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

Congrats! Just took delivery of mine today and finished the physical moving, and changeover (without re-installation of Win7 OS which went perfectly. I should do a step by step write up and post?) from my M17x R2 to the M18x R2.

I'm sure you'll enjoy yours as much as I am enjoying mine!

 

I am! But to be honest I am unsure where to even begin. lol. I already got a warning from the first game I installed that my video drivers were out of date. Let the research begin, I guess....

Enjoy it and congrats!

 

When mine was inbound, I gathered the newest drivers from the Dell site except for the video files. Those I got from LaptopVideoToGo along with the modified .inf files.

 

Lol. This is all foreign to me coming from Apple for the past 13 years. Still trying to wrap my head around all this driver stuff and navigate my way around windows. It's slow going, but I'm alright with that. Just trying not to screw anything up.

BTW, thanks for your service.

 

Finally Finally i received my R2 motherboard to complete my R1toR2 conversion. Only took 4months to receive parts from Dell lol
Anyway upload some photos of conversion when done

 

Awesome, Brother Dan. Don't forget the photos of the XBox 360 wireless controller installed in the internal USB port.

Don't forget to chop off the little tabs on the inside of the black plastic bezel for the USB/eSATA/ODD/ExpressCard ports on the right side. It will be tough to mate the I/O daughter card to the connection on the motherboard with those in the way... the connectors won't line up well unless to knock those tabs off with a razor blade.

 

Awesome, sticking the Xbox receiver inside. Be sure to take some pictures, we'd love to see how it goes

 

Will post tonight thx brother fox cant wait to get It going. Has A08 bios on it according to the box. Is there any issues with unlocked bios? Which one do you recommend? Now to get 3920xm and new gpus

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Got everything installed and booted however having trouble getting my 580m GTX sli drivers installed. Do you think dell blocked old cards running on the R2 motherboard?

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Just a guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if you need to modify the driver .inf file because the Hardware ID Strings are now different because they are in a R2 board?

 

My m18x was just delivered today. This is a dual 7970m upgrading from a gt70 msi 675m. Excited to see how it performs.

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Hi all, i have a question. I've been playing a 2-d side scroller shooter called Sin Mora (steam), on my alienware m18x r2 7970m crossfire.

I have a question concerning the keyboard limitations and was wondering if anyone had knowledge if anyone had this general issue. using the m18x keyboard as controls. the games default controls use the directional arrow keys below the right shift key to move. and the A S D keys to shoot. while holding down the S key i cannot move diagonally north-east. (up-right) when holding down the S key. only when i release the S key can i move diagonally up and to the right.

Does anyone know why this happens? when i use my dell inspiron 1520 laptop using the same controls for the same game, i have no problems moving in all directions while holding down the "S" key.

 

Having issues with m18xR2 motherboard when i put in my extra 2x 8gb 1600mhz Vengeance Memory. I turn on laptop and the all keyboard lights flash twice and machine turns off. before even getting into bios screen.
Is is possible i have bad Underside Ram Slots? its works fine with two in the top under keyboard. Has anyone else had issues with Vengance 32gb 1600mhz Ram in a m18xR2

 

I am running A10 unlocked. There's not any difference in experience between A09 and A10 that I can determine from use.

Exactly what Keith said. You're going to have to mod the drivers for the 580M in a M18x R2 mobo for exactly the same reason we have needed to installing 680M in the M18x R1... hardware ID needs to be added to the NVDM.INF file and everything will be peachy.

If you are running Windows 8, you will also need to disable DSE (Driver Signature Enforcement) during installation or the modded driver will refuse to install.

LOTS of problems with Vengeance memory have been encountered. I think it's good stuff with bad firmware. If you have something else available, use it instead. I doubt there is any problem with your memory slots. Get the system running correctly with other RAM and you can most likely fix the memory using Thaiphoon Burner when you have some spare time. There are a couple of M18x threads here with discussion on that subject. Codenamefa can probably help you get that sorted. He had problems, but has worked them out.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/715810-corsair-vengenance-1866-16gb-m18x-r1.html

 

Thx Brother Fox. Went through four sticks in different orders and it one Stick that causes the turn on issue. Got my 580m installed also flashed them to 675m because i can lol. Installed Unlocked v10 Bios also. Now to get the Xbox stuff confirgured and install msata drive. Loving this upgrade so far.

For anyone wanting to swap their R1 board with R2 i found with the IO board as it uses different shaped USB as Fox said. I took out the Black Plastic glued to the right inside of the case and just Cut out the USB Section and then reinstalled black plate separably. Motherboard fits like it was meant to be there

 

Wow, just got back home a couple hours ago, and I'm in the process of setting up the m18x. This computer is beautiful, definitely the nicest I have ever used. I had the m17x r3, so I kind of knew what to expect, but the nebula red, along with the aluminum case really makes this stand out, it is incredibly impressive. Not to mention the screen is gorgeous.

 

So I am having issues with Powerplay on M18xr1 with dual AMD 6970m. I have read that this is a known issue, does anyone have fixes? I redid windows and all drivers but still I am having issues with powerplay on giving me more fps, but after some time ingame the fps drop dramatically. Also when I switch from power to battery I get higher fps. I have already checked my power voltage and everything seems to be fine with hardware. I have read that people are having similar issue but no real solution. I am currently outside a country with dell support. Please help and share if you guys have similar problems. Laptop is around 2 years old, before I could run everything on ultra now having huge issues past 2 months.

 

It may be because of this. Can you change the setup?

 

Question for those with the 330 watt ac adapter. How big is it? I currently have the slim version of the 240 watt and it seems to be an acceptable size, hopefully the bigger one isn't too much bigger.


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It's about 1/3 taller, 1/3 heavier, and the power cord that comes with it could jump start a Buick. Doesn't fold or wrap up very well either. I swapped out my M17xR2 power and haven't had any heat increase in the cord.

 

thanks for the info, yeah can reconfigure it in-game but was hoping it was resolvable hardware/software wise, as the direction arrows as well as the a,s,d,w keys are always default buttons for many many games.

 

Happy to say I placed an order today for an M18x - my very first Alienware machine ever. The original quote after taxes was $4100 and after discussing it with the sales rep, we settled on $3400 shipped. I *think* I got a good deal, but below are the specs:

i7-3840QM
16GB (4 X 4GB) Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
Dual 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 680M - SLI® Enabled
500GB 7,200 RPM SATA 3Gb/s
Space Black Anodized Aluminum
Slot-Loading Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video and Bluetooth 4.0

I have a 256GB crucial m4 in my PS3 I plan on throwing into the m18, so that's why I opted for the standard HDD. Machine ships out 5/1, so now the long wait!

 

Seems like a decent price, although they probably reamed you on the ram. You can get 16 gigs for about 100 bucks, don't know how much they charged you. Also at that price did you get any extra warranty or accidental warranty?


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Only one year standard and one year accidental.

 

If I was to add an additional year of full coverage at the end of my one year warranty it would be 359.00 right?

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Hey everyone I'm new to these forums and hopefully someone can help with my problem.

I just did a fresh install on my M17x r1 with dual 280m and after the install it says i have 260m. I used my resource dvd and installed the 280, but this happened. I've done a couple fresh installs with an old windows disc before, which recognized the 280s. Now i found the original disc the laptop came and now this. Has this happened to anyone else?



Many thanks!

 

This frequently happend to me on my M17xR2 with the Crossfire 5870 Cards. Whenever I did a reinstall or even a driver update, they switched to identifying them as the some "Fire..." something something cards.

What I did was go into my Device Manager, delete the drivers for each card, and manually Update the drivers while still in Device Manager. I then manually followed the prompts and selected the drivers for my 5870's which had been unpacked in the C:\ATI (or was it \AMD) directory.

Note: Before uninstalling, I had Windows Explorer open to the drivers directory so that I knew where to find the .inf file for the 64 bit files.

The same procedure should apply to you with your 280M,except your directing your search to where the NVIDIA/GEFORCE drivers are unpacked. Then rinse, lather, and repeat for the other card.

There may be an easier way, but this one worked consistently for me.

 

Hi Folks,

A few quick questions before my unit arrives:

1. Is A10 the latest BIOS version?
2. Where can I get a copy of the OS - the sales rep mentioned you an d/l it online for a small fee?
3. How is the dell drivers page in terms of updates? Should I use the dell page for drivers, or go directly to the manufacture's site to find the latest drivers?

 

1. Yes
2. Your unit should ship one, or yes you can get it from dell.
3. Dell drivers great for most things but Video card drivers I like to get from Nvidia/AMD

Congrats on your purchase, the waiting is hell..

 

Hello... see responses below. Hope that helps.

Edit: ha ha! What AlienMike said... did not see his post before I replied.

 

1. Yes
2. Your computer should come with a couple of disks. The OS on one and the drivers and utilities on the other
3. I use dell and manufacture sites. Dell I grab the chipset and networking drivers, I also grab the updates to the Alienware software. Video drivers I grab from nvidia.

 

lol. I would still trust your posts more & so nicely formatted :thumbsup:

 

Hey guys, new owner of M18xR2 here after Dell exchanged my M17xR2 after series of repairs. Order was requested and started on the 25th. Dell representative told me that my laptop will be ready by Monday of 29th if not Tuesday, the 30th. Question is, has anyone recently bought and received their laptop within less than a week? I'll be happy if this is the case but seems really fast.

Oh and the website and the phone service does not list my ETA but it says it's currently in production.

 

Yeah Dell is not going to have a clue where your unit is in shipping until practically the day you have it. You can generally trust the EDD date but do not expect them to know anything about it other than what you see on the dell site. It doesn't matter what I order, they cannot track a keyboard out of the factory. Try and have patients my friend, I hope you get it ASAP.

 

Well if I had an EDD, I would not worry much but I don't even have that information. I guess I'll just wait until it says SHIPPED on the website. Given that I was out of laptop for about a month now, I'm a bit impatient but very excited at the same time! Let's hope that my ATI cards won't give much trouble out the box.

 

Hi all,

Thanks for the help with the previous questions! I'm anxiously awaiting my 5/6 delivery and with all this extra time, I just find myself spending more and more money in preparation :laugh:

My Dell order included 16GB (4 X 4GB) Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz) of memory, so that seems like the next logical thing to upgrade. Anyone know if this memory will work?

I'm also reading that there's some potential issues with pairing the system with Samsung 840 pros? Anyone know if the old corsair m4's work well, or if the new m500's work well?

 

There are issues with pairing Samsung 840 Pros in an m18x. I've tried 3 SSD's and they were not recognized as raid volume. I switched to OCZ vector and they work perfectly. 1 840 pro works fine however...

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I know some people have replaced the interposer cable when the 840 pro did not work right

 

Quick question, I've been trying to figure this out for a while now but can't seem to get a definite answer, when looking at my m18x with screen facing me as if I'm using it, where is gpu #1 located? Is it to the left where the programmable tact-x keys r located or to the right where the num pad is? Thanks in advance!

 

What is the best laptop cooler for the M18x R2?

 

There is not beneficial from any laptop cooler if you have an M18x, the cooling system of the M18x is excellent.

 

But if you want one, I think the popular choices are Notepal U3 and Coolermaster SF-19.

 

I just set my Bios to default F9 and put everything back to where it was, then I reconfigured it but I'm not sure if Turbo power limit MSR lock is supposed to be enabled or disabled. I think disabled.

 

I just bought and received U3. I was debating between U3 and Cryo LX but decided to go with U3 since I can relocate the fans. I just need to receive my M18xR2 for some testing. I'll post back once my laptop arrives.

 

Gah, the wait just got longer

"Dear Customer,
We wanted to let you know that there is a delay with one or more items in your order. Based on the latest available information, we have adjusted your Estimated Delivery Date and your order is now projected to reach you on or before 5/10/2013 We are sorry for the delay and appreciate your patience."

 

Disabled brother Harlon :thumbsup:

 

Yup, happened to me too, was supposed to get here on 5/2/13 but has been delayed until 5/9/13

I am just hoping that this laptop isnt crazy loud with the fans, I can't seem to get a definitive answer on that.

 

I have mine now for three weeks ... a great machine! And even better: I had before a MSI GT70 with one 680 ... now I have the full programm with Intel 3940 and 680 SLI ... and this beast is more quiet than my old MSI (with only one fan) was ... Crysis 2 with all maxed out and this machine runs the fans on only around 50% ... cool and quiet!

I am sure you will be happy with it!

 

Thank you for the response, I greatly appreciate it! It eases my concerns

 

Primary or GPU #1 is left hand side directly below W key. Hope this helps.