*OFFICIAL* M18x Owner's Lounge Thread

Tried starting it. And couldn't find an option on the menu to let me switch to monitor mode or some sort.

 

There is not a functional light, per se, on the Alienhead logo on the lid of the M18x. It simply relies on the light from the screen, as inap states. There is no way to change it because its not lit like the 17x's

If you toggle brightness up and down with the lid "semi-closed", you will see the logo dim "in line" with the screen......meaning, its reliant on the screen brightness for its own brightness too...

 

Whats odd is that they mention it here, Documentation

Unless that's something else it does sort of seem to get connected into nothing.

 

I havent stripped the display down to see what's there but there may be a board which is just linked to the screen brightness.....not 10000% sure.

 

I have a brightness problem with my M18x atm. I usually have my brightness set to 20% but everytime I reboot and come back, my screen is at 100%. I open up my brightness setting and the arrow is set at 20% and I have to re-adjust every time. Does anyone know what driver to update to fix this problem?

 

I don't know how similar to m18x but my old m14x a.f.a.i.c.r, was just a pass-through for the lcd back light to iluminate alien head,no pcb just clear cut out internaly.Edit,It was a while back when tech fixed my seperated bezel issue I know m18x is a total different animal,just sayin.

 

@Stevie: Riftwire might be up to something.
Some of the M17x R3s lid alien heads are illuminated by the screen back lighting and some have a separate PCB with only white LED SMDs (independent from the AlienFX controller of course) and supposedly all of them should've had this little board.

I think he wants to know if this situation applies to the M18x.

 

After looking at the M18x Documentation, I think we all overlooked something - pretty straightforward really BUT, the LED-Logo actually isnt for the Alien-head on the rear of the display lid, its for the "ALIENWARE" branded logo/name that lights up at the bottom of the screen.

That makes more sense to me. I bet if someone were to disconnect it on the mobo, the word "alienware" wouldnt light up or change colour with AlienFX.

 

That's what I was saying,as far as I thought,the alienhead looked like it was just lit from the backlight from led screen.Where as the ALIENWARE logo on lower screen bezel is a different thing altogether and can be changed in alien-fx,where as the led is the product of light from the screen itself not a separate controllable light source.-PS- Stevie,any luck yet brother?Either way I'm sure it'll work out for ya buddy.

 

Yep. Conlusion? - no LED lights for the logo on the rear of the lid - its for the bezel logo. Quite easy to get confused really. At least this is the case for the M18x....the M17x R3 may well have it as functional and some R3 owners may well have not had the board included, as Katalin says - I dont know on that one as I dont have or never had an R3.

 

There was a member (or two) on our forum a number of months ago trying to drum up support for a class action lawsuit or something absurd like that regarding the lack of adjustable lighting effects for the Alienhead lid ornament like what the M17xR2 and *some* of the R3's had. I cannot remember who it was now, and would not mention them by member name even if I did recall. It seems at though it was at least 6 months ago and I can vaguely remember that someone may have been banned over trying to collect personal information from a number of members of the forum.

Of all the things I can dream of burning my own calories on, this piece of minutia most certainly is not one of them. The fact that the M18x does not have special lighting effects on the lid may not help whatever cause the information gathering efforts are intended to serve.

 

Wow.Seriously??? A lawsuit?! Not for nuthin, but I personally don't game or use my laptop at all where you can even see the alien head.I like that it lights up at all,I definitely wouldn't worry about changing colors on something I have to close or move to see.The keyboard is another story,the customize color options are awesome.A lawsuit?That's crazy!

 

Lol just to clear the air I'm just trying to understand each and every aspect of my 18x like I did my 17x R3. I remember the thread Mr.Fox is referring too and parts of it were indeed laughable.

Perhaps later tonight ill tear down my screen since I haven't gotten to take a look at the guts of this machine yet, and see if it has mounting points like the 17x R3 did.

 

^^^Glad to hear that, bro +1 for your interest in the inner workings of the beast

 

i really don't understand why having a seperate led for the alienhead is so important to people. this thing has more lights then a x-mas tree already .

 

You havent seen my xmas tree

But, yeah....no biggie for me - its not like I sneak around the back of my laptop to gaze at the glowing alienhead

 

I agree i don't really care but i did like how the m17xR2 alienhead glowed when machine was off and charging lol

 

What?!? You mean I'm the only person that does that?

Yes, that was a cool feature and I liked it also. We're just having fun.

 

Dont worry Fox, I believe therapy is available for people with the same affliction....

 

Hi there. So I'm going to buy my first Alienware laptop the M18x.

So I figured this is the best place to ask some questions about that laptop.
First of all these are the specs the store tells me (bare with me, I had to translate these names from Finnish to English):

Type: Alienware M18x-6732 (2630QM) [SATA II]
Processor: Intel Core i7
Core amount: 4
Base/internal memory: 6GB & 2X750GB hard drive
GHz: 2,00
CPU memory: 4MB
Chip serie: HM67
RAM memory type: DDR3
RAM MB: 6 144
RAM memory speed (MHz): 1 333
RAM memory (places?): 4
Available RAM -//- : 2
RAM memory max MB: 32 768
GB: 1500
RPM: 7200
Soundcard: IDT 92HD73C
Graphic card: Dual 1.5GB NVIDIA GTX 460M
Graphic card memory MB: 3 072
Graphic card ''divided/shared'' memory MB: 0

Screen: LED 18.4
Max resolution: 1920 x 1080

Okay now that that's been taken care of what is your opinnion about the specs ? Naturally this laptop would be ment to play games, and hopefully run most of the games that are out there with high settings or nearly max settings.
It's not the cheapest laptop out there so I would want to get info from people who knows what they are talking about. Honestly I do not know all most anything about the specs...for example what graphic card is good etc.

There was some other random info about the laptop but I think these I gave you are the ones you guys judge
Bottom line: Can it run most of the games that have came out on high / max settings ? Sorry for my bad English

Thank you for your answers in advance.

 

upgrade your GPU ... that is all.

The 460 is not the strongest tool in the shed.

It will run most things on high, and some on max I imagine. But not the latest and greatest on Max for certain.

 

pics PLEASE!!!!

i imagine it like the one in myth busters when they tried to start a x-mas tree fire using a crap load of lights, hahaha

 

Thanks for such a fast reply.
So sinse I do not know anything about upgrading pc's: How to upgrade your GPU, is it something you can do on your own or ?

 

I would post up some pics but I gotta repaste the tree to keep temps down first.

 

He means upgrade the gpu b4 you order it from Dell. If your budget can handle it get a 580m or 580m sli.

 

Ah I see, thanks
Can you upgrade it later ? Meaning I could buy it and after awhile send it to Dell or something similiar to get it upgraded ? Or is it ''do it now or never'' ?

 

Rock103 - welcome to the NBR Forum and congratulations on the decision to purchase the M18x. I hope you love your beast as much as I do mine. For the money, there is no laptop that is built as well, looks as good, or performs as well as the M18x.

Below are some threads that will help you get off to a great start in our community.

USEFUL THREADS FOR FORUM MEMBERS

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ion-how-search-forum-read-before-posting.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/site-suggestions-help-announcements/109941-forum-rules.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sit...5516-reputation-points-power-user-titles.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/site-suggestions-help-announcements/137713-forum-guide-how.html

Do it now, if at all possible. It will cost you more money and potential headaches trying to do it later. If it is not within your means financially to do it now, it's still a solid configuration with 460M.

 

haha, can you recommend me some paste, my tree has been running hot lately too.

don't sweat it man, sli 460m will run games just fine.

 

Ok, I got paranoid again since my idle CPU temps seem rather high. They are around 65 C most of the time. Room temp is around 32+C.

 

Personally I really dislike the obnoxious attitude that some people have in this forum.

At the time of those postings I had an m17xr3 and my light had a seperate led board. Upon request I took apart my display/lid to verify this fact.

This community is about helping your fellow owners.

At the time I was merely curious about the how and why and how it was supposed to behave.

Things got out of hand in that forum and someone did get banned. I believe it was unfortunate because the situation was a bit odd. A lot of owners had missing hardware and dell had confirmed that the alienware logo on the back of the display was supposed to be independent in the m17xr3.

Until today things have been better with the updated bios/amd drivers. Now I'm starting to get some odd artifacts and slight pauses.


Rock103 - Everyone is giving you good advice, get the best possible cards in your budget. Same with the warranty. The costs of modifying after the machine is built is not worth it in these areas. You can save and upgrade in other areas such as SSD, memory. There's a particular post about saving money on alienwares, I highly recommend looking through all that advise, it's saved people quite a lot of money.

 

Thanks for mentioning that thread, Bloodroses. The http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/456885-aw-dell-ordering-advice-how-save.html thread might be very helpful for Rock103.

Are you getting artifacts and pauses in certain programs/games or even on the desktop?

 

Interesting day with my m18x.

history: ordered red refurb in october, delivered black, i5 2410 and 460 sli.
had graphics glitches + wrong color so dell decides to exchange. none avail so dell builds and sends black, i72670, 560. Wrong color, no sli.

AW sends tech to install 2nd 560 plus red shell. tech has screws left over when done. 3 days later newly installed 560 dies. no more sli.

AW runs out of parts, 560s on backorder. 2 weeks go by and tech orders 6970's as a replacement. they are also on backorder until yesterday.

Tech arrived today to install. did the install, windows see's new cards yay.
performance not right, no airflow from right card. WEI dropped from 7.2 to 6. no reading of 2nd card in hwmonitor64. call AW. overbearing tech tests and insists that everything is as it should be. Runs haven benchmark in windowed mode and states that the performance is CF performance for my system. (i asked him 3 times before he ran the test to advise me what it "should" be so i could verify with him) he refused. (im suspicious at this point that he's just too lazy to do his job). during call system just powered off. no shutdown, no bsod, just BAM off. tech dismissed as one time event.

I get off the phone, yank the battery and bottom cover to find the AW tech didnt connect the RH fan power to the board. no fan. way to go incompetent tech.

so AW tech onphone not listening to me ran benchmark stress tests on board with no fan. +1 rep to him for lousy listening skills. got 26fps average in haven benchmark.

I reconnect fan, boot. wait a while. fire up haven and run. gets 42fps average. 2nd card working. go to notebook review to post what happened. half way through post system BAM off.

I turn back on, call AW tech support. explain what happened and they arrange for new set of cards and maybe new motherboard since card with no fan may have overheated and damaged motherboard causing BAM system off crashes. dunno for sure.

At this point i ran my game for a few hours now. no BAM power off's since. Not sure if i'm gonna let AW field tech anywhere near my laptop. New keyboard surround(pwr +media buttons) on order because tech broke the clips. New bottom on orderfor same reason.

I thought i'd share my experience. Still a bargain for 800.00 bucks delivered but whoa! lots of hassles.

256ssd added post delivery...sata 3..way fast. me like.

 

Hey fellas,

I just joined the M18X owners club. This is my first Alienware laptop ever and I am absolutely amazed of the great quality and build of the system. No way could I have bought this at retail price! I got it through the AAFES using the Dell EPP program that gives US military retirees up to 30% discount on Alienware products. First thing I did when I got it was to upgrade several components as it was cheaper than buying the parts through Dell. Here are the specs of my build (asterik* denotes the upgrades I did myself):

M18x | Core i7 2760QM | *8GB KINGSTON HYPERX 1600 | *CORSAIR FORCE GT 240GB SATA3 SSD | *SEAGATE 750GB 7200RPM HDD | GTX580M SLI | *KILLERN-1103 WiFi | Blu-ray reader | USB powered mini-Displayport to Dual-link DVI connector for playing games on my AW2310 OptX in 120Hz and 3D

The laptop was received in perfect condition with no defects whatsoever. I am thus far very happy with my purchase. I plan to take it through it's paces this weekend and will start testing out the overclocking capabilities as well. More to follow!

 

Just wondering if anyone has installed Dell's new Bigfoot driver on their M18x because I have the November driver from the Bigfoot site installed and am curious if that is the same driver as the Dell release?

Thanks.

Looks to be same driver version.

 

Ey guys, Im new here but with an urgent question. I just ordered a 128 GB SSD drive for my laptop, a M18x. However, I dont know for sure if there is room for a second harddrive.

So my question is: Is there always room for a 2nd harddrive in a M18x? And if so, is it wise to use a SSD and the normal HDD?

Thanks!

 

Hello, Eclecticc and welcome to NBR, please take a moment and review the forum rules.
I'll move your thread over to the Alienware M18x suforum with a redirect.

Now urgent question needs quick answer: If you ordered your system with only one HDD, then you will have room for one more.
And as for the SSD + HDD combo, it's a yes also. Many of us choose this combo, SSD for operating system (windows, etc..), programs and games and a large magnetic HDD for data storage etc.

 

thats what i did , guess i should change my sig. i did have 2 ssd but needed more room so i use one of my extra 750gb drive for storage.

M18x has 2 hdd slots to use, one on top of the other.

 

Im having a problem with the new AMD Drivers. I'm having a huge problem with this. I did a fresh install Windows 7 on my laptop. It's set on ACHI and not SATA so theres no RAID 0 configuration, I couldn't even install Windows 7 after setting up RAID. But anyway, with ACHI I can't even install the Intel RST because I get a blue screen all the time. But when I try to install this AMD I get the BSOD as well, every time. Can anyone help out? :\

 

Yeah the new AMD drivers are giving me artifacts on desktop + in games. I'm going to have to find that program that others are using for brightness control. The battery life is abysmal, although still better than the m1730 mini battery backup.

RRei did you try the new AMD drivers launched as admin? I was getting blue screen errors with various AMD drivers as well.

Why couldn't you install as raid?

Inap isn't there a caddy that chucks your optical drive for a HD? I know it's added cost but if Eclecticc really wanted to raid SSD's that might be an option.

 

Run as an admin? I'll try that in a bit. And I have no idea why it won't let me install it via RAID. It just has that stupid "Windows cannot be configured on this hardware." error

 

Just a quick note to say hello and thanks for the great info I enjoyed while waiting for delivery. My laptop showed up with the A05 BIOS, but I still needed to get the new Dell drivers for the 6990 and so the thread on that and the Radeon Pro stuff was very useful.

Installed battlefield 3 and it played very smoothly. Thanks!

 

@Bloodroses: search for and use Dimscreen for brightness control. It's great.

 

I'd just like to ask if getting cpu idle temps at around 65C is something to worry about. I'm beginning to worry.

 

To answer your question directly, yes 65C is a high temperature for your CPU - IF it is being run in a stock configuration. This not an unusual temperature if you are in a forced overclock mode where the Intel SpeedStep is not functioning - meaning you are running your CPU at the desired overclock speed 100% of the time and there is no change in the clock multiplier to turn down the frequency when your CPU is at idle.

So, are you overclocking your CPU and/or GPUs? The ambient temperature of the room and the temperature of the CPU are directly proportional, but also is dependent upon other variables such as voltages, ambient room temps, etc. The following are some basic examples that will cause a stock CPU to run at higher than expected temperatures assuming your room ambient temperatures aren't higher than 80F:

1) Overclocking GPUs will cause residual heat to permeate through both the motherboard's PCB and the air within the laptop enclosure. This will ultimately make your CPU temperature rise even if running it at stock speeds and voltages.

2) Bad airflow! Duh...lol Make sure the air vents on the bottom and the back of the laptop are not blocked and also make sure you aren't reusing vented air. I know some folks that have their laptops back against a desk wall or other object and the laptop ends up sucking up the hot exhaust air right back into the intake, causing temps to rise above normal expected temps.

3) Modders sometimes do things in a hurry and don't properly apply the thermal paste/grease to the CPU surface. Three possible things can happen if one is not careful; a) too much thermal paste is applied, b) too little thermal paste is applied, and c) thermal paste is not applied evenly across the top surface. All of these possibilities can cause the CPU to be inadequately cooled once the heat sink is reapplied.

Hope this helps!

All,

I wanted to share a little information that I was able to confirm just yesterday in regards to a question that I had regarding the M18X mini-Displayport. I was unable to find a direct answer (via Google or Dell Tech Support) regarding the exact specification version of the min-Displayport that comes with the M18X. Apparently, it is 1.2, but am still working on verifying this information. So, you may ask why would I be worried about some stupid little port that most folks won't use anyway? Well, if you are an avid gamer like me and aren't happy with the 60Hz 1920x1080 screen that came with the M18X and would like to be able to play games @ 120Hz in 2D mode and also @ 60Hz in 3D mode, the only option is to use an external monitor solution. Well, here's where the great news comes into play. Displayport can support full 120Hz signals and 3D @ 60Hz (whereas HDMI 1.4a can NOT). The problem is getting the video signal converted from the mini-Displayport signal into a Dual-Link (DL) DVI signal for 3D monitors that don't have a Displayport. I found a USB powered (Active) mini-Displayport to DL DVI converter on Amazon and bought it last week. It arrived this week and last night I finally got around to testing it out on the M18X. I can confirm this solution works! The converter allowed for me to connect to my Alienware AW2310 OptX 3D 120Hz monitor at 120Hz and I was also able to play games in 2D @ 120Hz and in 3D at 60Hz (had to hook up the 3D emitter to the laptop too). You will probably need to disable the Alienware laptop monitor output within the NVidia control panel before enabling the 120Hz refresh rate.

Bottom line, if you are looking for a solution to be able to play games in 2D @ 120Hz and in 3D @ 60Hz look no further. Go here and get this adapter:

Amazon.com: StarTech.com MDP2DVID Mini DisplayPort to DVI Dual-Link Active Adapter - USB Powered: Electronics

Let me know if you have any questions regarding this information!!

 

@Iluv2raceit

Thanks for the reply.

I didn't overclock the CPU or GPU on my M18x. I don't use it as much as my G73 and I don't get a chance to monitor the temps that regularly.

One thing I did notice is that during the time I use my M18x, the room temp is usually higher since it is around noon. Room temps would probably be at least 32C.

On a side note though, I saw the temps lower down to ~55C today.

 

Holy crap! 32C = 89F! 55C may be about right for an ambient room temp that high - BUY A WINDOW A/C unit now!! lol

 

Vergil - don't worry about idle temps around 65°C if you're in a warm/hot environment. Your cards are always going to be warmer than the ambient temperature after the machine has run for a while. This is not hot enough to hurt anything. If you have load temps into the 80°C or higher for sustained periods when benchmarking or gaming, then you would definitely need to think about doing something to lower your temps. Let us know if you do have those high load temps and maybe we can help you resolve them.

If you have not already applied the A05 BIOS and updated Dell AMD drivers, you may want to do so. This may help lower the temps. Cooler is always better, but as I mentioned, you're in no danger with those idle temps. It does not take very much dust or lint in the fans and heat sink fins to raise temps.

 

Anyone here have a guide to setting up RAID 0 and installing Windows 7 on an M18x? Also having a tutorial on how to get your USB read during a fresh Windows 7 installation (when you go to Custom -> Load Drivers)

 

Thank you Iluv2raceit and Mr. Fox. I have updated the bios and drivers and was just quite worried.

I have tried gaming(Crysis 2 with the update) for about an hour with everything at Extreme. Temps didn't reach 80C. I just got really worried about the idle temps.

I do turn the A/C on once in a while, but my parents limit its usage since the electric bill is shooting up so much. This is definitely something that sucks about being in a tropical country.

 

There are threads that have this information already on them. There's really nothing about the process that is unique to the M18x. There are subtle differences navigating the BIOS and RAID configuration screens, but the Windows 7 installation process is the same on all systems.

You'll find all the information you need at the http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...tions-troubleshooting-thread.html#post8162654 including videos.