*OFFICIAL* Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge Thread

I don't know. I have not tried and after what happened with you and Northstar* I am halfway scared to try it now. I was going to test it, but now I don't think I want to.

You know, in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal. The difference in real world performance is absolutely nothing to get too excited about. In fact, other than memory benchmarks, it's almost meaningless to have anything more than 1866 CL11. The difference between 1600 CL10 and 1866 CL11 and 2133 CL11 or 2133 CL12 is easily measurable with a memory test, but nearly irrelevant in practical application.

 

i agree that there can be batch problem as with my 17xr1 both WD drives were bad on arrival Dell replaced both and they r still working great after four years
i got a WD shipped with my M18 added a seagate for raid and the WD is showing GSense Error Rate is failing now in SMART this seems to be a weakness with dell
but like all mechanical they usually fail early will wait and see
keeping an eye on your mechanical drive is always advisable and regular backups

 

How did you get this price? I was looking at pretty much the same specs and I cant get it below 2700 before tax. I tried talking to someone and the most they would budge is 100 bucks if I ordered it right that very second.

 

Wireless Multimedia Extensions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
" It provides basic Quality of service (QoS) features to IEEE 802.11 networks. WMM prioritizes traffic according to four Access Categories (AC) - voice, video, best effort, and background. However, it does not provide guaranteed throughput. It is suitable for simple applications that require QoS, such as Voice over IP (VoIP) on Wi-Fi phones (VoWLAN)."

 

I have never seen qos improving performance on pretty much anything, always causes issues. Maybe I am just unlucky but I hate anything with qos.

 

I agree, never had an improvement with QoS. I always turn it off on routers etc.

 

Just got my maxed 18 from eBay for a decent discount, but I'm having a slight problem with auto brightness. On the battery on the NVIDIA card, some auto brightness setting is on and I cannot find anywhere to shut anything off. I have disabled adaptive brightness in power options and I don't see anything in the NVIDIA control panel related to auto brightness. On the Intel card, this is not an issue, and on the battery on both cards it's a non-issue. Only on NVIDIA/battery. Any ideas?

Also, when I'm in the BIOS/boot screen, the screen is really dim and will not let me go to max brightness. Thoughts?

 

Hi dlimes13. Welcome to NBR. Congrats on the new machine. I will test this on the 18 I am using and see if it is the same way. I have never noticed, but I almost never use it on battery.

Thoughts: The fact that this occurs only using discrete graphics on battery seems to suggest that the battery is not capable of powering the discrete graphics well enough. As you say maxed out, I am going to assume that means 780M SLI and that GPU is very demanding in terms of power requirements. It is not really meant to be used on battery.

Ditto... I think QoS is garbage and never found a benefit in using it for anything.

 

Adaptive brightness doesn't seem to work, at least by my observation, so it might better to leave it disabled.

Also, if it's an AW 18, for the time being you might want to restrain from adjusting anything memory speed related, to prevent any potential problems. There have been a few cases of the system not being able to BOOT which were all memory related.

 

Any of you guys have A03? In XTU I can set the core current limit (amps) to 112 and it stays at that when I reboot.

 

can your CPU stay at stock 3.7Ghz on 4 cores for unlimited time in games or benchmarks when you bump amps to 112.00?

 

Yeah but you have a special mobo that was replaced, perhaps a newer revision of the mobo or something

I will confirm with you once I have got mine replaced.

 

Yeah but when I got this mobo replaced on Friday it had A00 on it. I updated it the same day.

 

That is really super good news. I don't know how many people have actually tried adjusting Core Current Limit with XTU on the A03 BIOS. I think some assumed it was not fixed. I would like to see what more folks that have A03 can tell about this. If you can adjust it and it sticks, that must mean the MSR lock was changed to disabled. If that is true, the BIOS CPU performance problem might be solved now. You and I will visit more on this soon. Looking forward to that.

Question: are the fans working correctly with A03 now, or still too slow to react? The CPU fan was typically waiting until the CPU hit 96°C before they did anything. How about the ability to use HWiNFO64? Does manually pushing the fans to full speed cause the GPU fans to turn off still, or is that fixed?

 

I have had A03 for a while now, and here is my experience:

I can set the current limit to 112A. It usually it stays locked after reboot, unless the machine freezes or hangs for some reason (unoptimized game, too high overclock, driver video that crashes, etc). It happened only a couple of times, but aside from that it stays at 112A; hence, I am able to keep my 4.2 OC stable. I set 4 profiles with the new Throttlestop like I had them with the M18x.

I haven't noticed any improvement in regards of the fan table. They still react too slow--they start pushing some serious air around 95°C.

As well, nothing new for HWiNFO64: forcing the fans manually turns off the GPU fans.

Hopefully the A04 will come soon with ALL the actual improvements we seek and deserve.

 

OK, thank you for the reply, Brother rafix73. That is a small step in the right direction. Can you set it higher, like 120.000A and it will stick, or is it capped at 112.000A?

Those fans have the ability to do the exact same job they do in the M18x... it's a shame they don't work correctly.

 

Yes, Brother Fox. I can set it higher and it sticks, unless it crashes for any reason. In that case it gets to its default. However, when it does crash, let say with a high overclock while playing crysis 3, not only does the current limit go back to 55, but it resets the whole BIOS (loads bios default). At any rate, I haven't tried anything higher than 120 so far.

I agree that's it's a shame with the fans, and I do miss the freedom to set and tweak them as I pleased, like with the M18x.

 

For UK customers: Scan has some pretty descent SSD deals: Award winning supplier, performance hardware & systems - Scan.co.uk including <200 pounds for an OCZ Vertex 4 512GBs (refurbished)

 

Hi all! Just got my Alienware 18, gtx780m 4gb, i73940mx, 32gb, windows 7 ultimate.

It has a 500gb SSD & A 750GB STANDARD HARD DRIVE. Can I replace the slow hard drive with an SSD or 2 SSDS? Is this possible?
(because it is seriously bottlenecking games.)

RSVP Dudes! ;~}

 

Is the 500gb ssd a msata or a standard 2.5 drive? The 18 standard fitting is 1 msata, 2 2,5 drives and the optical. So yes you can put 2 2.5 ssd's and one msata.

 

I have just ordered a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB ssd from Amazon. My AW18 comes with a 750GB HDD + 64 GB for mSata ssd caching. After reading threads and watching videos, I have some idea on how to do a basic install minus the optimisation, please correct me if i am wrong as I am still very new at this

1) Install the SSD in the machine without removing HDD (not sure if HDD will come into conflict with SSD)

2) Boot up windows and download Samsung migration software and go through the migration process (I am planning to clone instead of doing a clean SSD install, not very concerned about the decrease in performance, so yea )

3) Shutdown and reboot (after this step the system should be good to go? According to Samsung, the migration software will also delete everything on the HDD)

Is there any step missing? Got a feel that I have missed out some BIO setup. Also, am I correct to assume that there is no need to configure RAID since I only have one SSD?

 

If you don't wants to use the alienrespawn. The best thing to do is, the computer will come with a windows reinstallation cd, So do a fresh install on the ssd and keep the hd with the factory os just in case. That what I did with mine!

 

Alienspawn will not work if your are restoring to a 256gb ssd. It has to be 750gb or larger drive. AW should re-work alienspan to allow allow restoring to any sie drive but as of right now it has to be the same size or larger than the factory drive that came in it.

 

You really should consider a fresh install and not clone from a mechanical drive to a ssd. Windows does some optimization on install because it recognizes the ssd. The main one being enabling TRIM, sometimes cloning doesn't allow trim to truly start working. The best of luck whichever way you decide. But also consider following the steps in this guide to optimize windows 7 for the ssd. I generally implement most of the steps personally.

The Windows 7 Optimization Guide | The SSD Review

 

I am still trying to convince myself to do a clean install, guess i'm just lazy sometimes in any case, is there any major flaw in my steps or any missing steps?

 

just like what pathfindercod has said, my SSD is only 256GB, so alienrepsawn is not an option for me

 

Be careful with playing around with the RAM settings. Since you use the Samsung SSD, best to not install the Samsung Magician until maybe a later revision.

A clean install of OS is always more advisable, better err on the safe side. Although personally, I have cloned OS onto the Samsung SSD before, and it worked fine for me without any speed degradation. But to be safe, again, like what others say, if you could clean install the OS then that's a better way.

Leave the BIOS setting in RAID, instead of changing it to AHCI. If you change it to AHCI, you will lose the ability to use the mSATA to accelerate HDD. The performance of the Samsung SSD is unaffected by having it in AHCI or RAID.

 

Did you order with windows7 or with w8? If it is with w7 alienrespawn will install on the 256GB sds with no problem.

 

Could you enlighten me on the issue? I was thinking of using it to do some optimisation

 

oops sorry, i kept forgetting to mention the OS. It's Windows 8

 

Disabling RAPID on the Samsung 840 EVO has bricked my system and since there's no easy way to reset the BIOS after one encounters a no-POST, I will have to wait for a mobo replacement. It has been suggested that one could take out the 4900MQ/4930MX, and put in a 4700MQ and that way it will eventually reset the BIOS, but I don't have a 4700MQ sitting around to test that. Shorting the mobo jumper or taking out the CMOS battery or shorting out the CMOS battery connector pins didn't work. None of them worked.

Mr. Northstar* has had to get his mobo replaced after he tried setting XMP settings for the RAM.

Since you don't use the Samsung 840 EVO you should be fine. Even if you brick the system, if you're in US you can just call up Dell and they will send someone over to your place the next day.

Since my system is bricked I have got plenty of time to post on this forum. Heh.

 

Msata (its tiny, like a bank note folded in 3) I wouldn't have even known it was an SSD compared to standard ones.
then there's a small 750gb mechanical hard drive which i'd like to remove & replace.
Is there connctions for 2 SSD drives then?

Thanks for your help BTW. ;~}

 

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone else is having a sound problem. when i first boot up my m18 i dont get any sound coming out of the speakers at all, apart from the odd popping sound which is very random...

the only way i can get the sound working is by closing the lid and putting the m18 into sleep mode, then if i open the lid again i have sound.... very strange...

anybosy had this happen to them, if so how did you fix the problem

thanks alot

ian

 

Hi IanC. This is with an M18xR2 or the new Alienware 18? Almost everyone encounters this once in a while with the Sound Blaster Recon3Di on the M18xR2, but I haven't seen it reported on the new 18. (I ask because this is the Owner's Lounge for the new 18.) This affects M17xR4 owners as well. It does not seem there is a solid fix for this problem. There is a special thread for this in the main Alienware forum. http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...questions-here-m18x-r2-m17x-r4-audio-fix.html

I went for many months and never experienced it and now it is happening to me frequently. I applied some Windows Updates last week and it began happening to me with regularity, but nothing has changed with respect to my audio drivers. I am probably going to remove those Windows Updates and see if the problem goes away again.

 

You can remove the small 750GB and throw in two 1TB SSD in that bay. If you want to keep the 750GB with mSata acceleration and just add the 1TB SSD then you can add 3-4TB external HDD drives for mass storage if you need extra space.

 

hi mr fox,

its a strange one, the fault is on my new alienware m18

i will have a read from the link you put in your reply, and i will check if any windows updates have happened...

thanks alot

Ian

 

Sorry but I have win7 and my laptop came with 2x750gb HDD's. I upgraded to 256gb SSD and alienrespawn CD's from original config DO NOT work, it asks for a minimum storage of 1.3tb (somewhere around there lol).

Moreover with SSD's its best to do a clean install and then make a new Respawn media.

 

Between a refurbished OCZ Vertex 4 (£195), a brand new Crucial M500 (245) and a new Samsung 840 EVO 500GB (£275), which would you recommend? All three are around 500GBs.

I heard OCZ had some issues with Vertex 3 and that Crucial has one of the highest reliability rate out there. Are those facts true?

 

Go with the Samsung EVO!

 

Oh, I thought it will wok with w7. my bad!

 

Crucial M500 uses MLC vs the TLC on the Samsung, so just by physics of transistor M500 should be longer lasting, although durability isn't really exactly an issue here with both SSDs.

Samsung EVO is slightly faster and consumes less idle power than the M500 (load power about the same), but you could read up on reviews and see the comparison for yourself. In real life, I doubt anyone would be hard pressed to notice the difference between the Samsung vs the Crucial.

If you get the EVO, don't use the RAPID feature for now. RAPID uses 25% or 1GB of system RAM (whichever comes first) to serve as a cache for the SSD Disabling RAPID probably caused some memory problems and made my AW 18 fail to POST. I am waiting for a replacement mobo. Another member have had no problem with RAPID, but I believe I have 24GB of RAM vs his 16GB of RAM.

Crucial doesn't really have firmware update for their SSDs, as compared to Samsung. For the most part firmware update is safe, and requires just a reboot. But sometimes things get unlucky and you will end up like me, with a 'bricked' mobo.

I'd suggest getting the Samsung 840 Pro 512GB (which uses MLC like the M500), if you're planning to use it as boot drive. As storage drives the EVO should be fine. Updating the firmware on the 840 Pro has given me no problem, but one time I tried to update the firmware on the EVO it bricked the mobo.

I prefer to play safe, but sometimes the fire just like to burn you. Heh.

Personally the OCZ is fine, but it doesn't compare with the M500/EVO.

 

I've also seen the OCZ Vector's (not the Vertex) provide some outstanding performance...not to mention the Sandisk Extreme II which had some great reviews

 

Hey guys, just received my 18 the other day and have a few problems. One is the screen backlight bleed is terrible and im sending it back to get replaced. The other is the ssd. I got mine with the 256gb ssd but it says I only have 154gb available?? What, is this normal. Windows 8 should only take up 30-40gbs max, what else is eating up that much space? Anybody else have one with only 154gb from the factory? Thanks guys.

 

AGREE, my ocz work great!

 

A little bit after my post, as I was leaving office I got a deal from Pixmania, 242 for the Evo 500GBs and the M500 went off stock at Amazon and Pixmania. I read your forum post about the Evo and that is why I didn't buy Evo last week, when it was selling for <250 on Amazon. I took the discounted price and the M500 I had in my basket since earlier this morning, going out of stock, as a "sign" EVO's RAPID was the main reason I wanted to go with it. Maybe I should cancel the order and go with a M500, even late...

The Pro was unfortunately out of my budget as it is £350+... :/

Thanks for the answer however!

 

Some space will be taken by recovery partition.

 

Hey guys! So I got the new AW18 in my sig and it comes with 60GB mSATA and 2x750GB HDD. I have a 128GB M4 that I want to put in as a boot drive but I'm thinking if its possible to make that M4 and an equivalent mSATA drive as boot drive in raid 1.

Can I do this? Is it advisable?

 

Did you mean to Raid0 the 60gb mSata and the M4 128gb drives? - if so, that would be a no-no, mainly because the size of the Raid array would default to double the size of the smallest drive in that membership (60gb in your case) so you'd end up losing 68gb of the M4 if you did that.

Are you keeping the ODD installed or do you plan to remove it??? - I'm thinking that if you remove it, the best drive setup would be to have the two 750gb's installed, one in the caddy, the other in the ODD bay with an adapter bracket. M4 also in the caddy as boot drive and leave the 60gb mSata to cache accelerate the 1.5tb Raid.

 

Thanks Stevie.

I'm actually thinking of getting a 128GB mSata if there is (as I've only seen 120GB) and raid it with my existing M4. So I can keep the 1.5HDD as storage.

If its possible, will there be difference in speed between Raid 0 or Raid 1 of mSata and M4? Raid 0 will give me 240GB right? And Raid 1 is only 120GB?