (and then changing the settings you need from there)?