*OFFICIAL* Alienware 18 Owner's Lounge Thread

He just needs to redo them in 1080p now. lol

EDit:
Re upload them rather than redo.

 

I don't have a camera that records in 1080p. The only video camera I own is an old Hi8 tape type that rarely ever gets used for anything, and that's what I used.

 

Mr. Fox, thank you for the touchscreen information, good sir. So on the Alienware 18, if I have a 512 gb SSD drive and another 1TB HDD, is there another slot for an additional hard drive? I got my hands on five 64 gb SSD drives for free today ...

 

If they are both 2.5" you should have enough space for a 3rd one on the optical drive bay. You can get more info here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ow-many-hdd-bays-optical-drives-optional.html

 

Thank you ... so if I understand this correctly, since I DO have a blu ray player in the optical drive bay, I can only have the two drives that are currently housed in the system. That's cool, just curious ...

 

GeForce GTX 900M: The World’s Most Advanced Gaming Notebooks | GeForce
Now that the 900m series has been officially released, do you guys think we can fit this into our 18s? I'm currently running 770m.

 

Its only a matter of time until some 970m /980m start appearing in the market place. I'm sure they will fit.

 

I ordered one from the dell outlet i am so stoked, excited! I have a M18XR2 also being worked on, i became so very very tired of the Asorus X7 machine it really really has not been a great machine to me or for me the fans are so loud too like a jet aircraft even louder than a desktop. I can't wait to upgrade the graphics cards to gtx 980s, i ordered the one with gtx 770m sli.

 

Please assist me in my inquiries on how to make great use of these babies.

Ill post pics too.

Specs on my AW18


I7 4700mq
GTX 780m sli
16 gb 1600 MHz ram
1TB HDD,
Samsung Evo 840 256gb mSata SSD
Killer E2200 Adapter
Bluetooth
Bluray writer

 

What you got AW18? i thought your goin for Dual 980m?

 

I am. Well this is the plan....

Upgrade the AW 18 to 980m sli and transfer the 780m sli to my M18x r2.

 

Good plan to me, but why do some people have two AW Laptops?

 

Bigger head below than above.

/s

 

I realized my ssd is not Samsung evo but a different brand. If I buy a new ssd like the sandisk, can I raid 0 both ssds even though its different brand?

 

Why do you want to Raid 0 ssd? you wont even notice performance boost in everyday usage. It is just point less to Raid 0, as they already fast. I had two Samsung Evo in Raid0, sold it both and got one mSata. I didn't notice any performance drop in everyday usage.

 

I was planning to buy a new ssd to add my other 256gb ssd. What's your advice, mate aside from replacing the ssd?

 

Well Samsung Evo ssd are good, just get one ssd. If you like to carry more games then get 500gb. If you already got ssd then dont throw money on them, you wont notice any performance boost. I remember one guy on this forum, who returned his laptop just for few MBs performance drop.

 

Oh, by the way. I am a new AW 18 owner. YEAH!!!!

I love this beast. I love both my M18x R2 and AW 18

 

Congratulations, and have fun being one of many owner of AW 18!. Still thinking myself whether i'm going to buy AW 18 this November/December or wait until the new generation to come..

 

i would recommend waiting for the new gen, its going to be worth the buck!

 

I got my alienware 18 up and running i replaced it with one samsung 1tb msata ssd, and two seagate 1tb ssdhd drives pretty cool so far, keyboard seems to suck it's terrible laptop design could of been done better but i will see about that later on have to play around more with the machine play games type of papers etc..

 

Kinda wish that AW 18 will support the 980M.

 

But i keep hearing a rumor that AW 18 product will be discontinued. Whether it's correct or false, i'm still not sure

What about Alienware 18-HID19 NVIDIA Dual SLI GTX 980M Gaming Laptop ?

 

Talk about customization options. If it's for real it is an original alienware 18 with upgraded graphics cards. The 2013 model.

 

Hey maybe someone could call these guys and ask them for the vbios for the new 980m s so we can put them in our own 17 and 18 .

 

What's this rumour about alienware stopping the 18? Not that many other options for a dual GPU machine except clevo.
Does anyone know how Clevo cooling holds up compared to the Alien?

 

I have a P370SM and the cooling is good (by my standards), however, the fan noise not. When I'm in TS3 with my buddies they sometimes like to complain about the fan noise that they hear.

However, to give you an idea about the cooling: CPU clocked to 3.9GHz doesn't get hotter than 83c in XTU stress test running for 1.5 hour, and my GPU oc'd to 976/5500 doesn't run hotter than 80C when playing super demanding games like ultra modded Skyrim, Crysis, Far Cry 3 and Witcher 2. This is however, with Liquid Ultra thermal paste.

 

Many congrats on your AW18. I have had mine over a year now and, despite the cpu limitations, it is by far the best gaming laptop I have owned. I wish Alienware offered other color options for the 18. The Nebula Red on your M18x is slick! : )

 

Alienware has the best quality

 

I have a question for the experts.

Since a couple of weeks my Alienware 18 won't go "dark" meaning the screen stay a the Windows 8.1 login page and stays there. I uninstalled Command Center 3.5, downloaded the version from Dell Support and reinstalled it to no avail. My Windows screensaver is set to go blank in 5 minutes and ask for a password upon coming up. The settings in Command Center are to blank the screen and go dark after 10 minutes.

I didn't installed anything weird on that system since at least a month. I remember having such an issue with my MX18R2 and Dell Support had me do some nasty things to get it back...

The current Alienware is out of warranty so I can't call for support.

Any help will be appreciated .

Yves

 

Have you tried opening up the Windows Advanced Power Options and changing the profile there? You should be able to set a time limit until the screen goes black.

 

Found A solution if not the best one: I reverted to a Ghost image from 30 days ago that didn't have the problem... Fortunately, I had not installed much on the laptop since the Ghost...

Laptop is going "black" again !

 

Very disappointed to be getting a hard drive error on a three month old $4000 device.

 

Time to invest on an SSD? Once I switched to SSD, I would never go back to HDD.

 

So I never did do my introduction, so here it is. I have been wanting an Alienware laptop since 2001. I finally made the purchase of an Alienware 18. I ordered an Intel i7-4910MQ, 16GB RAM and the dual GTX 880M. I did an after purchase Intel SSD 730, 430GB x2 and put them in raid 0. I was pretty happy with the purchase. I then ordered the LG 34UC97 Black 34” Ultrawide 21:9 and found a need to OC the 880Ms to run at 2k resolution for gaming (wanting max settings).

After reading the form reviews over the GTX 880Ms, I have become very disappointed. I was hoping the purchase would hold me over for at least 2 years. The 880s were found to be very limited. So I thought to myself, I'll get the next generation of MXM cards when they come out. Then I was optimistic about upgrading to the 980Ms but that has been another disappointment as they do not work in SLI for any Alienware laptop.

I have to say when I first heard that DELL was purchasing Alienware I was sure that they would mess up the laptops. But I saw the reviews of the Alienware laptops that people reviewed and did not see the flaw that I am now reading about here on NBR forms. I do still enjoy my new purchase but the thought of the laptop already becoming stale is really upsetting.

Here is to hoping DELL gets their sh@t together and adds continued support for Alienware laptop hardware upgrades.
Current Alienware 18 owner,


/imest

 

Okay, I was using my alienwares two monitor outputs:MINI DP to DP and HDMI TO DVI. It worked fine all night with no problems what so ever.
I then started a windows update when I went off for the night, resulting in faulty in the mini DP to DP. I just can't seem to make the monitor work with the mini DP connection.
It works fine with HDMI-HDMI but when trying to connect it through mini DP to DP it finds it but it says that it can't save the setting and tells me to try some other settings.
Any ideas?

/spG

 

Hi Brother. Alienware are even Better then before, the problem is that dell don't allow you to upgrade the video card. I Think They Just Thinking on make cash. no in your happiness as a customer!

 

I need a little guidance myself. So I need to put this replacement HDD in my laptop. I've never dealt with dual hard drives ... do I need to do anything other than put it in the device? Any configuration or will it just read the drive like the old one as a secondary?

Thanks.

MS40

 

should I buy AW 18 with dual GTX 880m SLI now? I heard a lot of problems about it... any1 here please give me an advice ....

 

the longer im without the 18.4", the more I miss it... anyone here wants to part with yours? Im on a lookout for one, basically regardless of the condition (I know I know, it may have been wrong section to ask, but I thought it will give some extra light to my search, maybe...)

 

@ MythicSage40

Depends on the drive you purchase. If you are doing a fresh install, you should not have anything to worry about. Plug in your new hard drive and boot from Installation media. What brand/model/type of hard drive are you looking to replace your failing drive?


/imest

 

Hey guys, I had two 780M working on my AW 18 just fine

Buuut I bought two 880M for my AW 18 but when I try to put new vbios on NVFLASH the cards are just not found by it. Same on windows, it cannot install the driver "no nvidia display adapater found"

If I put the 880M indepentendly on my MSI GT70 and nvflash a clevo 880M vbios will it solve the problem on my AW 18? (because they using same vbios that clevo)

 

Sir,

This is a replacement because the original is failing, even though I've only had the computer for less than three months. Anyway, the OS is on a 512 GB SSD, this is the 1 TB HDD that I am replacing ... just drop it in and no formatting or anything?

 

Can the Alienware 18 run with just 1 GPU? I understand you can't configure it for 1 GPU but say someone had a 765m SLI and they could afford to upgrade to a single 780m.

 

Yeah, it can run on one card!

 

@ MythicSage40

Some drives come pre-formatted. Drop in the new drive and go into disk management and verify the state of the drive.
Here are some guides to help you:

Create and format a hard disk partition - Windows Help (works for windows 8 too)

a 2nd for reference:

How to use Disk Management to set up a Hard Drive.

Let us know how the replacement fairs for you!


/imest

 

Does anyone have some trick or useful tool to safely remove the palmrest of the AW18 without making scratches and/or marks on the palmrest or the bottom assembly?

 

razor blade + old credit card = "sharpened edge credit card pry-tool" old type paper-blade could also do the trick... I think

 

I've always used a small plastic pry tool around the edges to gently prise up the palmrest. It's exactly the same method working on my 14 as it would be the 18.....something like this, which is what I use:

New 4.6" Long Green Plastic Opening Repair Pry Disassembly Tool for iPad 2 | eBay

After the first couple of 'removals', you'll find you can just use your fingernails instead........

 

I tried using a credit card last time, but was too afraid it would snap. Yeah it wasnt an old card though. The palm rest is sitting like super tight.

Thanks for the tip Stevie. I made some scratches near the left upper corner last time after being so silly I thought a thin metal tool that was insulated with layers of tape around the sharp edges would be good. Did not work like I planned because the bottom assembly only got a thin rubber layer with aluminum below. So I need to be more careful with my new AW18.