Area-51 M18X R2 - Return Of The Alien...

Nebula Red Alienware M18X R2

Processor: 3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3940XM (8MB Cache, up to 3.9GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0)
Display: 18.4" WideFHD (1920 x 1080) WLED LCD
LCD Back Cover : Nebula Red - Anodized Aluminum
Memory: 16GB (4x4096) 1866MHz DDR3 Dual Channel Kingson HyperX
Hard Drive: 512GB (2x256GB) Solid State Drives
Optical Drive: BluRay Combo (Blu-ray read only, DVD, CD read & write)
Graphics: Dual 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M SLI
Operating System: English Windows 7 SP1 Professional (64 BIT)
Warranty: 3 Years NBD with Premium Phone Support & 3 years Accidental Damage Protection
BIOS: A05

Monday 15th October 2012

I arrived home from work and saw the box. After at least 10 minutes of play time with my son, it was time for the all important check (I had seen some un-boxing videos that showed the owners having holes in the sides of the box), "Was the box damaged" and I was presently surprised to find that no, it was in perfect condition save slight scuffing on the front but, no dents and all the corners were still sharp. So far, so good.

After putting my little boy to bed, safely out of harm's way (for him and my new laptop), I began the unwrapping. I found that although the box and contents weighed in at 8Kg, the power brick was surprisingly heavy. Apparently the M18X weighs in at 6Kg therefore the power brick must weigh 2Kg on its own, which considering its size is allot.

And there she was "The Beast" A beast is something that traditionally has horns, is kind of ugly and growls and probably smells bad too. I prefer, " The Goddess", her flaming red fire blasting through all known games...

The build quality is top notch, it's even better than my m17x and that's saying something. The finish in red is awesome, it's a nice deep red, more blood red than bright red. After all 'they' do say "red ones go faster" a-la Ferrari’s. The hinge is nice and stiff but still easy to lift with one finger and when open shaking the laptop only just moves it, hardly a wobble in sight. The screen is also very impressive, I use a 23" LCD for work and M18X's screen looks nearly as big somehow, it's also a higher resolution at 1920 x 1200 rather than 1080... But, more importantly there are no scratches, cracks or any signs of damage what so ever, very impressive.

After laying a micro-fiber cloth on the table I began to take my brand new laptop apart. I'd seen the very helpful guide on here so I knew what to expect. The battery is very heavy; it must be one of those "heavy duty" batteries.
After carefully removing all the required screws (some have to be teased out with the laptop upside down) I carefully popped off the keyboard surround. I found that a plastic baby feeding spoon worked well, no scratches afterwards. I added all of the HyperX memory, making sure it was all well seated (don't want to have to take it all apart again) and began the "build".

I use a heat-proof glass cutting board as a base on the table for better airflow and less dust. On that sits my cooler which is a Zalman ZM-NC3000U (apologies if I got it wrong before), it's slightly smaller than the M18X but the important parts such as the fan are top biased which make it ideal for the M18X and it's up and through cooling. After connecting my Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook sound card in the express slot, Razer mamba, wireless keyboard (prevents the palm rest getting grubby) and then locating my Razer Armadillo and eXact Mat for optimum comfort, the assembly takes up nearly half of the dining room table. Slightly more than my m17x did.

After switching on the power brick I turned her on for the first time. The Alienware screens when loading are a nice touch and make a nice backdrop to look at while Windows is doing its thing. After the usual setting-up, Windows appeared and looked very good. The quality of the screen is excellent. Yes, it's shiny but, to be honest, how many people play games in a well-lit room? I prefer a darkened room, with my Alienware glowing where there's no distractions...
I have updated the colour profile and the effect was very apparent. i had selected a forest seen with the sun bursting through the trees and after updating the profile it looks almost 3D, the colours pop out of the screen almost, very, very, good Alienware.

I did find that Sli mode wasn't enabled by default on the graphics cards, it's only a tick-box away but... anyway, I uninstalled the current drivers, ran Driver Sweeper & Ccleaner and then updated them to the latest 306.97, after the usual restart and re-enabling of Sli, she's looking good.

Apart from loading the drivers for my sound card, that's all I had time to do apart from install Avira and PrevX 3.0.

Once I’ve had time to install & configure Skyrim i will report back on performance. I intend to run the complete HD package with extras "kitchen Sink" style and see how the 680's cope.

I was also surprised/pleased that because the motherboard can allocate 32Gb memory, I am able to utilise all 16Gb memory for computing, rather than having to on my m17x where I had 2Gb RAM to use because of the 2Gb VRAM the graphics cards needed space for.

Oh, I also ran Respawn on a spare 16Gb memory stick... just in case.

OB :hi2:

 

Cool, Have Fun With It Brother :thumbsup:

 

I'm sure your goddess will chew up Skyrim, spit it out and laugh tauntingly at you to throw something more challenging at it LOL

 

Lol, loving the profile pictures, you guys are hilarious.

Personally I use a Razer Nostromo in conjunction with a Cybrog R.A.T. 9 wireless mouse for games that benefit from this set up (Witcher 2, Skyrim) and use an x-box 360 controller for quite a few games where there is constant transition to and from vehicles, such as Rage, GTA 4 and Transformers: FoC.

Yes I believe Red is the fastest.....

 

Sounds great...enjoy. Take care of it!

I see this a lot with vehicles and expensive products, people neglect them after a month or so, it's awful!

 

congrats mate!! I'm thinking of getting an m18x myself, but cant decide whether get it from the outlet or new.

 

Brother Vulcan, they are indeed. I hit 7.9 across the board apart from 7.7 for my 3.2 processor...
Brother Dre, Mine gets cooled, and covered at night and once a month I de-dust to maintain performance. At these prises we'd be mad not to look after our "babies".
Brother 90, I'd get a brand new one, I know they are expensive but, you get a very good warranty, assuming your pockets are large enough that is!!! Unless you mean the route that Brother Dre took by going through a reseller such as XoticPc and such like.

I'd only ever get new but, that's just me...

OB

P.S. Installed Skyrim and ran it at Ultra, everything ticked and the into was so smooth you could move the mouse fast enough to feel sick... no lag at all. I'm now in the process of following S.T.E.P. (Skyrim Total Enhancement Project) which will make it look almost real... and test those twin 680's

 

Oodle Bear, if you wan't to get Skyrim humming check out the Nvidia optimizations on this page:

Optimize : Five Fast Skyrim Tweaks Guaranteed To Make Your Game Look Better | GeForce

Vanilla Skyrim, even with settings all on Ultra, is mere child's play to 680 SLI, I recommend using an ENB since these cards can handle them. Personally I have tried Sharpshooters Extreme Graphics ENB, but have found the colors too saturated for my taste.

I am currently using Skyrealism with the "cinematic with brighter metals" preset.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/23765/

If you go with this one make sure you change "SkipShaderOptimization=false" to "SkipShaderOptimization=true" in the "enbseries.ini" in the skyrim/data folder otherwise you will get a weird red film grain with SLI.

Also, of all the tips in the Nvidia Skyrim optimization guide, changing "Ugridstoload" to 7 seems to really help with the draw distance.

With all of these changes and all settings "Ultra" I still average 50 FPS outdoors in most areas and 60 indoors. The graphical improvements are significant.

Also, this game benefits from CPU OC, it is one of the few that I play with the multipliers all at 42x.

 

Oodle-Bear can you help me check what is the Dell alienware m18xr2 3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3940XM part number . urgent to need this part number pls help
thank

 

I'm afraid that my invoice doesn't give any part numbers, neither does the Dell web-site. I'd give Dell a ring and ask them for the part number as they will also have the most up to date information.

OB

 

Congrats on the new system dude!! Go tear up some noobs!!!! happy gaming

 

Wednesday 19th December

I am currently extremely pleased with "The Goddess", she's looking good and kinda 'cool' even though she's ticking over at 4.2 and soon to be 4.4Ghz thanks to Brother Vulcan. I am currently playing Diablo 3 and am in Hell at level 54 and the game plays on tick-over as there is no load on the Pc at all, looks good on the colour corrected screen though. I have also re-installed and playing through Crysis 2, with the full texture pack and it looks awesome, the fans are running at low speed and temperatures are basically normal, the game itself is putting normal load on my PC, I would suggest that's down to the 4Gb of graphic Oomph that powers games into the next century.

So far everything is working correctly, Blu-Ray's are really sharp, The Avengers is awesome... I thoroughly recommend this model based upon my experiences. She has a 7.8 Windows score and that's for the processor, everything else is 7.9, highest it can be...

OB

Thanks Tony, So far she'll tear up anything that's thrown at her... I can't wait for Crysis 3...

 

Crysis 3 will be even more optimized than Crysis 2, needing less power. Should run well.