*OFFICIAL* Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge Thread

But not anymore.

yes,

 

Hei, det er ikke så veldig lenge siden dell Norge hadde a 18 med i7-4930mx. kansje 2mnd siden.

Translation: Hey, it's not so very long ago dell Norway had a 18 with i7-4930mx. maybe 2mnd ago.
Har selv den nye alienware17med i7-4900, men fikk i7-4930mx da min første cpu gikk i stykker. De hadde ikke 4900 på lager

Translation: Have even the new alienware17med i7-4900, but got i7 4930mx when my first cpu broke. They did not have 4900 in stock

 

4940mx is out btw.. its on canada dell AW website. well it should have been out last year november and december looks like intel really putting haswell to 2 generations LOL. also that broadwell will probably ship Q4 this year and come out march/april next year, just sayin

 

I sure hope it's better than 4930MX. With prior generations there was almost no difference in the A/B XM flavors in each generation (2920XM vs 2960XM and 3920XM vs 3940XM were almost irrelevant) but in this case there definitely needs to be some evidence of improvement, as 4930MX really doesn't live up to the "Extreme CPU" legacy of awesomeness.

 

Mr Fox must have some Norwegian gens hidden within himself! (or just knows about google translate)

 

i doubt it. intel went back on their words which totally make sense now and shows their true face lol. VRM will still come out on the cpu die, old gen haswell had it, refresh haswell will have it, same applied to broadwell. kinda make sense they don't want to lose to mobo maker in controlling their own cpu, they want to make money off everything.

I have a feeling broadwell just might go to BGA which is soldered onto mobo lol

 

If they do, I'll be done with "high performance" laptops, LOL. I won't waste my money on BGA feces... embedded CPUs and GPUs are a joke IMHO. As much as I cringe at the thought of it, I'll just buy a $299 turd laptop or a $199 Chromebook for web surfing in my recliner and go back to building my own desktops if they do that. If I wanted an expensive piece of trash, I'd go buy a Razer notebook.

 

Just wondering if anyone has had issues with either the battery not charging, the ac adapter not being recognized by the system, the ac adapter quits working, this has happened 3 times with my system Dell has replaced the battery, the ac adapter twice, the mainboard, I have it plugged into the wall not a power bar also have tried different outlets. Dell replaced the mainboard about a month ago then I got the message " plug in a Dell 330 watt ac adapter", the battery won't charge, went into the BIOS it shows the ac adapter as unknown.

I have a i7-4930 mx cpu, 780 nvidia sli video cards, system has current Bios of A05 this also happened on the A04 bios.

 

I wonder if perhaps the AC power jack (input socket) is messed up. Sounds like they have replaced the most likely offenders, but not that component. I haven't seen other 18 owners posting about this issue.

 

After they replaced the mainboard last month it happened again so I called back they were going to order a new mainbaord, the ac adapter and the cord but called back a bit later said the mainboard is on back order with no ETA so they are doing a system exchange just seems odd.

 

I'll need to look at the inside of the 18 again to see if the AC jack is connected by a cable or soldered directly to the motherboard like the M18xR2 and earlier models. I don't remember now how the 18 is made in that respect. If they replaced the motherboard already, that would/should have eliminated the problem if it is soldered directly to the motherboard.

 

I am beginning to think I am not suppose to have an Alienware. After getting my payment situation worked out I checked my order status yesterday to find out the gift card portion was cancelled. I was busy at work yesterday so I sent in an email and got a reply this morning that said they never received payment for the gift card portion which is $0.10. So I called in not in a happy mood and explained the situation to the agent who said there was nothing she could do. I insisted she needs to do something because the $0.10 is given back as a credit on the Alienware portion and loosing $400.00 for a $0.10 mistake on their part was not acceptable. At first she came back with a $25.00 credit and I said no that is still not acceptable. She then came back and said she could offer $200.00 and I still told her no that it was not acceptable. I told her at this point it would be a better situation for me to send the computer back to them and order a new system to confirm I receive what I am entitled. So now she is suppose to check with her "concern team" and get back to me 24 - 48 hours.

It is hard to believe that their system is so broken as you take out a whole order and they only fix a portion of it. Sorry just had to rant out to someone about my grief.

 

I would recommend you to get in touch with the person who placed the order for you and ask that person to cancel it and redo the order.

 

Hello guys, so today I reminded to check if my AW 18 with two 770s were in SLI and I realized that they are not. Is it normal for alienwares laptops to not come with SLI or Crossfire enabled from the start or is it some kinda of auto-detect when in-game the laptop enables sli and when not it's disabled?

 

The original order was placed online via the website so I don't have a specific person to contact however I did mention to the rep I spoke to this morning after she said $200.00 was the best she could do that it would be better for me to cancel. She said it has gone beyond the point to cancel and it would have to ship and be sent back with the EDD of the 9th. My concern is that it will be out of my budget if the 12% component discount expires before all of this goes through and will have to go with a different manufacturer or without a laptop and hope my current one doesn't die before as I use it for work as well.

 

If you've updated your Nvidia drivers make sure you've re-enabled SLI from the Nvidia control panel.

 

Hey all!

Well my 18 finally came in today and man I am loving it. Almost freaked out when tried to play some youtube vids and doing so froze the whole computer...but realized I hadn't installed the flash program update...de de de. Anyway loaded up Blender and this thing is chewing thru some of my projects...so cool. Loaded Arma3 and The Star Citizen Hanger Module up on their highest settings and the run like butter! So far so good folks! Since I can't make a sig yet here goes....

Alienware 18 "Raquel-Mini" | i7 4930MX | 2x SLI 880M | 32 GB GSkill RAM (User upgraded) | 256GB mSATA boot drive + 1TB | Broadcom Wireless| Blu-Ray |

 

Congrats to you on getting yours

I see you ordered yours on about the 21st so mine will likely ship today or tomorrow which is a shame I haven't got the gift card problem sorted out. Called in this morning and supposedly the rep put the request in to get the gift card added back but it hasn't been approved. Hopefully I will get a response back before it arrives would hate for it to come in and just sit there unopened waiting for a resolution.

Edit: And as I feared the 12% sale they were having appears to have expired so if they can't get the gift card added back it's basically I send it back and wait for another sale / discount or accept it and loose out on something that I should have rightfully had.

 

That's awesome! Congratz!

 

I just received my 18 today and I am loving everything about it. It just feels solid and exudes a feeling of quality all around. I am replacing a pre-Dell M17x from 2008 and the difference is huge. I have never seen a screen that looks so good on a laptop. It is way nicer than the generic Dell monitors they give me at work too...but that is not surprising.
So this is my new lounge eh? Nice...

 

Welcome to the lounge! If you need anything feel free to let us know

 

Well my order shipped out today and I still didn't received an update from the agent I had spoke to last week who would get back to me in 24--48 which would have been Wednesday or Thursday. After emailing her Friday morning and this morning she finally responded back conveniently after her office hours saying she was just customer care and couldn't help me and told me to call order modification. Furious as I was I called the Alienware number Mr. Fox referenced in another topic and calmly spoke to a nice gentleman who said my Dell Advantage was confirmed and I would receive my gift cards and even volunteered his name and extension number. He did say it would be within 30 days which would put me past the return time however he did see more interested in the situation so it looks like my 18 will arrive sometime on Wednesday. Will see what happens.

 

I'm glad you were able to find somebody that could help you out with the order. Let us know when it gets there!

 

Was delivered about an hour ago Looks really nice and makes my Vostro 1700 look tiny. Keyboard is different and will take some getting use to but so far so good. Long process now of getting everything updated and my work stuff transferred over and then start some gaming.

 

Hope you enjoy it. Have fun!

 

Amazing specs but honestly I truly miss my Nebula Red M18x. If I could have my ideal setup that would be 3920xm with SLI 780m in a nebula red M18x R2 chassis with raid 256gb SSD. Bang for buck that would run circles around lots of machines and have a solid build quality. I love the older body styles and can't get my self to like the new body.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

Alienware 18



Catalog Number: 29 DKCWX03S
Module Description Show Details
Alienware 18 Alienware 18
Operating System Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
Memory 16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz
Keyboard English Keyboard
Video Card Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 880M graphics with 16GB total (2x 8GB) GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI® Enabled
Driver Killer NIC 1202 Driver
Hard Drive 1TB/5400 RPM + 80G caching mSATA
CD ROM/DVD ROM Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader (BD-ROM, DVDRW, CD-RW)
Wireless Killer NIC 1202 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0
Cable US 125V Power Cord
Documentation/Disks Documentation, English
Support for Your PC 1 Year Alienware Basic Support
Systems Management Alienware Command Center 3.0
Placemat Setup Instructions English
Retail Software Dell.com Order
Primary Battery 8-cell Lithium Ion (86 wHr)
Processor 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4910MQ processor (Quad Core, 8MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.1GHz)
Packing Label Dell.com Order
Color Choice Silver-Anodized Aluminum
Shipping Material Shipping Material
FGA Module NO FGA
Optical Software Cyberlink Media Suite Essentials without Media
Labels No OS Label Required
LCD 18.4" WLED FHD (1920 X 1080) TrueLife Display
Office Productivity Software Microsoft® Office Trial
Additional Software Additional Software
Security Software No Anti-virus Requested
Power Supply 330W A/C Adapter
Operating System Recovery Options Windows 7 English OS Recovery - DVD
TOTAL: $3,849.00

 

u should just buy a used one off ebay. barebone probably runs for about 800 to 1k, with Cpu and GPU upgrade at most 2.5k

 

Can I get a copy of this vbios?

@Anyone with a Dell 880m.

 

I have new 18 with dual 880m. svl7 how to make a bios dump?

Edit

Used GPU-Z

 

Upgrading from MSi GT70

Just placed order for this, I'm pretty excited - should get it this thursday/friday




Alienware 18-HID10 NVIDIA Dual SLI GTX 880M Gaming Laptop
Chassis Color
Silver Anodized Aluminum
Operating System
Windows 8.1, 64bit, English, with Multi Language Support
Processor
Overclocked 4th Generation Intel Core i7 Extreme i7-4940MX Processor, 3.1 GHz (Max Turbo Frequency 4.4GHz), 8MB Smart Cache
Video Card
Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 880M with 8GB GDDR5 - NVIDIA SLI® Enabled (16GB total video memory)
Thermal Paste
IC Diamond on CPU + GPU
LCD Panel
18.4" WLED FHD (1920 X 1080) TrueLife Display
System Memory (RAM)
Kingston HyperX 16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1866MHz (2 x 8GB)
Hard Drive
Samsung 840 Pro SATA3 6Gb/s 256GB SSD
2nd Hard Drive Bay
1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive
Wireless Cards
Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 a/g/n 2x2
Bluetooth
Bluetooth 4.0 Included

 

Congratulation Enjoy it!

 

hate dell norway, cant even get the M18x with SSD anymore...only 1TB 5400 HDD. They havent even heard about 4940XM

 

Its less expensive to add an SSD drive such as a Samsung 1TB SSD, but the 4940 is another story, maybe go a deal for an e-Bay 4930 M18 then upgrade.

 

I'm ordering my Alienware tonight. Hope that's enough to merit my posting in this thread I apologize for the text wall post, but it seems there's a lot of knowledgeable people here that I can benefit from before I drop $4K on a gaming rig. I'd appreciate the perspective of Alienware owners specifically.

Options I chose:
Intel® Core™ i7-4910MQ processor (+$500 doesn't seem worth it. This laptop is already really ing expensive)
Windows 7 Ultimate (Because OSes originally designed for tablets)
Dual GeForce GTX 880M's
16GB Dual Channel DDR3 (Even if I plan on using VMWare extensively, I don't see much of a use for 32GB. And in such a case, It's not like I can't upgrade myself later)
2TB 5400RPM drives in Raid 0 w/ 80GB SSD Caching (My best option... Wish I could do 7200RPM drives but Raid 0 and the SSD caching should still perform nicely)

I've been a lifelong desktop owner. Never owned a laptop in my life and the only thing I've ever done with a laptop service-wise is replace a hard drive. With that said, I'm A+ certified so I've studied a decent amount on laptop maintenance, etc... but I still feel like I'm delving into foreign waters here. So I have some questions if anyone wouldn't mind answering. I'd greatly appreciate it.

What niche things will I need to know when it comes to laptop ownership/gaming that I wouldn't know from years of desktop ownership/building?

When it comes to accessories: What accessories actually worth the cost and have good use to them beyond being just fun gadgets?

Dock: I know I need a laptop dock of some sort. I don't want my nuts roasting for hours on end when I'm on the couch with my gf and the kids gaming. Any recommendations?

Carrying Bag: Are the alienware-brand bags worth their price? Or will a generic bag fit this laptop decently? I will be taking this laptop everywhere. Work, LAN parties, between my house and my gf's, etc. I want a solid bag.

Couch Gaming: As I said, I'm going to be gaming on the couch next to my girlfriend after work for hours on end and I can't stand using the track pad. What do you guys recommend for facilitating this? I've made a mouse work decently with a pad just laying on the couch next to me when I use my gf's sparingly, but this thing will be a behemoth and I imagine it will be more difficult to deal with.

Dell Tablet: Dumb question but I can't help but ask. Did any of you actually add a tablet on to your order when customizing your alienware? This just seems like them trying to make more money, because I don't see a big use for a tablet if I have a beefy gaming laptop.

Benchmarking/Performance Tweaking: I've always been a gamer, always wanted to have the best graphic performance possible, but I've never really gotten into the whole high end tweaking/overclocking/FPS-crunching tier of it. Where would a novice start gaining knowledge in this aspect of high end gaming PC ownership? I want to benchmark accurately and get an idea of how my hardware is performing, measure differences, measure potential upgrades etc.

Video Sources/Home Theater: At home I have a TV and set of Logitech Z-5500 speakers that I use for my main monitor and audio source on my desktop. I've researched and I know I can outsource to those easily via analog and HDMI but soon when we re-build our basement for home theater use, I want to outsource my video and audio via HDMI to a high end receiver. How is the audio output via HDMI on these? Any other concerns I should have when it comes to video/audio sources?

Dealing with a manufacturer vs self-built: As I said, I'm used to always building my own desktops with my own parts and have never had to deal with a manufacturer. Are there any difficulties I should expect with Dell? Anything I should know before hits the fan?

[BPre-installed software: [/b]One of my biggest gripes with manufacturers is all the software clutter that comes with all of them. Can I just reinstall a different Windows 7 copy using my license I got with the laptop to have a clean install?

That's about all I can think of for now. Thanks a lot in advance if you managed to get through this huge post.

 

You have a good setup.

 

Hi all,

I'll be getting a new AW18 by tomorrow with these specs

4800qm
780m sli
16gb ram
80gb msata
750gb data
blueray

So it's a pretty lightweight setup right now but I still have these things laying around

4930mx
16gb ram
256gb 840 pro

So if I throw all of that into the AW I should have a pretty high end laptop. Now I do have some questions, I've worked on laptops before replacing CPU's and GPU's but never on this model. Is there a guide anywhere for tearing it down or replacing the CPU?

Another question, The 4930xm I have is an engineering sample QDMG. Would that be any problem whatsoever?

Thanks!

 

I just realised I'd need a better heatsink since from what I understand there are different heatsinks for the 4800-4900 and 4930. Does anyone have more info on this?

EDIT
According to this thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-18-m18x/732338-new-aw18-4800mq-2-pipe-3-pipe-2.html

It's been said that the AW18 comes standard with a 3 pipe CPU heatsink so that's great news!

 

I actually already have a 128mb SSD that I'm gonna use to boot from in my desktop that I'm gonna migrate over.

Thank you for the recommendation but I was just curious if there is some reason that a tablet pairs well with a gaming laptop that I am just not seeing. Maybe I'll get a tablet in the future though.

I'll have to see what I can jumble around to fit it in the cost. As is, it's pretty pricey.

Edit after toying with price: If I wasn't required to pay for more years of Alienware Basic Support on top of the cost of the Accidental damage warranty, I would do it. I'm not going to pay $200 for a service that I will never ever use.

Thank you for the reply, I appreciate it.

 

I'm reading that in some ways, Windows 8.1 outperforms Windows 7. As much as I hate Windows 8 inherently, after tinkering with my girlfriend's laptop that has it, I can see that they made some innovative changes beneath the surface. This makes me want to give it a chance, that and it will save me some money when I order my laptop. Will I have to jump through considerable hoops to get reliable gaming functionality on Windows 8? I know there's a stickied thread with Windows 8 info, but I'm looking for opinions rather than tutorials.

 

WINDOWS 8.1.1 with the latest updates had some people on the hang when trying to upgrade from 8.1 and its rather new so gamers are just getting their AW18's stablilized so they can get all there software looking the way they want. Its looking more and more like Windows 7 and with classic shell app which is free, it functions like Windows 7. The part I like most about Windows 8 are the apps available, that are not available on Windows 7, like Sports and ease of functionality of how it looks to follow my favorite sports teams. Gaming will have more FPS if you upgrade to the best combo of CPU/GPU such as: 4940/880 vs 4700/765 setups. Then you have fast SSD's like the EVO with Rapid or slower HHD that are cheaper but slower and run at 7200 or 5400 rpm which is outdated technology. Try to with the best deal within your budget.

 

Alienware ordered!

i7-4910MQ
8.1 Pro
16GB DDR3
2TB 5400 RPM's Raid 0 w/ 80gb ssd caching
880's in SLI

Splurged and bought the vindicator bag for it just because I wanted to splurge

Counting the days until it is delivered.

 

The model you ordered will not allow the addition of a SSD drive unless you breakup the RAID 0 configuration and remove 1TB 5400RPM drive, because there are only 2 regular drives allowed in the hard drive bay. You could remove the entire optical disk drive and get a caddy to install the SSD boot drive in that bay but then you give up the ability to watch DVD's. For the cost of AW 4910MQ unit the addition of a 128GB SSD which has a value of $50 doesn't make much sense if you have to sacrifice either the 1TB or Optical drive, because then you have to buy an external disk drive or optical disk reader to make up for what would be removed. If you selected the 256GB mSata boot drive for the addition of $100, then you it would have arrived with 1 empty bay drive to put your 128 SSD drive, but then you would have to cancel your order. If you didn't want the ODD then your all set.

 

Windows 7 outperforms Windows 8 in pretty much everything except for 3DMark Fire Strike benchmarks. Windows 8 does some pretty nasty things to cripple CPU performance, but Fire Strike places hardly any weight on CPU performance. If you're not into benching and don't care about the diminished CPU performance it probably won't make any difference. If you like the apps like Traderjo does it might be worth it. I don't really have a use for any of the apps and the Modern UI creates more of a nuisance for me than anything else. To me, the Modern UI adds absolutely no value of any kind... but some people actually like it. It's definitely a personal preference thing in terms of aesthetics. I've tweaked the guts out of Windows 8.1 and having it looking pretty spiffy. It's as ugly as sin (IMHO) in its default form. The one thing that I do think is really sweet is the Win-X menu, but that's not enough of a sweet thing to make me prefer Windows 8 just to have that nice feature.

If you can get Windows 8 for free, you can always try it for a while and see if it grows on you. I upgraded every computer in the house to Windows 8 except for the M17xR2. None of my family members are impressed with it and one actually decided after a year that she was sick of it and wanted Windows 7 back on her laptop again. If it were not for the adverse effect it has on CPU performance I would go ahead and replace Windows 7 with it. However, if you would have to pay money for Windows 8 it might be a better idea to keep using Windows 7 and skip 8 altogether as Windows 9 should be released in less than a year and all expectations are that it will be the killer Windows 7 replacement that Windows 8 never has been.

 

Thank you for the insight. I did a lot of reading after I made this post and every site that did testing showed that windows 8 was just SLIGHTLY worse than windows 7 in terms of performance. It seems like it's a symptom of driver performance more than anything based on what I've read. Then again you're someone who's used it first hand.

Is it going to be a dramatic hit in performance in games though? I imagine the 880's in SLI coupled w/ the nice processor will still keep my framerates in all current and next gen games perfect at max settings. If it's only a year or so until Windows 9, I can just upgrade again then.

It seems like it's just gonna be a more solid version of Windows 8 so the practice will help out since I already made my order with Windows 8.1 Pro. What swayed me was the tweaks beneath the surface that microsoft made. Little things like being able to go into msconfig and tell windows to automatically boot into safe mode on the next boot instead of having to mash F8 on boot.

 

No, not dramatic in anything except for benchmarks. It won't affect gaming at all. Windows 8/8.1 does fine with games and there are even a few that have been tweaked to perform better with the Windows 8/8.1 OS.

There are hundreds of thousands of desktop and laptop users that hate Windows 8 and regret buying it. It's the modern day Windows ME in many respects. It's fine for touch, but very inefficient and ugly for use with an ordinary PC, and that's why it is one of the least adopted Windows versions in Micro$haft's history. Instead of the adoption rate getting better over time it seems to be getting worse.

Other than the CPU performance hit I am in the indifferent camp, not a hater. I hate the default UI, but I am able to tweak it to the point that I like it in most respects. I seldom use the Modern UI or apps because I find them irritating and mostly useless garbage. I'm able to disable just about everything I don't like to the point that those "features" stay out of my way well enough that I forget they even exist. I'm sure there are a few good apps out there that I don't need or haven't discovered, but many are adware filth and gimmicky limited function apps designed to sell more features or another app that's similar but actually useful. I have made it what I want it to be, with the exception of not finding a fix for the CPU performance hinderance... not sure what causes it and it might not be fixable.

 

I know a lot of people hate it, and I was one of those who was staunchly against it... but saying it's like Windows ME is a bit far, no? I'll believe you if you say it, but ME was a TRAGEDY, lol. Beneath the surface, 8 looks like it does bring a decent amount of benefits to the table.

 

I installed W8 on an older non-Alienware W7 laptop and the CPU temps at idle dropped 5'C, and the noisy fans didn't have to ramp up under light loads. With the free app Classic Shell or a $5 app called Start8 and it looks like windows 7 without the AeroGlass look. But many don't like the look of plain Jane W8 without the glassy aero-look. I hated it for 2 weeks but got used to the faded out look. Then I upgraded to Aero Lite.
Hidden Secret Trick to Enable / Activate “Aero Glass” in Windows 8 “Aero Lite” Theme - AskVG
Whenever I run my older W7 using GoToMeeting it removes AeroGlass to put less load on the system, so it can run faster.

 

Hey all, As I mentioned earlier I've aquired an 4930mx ES (Engineering Sample)

Is there anyone who can tell me more about this? I know that it's the latest ES before retail production but nothing more then that. Are they better in certain ways ect?

Also I just ran 3D Mark 11 and got 11500 as score, is this normal for a 4930mx and a 780m sli setup? (16gb ram, 80gb msata)

 

Hi everyone,
Just took the leap and bought an alienware 18(deploying 5/8/14)... my previous alienware were the m9750 with 7950m gtx in sli in 2006 And the area-51 m17x with 8800m gtx in sli in 2007... I haven't purchased any other model since 2007... The 18 is spec to 4940mx with 880m gtx in sli... Very excited... I just had a quick question with hdd In raid and the optional optical removal... If I wanted to do quad raid... I know 2 will be in the original place, are 2 more replacing the optical? And is there another cable or bracket to get to take place of the optical? Am I still using msata as a hdd? So does that mean I can do 5 hdd total? I'm confused on what options I can do... Please help... Thanks

* http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...icial-alienware-18-owner-s-lounge-thread.html on post #3, mr.fox picture 3 and 4

shows there is 2 drives replacing the odd, and I know there is 2 more drives in the standard caddy location and 1 more msata... 5 hdd possible? was there suppose to be only 1 drive replacing the odd?

 

You can remove the optical drive if you want,that will allow 1 extra HDD making it 4 in total including 1 mSATA, personally i would not bother with 4x Raid 0 as 3x Raid 0 is only about 50mb/s slower than 4.