*OFFICIAL* M17xR3 Owner's Lounge Thread - Part 2

In the picture I've attached, what causes those little dimples/lumpy/orange-peel looking dents? I've noticed this on basically all modern-day cars too. Is it the paint or is it the surface, i.e. cheapy/lumpy/low-quality/not-smoothed-out exterior? I think the only car lately that I've seen not have that lumpy look was my 1988 Honda Prelude, and a late 2000s Maserati, which had higher quality metal sheets. Everything else, including beemers and benzes and jags, and especially all hyundais, hondas, toyotas, and ALL American cars have that lumpy look.

 

This will be my first Alienware. So can someone please tell me, is this laptop going to burn my legs if I game with it on my lap?

 

Extremely common misconception....you will be fine.

 

That's sweet. Thanks. Even my girlfriend's Compaq with HD 4250 burns my legs after about 20 minutes of gaming.

 

Allow me to clarify, the laptop will warm up, that is true of ANY laptop. I would not call it "burn" temperature by far though....

 

i recommend getting something flat to put you laptop on when using on your lap to provent you from blocking the vents.

i use this
Logitech Comfort Lapdesk For Notebooks Notebook stand

 

Very true, If you simply do not block the vents then there is virtually no heat build up what so ever

 

That looks really nice. I'll look into it, thanks.

 

yeah its real sweet, prolly buy another one since my wife has taken mine over.haha

 

Question for those who have the wireless hd... What part number or listing is it under the configuration? Mine just shipped and I went to see the service tag, but I don't see it :/

Edit: nvm, I found it...


1 5HT44 Card, Planar, Wireless, Dell Marketing Communication, Alienware

 

The middle section (where the nameplate is) of the base gets really hot, cuz that's where the ram is. If I had the correct tools, I'd buy a spare bottom panel and drill holes/vents in it and prolly buy a notepal U3 to go along with it.

 

My mothership has landed!

 

Hi, sorry if this has been asked before but I've been searching the internet for the last couple hours and got nowhere. I recieved my M17x R3 today and I installed a new HDD which meant ofcourse reinstalling windows. Everything went fine until it came to installing the graphics drivers, I have downloaded the most up to date nvidia mobile drivers from their website which say they support my card (gtx 560m) but I cannot get them to install, I just get the message: 'NVIDIA Installer cannot continue, This graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware' and I really dont want to have to install the out of date dell drivers. Anyone else had this issue/know how to sort it? Thanks

EDIT: After looking around, seems they wont install beacuse intel hyrbid gpu switiching systems like this arent supported by nvidia drivers anymore. So annoying, when I orderd this system I specifically didn't go for the optimus system as I thought itd mean I'd then just have the gtx 560m only as my gpu, but instead theres this awful intel thing messing everything up lol, I really don't worry about battery life so just want to disable it/get rid of it but I can't seem to find a way to do this other than some bios mod which tbh, I'm a bit cautious about doing.

 

you need to add a few lines to the inf file of the graphics driver then it will install, do a search on the forum, I don't know what the id of the 560m is so can't tell you what to put in there, the Dell drivers will be fine until you know what to do

nothing to do with intel or anything else

 

Thanks, instead of doing it myself I got a modded inf from laptopvideo2go and its worked and it seems to be running fine on the latest nvidia drivers right now.

 

Just received the following from the outlet. Seems to be in good condition. Didn't get the 6990m sadly, but overall how do you think I did? I am hoping the 6970m is still plenty for my needs (SC2, Fallout 3, Diablo 3 and Skyrim when they arrive), and was trying to keep costs somewhat down. I also wanted a well-rounded/balanced machine. Price was $1588 (including taxes).

-- Alienware M17x R3 Laptop
-- Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD)
-- Dell Wireless 375 Bluetooth Module
-- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
-- Certified Refurbished
-- 8 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz (4 DIMMs)
-- 2 GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 6970M
-- 256 GB Solid State Drive Ultra Performance
-- Processor: Intel Core i7 2630QM 2.0GHz (2.8GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache)
-- Killer Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO
-- 17.3 inch Wide FHD (1920 x 1080 60Hz) WLED Display

 

Awesome price IMHO, the mobility 6970 is a beast and with the overall specs you'll do fine.

Congrats

 

Dang, it's been a while since I've been on. How's everyone doing, and how's your toys?

 

I realize this is not the right place to ask this but you all own the machine so might as well!

I have the opportunity to buy a M17x R3 locally. How much should I expect to pay for it?

The specs are,

i7 2630QM 2.0GHz
4GB DDR3
320GB 7200rpm
2GB GDDR5 GTX 580M!
1920x1080 120hz 3D Vision Bundle!
Windows 7 Premium
Dell 1501 Wireless-N

The laptop is a replacement for his dead M17x R2. It arrived about a week ago. The owner only turned it on twice. What would be a fair price for this machine? Any help regarding this would be great!

Thank you

 

The system in my specs (please see my review in my sig) came to $1311.80 after aafes discount. Try to get it close to that price if possible? If you can, then I'd call it a good deal

 

That system would cost $2,300 (after a $300 package discount), plus tax and shipping, from Dell. I'd say a price at or below $1,850 would be an excellent deal.

 

Both of you life in the right place....., In my country I must paid more than $2000 for get that spec..... with tax and all of .... it's true no kidding....

btw, my M17XR3 just coming this morning, just wanna ask how to check which AMD driver version that I used ??? It's my first time using AMD. yesterday I still using M11xR2 with NVIDIA version and it's completely different...

 

wow that's a really good deal. You even got a SSD? How did you pull this off?

 

Well i finally bought one!

RRP'd at £1789 I paid £1100

Alienware M17xR3 : Base Stealth Black 1
Processor : Intel Core i7 Processor 2720QM (2.20Ghz, 6MB, 4C) 1
Display : 17.3in WideFHD (1920 x 1080) WLED LCD 1
Memory : 4096MB (2x2048) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel 1
Hard Drive: 320GB (7,200rpm) SATA Hard Drive 1
Optical Drive : Blu-Ray Disc (DVD+/-RW + BD-ROM) Drive including software 1
Graphics : 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M 1

Pretty happy with the end price, spent 2hours with the rep, he was happy at the end of the call, it sounded like the truth but apparently meant he has achieved his stretch wage this month.

I bought the Mrs a lappy at the same time, XPS 15

That retailed at £890 and i paid £700

The RGB LED screen is suppose to be excellent, she will be using it for Photoshop.

Looking at mid sep for delivery
101 Cameras by Adam Frame by Adam Frame 1 £651.00
Dynamically created cart option for holding royalty skus 1
2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5-2410M processor 2.30 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 2.90 GHz 1
English Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT) 1
15.6"(40 cm) FHD B+RGLED TL (1920x1080) 1080p with 2.0 Mega Pixel Integrated Camera 1
4096MB (2x2GB) 1333MHz DDR3 Dual Channel 1
8x DVD+/-RW Optical Drive 1
500GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive 1
Mobile Broadband Module - no SIM card included 1
6-cell 56Whr Lithium Ion battery 1
Internal Backlit UK/Irish Qwerty Keyboard 1
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 525M Graphics Card 1
Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 (EUR) 1

 

The system in my sig (minus the aftermarket SSD and RAM) is the same except with a 6990. I got it for $2000 shipped (including tax), which was about a 25% discount off MSRP. All I had to do was put it on a Dell Preferred Account.

 

Wrong thread. Mods delete please

 

Man...why do people always post the useless stuff like Ship Accessory, Resource DVD, Power Supply, etc.?? Just post the essentials like cpu, gpu, ram, net card, and screen...

 

I wanted to make sure you knew i got a power supply! Where would we be without the Resource DVD?!?



I do apologise but im sure you have been a little excited in the past and wanted to tell everyone.

I ordered on the 28th and its been shipped with a EDD of the 2nd! I always though it would take weeks.

 

I just got my 17x and went to

System information > Device Manager > Display Adapters

And instead of AMD 6990m it is listed as "AMD Radeon HD 6900m Series"

So is it a 6990m that I payed for or is it a 6900m? -_-

(Im not sure where to post this Q so yeah...)

 

because it says "series" after it, it mean it could be a 6900 a 6980 a 6990, or any of the 6900 "series"

 

That's okay. Hope you have fun with your new toy!

 

Yeah really wanted a model no. rather than a broad term ...meh.

 

Yeah dell seem to be a lot quicker with delivery/making the systems now, my m17x turned up 4 days after I ordered it! last time I ordered from dell a few years ago, it took a good few weeks to arrive.

 

the new gpu-z says my shader count is only 896 for my 6990m... i thought that it was supposed to be 1120?

 

4 days? Probably a returned/cancelled item. This stuff is made in China. Take's at least 3-4 weeks from order to delivery.

GPU-Z needs a update again. Dont worry about the shader count.

 

I ordered on a Monday and it was delivered the following Monday. My order wasn't exactly a cookie cutter model - R3 w/ 2720QM, 580m, 3D screen, 16GB RAM, Killer Wifi, 750GB HD.

 

Parts made in China but are assembled in the US I believe. They also likely keep a large stock of ready-to-go laptops in popular configs at their shipping centers in the US, especially soon after major hardware refreshes (like right now). They just slap the nameplate on and go. I received mine at my door exactly one week after ordering on the phone. It was too soon after the 6990 came out for it to be a return or anything like that.

 

How difficult is it to upgrade the CPU? Any advice? Any videos? Do I just put the new CPU in and apply the paste and it will be recognized? Any help would be nice. I have never done this before!

Thank you

 

Hmm no seemed new to me and I did customize it a bit, its not completely the basic spec so would be a bit of a coincidence for them to have one the same just cancelled. Plus I'm in the UK, I don't think they assemble it in china, I think from looking at the box it came from france, with parts ready to be assembled, 4 days is easy with it being a brand new one too.

Yeah thats what I thought they did, plus I couldn't find the option to choose a nameplate on the UK site, just got the generic one which I guess speeds the process up more.

As long as the cpu you install is one dell offer on their website for this model (this guarantees it will be supported by the bios and motherboard, but update to the latest BIOS before doing the upgrade to be sure), it will go straight in and be recognised just fine, just slot it in, apply paste and reassemble. You'll also want something like Articlean to remove the old thermal paste and prepare the heatsink for the new CPU. I upgraded the cpu on my old M1730, didn't even need to reinstall windows. If I remember correctly, the cpu is located on the underside of the m17x, just remove the 2 screws under the battery, slide the whole bottom of the laptop toward you to release the bottom casing. You will then find the cpu besides the gpu and just below the RAM (the same end of the laptop as the power plug connector, in the left corner when you look down on the bottom of the laptop with the battery at the top)

I know the following are supported for sure - i7 2630QM, 2720QM, 2820QM.

Although to be honest it's not really worth upgrading to the above just yet, you'd be better off waiting for new CPUs to be released.

EDIT: I figued a picture may show it better than my explanation, here you go:

 

Thank you so much for that! I think I should be able to do that! If you are switching CPU's from one M17x R3 to another, do you really need to repaste? How important is it?

Thank you

 

If you are taking it from another m17x, switch the heatsink's aswell, then the thermal paste will be even, however if you can get ahold of some new thermal paste, such as artic silver I would reccomend it as it will improve temps and ensure the spread is even. If you do keep the old paste, monitor the temps for a few days and check temps under stress to make sure they aren't too high.

 

I strongly recommend against keeping the old paste when removing the CPU. You will need to remove the heatsink, which will "break" the paste that is on there. Even if you put the same heatsink back on you won't have the same level of conductivity as before.

It's pretty easy to repaste using MX-4 or something similar. The most time consuming part is cleaning all of Dell's goop off of the CPU and heatsink. Google m17x r3 repaste and you will find a nice guide here.

 

this may seem like a weird question lol, but isn't the S/P DIF connector supposed to light up red? I've noticed it in review's/videos of this laptop but mine doesn't.

 

Hopefully I will own one soon

 

Go to Control Panel/Sound/Playback tab. If you right-click on 'Digital Audio (S/PDIF), and click 'Test', you'll see it (or should see it) illuminate during the playback. After 30 seconds of no signal, the device times out, and shuts off the light.

 

Mine stays red all day long. Izzat right/normal??

 

Mine does this as well so i hope its normal

 

Mine used to stay on as well. I could be wrong, but I vaguely remember this behavior changing after an audio driver update. It could also just be a matter of setting up your default device appropriately. I default my sound playback device to the speakers, and leave the SPDIF enabled (I have no idea why...I never even use it).

It shouldn't hurt to leave it on. The emitter is either an LED or laser diode that should outlive the laptop. Leaving it on also means you'll avoid delays that can occur when the signal hits the decoder. Some sound processors switch to default modes when no signal is present, causing it to thrash between the default mode and the mode of the bitstream. As they switch, they typically don't preserve the audio, so usually a bit of the audio gets truncated (eg: as a movie is playing, switch the audio mode of your home theater receiver between stereo and multichannel - notice how audio is "lost"?) It can be an annoying effect -- one that you'd avoid if it always remained on.

 

That worked, thanks, atleast I know the light isn't broken now, not that it really matters I guess, it does switch off afterwards like you said though.

 

Cool, guess I'll just leave it on stock settings. Just always wondered what that light was for lol. I wish the headphone jacks would have cool lights like this. What'd even be better is AlienFX for these jack-lights lolz.