Hey Brother, your tempertures are right in line with what I was getting after a 3DMark 11 run - Mid to upper 70's.
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Hey all,
I am currently in the process of reinstalling win8 pro to my new SSD, have successfully installed the OS on the SSD, in the process of downloading all the necessary drivers, but just getting into windows explorer now, I do not see any other drives available (my 750gb with the caching drive is not there, just the C drive). Anyone know why that is and how to get the other drive visible? Is it just a driver I'm still missing? Thanks for any help you can give me. -
I currently don't have Windows 8 (I have used it before), but it should be very similar to 7. Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Administrative Tools > Create and format hard disk partitions. You should be able to assign a letter for the other drives and decide how you want to use them.
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Wasn't even listed in explorer as a drive period, but turns out the cable wasn't pushed in all the way, I see it now and have formatted it, but my bios says I don't have an msata drive attached to accelerate the drive, despite windows telling me the drive was accelerated prior to putting in the ssd...we'll see after all the drivers are installed
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You have to install intel rapid store to be able to do that.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk -
Is anyone having the same problems that the 14 and 17 are?
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Does anyone else have blackspots under their trackpad. They are most visible when the light is on of course. And the left and right clickers are spaced slightly unevenly. It doesnt take away from the laptops awesomeness I am just curious if I got a slightly defective laptop.
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So far I haven't read anyone write about any throttling problems on the 18. In fact people with the 780m SLi seem happy. -
A lot of people seem to be reporting high temps though.
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What I LOVE about this system though is how cool the area from the top of the keyboard to the front stays. I wouldn't even notice if my GPU was on fire until I started seeing sparks lol. Touching the top of the machine by the screen is REALLY HOT under load though. It can scald probably. -
Good to read there are no throttling problems. Brings peace of mind when I go to finally purchase my rig.
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Am I going to run into any difficulties installing a Samsung 840 pro and windows 7? The system will already have 750gb hdd + 64gb ssd cache. Will would be the steps of properly installing the ssd?
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Finally got my machine Shipped!!! and this is after cancellation and re order. I was expecting it to be much more late but this will doo
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steviejones133 Notebook Nobel Laureate
Leave the bios set to RAID. If you want to add another SSD later on down the road and set up any raid array between them, it's far easier to do, and will not require an OS re-install. Also, if you plan on using the mSata as a cache drive, you would need RAID anyway.
Physically install the SSD and install windows: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html & http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ook-feel-after-clean-install-windows-7-a.html
Once you have done that, and assuming you still want to use the 750gb HDD & mSata (as why would you NOT want to use them?) you can, if you choose, format the HDD (your mSata won't have anything on it as it should come from the factory set up as a cache drive) and use the 750gb drive as a data drive for other stuff. Personally, as the mSata is of a rather small size, I think that it's most beneficial use would still be to accelerate your 750gb HDD.
Note: Foramtting your HDD will erase all info on it, however, if you have made your AlienRespawn recovery media, you can 'Respawn' to it via USB/ODD and it will still revert your drive, including recovery partition, back to how it was when you first got it.
Hope that helps. -
Just looked at the status and:
Carrier: UPS
Shipped On: 15/07/2013
Shipping Method: Standard Shipping
So dell is sending it to UPS and it will be on its wayto bad i will no be able to pick it up until the 16th of august. UK dell only sends the unites to UK addresses. Will be in the UK in august. But still am happy
hope the unite is not faulty in anyway.
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steviejones133 Notebook Nobel Laureate
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Mines just arrived at home
This days going to drag now :'( -
The day has finally arrived! My M18 will be here today. I have been waiting since May.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to have the same freedom as the rest of you as since this technically isn't "my" laptop. I ordered it as a desktop replacement so that I may get out of the office and work some nights and weekends at home. With that comes a few stipulations. I'll be an Administrator on it but so will at least one other person.
The IT guy here is going to take this thing and load it up with a bunch of garbage I just know it.
It kinda sucks but I get it. The laptop has to be backed up regularly and be made idiot-proof just like the rest of the systems here. I work as a designer in the themed-entertainment industry. I'm sure many of you that work in IT know how computer (meaning hardware) illiterate most creative types can be. I'm not as bad as most of the people I work with (or am I??) but I still get lumped into the same category as everyone else that went to art school.
Whatever I still get a beast of a laptop. -
Is it true that you have to unscrew back of the laptop to get the battery out. I was just wondering as I wanted to hook it up with mains most of the time with occasional use on battery.
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steviejones133 Notebook Nobel Laureate
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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk -
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Hi guys!
I just ordered my Alienware 18! I've owned an M17x R1 for three years now, its still delivering fine on games like battlefield 3, the only problem was that I burned out one of my video cards when battlefield 3 first came out, too many marathons even for the M17 ;(. The poor things got heat issues now and the display shuts off randomly. So I decided to get another laptop! and after perusing everywhere, it was a close battle between a Cyberpower Fangbook and an Alienware 18, but the benchmarks the 18 delivered were so impressive I was blown away. GPU equivalence of a GTX Titan!! Whatever that meansSpecs!
Intel i7-4930, 32GB Dual Channel DDR3L @ 1600 MHz, 1.5 TB(2x750 GB 7200) RAID 0 + 64 GB mSATA SSD, Nvidia Geforce GTX 780m SLI, 3 + 3 years of support. Got the Orion backpack coming in, the expected delivery date should be the 31st of July! Looking so forward to it. Battlefield 4 and Rome 2!!! And whatever new elder scrolls is coming out, I hope there's an offline one, not a big fan of MMORPG's :,( -
UPS sent me a update.
Shanghai, China 15/07/2013 22:08 Export Scan
15/07/2013 22:08 Origin Scan
China 15/07/2013 6:11 Order Processed: Ready for UPS
So it is coming from china. Funny thing is my bank released the amount as it had been locked for a month without dell sending a request. Was showing as pending. I asked Dell rep. if there was a problem and was told that money would be credited to dell account as soon as it is shipped. Well its shipped and still have the amount on my account lol ....free AW lolAlso have a mate on the UK side that will take a look to see if it is ok when it arrives.
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Does anyone know what part I need to replace CDROM with hard drive. Can u please send me a link what I need to order?
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steviejones133 Notebook Nobel Laureate
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Finally mine has been shipped - due at my office on Wednesday
Its been a long wait considering I ordered the day of announcing the beast (11th) and a cancellation in the mean time.
Can't wait!
And just to help me keep it as fresh as possible, I just ordered the new XPS12 with 256GB SSD and i7-3687 for working from. Saves me lugging the 18 everywhere unnecessarily. -
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So after extensive testing I'm pleased to say that the CPU (4930MX) actually runs significantly cooler than I would have expected it too. Triple Pipe Heatsink really works here and it never goes above 80 or so on demanding games and firestrike extreme at stock.
The GPUs on the other hand are, conversely, running hotter than I would have expected given the design, one of them even hitting 91 yesterday. They only have dual pipe heatsinks but they are quite thick so I'm not so sure if they are the primary cause. (Does anyone know if I can install a triple pipe heatsink in the new 18? Where/which would I buy it etc.?) I plan on re-pasting everything tomorrow afternoon and I'll come back and post results. Was going to use MX-4 but now i'll be using IC diamond since I grabbed it for cheap at Fry's yesterday (and since most people on this forum seem to prefer it.)
Oh and this is probably a stupid question, but can you install a third hard drive without removing the optical drive? My caddy only seems to fit 2 drives and I only saw two connectors. Thanks in advance for any tips. -
steviejones133 Notebook Nobel Laureate
Mr. Fox used this one https://www.jacobsparts.com/items/HDDBAY-01/ in his R1 to replace the ODD. I cannot say with 100% certainty wether it will fit the new 18 though....
As for the drives, x2 in the caddy, x1 mSata and one in the ODD bay. That's it. So, you could go x2 7mm SSD's and an mSata SSD to get 3 drives without removing the ODD. -
I'm interested in knowing whether or not these will work correctly. It might be a solution to having lost a drive bay if mSATA doesn't turn you off too much. If they work well, you could end up with a lot of SSD RAID0 goodness stuffed into the box.
SSDMR (Dual mini-SATA to SATA RAID Adapter - SATAIII)
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Got my rig today
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Can anyone point me in the right direction/Page/link or advise on how to do a clean install please. If it was just a normal hard drive I'd be OK but I'm a bit of a noob with this Msata thingy.
512GB mSATA SSD Boot + 750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s. Window 7 Ultimate.
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steviejones133 Notebook Nobel Laureate
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@titansfan:
Did you hit those temps with stock vbios on the GPU?
That would mean there´s no temp limit in the AW 18. -
steviejones133 Notebook Nobel Laureate
Before formatting/clean installing to the mSata, make sure you create AlienRespawn recovery media using the Respawn software that's preloaded - stash it somewhere safe in case you need/want to revert back to the original AW factory drive image.
What you might want to do, and I don't know if Alienware configure the mSata in this way at the factory, is to make two partition's - one say 32gb, leaving the rest as space for everything else, and then use the smaller partition to cache/accelerate your 750gb HDD using RST - that way, you maximise performance of your much slower HDD as well.... -
Thanks Steve,
Will give it a go tomorrow. +1 rep. -
And by the way, thanks for your explanation regarding clean installation on page 77.
I was going to use the Intel 525 240GB to accelerate a 1TB HDD, but now I look at the power consumption figures, I figure I should just go balls out and get the Crucial M500 960GB. With all due respect, why do a Raid 0 on msata/SSD? Why not just use it all without raid as storage? Any proper Sata III SSD is fast enough, will it even make any significant improvement to loading/bootup time?
I understand that the first method is a more cost efficient way, ie, using raid 0 or non raid msata to accelerate the HDD, and that way you get good speed and storage, by sacrificing some power. With the msata and HDD both active, we are probably looking at probably at least 8W of power here.
The other way would be, just get all SSD storage. And that's what I am debating about, if I go this way, I will have the Samsung 512GB, Intel 240GB msata and Crucial 960GB. After all the over provisioning, I should have 1.4TB or more of pure SSD storage. From a power and speed standpoint, the second method should trump the first one. But from cost efficiency standpoint, the first method is quite a bit cheaper. -
The GPUs just run hot, no throttling as of yet. -
@KH90213
You are right when you say SSD Sata 3 is fast enough. But having 2 in raid 0 will almost double the speed. Having 3, 4, etc in Raid 0 will still show improvements, just not as dramatic with each addition.
Personally I'd go for 2 x 480/512 over 1 x 960/1024 purely for the greedy raid 0 speed gain -
The opening post of this thread (link also provided by Brother Steve) should be useful: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...es-sata-iii-ssd-upgrade-raid0-discussion.html
Look for newer versions of Intel Rapid Storage Technology than what you find links for (those have not been updated). -
And of course, one could always do a raid 0 on the Crucial 960GB.
Edit: I think I found the solution. I could do what Mr. Fox did. So on top of having the Samsung 512G, Intel 240G, Crucial 960G, I can add another 1TB HDD using a HDD caddy, and that will push me to 2.4 TB space. Balls to the walls storage solution.
*OFFICIAL* Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge Thread
Discussion in 'Alienware 18 and M18x' started by Mr. Fox, Jun 12, 2013.