*OFFICIAL* Alienware M17x Owners Lounge - Part 2

Can you shoot a picture of it? If you are talking about the rear exhaust grille area then you'll have to open the system. If you are talking about the bottom of the laptop, just remove the panel with the nameplate - remove the battery and youll see two screws. Unscrew and its free.

Refer to the service manual for snags or questions -
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/M17x/

If you do not feel comfortable taking apart the system to get at the back of the exhaust grille - don't. Call Dell Support and let them deal with it.

Not sure what it is.

 

AHh sorry I wasn't clear earliar.

I was reffering to the back end rear exhaust black grill area.
The middle part ventilation.

I'm sorry I can't take a picture of it anymore cause it has now slided into the black sides of the grill and I can no longer see or get to it. I hope it wasn't important.

The little clear plastic piece was within the back middle vent where the CPU fan spits out the hot air. It was a very tiny piece about 5mm X 5mm or smaller and it seemed to be stuck but after some cleaning trying to clear the dust and fan it moved and now has disappeared into the side.

I was just worried it might have been a heat sensor or something important.

?????????

 

I managed to open it up nows and I saw it hanging off the edge of the grill. I got some tweasers and took it out. It was just a little bit of plastic which had the letters MB on it. Weird. I'm pretty sure its not important now. I guess it was just some plastic left over which they forgot to take out or somethings.

 

here is ninja blade.
http://i50.tinypic.com/a08dvo.jpg

it never fully used sli until 196.62 i believe but i dont have my 280m's any more but i was scoring much more frames with this then the nvidia....

 

Okay, I'll reword that Johnkksss, just to cover the whole point, since it counts.

I would consider getting one of these R2 units, if Crysis - stock/vanilla very high - ran a good 15-20 average FPS faster than my current setup. I wouldn't even want it to pass a desktop, because those are in another league now. Just for now, even 15-20 average FPS gain would be a reason for me to consider as a future purchase once it gets cheaper. Besides, Crysis is a polygon hungry monster, which is my only source of comparison that I chose to use; it helps with expectations of my system with regards to other games in the longer run. I am bored of the game itself, but the frame rates help serve as a gauge for other spec-killers in the future.

FYI: My ultra-high custom config is actually more taxing than Crysis very high, but that's something I made for a friend who had Xfire 5870s in his desktop, which runs very high near the 60s range. No point in running in running this configuration on the laptop.

And RubyBoy, you are correct about the quad-core stuttering. Some people have reported this problem, but then again, other people are not experiencing this very problem. BatBoy himself uses QX9300, and he is problem-free.

 

Hello again to all, I have not been here for a while and as such I have slightly suffered for it,

I have not had a chance to update my vid card drivers and as such one card runs much hotter than the other anyways from 10-20
I'm on win 7 so any recommendations would be nice.

Also I have an issue were the laptop will just hang there and do nothing for a while, this is usually when i'm installing something but not limited to those such instances
with the A03 bios update the freezes went down but they still exist.

Other than that I've had no real problems

Also this is still and R1 for those who are counting

 

Probably a piece of tape of film left from some sloppy dell tech working when he was tired or distracted.

 

bionoc commando for an hours.
http://i50.tinypic.com/2eptyti.jpg

 

All, just a heads-up, a change has been made to the forum rules. Please note, when posting images:

This helps to prevent unwanted page scrolling and wont throw off the forum formatting.

Thanks everyone.

 

ok.

must I change the tjmax in the hwmoniter to 105 for the qx9300 as well?

 

With the QX9300 I have left it at 100. I was never able to locate a specification from Intel on the TJ_MAX for this one.

 

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?i...or+QX9300+(12M+Cache,+2.53+GHz,+1066+MHz+FSB)

 

erm ati users, what kind of fps are you getting for borderlands? im getting about 40-50fps avg with dips down to 20+ for no reason. if i remember correctly i got 70-80 avg with my nvidia cards. i dont see why i should be getting 40s unless the game doesnt want to play nice with ati cards

just got my gtx280s swapped for atis, fresh install catalyst 9.12 with hotfix.

 

Weird thing happened to me - I was playing an .mkv file via Windows 7 (using Shark's Win7 codec pack), and a vertical red line was constantly going through the center of the image. Full screen, resize all didn't matter. I tried using Divx player and no red line, so it's probably something with WMP. Anyone else had this happen? It didn't happen before when I had the nVidia 280's...

 

I bet its a faulty codecs try reinstalling them.

 

So I'm having an interesting problem. For some reason, I have both the NVIDIA and Broadcom network adapters installed, as shown in the attachment. Now my wireless internet won't work upon startup until I open the NVIDIA manager and let it sit for a minute, then it'll connect. What's going on? Do I just need one or the other?

 

If you are on W7, see Glzmo's guide -

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=436486

 

batboy. i was looking for the qx9300 also and i can't find anything regarding the tjmax also. i would want to say 100 as well.

 

tcase is the same as tj_max
or are they really that different?

when we tested the qx9300 on the whitebook, it would throttle down at 98C and at 105 the chip would cut off.
not sure if that helps.

 

I dont believe they are the same John (related, yes - same, no). Here is a detailed post/article which may explain a bit more however I don't have the time to go over it. If someone is interested in this they can look it over and post back in regards to its validity.

The Truth about Temperatures and Voltages

 

your right batboy...they aren't.
one is on die and the other is on case.

only from personal testing
thermal is suppose to be something like 67C
shut off is like 105C
throttle is like 98C

and when i say throttle...we watched it drop the multiplier and voltage for about 3 seconds then it would go back to it's correct settings till it hit 98C again. then it would repeat.

we covered the laptop up in blankets and shot the temps up to 105 and the laptop cut off.

 

Don't forget this little bugger which I believe (could be wrong of course) is a sensor situated on the MB under the CPU Socket.

 

rotflmao!!! i did not want to mention that one.
it plagued all the gateways when you installed a x9000/x9100
that stupid sensor would jump right to 98C in like 5 seconds from over clocking and stressing...hahaha

and i think that sensor is the one closest to being related to the tjmax sensor.

we even went so far as taking the laptop apart and tried putting a fan on the general area we thought it might be at....of course...didn't work...lol

 

Hey bud, as long as the system works and I have no issues in-game or otherwise, the thing could tell me it was 2c or 200c and I could care less. Hahaha

On this machine though, the TZ00 typically stays in sync with the CPU. At least with HWMonitor. I am not using any other app to monitor. Oh well. Nothing I'm concerned about.

Thanks for the input and thoughts relating to TCase and TJMax.

 

no problem...when you do hit 98C...let me know if it throttles...im curious.

thanks for the time.

 

CPU has never gone that high. Max is usually 60-65c.

 

i ramped up my cpu and the max i got was 86c under stupid heavy stress. my whitebook hit 95c easy.

the m17x is very hard to get hot.

batboy i notice your last two cores are higher then your first two. mines is also the same.

 

We could just try contacting the maker of HWMonitor and ask him what sensor the TZ00 reading is from.....he would know I am guessing

 

it varies cook..some computers use two of those sensors while others use one.

 

Well he had to write the program to read from them. So he must know at least something about them

 

Well, its coming from ACPI - we see that in HWMonitor. The TZ stands for Thermal Zones. There are various TZ which can be set/created. For anyone who is interested in really diving into this - check out ACPI for more info. They have the good ol' ACPI Specification which was last revised on 6/19/2009. The .PDF is HERE. It covers setting the TZ's and how they are 'called' and everything else you could ever want to know about ACPI.

Who knows - if we get a really creative person who looks it over they just might be able to figure out the DPC issue on the M17x (j/k)

 

hummm, you would think...but even the bios writers couldn't get past it due to some agreement with the maker of the computer..so not sure what an aftermarket source can do...they haven't got past it in 2 years...maybe things are different now.

some one on these forums did alter the acpi tables in the bios and it seems to work. i forget which thread it was.

 

Hi... I'm new here.. ^_^ Where can I get the latest version of BIOS for M17x?

 

For the M17x R1 (be sure to select your OS from the Pull Down Menu):
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...emID=Alw_lp_M17x&os=WV64&osl=en&catid=&impid=

 

erm question for those with atis. any other way to oc these cards(like rivatuner/ati tools/techpowerup gpu tool/ati overdrive tool) without doing the bios flashing? is there a chance of bricking the system if lets say the flash fails and cant even show any boot options due to video card failure?

 

Thank you ! ! @Batboy

For M17x-R2 which is better for a video card driver 9.12 or the one in Dell's site?

 

No worries Orange. Your ATI driver question I will pass on Let one of the ATI folks advise you on this as I have no idea. From what I have read, some are having issues with setting up the correct ATI driver on the R1.

 

best for me between dell's ati driver and 9.12 with hotfix is the 9.12 with hotfix. dell's driver is just crappy. but youll have to install it first to get the xfire option

 

so far on the ati with 4870 i have tried
del's drivers
9,12
9.12 hotfix
10.1
and the best is 9.12 hotfix and10.1 they is a performance decrease for some reason. i hope this helps. i will however do more testing when i get the chance.

 

Don, please let me know if you have issues with the machine waking up from sleep-mode.

 

i just did it and it was fine.

gpu drivers has to do with sleep issue...

 

remember some time ago i said that on certain boots my laptop will perform really slowly when gaming(eg really low unplayable fpses) and someone else said he noticed it as well even when web browsing?

i thought it was the gfx cards(i had nvidias then) but now that i have atis, the issue is still there!

im starting to believe its got to do with the processor/faulty motherboard since when i try to game all 4 processors go to 100% permanently which is really unusual.

 

Bat boy WOW.

How did you get your GPU 280m temps soo low?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=44743&d=1265669780

low 30s thats brilliant.

and your 9400m temps are half mine as well. Mine are in da 70s and 80s constantly. How do i lower my temps??

 

LOL Reborn...

No cooler pad here. Just normal free airflow here. Thanks to the Logitech Alto Cordless stand. Given the size of the M17x and the build of the stand, all intakes are open to free air and not obstructed. I've had this since my XPS M1730 days and although I love the stand as its easy to pack up for travel, I cant suggest it for the M17x. Due to the curved front of the laptop it does not rest flush on the stand. I've rigged it with a bit of packing foam - lol.

Ambient temp isn't too high either. I like to keep the heat down in the home office so I have the central air duct in the office closed. Ambient temp is in the upper 60's which is fine for me.

The temps you saw in the previous post attachment are typically what I see at idle. Gaming wise, I have yet to exceed 65c on the GPUs.

 

Hi there... Im a former XPS 1730 owner( may it rest in pieces).. Had a lot of problems with everything. So finaly they took it back and sent me an Alienware m17x R1.. T9600 cpu and a single ati 4870. I read some pages back about overclocking and yes pleazz for that.. Im not been in this page for a long time so i apologize if im at the wrong thred.. But i was wondering about oc the cpu. Any good working programs for that and also for the Gpu. There was one program called "Ati oc.rar".. But i havent flashed my bios this way before because it sound a little bit dangerous.. And how do i save my bios?? And now to the cpu.. My bios says cpu oc not unlocked?? memory and fsb i can change but i dont know how much or if the cpu is locked.. Some help would be appresiated Thanks for a good forum/ Unhappy Xps owner, happy alienware owner

 

I'm sorry don, how did you get the 9.12 hotfix to work on ur mobility card ??

 

That was me. I haven't experienced the issue since we last talked about it months ago.

 

THe quote that you quoted contains all the information to back-up , save and flash bios on the ATi 4870. Follow the instructions and download the files and all the information is there.

 

really? i realised the issue happens more often when hybrid is enabled and if the processor isnt oced.

yea when the processor isnt oced it happens more often. no idea why. maybe when its not oced the mobo doesnt take in as much power hence the throttling?

anyway ill start bugging dell for this issue if my r2 replacement/refund request fails

 

I haven't been on the forums for say, God......three and a half weeks? I've totally lost touch with everything computer/techy/geeky, so you'll have to forgive me for being behind everyone when I ask these next questions ruby:

1) "hybrid" refers to hybrid mode? which means both 9400 and 260/280(s) are enabled? if so, I only have the 260 gtx enabled, running 186.64, on W7 Home Premium x64.
2) when you say you're doing a R2 replacement, does that mean you're going to try to swindle Dell for-lack-of-a-better-word out of it in place of your current R1? what argumentative points are you going off of? is there something I missed in my long absence?

One thing to note: I have had my cores OCed to what my sig shows since I basically got the computer some odd months ago. Aside from the fan failing to work on the left side of the computer (hits 70's/80's for the GPU), the computer runs smoothly. I AM going to stick the 280m's in there when the 260 fails undoubtedly from being in the 70-80 celcius range for too long, considering the fan isn't working properly. Sometimes it kicks into high RPM; sometimes it simply does not. I can tell you and everyone else interested, the fan did not work on the GPU at ALL when I played the AvP demo, and I felt the keyboard get warm on th left side <--- this irritated the hell out of me. So, I went into Dell tech support chat under my old service tag for the XPS and told them I needed a new fan, and they told me to contact Alienware regarding it, to which I told them to kindly F off, since I paid for Dell warranty, not Alienware warranty, which is crap compared to Dell's, so that would put it on the grand gamut of things that are crappy at a 2 on a scale of 1-10.

I have yet to contact Alienware regarding the fan (I really don't think it's a hardware issue - I believe it's a nVidia driver/W7-being-new-and-buggy-still issue) since the last time I did I had a helluva' time getting anything done. Add to that that I'm lazy and really want to use the heck out of the 260 before I stick the 280m's in there, and the fact that Dell never asked for the 260 back in the replacement procedure, and I got a lot of time and smooth sailing on my hands here