*OFFICIAL* M18x R1/R2 Owner's Lounge Thread

looks like my old sony puts an solid picture in my head i cant have anything go above 80. T5750 shuts down at 80-85 i think and i had my sony for almost 4 years prior to owning alienware and asus. i have my cooling pad but i highly doubt it'll be any good unless i take off the bottom panel of my alienware to get a drastic 5-10 C difference.

for my XM i do video rendering at 4.2ghz with fan max in hwinfo @4000 value however i think max is around 3800. a 20 minutes of rendering gets me to around 75~77 C. basically as soon as temp goes over 65, fan is set to go to max at room temp around 27-29ish.

ive never OC above that value havent got time to test around it, im more amazed how he had issues with triple heat sink cause mine worked just fine, and it was almost as good when it was duo copper. but from my experience ever since i got my R1, alienware doesnt have a very good fan control system thats why im stuck with hwinfo from the very 1st day. it still reminded me when i didnt have hwinfo on during fresh window installation, i left computer on for about an hour and got back to check my CPU/GPU meter only to find its around 65-70C at idle temp, just too much.

 

NO difference in temperature after all work is done... Tech guy is very nice and professional he came with padding and foam to support my laptop to make sure no scratches will be done. I guess NO overclock for me unless I moved to alaska lol.

as you mention fox, I believe my room temperature is just not cold enough for this XM cpu. Since Im not experiencing any BSOD or random crashes in all my games / apps, I'll just have to live with those temp for now.

I found this m18x R2 review on the net Review Alienware M18x R2 Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews with configuration almost identical to mine ( identical CPU and Video Card as mine )
stating
"Temperature
Stress test
Any fear of critical hardware temperatures can be put to rest. The roughly 85°C (CPU) and 82°C (GPU) we measured after a one hour stress test are perfectly acceptable."

its a very good review, you guys should check it out if you own a m18x R2 with i-7 3920XM and AMD 7970m Crossfire setup.

 

i would imagine maybe a faulty cpu chip, or this time try doing your prime95 test but with hwinfo set up and at max fan speed, see how that goes. i mean in the end, if heatsink is fine, fan is fine then its just your CPU.

 

Holy cow. All I got to say is battlefield 3 multiplayer on pc Rocks so much on more then Xbox. I cant even turn on my Xbox anymore. Games just look so crappy compared to pc. If anyone has that game and wants to add me my user name is "postalpainmaker". It's double xp weekend on origin BF3 to so leveling up is super fast.

 

is it possible to create a CPU fan speed profile using HWINFO64 just like with MSI afterburner on GPU?

I'll definitely try this when i get home later.. Thanks

 

No... the GPU fans are essentially case fans and they are controlled by the EC simultaneously with the CPU fan. They all run at the same speeds simultaneously. This design is inherent to all laptops because MXM video cards do not have onboard fan controls like a desktop video card.

However, you can create a HWiNFO64 fan profile that controls all fans based on the CPU temps. That's what I use and it works very well.

 

yes and i think actually it is ONLY able to create fan speed for the CPU since it is unable to control fan seperately, so all three fans will go together, and thats based of DELL EC or something. heres the thread though, for m18x R1 and R2:

Alienware Fan Control

mumak and mw86 does a pretty good job, there are of course some faults in it but you can just read that first post should tell you everything you need. as for MSI afterburner, i wouldnt suggest using it. lot of issues are known and alot of people having their system fried because fan dont trigger, faults in the program.


edit: LOL mr fox beat me to it xD.

 

I understand.. thanks guys

 

I just want to let you people know that I am "VERY" happy with my system!

I have too many games to list. I am like a kid in a candy shop in that I cannot make up my mind which candy(game) to stay with and play.

What I mean to say is, all games that I have on HIGH settings are smooooooth! Just a few are Batman(Arkham City), Witcher 2, Max Payne 3, SkyRim, Deus Ex, GTA4, etc., and many more. Even older games(do a google search if a game won't run and you'll find a solution in relation to your OS). They are all non problematic. I am just at a loss lol.

I have NOT overclocked a thing, not CPU(3610) or GPU's(dual 680m or SLI). Nor will I at this point and time. Why? Whether in single or multi, I'm owning!

I paid 3500 for a system that has made me happy!

I was so damn skeptical as I was reading all the threads in here about order dates, the dates they received them, etc. I got mine near a month ago, or more. Mine came with a cosmetic issue, that was resolved.

When it comes to performance, all I can say is "WOW"!

Questions?

 

haha happy for you man! i'm in the same shoes as you, i love my system!
although i overclocked mine, cause i'm a power hungry little man

 

hey mr fox i just realized you using the gadget from hwinfo64. somehow that gadget always freezes on me but i never bother with updating the hwinfo program i got. i just noticed one of your core is at 800 mhz while others at 4.5ghz. i thought AW was suppose to be able to OC all 4 cores at 4.5ghz and not just 3

 

I can't vouch for the r2, but I can definitely vouch for the 680m's. They are amazing cards!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Trackem1,

Congrats on your new system !!

When did you order?
Where did you order from?

 

It does, but what you are seeing is Enhanced Instel SpeedStepping Technology (EIST) working normally. You are seeing a moment in time frozen in the screen shot. All of the cores randomly change with EIST enabled, and this functionality is by Intel design.

If I turn off c-states in the BIOS, all 4 cores run at full speeds all the time. With c-states enabled when the system is idle, the cores can slow down and let the CPU run cooler when it's not being loaded.

When I am doing a lot of benching, I go into the BIOS and disable c-states.

Optionally, you can toggle c-states off in Windows by changing a couple of DWORD values from 3 to 4 and use ThrottleStop to temporarily re-enable c-states. I just prefer doing it in the BIOS instead.

C-States Disabled

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Processor]
"Start"=dword:00000004

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\intelppm]
"Start"=dword:00000004

Normal

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Processor]
"Start"=dword:00000003

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\intelppm]
"Start"=dword:00000003

 

I definately hear ya bro. Couldn't be happier with mine

 

I too, am most happy with my glorious machine of goodness.

 

good to see so many positive results! there isn't another laptop that can replace this thing, looks, function... did i mention looks?

 

would changing power plan work the same? right now im using high performance and balance as CPU/disk performance profile. high performance is default OC and balance is CPU at 60%, 60% of 4.2ghz though. i tried using throttlestop and the profile seems kind of strange, sometimes it would not change CPU frequencies even after i change the profile.

 

No, it doesn't. The power profile has no meaningful effect on c-states. I wish it were that easy. I have my power profile set for 100% on minimum and maximum for the CPU. You'll need to do it as I explained to get the same result.

 

I'm super happy with mine as well. No problems at all with stock drivers out of the box. All games run like melted butter..... Mmmm butter ....I might just make some popcorn. Lol

 

you're right, i just checked CPUZ which i never used after changing profile, frequencies dont change. man i wish realized it sooner, only thing ever changed was the brightness and diskperformance


edit: does this mean any OC programs will overide any windows battery profile? at least for CPU overclocking? and your method to toggle is way better than turning it off in bios lol. having to go to bios everytime to change something is quite annoying. just another question, you ever had shutdown freezes with your hwinfo64 or hwinfo64 gadget? cause mine happens daily.

 

Hello everyone, new m18x owner here, unfortunately it's a used r1 that was won off ebay so the specs aren't anything to write home about but for $1300 it will be a fantastic machine. The specs i got for my machine are a i7 2720, 2x amd 6970 2gb crossfire, 16 gb ddr3 1333, 128gb vertex 4 and 500gb seagate momentus xt, bd player, and intel 6300 wifi card, plus an orion m18x backpack and all the original stuff the original owner received about a year ago when he bought the system. All in all I'm quite pleased with the purchase at $1300 and will be receiving the system tomorrow, and am greatly looking forward to when I get to play around with it.

thanks.

 

The OC programs should not affect your power profile. I have no problems at all with HWiNFO64 or the sidebar gadget. Maybe your configuration settings are off. See screen shot below...

 

Sounds like a good deal to me. Welcome to the forum

 

Hello,

As of Sept 11th I'll be joining the M18X club, went with the 7970m Crossfire as an extra $600 for the 680m SLI was simply not in the budget. I know it's been either hit or miss with the 7970m's so hopefully mine is a hit

Found it rather odd that my Dell sales rep assured me that "All problems with the M18X and Crossfire have been resolved" so if it's a miss when it comes to the 7970m's then it gives me some ammo to use to return and negotiate a better deal.

Returning would be a last resort as I do love the power of the 7970m's, just need to hope I get a semi stable laptop I suppose

 

Welcome to the club, and to the Community. Congrats on the new M18x R2. I think chances are really good you'll have no problems with 7970M CF. When it works right it is extremely powerful and I know you're going to love the system.

 

I did it and spent 4.300 Euro for the following new

Alienware M18X-R2
Intel i7 3720QM
16GB Ram (1600MHZ DDR3 DualChannel)
2x 256GB Samsung 830 SSD Raid0
2x Nvidia GTX680M 2GB VRAM SLI
BluRay diskdrive
Intel Wireless 2230N
1920x1080 WideFHD WLED LCDisplay
1x Windows 7 Professional SP1 with Disk
3 Years Hardware Support Next Business Day
3 Years Damage/Accident protection

2 questions:
1.) Is it possible to change the Raid0 to Raid1 by myself afterwards (if I want to) or am I locked to Raid0 due to the Raid Controller - have no problem with it as Raid0 is fastest and also more disk space than Raid1 but just curious.
2.) Are there true Nvidia GTX680M SLI drivers jet?? I spent a lot of money to leave the ATI/AMD driver fiasko on my M17X-R2 so I seriously hope, Nvidia does better.

Thanks and if all goes well, I wil be an M18 owner as of Sept. 12th.
Witcher 2, Skyrim HD, GTA4 EHD, Metro2033 and Crysis HD I am coming

Nathan Graves

PS: How much is the shock from the M17X RGB LED to the M18X WLED - I guess this will be the only downside

 

postalpainmaker's channel
I put a couple videos up

 

You just wasted a lot of money on those SSD (and RAM) buying them from Dell directly. A single Samsung like that is 186 EUR (2x = 372 EUR) and 16GB of Corsair 1600Mhz some 92 EUR (in Germany as an example). Now think how much you paid for them. You could simply buy the drives and memory separately.

To answer your questions,

1) Yes, you can do what you want.
2) There will be. For now some BETA drivers which work okay (should do for now).

 

Welcome to the club.Thats going to be a killer system. I think you'll be very please with the 680m's as I mad the switch as well. I'm still running the stock dell drivers that came with the system and have had zero issue on all my games. They run great right out of the box. Have fun with that beast.

 

Congrats on the new beast man, you'll be quite pleased and positively surprised by what your M18 will do. In regards to the screen, as a former owner of a M17x r2 I admit that I fell in love with the quality of an RGB LED solution. However, once you'll calibrate the screen of your M18x I promise that you won't miss the RGB too much. The M18x has an excellent LCD.

 

Thanks a lot for the feedback and the info - the next 2 weeks auf waiting will be "tough"

@Darkskies: no worries about the price - I made a special deal and got 20% discount on the whole system. Had to pull some strings and use some of my local connections but the list price of this config was 5300 and I will pay 4280 Euro.

 

That's good, because otherwise DarkSkies would be right on point. Undeniably, it is advantageous to have the factory warranty and support cover the SSD and RAM as long as it does not cost a small fortune. Under normal pricing conditions, these upgrades are typically cost prohibitive except through aftermarket channels. That was a hefty discount, so you have the best of both worlds... parts and factory warranty. I am excited for you.

 

Yeah one of the things was that my "connection" getting the offer for me said to the Dell rep, that I would take a regular HDD and upgrade later with 2 SSDs via aftermarket, as the Dell offer was/is to expensive - after this info we got the 2nd SSD basically for free (was only 50 Euro upgrade vs. single SSD option) - don't know why this worked and if I just had luck but maybe this is a trick for other users here to get a good price offer. Also what we noticed - the more aftersales service options you take (took the 3years next day hardware support and 3 years accidental protection) the higher the discounts get - so as always within these aftersales offers there seems to be a larger margin, giving the rep the possibility to increase overall discount.

All I hope now, is that the system arrives asap and without issues and that the Nivida cards hold their promiss and I will never ever have to mess around with driver and crossfire issues. AMD/ATI hardware might be good and fast but their drivers are the worst I ever experienced - so I hope finally I can play Skyrim with all HD Texture upgrades at full speed - which would have been possible with the ATI cards if crossfire had worked...

 

So i have been in market for mx18r2 for about 3 weeks now and haven't seen a deal that makes me pull the trigger.

I do have questions to the people who have purchased mx18 reguarding ssd hard drives being generic brand that is much slower read/write speeds compared to samsung? I have also herd of mx18's having samsung in them. So could someone please confirm this for me.

Also does anyone think their will be a sale for labor day on r2's or they just gonna keep throwing last year models out?

Spending around $4,000 on a laptop and want to get best bang for my buck.

 

Hello Everyone,

She arrived today in perfect condition. From the box to every millimeter of the machine being pristine. Could not be happier with my purchase from the ordering process all the way to delivery.

+1 to Dell/Alienware.

Will spend the weekend doing surgery on the Alien installing the additional hardware purchased to "top it off"

Watch out Mr. Fox, I am coming after you

Thank you,
Monnie

 

I'm looking to upgrade my HDD to a SSD soon. What are a few good recommendations....at least 128 gig.

 

120/128gb, plextor m3p, intel 520, vertex 3 max iops
240/256gb, anything below 200 dollars is good. sandisk extreme, vertex 4, vertex 3 are all around 160-180 dollars.

 

I just got a PM830, 256Gb Samsung from Newegg for $219 and based on AS SSD and HDTUNE it blows the Intel 520 away with bother operating @ 6GB/s.

 

I got a Crucial M4 256 for $209 and it is pretty amazing so far.

I have a question for the lounge regarding Nvidia drivers. I tried to install the 306.02 beta drivers but got an error that it couldn't find any supported hardware. Is there a vbios update I need to do on these cards in order to install Nvidia drivers?

 

Got my M18X-R2 a couple of days ago, after 4 years of faithful service from my M17 (Pre-Dell). So far so good... Great to see Skyrim run great in all Ultra settings and graphics mods.

Decided to go with the 3820QM as I just couldn't justify the extra £500 for a couple percent performance increase in the XM. Instead I put it towards the GTX 680M SLI , as I just don't want to go through the nightmare of AMD/ATI again (remember all the stuttering problems we had with the M17 - tried everything, zfactor's bios, project freeze, copper shims, everything - still happens to this day).

Did what others were doing here and opted for the cheapest RAM and HDD, and replaced it with two OCZ Vertex 4 256gb's in RAID 0. Was a shaky start at first (RAID array kept in failing - flashback to early OCZ RMA days!) But dang it flies in AS SSD now!

Oh, and as an FYI for others looking to upgrade the RAM. They may be tempted by the press releases from a few months back for the new Kingston XMP 2133mhz SODIMM RAM - but I can't find it anywhere for sale. I wrote to them and apparently when they replied, they said that "they are still working on it" with no ETA.

 

Good choice on the 680M SLI and Vertex 4.

An SSD without a Sandforce controller is always a best option for anyone that is SSD shopping. Samsung and Crucial are excellent options, and so is the newer OCZ Vertex 4 with the Indilinx controller. Steer clear of Sandforce technology. I'm not having a particular problem with mine at this time, but they were a pain in the bottom to get working correctly and the incompressible data transfer rates are lousy in comparison to non-Sandforce SSD drives.

 

I'm running a 240 GB patriot wildfire. Very happy with it.

 

Definitely steer clear of Sandforce controllers, unless you go for the Intel 520 Series. I'm happy with my Samsung 830's and Crucial M4's.

 

Lots of good recommendations, been looking them up. I'll mull all of this over and then decide which one i want.

 

LOL samsung SSD does NOT blow 520 away, more like the other way around, at least thats true for two of laptops i currently owned. i don't get why people keep looking at its high sequential read/writes when SSD uses it's 4k read/write about 60% of the time.

samsung 4k, 25-26 mb/s read and 110-120 mb/s write
intel 520 4k, 34-42 mb/s read and 130-140 mb/s write

notice the 4k read difference differ so much for intel compared to samsung and that is due to sandforce. compressible files you get 42, incompressible you get 34 and given most window and most program files are compressible, you get almost twice the performance. samsung has it good point when writing incompressible file at high 400mb/s but that speed is only good when copying files, installing files and file transfer things like movies/music. if you put compressible file for intel sandforce drive it'll easily go to 500mb/s.

only few things samsung really wins in here is cost and read access time, however the write access for samsun 830 is HORRIBLE. also note the above value is just simple testing cases where NO OS is installed on it. intel 520 is among the best SSD when files existed on it's drive, hands down. any reason if i ever would go for samsung SSD is because their cost, or its because their own controller, the same goes for OCZ vertex 4. another thing you can do is to compare two drives' iops and differences will be clear.

 

Post whatever numbers you like..........I own both currently, the 520 in my M17 and the 830 in my M18. Benchmarks show the 830 to be faster all around, boot times on the M18 are notably faster with the 830............real world experience says the 830 is faster in my case. And before you ask, Intel RST shows both operating at 6Gb/s and both were verified aligned properly with Paragon Alignment tool.

 

the Corsair Neutron and Neutron GTX SSD looks nice, it uses the new Link A Media (LAMD) 6Gbps controller

Corsair Neutron and Neutron GTX SSD Review - New Link A Media Controller Pulls No Punches - The SSD Review The SSD Review
not that great of a review because they dont show what happens when the disk is filled to say 25%, 50% and 75% like other review but it gives a good idea of what to expect.

 

exactly! say what you need too, you have got one laptop with intel 520, i have got two laptops with intel 520 and one with samsung 830. soo.. when you look it up, it should make total sense why intel 520 is faster =/ and obviously at least i got some numbers to backup what im saying, you have no ##

 

You may want to do a post search before you accuse people of having no numbers amigo...............they're posted, you just don't mean enough to me to warrant my tracking them down for you.

Sitting side by side my 830 equipped M18 boots faster than my 520 equipped M17 by roughly 5 seconds. As for AS SSD bench numbers, they are on the boards if you're curious but I'll save you a little effort and tell you that the 830 scored higher than the 520 in MY systems.