*OFFICIAL* M18x Owner's Lounge Thread

Disabling SoftThinks Agent does not prevent AlienRespawn from working. It will stop it from nagging you to do things.

 

Any answer to this question is mostly speculation. It depends on what happens with games more than anything. Minimum system requirements of most games allow for hardware that is old and slow by most of our standards. There are exceptions and Crysis is one example. It's an old game that can really tax the latest hardware. By the time the M18x doesn't handle the latest and greatest games very well it will be a pretty tired computer, and probably close to worn out. The M17xR1 and R2 still does a decent job with most games and still has more horsepower than an average person's computer.

 

Just to add some stuff, most high end systems take a while before they become incapable of addressing hardware requirements. I would think they are way beyond their expected lifetime. Assuming that the system is well cared for, it would probably be phased out before it becomes completely useless.

If I'm not mistaken, 3-5 years is the average lifespan of a laptop, and a high end system would still be able to play games at decent settings. There are also some tweaks that can make games more playable. You can play around with that. Don't expect too much eye candy though.

 

Hello,
under heavy CPU load turns the left fan(GPU) on full . An example: I start Prime95 and CoreTemp. The temperature rises to about 70 degrees.
After about 2 minutes the left fan turns on fully. Why? The same happens with cpu intensive games such as Crysis, for example other games Deus Ex, nothing happens. the cpu fan woking normal .
Greeting Treffnix

 

Yes, 3 to 5 years is a good generalization. On an ultra-expensive system like the M18x, this is one good reason to purchase the advanced Dell/Alienware warranty with next business day on-site repair or replacement and accidental damage coverage for 4 years. It's not an inexpensive warranty, but it is much less expensive than breaking open your piggy bank to purchase the latest and greatest gaming system when a component dies that is no longer serviced because it is too old.

This sounds fairly normal to me and I am not sure you have a problem. When you say, "The temperature rises to about 70 degrees" are you referring to the left GPU, both GPU, or the CPU temp? What might not be normal is the right GPU fan not keeping up with the left GPU fan. Is your M18x a dual-GPU system or single-GPU? What GPU(s) is your system equipped with?

The BIOS/EC control when the fans for the CPU and GPU(s) kick in. They can be controlled, but not independently to my knowledge. HWiNFO64 allows you to create a custom profile for fans speeds to react at different temps. This is what most 6990M CrossFire owners that were affected by the recent issues were using before Dell/Alienware released an updated BIOS and AMD video driver to fix the glitch. (More info at links found in my signature.)

 

I have two 6990m. prime95 load only the cpu. the temperature is 70 degrees, the 6990 has 50 grad
The cpu fan is running normally at 2500 rpm. To one minute the left fan starts running at 3500 rpm.
Why does the Gpu fan? The M18x has no load on the gpu.
greetings Treffnix

 

Seen an Mx18 on the outlet page for 1800 and hit the buy button. I hope the processor is up to the task. I will replace the hard drive with two 500GB momentus XT's I have. Everything else looks fine to me. Looking forward to getting it.
-- 8X DVD ± RW Drive
-- Dell Wireless 375 Bluetooth Module
-- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
-- Certified Refurbished
-- 12 Cell Battery
-- Dual 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 6990M AMD CrossFireX
-- Powercord,125Volt,15Amp,10 Foot
-- 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (4X4GB)
-- 18.4 inch Wide FHD (1920 x 1080) WLED Display
-- Wave Systems Software
-- 750 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
-- Nebula Red Anodized Aluminum
-- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Operating System DVD
-- Intel Advanced-N 6200 a/g/n 2x2 MIMO Technology
-- Processor: Intel Core i7 2630QM 2.0GHz (2.8GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache)
-- Image Restore Software
-- Alienware M18X: 1 Yr Ltd Warranty, Basic Service after Remote Diagnosis (Included In Price)

 

How old are the R1 and R2? And what kind of settings can they run current games at?

 

Glad you asked. The R2 is approaching a year past end of life and the R1 about two years past. I may be off on the timeline a bit, but it is based on procs and chipsets. They look the same cosmetically, but the specs differ. The R1 was based on the Core2 Duo before the i7 procs were released. The R2 was the first generation of i-series dual-GPU laptops.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...alienware-m17x-benchmark-thread-part-4-a.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/455435-official-m17x-benchmark-thread-part-3-a.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/424518-official-m17x-benchmarks-results-part-2-a.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/392377-m17x-benchmarks-thread.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/619962-m17x-battlefield-3-discussion-thread.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...are-m17x-swtor-general-discussion-thread.html

M17x Skyrim Discussion Thread

And there has been some good (although limited) success in upgrading the R2 to current display adapters...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-6990-your-m17x-r2-single-gpu-crossfirex.html

I don't consider this off topic in the context of answering the question of longevity expectations for the M18x citing the M17xR1/R2 as examples. However, for any discussion or questions about the M17x models, please post on the correct thread for that model, not here in the M18x thread.

 

well, i owned this rig for one week, and so far love it, but tonight playing starcraft 2 in 3d (on external projector), i noticed that after a short time, my screen went blank, and when it came back on, there were square squiggly artifacts all over the screen. Then the computer hung. I rebooted and tried again... same thing. Artifacts, and then a crash.

I thought maybe it was just starcraft (hadn't played it on this laptop yet) and booted up command and conquer 3, and boom, happened again. And again. The M18x played my games all weekend without a glitch, then this... what is going on? is one of my vid cards fried? should i send back to dell? anyone else have this issue? i have SLI 580Ms with the 285 drivers BTW.

 

Call them up and order a replacement right away. Don't mess around trying to fix it while you're within the straight swap-over window.

I've seen a few people mess around trying to fix problems like this, only to have the problem come back a few days out of replacement warranty.

 

how does their replacement swap work? is there a fee for it?

EDIT: its 14 days from invoice, and unfortunately, it took nearly 14 days to get to me. I've had it around 20 days.

 

Call them and discuss. They want you to be happy with your new machine and share your positive experience. I'm sure you will be surprised.

It should be counted as a DOA.

 

Ok, i will call them. I did some testing with GPU Z for temp monitoring and furmark...

Running furmark on 800x600 windowed crashes in about 4-5 seconds. GPU only gets to 70 degrees, then i get the weird pixelation all over the screen, and after about 10 seconds the screen goes black. Wierd. I will call them ASAP. Thank you.

 

i added a second HDD for backup purposes BTW. Will they care if i send it back with that drive? i added it before i even turned this sucker on for the first time.

 

Feel free to send any M17x R1 questions my way, pretty sure I pushed mine harder than anyone else on the planet (not joking)

 

Try uninstalling your drivers and all additional Nvidia options and doing a clean install, custom and only install PhysX and the driver nothing else and see if that fixes the problem.

 

i would, but the video card is now crashing after any use in windows at all. It is def the GPU, as i turned on the intel graphics and was able to run furmark for 10 mins, and i rebooted into the SLI 580Ms and they crashed after 4 seconds of furmark.

In order to delete the drivers, i have to hope the GPUs will run long enough to let me. Also, i updated them several days ago and have had no issues up till today. i played C&C 3 for about 6 hours yesterday without incident. Stuff just started going haywire today. Also, after the computer crashes, when it reboots, there is pixellation everywhere, even on the bios screen! then it gives me a BSOD before booting into windows and restarts and does it all again. So i have to shut everything down for a couple of mins in order to make it start up again without issue.

For being only a week old, i'm going to call dell tomorrow and let them know that it should be fixed by them.

So is it ok to leave the 2nd hdd in that i personally added, or should i pull it out before i send it back?

 

When your replacement arrives, you can put the extra HDD in it, then send the old one back. You don't have to send the old one abck until you get your replacement.

 

Avoid sending it to them for depot repairs if there is any way you can avoid doing so... if you have the next business day on-site warranty, it's poppycock for them to even ask you to consider doing that. They should be sending parts and/or a tech to your house.

If you have the depot-only warranty on a refurb, then don't send anything to them that you can afford to lose. If they need to replace your machine they won't swap the parts over for you and you may never see those parts again. Take everything off that you added and put anything back on that you took off.

 

I'm sure there have been a lot of people add RAM to their M18X using the slots located under the keyboard. Of all the attempts, I'm sure that I'm in the <1% that had a bad expereince.

Even following the direction, I had two keys on the keyboard (F3 and F4) that kind-of flop in the wind. I'm not sure if they caught the edge of the bracket or of there was just enough flexing going on that they just popped out of their compressed fittings. Either way, the RAM is installed and works great.

This happened back in July and I've had the replacement keyboard ( $109 USD) on order since August 8th. It's still backorder and a recent call to Dell didn't really yield any results. My order has been placed on some kind of "watch list" so they can find out what's going on. My 'guess' is that all the keyboards are being routed to production.

When it happened, the over-the-phone Support tech also setup a house-call with a technician so that when the new keyboard does come in, it will be installed by a dell tech. And if that one gets damaged while going in, it will be replaced cost-free.

I'm happy with the way i was taken care of by the folks at tech-support but I do think that waiting 4 months for a replacement keyboard is a bit excessive. The kicker is, its STILL hasn't shipped.

 

Let me guess...the keyboard is made in Taiwan? If so, you won't see your keyboard for another 6-12 months. Hard drives werern't the only product effected by the flooding

 

Replacement video cards for the M18x have been an issue as well. Anything made in Taiwan... computer electronics, automotive electronics, everything.

 

so i called and here is what happened....

They gave me new drivers and stuff for the SLI 580M. Nothing worked as it was supposed to.

So they are sending me dual 460s to hold me over until the 580s are available again, and then they will be switching everything back to the 580s. They are sending techs out both times, so overall, service seems pretty darn good from Dell. The 580s are on backorder until roughly the first week in January, but for all we all know, they may end up coming in later than that.

 

Floods happened in Thailand, so if the keyboard is made in Taiwan, there shouldnt be any issues with that, right?

 

Reports are that the ramifications of the flooding and subsequent damage are starting to subside and the market is stabalizing.

Hard drive prices slide as Thai flood aftermath subsides - Computerworld

However keyboard replacements are meeting an all time high!

If you look at this imaginary chart you can see that end users are breaking their keyboards trying to replace RAM, chasing lint, dust, food particles and mashing away to update facebook and twitter.

Worse still, WASD keys are even higher demand, there's currently an underground market for these keys!

Khaot1c I'm not sure if you have accidental warranty or not. Assuming you don't that $109 you spent might be better invested in an accidental warranty that would cover that damage.

Additionally that accidental warranty might come in very useful as you smash your head through the 18.4" LED screen after waiting 4 months for a keyboard.

 

With all the flooding, tsunami, earthquakes, etc. it has been a bad year for electronics manufacturing. Components that go into many products come from a variety of vendors in Asian countries. All it takes is for one of them to get messed up and it has a cascading effect on part supplies.

 

Yea some of the Prices for HDDs are starting to come down as manufacturers are getting back online. WD who was hit hard still has higher prices than others. I'll be looking for a WD 3TB in the future when prices go even further down. Seagates are lower than WD as the were hit by the flooding because some of the HDD components went offline due to flooding. There hit wasn't quite as bad as WD. WD lost 60% production.

 

So why is it that we can't make things in America? Just had to vent and ask the age-old question. Look at what Apple did recently. They decided to move the A5 processor manufacturing to Austin, Texas...AWESOME! About time. Small baby steps are better then no steps at all. We really do need to start bringing our jobs back to the US. I for one am willing to pay more for my toys (Alienware laptops) if it means more Americans have jobs. Just sayin!

 

Because US's currency are too high compare to some Asia location also labor's pays are too high in US, that's why they chose some country with low currency & low labor to build electronics stuff.

All about quality control , apple did good job in quality control but not dell.

 

That would be for the same reason we dont have a Call Centre with English people on the other end in the UK.....its cheaper to outsource all this work. End result is that QC suffers and so does Customer Service/Support.

Sorry for the OT post....

 

While I am stoked about the A5 plant in Texas for reasons mentioned, I would still take my Chinese built M18x over an Apple any day of the week. I totally agree with these comments conceptually. Apple's warranty and service are not as good in my opinion. You can go to the local "Genius Bar" but I haven't found any genius working at one yet. They way they have (not) handled issues with several iPods my kids have owned left a lot to be desired for our family. I'll stop there with the superiority of Dell's advanced warranty options and service to stay on topic about the M18x.

I would be willing to pay an extra 10-15% for a Dell product built entirely from American-made components and assembled in America, with good pre-delivery quality control. As much as many of us would like that to happen, in our current global environment it may never happen.

 

That's sooo funny! - I wonder if you could sue for misleading advertisements?

 

TOTALLY AGREE!
Same as you: " am willing to pay more for my toys (Alienware laptops) if it means more Americans have jobs".

"God save America" ( but, don't put all the eggs in one basket: we can do more our selves!)

 

I'm having a bit of an issue that I'd like to resolve without a format and fresh install. I am completely unable to switch between discrete and integrated gfx using FN+F7, I did a fresh install with reference drivers a few months ago and hadn't worried about the igpu at all. Now that I'm attempting to use it its completely unresponsive. When you press FN+F7 it does absolutely nothing. I do have one "Unknown Device" in the device manager though, I haven't figured out what device it actually is, I just assumed it was the iGPU or related. I've wiped out the discrete drivers with driversweeper and ccleaner in safe mode, reinstalled the latest dell release, and attempted to install the HD3000 driver package in both modes, and even force the install through device manager-have disk-selecting the .inf, still nothing. Also, when I attempt to uninstall CAP 11.3 it gives a BSOD in both a normal boot and safe mode. Any ideas? I'm about to just give up and format/fresh install...

 

A format fresh install would help and so would this guide

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html

 

Try reinstalling Alienware OSD. The FN+F7 cannot work if OSD is not installed, or not operating properly.

Download it here: Drivers and Downloads | Dell [United States]

The unknown device is most likely the free fall sensor. You can download that at the same Dell driver support page for the M18x.

 

Isit true that there will be gtx590 and gtx595? Cos i was just talking to the tech just now and they were planning to ship back my unfixed m18x. They were replacing my old with a.replacement system with a free upgrade to either the gtx590m or the gtx595m. So im just curious.

 

What is everybody using for Blu Ray playback? I have Total media Theater 5 and lately I have been having issues with slow downs while watching movies. I just updated the software so maybe that will fix the issue.

Main reason I like TMT is the integration with MyMovies, though even that is having issues with some of the newer versions according to the TMT forums.

 

Hummm, now that would be good news!

 

Since kepler won't be released until 2012, if there were a GTX 590M right now it would just be a rebadge of the 580M with a possible die shrink to 28nm, which would yield power savings + faster clocks. But I doubt we'll see something like that anytime soon though it'd be nice to be wrong.

 

At this point...I wouldn't care. It would be a free upgrade for me. Bring on the 590M!

 

Free? How?

 

My gpus have issues like the last one. That's why i don't have any new 3d benches. Never got a chance to really run any. And since the 580M's are on hold till sometime in January. Free upgrade.

 

Man that sucks but then again if you get 590s then win win.

 

There isn't even a single hit for 590m on google ... so ...doubtful... can't even find lame speculation on it.

 

Im just glad i got a super win cpu! I can live with half working gpus.

Yeah, I need to quit "Jumping on the bandwagon" ride. LOL

The only hits i got are Chinese and running *facepalm* windows xp.

 

i thought the 680M are supposed to be just die shrinked 560tTi s

 

Where did you find this idea at? (Just out of curiosity)

 

this is the more recent slide but all i ever heard was that mobile gpus would be fermi since kepler wouldnt be released yet.



that might change though