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

3x 9mm will fit fine too

 

I can also fit my head inside the oven, doesnt mean its a good idea LOL

 

hey thats whats warranty for lol

 

hey can you guys tell me how much you paid for your m18 backpack or messenger bag? I heard if you call in you can get discounts

 

It's not just a matter of fitting; it's also a matter of heat dissipation.

 

anyone know of some good led accent lights for a good price?

 

I need some pretty fast advice.

I am trying to order on Amazon before the 15th (California Tax) and am seriously thinking about getting a M18xr2. The reason I'm using Amazon is because I have a lot of gift cards to spend on Amazon.
What do you guys think about the specs of the model they have for the price?

Amazon.com: Alienware AM18XR2-8728BK 18-Inch Laptop (Black): Electronics

I'm fine with all the internals. I'll put my own SSD in it sometime later. I'd want to put in one gt680m later down the line to upgrade the graphics. How expensive, available, and easy is it to install a different graphics card in the laptop?

 

Snoopp, I believe your better off going thru Alienware direct...even with tax included you;ll get a better deal for the same price with better options. When I got my R1 I had dual 560's very similiar to the 660 as for price, but I got two there, BD player, Extended warranty, and upgraded CPU and didn't pay much more than that price there. Always a deal to be made...

 

warranty!

or I guess you can always leave the rear cover off to let more air circulate? lol

btw, I was just implying that it will fit, NOT in no way recommending it should be done.

 

Sell your amazon gift cards save your money.
Buy it direct through Alienware Online. Customize it but pay over the phone after you haggle to death! ( there should be a sticky about it here somewhere )
You will save more money this way and get the best configuration.

Most importantly, Its better to have all your parts under a single warranty through dell. They have the BEST.

But if you cant wait, the specs you link from amazon looks good. Just make sure you upgrade it later on with an SLI or crossfire (Crazy money). Without it, m18x just seem a ton waste of money.

goodluck

 

If you don't have plans to go sli or crossfire, then go with an m17x R4 and save money. And dual 680m's right now would be well over $1000. A second 660m would be a good idea for this system.

 

I understood what you were saying, I just wanted to make sure that there were issues doing this, and that's why Dell doesn't recommend it.

 

ofcourse, they wouldnt recommend it since there is a bigger factor of heat buildup thus breakdown which will lead to costing dell time and $$$ to replace and fix it. I have 3x 9.5mm in there right now and I have to admit that it gets warm after transferring a big file but thats all ... WARM not crazy hot. it works perfect with no issue or modded needed. Dont do this if you dont have any warranty tho lol. Im still not recommending this setup fyi.

 

^^^ exactly! 3d screen on the m17x is SEXY!

 

My M18x is going to be a completely different machine here in a couple of weeks. I ordered the 580’s last week to upgrade my 560s and last night I just pulled the trigger on the 2920xm processor with the triple heat sink.

I can’t wait to see what a performance difference that I will notice; from playing games on better settings to experience them better to processing pictures quicker while using CS5 and Lightroom.

 

Hi,
just sitting in front of 2 AW Laptops - my old and new one.
So far very nice the M18-X2 but I have one issue or question I urgently ask for your support.
I am not sure but it seems there is no sound card and speaker system installed in my sytem - is this even possible??
I can not change the noise level or anything else as he tells me there is no loudspeaker available and there is no audio device installed (I am still on out-of-the-box config).
In the device manager I see under the audio-video and gamecontroller part only 2x NVIDIA High Definition Audio and thats it. No sound ever came out of the new Laptop.
Is this a hardware defect - eg. simply not there or not connected or is it (hopefully) just a driver issue??
Many thanks in advance

EDIT: Well forget it - after a reboot the creative driver installed itself again and sound now works fine. Man a shock in the morning.

 

As the others have said, buy direct from Dell and you will have the best warranty support available to man. You can also haggle a bit with the reps to reduce the overall cost of your machine. Not saying that the Amazon rig is not a good purchase but I would be tempted to sway you towards a totally stock machine from Dell with the only upgrade being to a single 680m. This will perform on par with 580m Sli and will blow the 660m out the water for gaming. You can upgrade ram/hdd yourself after you buy and it will cost far less than Dell's prices for them.

That's based on the budget price of the Amazon machine...I just looked it up on Dell US site and for my config, it rolls in "list" at $2,349 - I know that's more but you are getting more gpu power - MUCH more. Also, you should be able to haggle some off by contacting one of the Dell reps from this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/669327-alienware-sales-assistance-thread-redux.html

Just my two pennies....

 

isnt nvidia high definition audio is for external sound via HDMI, thats not the actual sound comes out from the machine.

when installed nvidia graphics driver it will install the HDMI or wireless external sound driver or w.e its called lol. since you got your sound to work thats great, uninstalling in device manager and let window reinstall its original sound should be good, then install IDT after that.

 

Hi,
setting up the new system with the guide from NBR.
First question - I have the AW M18X-R2 with 2 Nvidia680M SLI - wanted to unstall the Intel HD Graphics device driver but driver tells me I dont have the minimum requirements??
Many thanks for support.

 

To uninstall it, you need to be in integrated graphics mode. Use Fn & F7 to switch from your Nvidia cards to the HD4000 and then uninstall. Should work.

 

Sorry typo - want to install the driver. But does there also apply this switch to internal driver.

Jep thats it been - many thanks stevie.

 

Yup. You have to be in iGFX to install/uninstall......glad you got it sorted. :thumbsup:

 

Hm unfortunatly it seems I have serious issues with the new Nvidia 306,23 drivers. After installing this driver I had some Blue screens, but after a reboot it worked. Now I wanted to make the Windows updates as it was as clean Win7 setup and now after downloading and upgrading the windows updates (only the recommended one from windows) the system always crashes. In the bluscreen the issue derives from some file with nvlddmkm.sys or so.
Will try Dell drivers, than make all the windows updates and maybe than a driver update from nvidia. man i hoped that this would end with nvidia...

 

nathan try to disable link state power management under advanced power options. That seemed to have done the trick for me. After do a clean uninstall then reinstall of the drivers.

 

lol whats with the extra steps.. dell alienware =(. i thought HD3k or 4k driver would just install fine then installs the Nvidia driver afterwards. at least thats what happens on my Asus and my other dell laptop.

 

The m18x is not like other laptop with switching gfx. It has a physical switch that lets the computer see either the igpu or the installed vga cards but not both at the same time.
Its actually better this way, you can only see one gpu setup and boot with either one. That way you dont have to deal with enduro/optimus.
The only (small) disadvantage is that you have to reboot when you change from one setup to another.

 

Hi,
many thanks - seems to have solved the problem - new drivers installed, no issues so far.

 

Hi,
is there a way to check if SLI is running or used in the game?? I mean so far the 3 games I tested were running very smooth but I still would like to know if this is the power of SLI or only one card?

 

If you open Nvidia control panel and look a the 4 tabs on the top, go to 3d settings tab and you should see an option to tick to enable the SLI meter and/or PhysX meter. It will give you a vertical green bar on the side of your screen during gaming to show you how much use your gpu's are getting and wether they are working in SLI for that title. To get rid of it, just reverse the process and untick the option. Other "non-visual" ways of telling is by feeling how much air is getting pushed out the rear by both gpu exhausts... also,by placing your palm on the top left/right of the keyboard areas near the screen, they should feel warmer if using SLI.

 

Thanks a lot Stevie.

 

First feedback on my new machine.
I just had the honor and joy to play Crysis II with Enhanced HD Pack with max. settings - and it was awesome - so smooth, so fast, so WOW. What a hell of a machine. These Nvidia680M are powerhorses and the whole system is - well I would say at least 50% less noisy than the old system.
Next test will be Witcher 2 with Enhanced HD Pack and Metro 2033 and of course Skyrim with all the graphics enhancements there are.

 

you should play sleepdog with settings on ultra and get only 25 fps =D

 

This way removes any question or shadow of doubt. You can even configure OSD to show GPU utilization specifically.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...mperatures-game-benchmark-screen-display.html

I think you'll like it, too.

 

I have an m15x, 720/460/16gb

thinking of picking up an 18x, which would be a fairly basic config, as I have a 2500$ target budget.

I'm wondering without an XM chip is 1866 ram even worth it for me at this time?

Should I simply order it with like 8GB of 1600 and go a notch higher in proc, then add memory later?

this config comes close to price, I could fiddle the memory to 16gb 1600 as one option if the 1866 isnt really going to do much for me.
another option is order it with less RAM to 8gb and pop proc up one notch, and toy with ram later as that is fairly simple.

PROCESSOR 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3610QM
MEMORY 8GB Dual Channel XMP DDR3 at 1866MHz edit
HARD DRIVE 500GB 7,200 RPM + 32GB mSATA Caching SSD edit
VIDEO CARD 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 675M edit
WIRELESS + BLUETOOTH Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video and Bluetooth 4.0 edit

I dont see making it to a 680m card without attacking quite a bit, but perhaps thats even another thing to consider. I dont want the 660m, and I cant afford SLI/Xfire. or XM procs right now

I realize this is a pretty base m18 config, and a 17r4 might be ordered 'hotter' for he same price, however i'm a tiny bit gunshy of the 17r4, some of it is aesthetically for the coating, and I feel that the 18x i can more easily add to later plus more of a heat shedder.

thanks for any advice.

 

I would stay away from the rubberized plastic M17x R3/R4. Nothing beats an anodized aluminum M18x... nothing.

The GTX 675M is an awesome GPU. While it is not the fastest, it is extremely competent playing games and a more reliable option than 7970M.

By laptop standards, GTX 675M is still very high end and far exceeds what the majority of Alienware's competitors offer in so-called gaming laptops.

 

i'd stay away from any ram upgrade at all if possible. imho 1600 mhz is far more than you'll ever need. faster xm processor can give you boost in games to certain extend but mostly based on the dual graphics. if you are a lucky person, go for 7970m and hope you wont get defect graphics.

 

Blasphemy!!!!

I love my M17 even with the soft coating. That said, I love my M18's design too.......as for the question, If I were buying an M18 with a single video card, I'd move Heaven and Earth to make sure that video card was a 680m.

 

The motherboard specs state 1600 for memory, so anything higher is overkill.

 

thanks for the input, I bit the bullet and got a 3720 with 680m 8gb/1600 500/32mstata combo and killer card. Haggled some and wrangled gift cards and a tiny bit more off added to the current discount on the site, I dont think i did amazing, but with gift cards accounted as cash i may have pulled some physiological equivalent of approx 18% off, if i lie to myself just right.....

 

don't kick yourself, you just got a 680! You'll be hitting 60 FPS in BF3 in no time!

 

Having 1600 mhz ram instead of the 1866 mhz is the difference between 7.8 to 7.9 max score on Windows Experience Index.
Personally, having a score of 7.8 cpu, 7.9 memory, 7.9 graphics, 7.9 gaming, 7.9 primary disk is sexy!

Performance wise, 1600 mhz & 1866 mhz ram feels the same. Im not noticing any significant speed improvement to warrants the price difference.

 

^^^agree with jethsmart's comments on the 1600 vs 1866...

You guys remembering this resource?

 

I'll be getting my rig next week. Is the thermal paste Dell uses ok or should I repaste both video cards and the cpu especially since it's a 3920. I made sure it's coming with the triple pipe H.S.

 

The stock TIM works good if it was applied correctly and with care. I'd just run some benches or game for a few hours while monitoring the temps to see if the stock stuff is working well for you during load. If the temps are higher than your liking, a repaste job isn't a bad idea.

 

As LannBot suggested, try it and see before doing anything else. The Dell TIM is generally excellent and very durable. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

As Lannbot and brother Fox suggested , stick with the dell paste. I repasted my 680m's as well as my 3920 xm with IC diamond 24k paste and only saw 2-3 deg Celsius difference and it will not hold over time compared to dell paste in my opinion.

 

Re pasting CPU and Video cards is a gigantic task. The risk of damage or at the very least, scratches is possible. If difference in temp isnt major, I dont think its worthit at all.

 

I agree jethsmart. I watched Mr.Fox's video on replacing the cpu heatsink and video cards and was amazed at how complicated a teardown is. I will be sticking with stock paste. On another note are there available TIM pads instead of thermal compound for cpus and gpus?

 

Harlon... regarding phase change thermal pads versus paste, have a look at this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-temps-ok-thread-ask-here-21.html#post8821333

The M18x teardown is not complicated, but it can be intimidating if you have never done it before. The video is longer than it actually takes because I was going slow for the benefit of viewers.

 

yep, once you done it several times.. you'll get use to it and do it fast.