Samsung 840 w/ M17xR3?

Here's the deal guys. I'm intending to bite the bullet and buy an SSD.

I considered the 840 Pro (costs quite reasonably), but I'm unsure if it works on the R3. I remember reading bits here and there about the 6gb/s having some problems on certain ports, and also iffy performance on certain ports.

So here's my question: Does the 840 Pro go smooth with the R3, should there be a certain bay which I should keep to, and do you guys recommend me to get the 840 pro or some other SSD?

 

just a slight little nudge! is SATA 3 completely unreliable on bay 0 too, or only if both bays 0/1 are on s

 

Works in the center bay I believe as that is where my drive is and I have never had any issues. Just make sure you have the A08 bios or a modded later bios so that you get those max speeds.

 

With a modded bios only 1 bay is sata 3, is that so? With a stock bios, no bays are sata 3?

 

no, if you are running a bios that is A08 or below, you will have SATA III. If you are running A09, or A10 you will not have SATA III and will be running on SATA II. There is a modded bios availible that have SATA III enabled, but if you aren't comfortable with this I wouldn't recommend flashing it.

 

Same here as OP. Created a thread yesterday http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/697520-m17x-r3-ssd-bios.html

Still a bit confused about slots.

 

Wait wait let me rephrase.

17xR3 has a bay 0 and bay 1 - bay 1 is known to not have sata III - am I right?

Stock bios is known to disable sata III, but is it on BOTH bays or ONLY bay 1?

And would modded bioses enable sata III on BOTH bays or ONLY bay 0?

 

I don't know the bay numbers off the top of my head, but the bay that is in the middle is the one that will stay SATA III. The other bay has issues with SATA III and will keep constantly reverting to SATA II making SATA III RAID 0 Impossible. Stock bio's later than A08 will run all bays at SATA II.

 

So modded bios has the middle bay in SATA III? Okay!

The next part is if I need to change my current raid config to AHCI or if I can just disable the raid array?

 

you need to get the bios from techinferno if you want to have those speeds on anything later than A08, though A08 works perfectly fine, just without all the additional options for overclocking and such that is included in the unlocked bios. In the end it doesn't matter what the config is, but you can't change it unless you reinstall windows or modify something in the registry. I personally always use AHCI though. Hope this all helps