My not so great experience with brand new M18X R2...

Ok here I ran in to some troubles setting up my OCZ 2 x 256GB Vertex4 RAID0, problem after problem from the first minute I tried doing it so, windows would jam freeze would not finish setup, later then I have seen one of my OCZ vertex drives gave error message in Raid bios screen as drive error: "Error Occurred(0)" however I identified drive and first swapped around with other SSD, still identified same drive as having error, removed it and since setup in single SSD which didn't fail yet, so far so good, it works, first it worked just at 3GBps sata rate no matter what I did, later after reinstalling latest intel manager I got 6GBps sata speed (sata port0 - in BIOS as ACHI)
other two drives are 500gb and 1000GB also they both run at 3GBps, thats weird because 1TB drive which is in sata port1 should run at 6GBs too, whatever... moving further
Day I ordered M18X R2 I went and bought 1866MHz vengeance 16GB ram later same day found out these machines dont run with this ram, machine needs tinkering with tons of settings bother bother bother.... so I canceled order luckily before it got dispatched and ordered a set of 16GB 1600MHz ram from crucial, still waiting to arrive... however, 7970m, they idle 55-58c as we speak now, thats HOT!!!! my MSI GX660R idled with new 7970m card approx 38-45c all the time !!!!!, ran some benchmarks , got some expected flickering and un-rendered squares during benchmarks but did not crashed yet
Only times it crashes if I close the lid of the laptop, it enters sleep mode or hibernation, I resume session, screen comes back on with maybe 1-3% max backlight, so Im forced to look at my screen from an extreme angle to see image and I go trough start->shutdown->restart, once laptop restarted it shows proper image again.
Very often I have noticed browsing firefox I get some seriously nasty artifacts all over firefox window from top to the bottom where before start line begins screen (only firefox, like flash plugin would fail or something, but not browsing in pages with flash... tried to be fast to capture the mess with my phone camera but wasnt quick enough firefox forced itself close down with crash report window..this is weird one,since I went and disabled hardware accel. in firefox, will see how it goes) Im running latest 12.8 official driver ... dont want to go lower modded version in case crossfire doesnt work on it... Im little p-ssed off this machine requires so huge of attention and it basically requires not to be touched otherwise it will wear out the chassis soft touch rubber paint in no time, i already see rubberized paint pealing off at the places on the back of the battery - THATS BAAADDD! I can see the same will be happening with palmrests if I will do alot of typing while wearing my watch!!! , screen is big and clear colors easy to see and reflective thing is not as bad as many would make out, but black colors are nothing like my LG upgraded LCD I just put in before I sold my GX660R... one more thing sucks heavily, CD eject doesnt work unless youre fully booted in windows, so if you're installing OS and you stuck in CD that doesnt boot or wrong version you will likely have to finish setup before you will be allowed to eject cd... this is nasty!!!!!!! I havent gamed yet, but I will maybe tonight... yes, while typing I can nearly feel keyboard is gonna wear out like chips, its not chicklet and thats disappointing as I can see now, at first impressions it felt good but now I see I dont like this thing not one bit... bad part is mate finish on the keyboard and palmrest will make it all look spotty and oily dirty in no time as if your hands sweat even a little bit you will see no more mate finish just sort of oily stains that mate surface will absorb... keyboad arrow buttons look like left arrow button is scratching the housing bezzel of the keyboard and there is one more fail I can see already, the bezel is not installed properly! it is approx 1-1.5mm raised of the chassis just wround where the arrow keys are... will have to photograph that... few more days and I will see if I decide to keep it or just return it and buy something else(dell sales rep told me there is 7days return policy from day delivered If i dont like the machine)... I feel I should have really went for GTX680 SLI config instead... alot to think of before final decision.... oh saddest part I thought it was my SSD that failed in RAID0 setup with M18X at the first place it seems it is working in all my desktops and other laptops I tried, just not this alienware.... just my personal experience... disappointed already
Oh by the way storage drives 3in1 bezel that is plugged in to motherboard, was plugged in not in even level, at probably 15% angle or more it really caught my eye how it was plugged in prior taking out the HDD bay, engineers fault, but yet it was still touching approprieate pins inside of flex slot so it was booting ok with its original HDD, since I have reinserted it but this all connector thing is really loose, I really dont like the way it was put together.
By looking at miniDP port I can see its not exactly in the middle of chassis frame hole... just one more bad point, machine of a few grand and quality it represents in my eyes I have probably overpaid for it... I dont know yet...


EDIT:

not only the arrow keys, but also ALTGR / CTRL LEFT/ arrow LEFT / numpad INSERT

And I have now took the photography of what I was talking about

+I noticed either whole frame is not made well or motherboard fitted all wrong inside! all ports on the left side are out of place, audio ports, 2 x usb , miniDP, HDMI OUT... I have checked right side and that one does not look that bad but still not perfect... also pictures taken































see last few photos, i dont know if that counts but it seems there I found another imperfection on paint surface, it doesnt affect functionality but this shouldn't be there, its not a scratch, its like more a dint and its painted over along with the rest of the palmrest.

please see photos


EDIT: UPDATE

Ok this morning was quick enough to take this video when terrible artifact mess reoccurred on the screen

IMG 1123 - YouTube

despite my angry face

 

Sorry to hear about your issues with aftermarket parts. The Vengeance RAM has known compatibility issues with the M18x and some other systems. There are some fixes for the memory noted on the Taiphoon Burner web site. Sorry you did not see the thread covering that problem before selecting that brand of memory. It's good you were able to catch that early enough to cancel and order something else.

I know of another person that encountered problems with the Vertex 4 refusing to operate at SATA 3.0 speeds. I have had to jump through quite a few hoops to get my OCZ Agility 3 SSD to run at SATA 3.0 speeds as well. You might try the fixes in the opening post of this thread to see if they help the Vertex 4. http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...llation-questions-troubleshooting-thread.html. The Intel SSDs, Samsung PM830 and Crucial M4 seem to work best with the M18x R1 and R2 when it comes to this issue. (They are not as difficult to get running at SATA 3.0 speeds.)

The CD eject button is controlled by OSD software, so until OSD is loaded with Windows, the media bar button cannot function. However, you can enter the BIOS and the eject button will work if you have a stubborn CD that the drive has trouble reading or ejecting. Just press F2 at boot, eject it, and exit without making any changes to the BIOS. It would be nice if it was purely a hardware switch, but I wanted to be sure you knew of this option if you did not already.

The matte finish on the palm rest is very durable. Mine is about a year old and looks new. Yes, it shows oils and fingerprints, but so does any dark colored surface. A smooth glossy finish would show it equally bad or worse.

Resuming from sleep has been a persistent problem with multiple Windows systems for me many years, and the AMD drivers going all the way back to the 5870M have had issues with screen brightness or crashing when resuming from an S3 state. I have the same problem with AMD drivers in my desktop computer. I no longer even both with that. I disable sleep and tell all of my laptops to "do nothing" when closing the lid, and simply shut down when I am finished using it. With the incredibly fast boot times using SSD, it's a better option anyway. You can leave hibernation enabled so data is saved to disk if the battery runs dead. Hibernation has some issues sometimes, but not as many as S3.

Adobe programs and Firefox have known issues crashing with AMD drivers. Some have had success disabling hardware acceleration in Firefox, but others have not. Hopefully, AMD will fix that before long. It is irking a number of people that have AMD's latest and greatest video cards. I don't use Firefox, but my Adobe Creative Suite does not play nice with any of the 7970M drivers currently available. AMD is aware of both issues.

 

Please view first post again, updated with more details and photography.

Yes i know what hibernation and sleep modes does, hence i have had HP DV7 with 6770m and MSI GX660R with 5870m and later with 7970m and none of these laptops had any issues returning from sleep modes... now Idid not know about eject CD from exiting bios disregarding changes in bios...
Im used to understand, new stuff works as NEW stuff should work, not that I buys something I want to spend my time troubleshooting problems i did not ask, I just want one solid piece of equipment that it is perfect and works out of the box and any future mods applied with brand new parts it doesnt cause me troubles...

I hope you understand what Im talking about

 

Yes, I understand what you are saying. The ports being out of alignment and the defect in the palm rest would bother me, too. I would get that addressed under warranty, as both of those issues can and should be fixed. I would not like those things even on an inexpensive laptop.

Please resize your images. They are larger than allowed by forum rules.

Here is a link to read them: http://forum.notebookreview.com/site-suggestions-help-announcements/109941-forum-rules.html

I have resized the first one as an example. You can edit the code as shown in the example.

Code:

[FONT=Arial][IMAGE=500]image URL goes here[./IMAGE]
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(remove the period so the code will work...
added for demonstration only)[/SIZE][/FONT]

To view the post for editing in code versus preview, click on the upper left icon and you will be able to do the edit.

 

Im sorry, thought forum would have autoresize to vga res feature, my bad,

edited: works better now, thanks for the tip

After other thinkabout, it has been just 24hours since I got the laptop and Im more impressed with the low built quality I have receive rather than the specs of the laptop... I may as well just try contact dell and organize return of the unit for a refund as Im not receiving what Ive paid for, really not feeling paying for someone elses made mess

 

Yeah, if your having problems like this right off the bat, I would definitely recommend just returning it and trying again.

 

Was this a new or refurbished?

 

Its already reverted back to its original state hour ago since Im not comfortable with it using any further.

Third party parts mentioning SSDs work wonderfully in any other system, please explain this

Assembly issues , is something that took my big part of the attention, keyboard keystrokes are sharp on mentioned buttons since they scratch keyboard bezel while typing. Im not happy about the way it came at the first place.
However I would never ever think of returning system for a refund or exchange with my own parts in it it just would not make sense, I know dell warranty covers only parts they sold and they are irresponsible with incompatibility of aftermarket upgrades, but yet the main thing I have noticed is the frame is all out of order with motherboard and keyboard issues, disregard all other issues its already more than enough to give it back for refund. Just disappointed nothing else to add.

It was brand sparkling new direct from Dell, no wonder dell offered me 10% off straight away thinking probably giving some retarded assembly quality unit away as good, ,maybe thought "this customer wouldn't notice a thing!"

not trying to make it any kind of rant, its just a fact, its not good enough to be sold like that

 

Thanks for taking care of that right away. I appreciate it, bro.

 

Hello Look Tread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/685971-probleme-raid-zero-m17x-r3-vertex-3-120go.html

 

yes , sadly these drives doesnt work too well or not at all in M17X and M18X ... but at least one works thats some relief...I could live with one SSD for some time later replace it with well reputable brand SSD's that will work in RAID0... but yet thats not the main point Im not satisfied with my purchase if you read the whole story above ...

 

little English : Mad:

 

No probleme M17X R4

 

did you get my private messages??? please reply , thanks

 

No PM Sorry

 

ok there is an update on how good my M18X R2 is, artifacts artifacts artifacts ... what 36h old laptop??? lol

video in first post above at the end of it.

Dell is currently organizing courier for pick up and will get it refunded...

what a painful run

 

Ok, so after all DELL took in the unlucky laptop back, and all is now sorted, ordered another one with 680m SLI and all is excellent for over a week already, happy with the purchase at last

Thanks to DELL/AW

Topic can be now CLOSED/LOCKED for good

BR

 

good to hear !