Soon to be new M17X R4 owner and some questions

Hi,

I should be getting my R4 in about 2-3 weeks. It is configured with the 2x 500gb 7200rpm hard drives in raid 0.

I want to gut those out and go with a Samsung 830 256gb for drive 0 and that western digital 2TB 2.5 inch HD for drive 1.

The WD 2TB has a height of 15mm. From what I have read, the R3 only has room to 12.5mm without the drive caddy, I assume this is the same in the R4 or will it fit in the R4?

 

first off welcome to NBR!!!. As to Hard drive sizes, I believe the maximum size the m17x r3/r4 can fit in there is 9mm, but you may be able to fit a 15mm drive in the disk drive bay if you wanted to swap your disk drive for a HDD. Not sure what the maximum size for the Optical Drive bay is though.

 

Could I ask, why waste the money on those two drives if you know you're going to swap them out?

 

Hi, Thank you for the information

 

Unfortunately with the options the on-line configurator offered me, that was the least amount of space I could select. The specs are below:

Stealth Black with Soft Touch Finish
1
410-0548
Adobe Acrobat Reader
1
318-2006
Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader (BR-ROM, DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
1
421-5106
Power DVD 9.6, 3D
1
318-0424
Creative Sound Blaster Recon3Di with THX TruStudio Pro Software
1
430-4712
Killer Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming and Video and Bluetooth 4.0
1
430-4706
Internal Wireless Bluetooth 4.0
1
331-7193
Alienware M17x 240W A/C Adapter
1
331-6865
Alienware Documentation
1
331-6868
Placement, M17X R4
1
331-6867
Shipping Material, M17X R4 - Black
1
461-8389
NO VIRUS PROTECTION REQUESTED
1
331-6909
Resource DVD, M17X R4
1
331-8045
Windows 7 OS Label, Alienware Notebooks
1
420-9691
DataSafe Local BackUp
1
420-9956
PC Restore
1
421-0092
DELL-DOWNLOAD-FLAG
1
421-3874
Camera Software 2.X, Factory Install
1
421-4289
Dell Support Center Software 3.0
1
421-7440
Quickset, M17X R4
1
421-4047
Dell Digital Delivery Client
1
421-9378
Windows 7 Browser Search for Alienware
1
312-1334
90WHr 9-Cell Primary Battery
1
421-8801
Microsoft Office Trial
1
995-6093
Dell Hardware Warranty Plus On-Site Service, Extended Year(s)
1
995-6083
Dell Hardware Warranty Plus On-Site Service, Initial Year
1
995-6143
In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis, Parts and Labor On-Site Response, 2 Year Extended
1
995-6103
In-Home Service after Remote Diagnosis, Parts and Labor On-Site Response, Initial Year
1
950-3339
3 Year Limited Warranty
1
938-6762
Accidental Damage Service, 3 Years
1
421-1719
Soft Contracts Consumer Accidental Damage Agreement for Alienware
1
421-1723
Soft Contracts Dell In-Home Hardware Agreement for Alienware
1
993-8582
Warranty Support, 2 Year Extended
1
994-3730
Warranty Support, Initial Year
1
330-5090
Thank You for Purchasing AlienWare
1
A5750525
Your Dell Advantage benefits have been applied and $1 discounted from your primary order.

If I could have ordered it with out any hard drives I would have preferred that option as I am in IT and have a technet subscription.

This is my personal laptop, but Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2013, will be going on it and then since I do photography and HD video editing on the road, CS5 or CS6 will be on it and then the occasional Civ V, Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, etc.

If you ask why I am going with Windows Server 2012, I am studying for some certs and I will be disabling most of the extra services I don't need running all the time until I need them.

 

That has no specs... CPU, RAM, etc...

 

The size you will need is 9mm, it would be better to get one of those than doing all the mods needed to fit that it.

 

Hi SVO, sorry, it must not have copied everything:

1
225-2945
Alienware M17X R4 with Soft Touch - Direct
1
319-1474
3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3840QM (8MB Cache, up to 3.8GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0)
1
317-9744
32GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
1
331-6912
English Keyboard, 101 Key, M17X R4
1
320-3275
17.3-inch WideFHD1920 x 1080 60Hz WLED
1
317-9747
2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 7970M
1
342-4432
1TB RAID 0 (2x 500GB) 7200RPM
1
331-1350
Custom Nameplate
1
330-6106
Personalized Nameplate Trigger
1
331-6859
AlienFX Color, Quasar Blue
1
421-7439
Alienware Command Center Software, M17X
1
421-5813
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit Service Pack 1, English, w/Media

 

How slim are the Samsung SSD's? I know they need an adapter to fit, are they slim enough and is there an adapter to put 2 Samsung 830's in 1 drive bay? I don't see why a SATA III Y adapter would not work, if they are 4.5mm height each?

 

The SSD's generally are 7mm (including the samsung 830) maybe 9mm in some rare cases. They do not need a special caddy, they are secured to the caddy by 4 screws so no adapters need to be bought I don't think. You will not be able to put two of them in 1 bay, you already have 2 bays + the msata as well.

 

Should've done what i did, 500gb 7200rpm + 64gb msata, gonna add an ssd make it primary and leave the normal hd for music and videos and stuff, while using the ssd purely for gaming. :>