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

There seems to be ALOT of confusion about what drive combinations you can have in the M18x R2 and what Sata performance to expect from various combinations. The manual seems pretty clear to me about the "physical" capabilities of the caddy and what size drives you can actually put in. It's not clear about the Sata operation of each port in the caddy.

Regarding the Sata performance of the drives in the caddy, until further confirmation from Dell, I would assume that the middle port is Sata II 3gbps as clearly pictured earlier on the Interposer.

From the diagram on page 24, it shows that the middle drive is the bay for the 3rd or Tertiary HDD. This stands to sense as it is indeed the port that is running Sata II 3gbps, and as so, would be the last port to utilise. What isnt clear is wether or not the middle port will take a 9.5mm drive. Assuming it does, I imagine the follwing would be failry accurate.

The configurations available are as follows - quoted from the owner's manual:

Number of hard drives Dimensions supported:

One - 9.5 mm or 7.0 mm - Any drive size on any port, 9.5mm or 7.0mm.

Two - 9.5 mm and/or 7.0 mm - Any drive size combination on any two ports, either x2 9.5mm, x2 7.0mm or x1 9.5mm & x1 7.0mm in any port. (7.0mm max on the middle port??? - TBC by Dell at some point)

Three - 7.0 mm only - All drives required to be 7.0mm - no room for a 9.5mm drive at all.

Assuming any of the ports will accept a 9.5mm drive for a single drive configuration, the drive could technically go on any port and be either size but obviously port 0 (top drive) would be the logical port of choice. If the middle port is 7.0mm max, a 9.5mm wont fit but you wouldnt put your single drive there anyway, right? - as its Sata II LOL

For a 2 drive setup, you could use any combination of drive size in any of the two ports (maybe not the middle port if it IS indeed 7.0mm max.) but as the top (primary 0) and bottom (Secondary 1) are Sata III 6gbps, it makes sense to utilise those FIRST when setting up a two drive configuration - this can be done with any combination of drive size - x2 9.5mm or x2 7.0mm or one of each.

For a three drive setup, space becomes a limitation and all three drives need to be no larger than 7.0mm - you simply cannot have three drives if any one of those drives is larger than 7.0mm.

Even if the middle port only supports a drive of 7.0mm max, the only consequence this has is when you want to add a third HDD (not SSD) drive for storage, as pointed out before, larger HDD's arent slim enough to fit in with two other drives of either size combination......oh, and you will also not be able to have three very large taditional HDD's either - maybe some buyers had thought about a massive three drive HDD raid array but again, traditional HDD sizes will not allow for this (or for three larger non-raided HDD's).

 

Very informative. So Im assuming an SSD and 2x 7mm Sata 2 HDDs 7200rpm would work? For the budget buyer of course. But I think those new 7mm HDD drives go up to a maximum of 500Gb... not very big. but at least you have the Raid option.

 

Yes. That would work, as long as all drives are 7.0mm - no larger.

Again though, the issue of Sata speed on the tertiary middle port 2 comes into play.

Assuming you put your SSD on port 0 (primary) and raid the x2 HDD's on the other ports, because the middle port is Sata II 3gbps, that's the max speed you will get from that raid array, as the array will perform only as fast as the lowest counterpart within that raid - Sata II 3gbps. (same would be true for SSD's put on the middle port 2).

There maybe not quite as noticeable an impact on overall performance when using HDD's on the middle/tertiary port 2 vs. SSD's on that same port......it would mean that any Sata III HDD or SSD - raided or not - would default to Sata II.

So, it's clear to see that it certainly would be a huge speed impact if someone chose to raid two Sata III 6gpbs SSD's on the secondary and tertiary ports, as they too would only funtion at Sata II speeds.

For your proposed set up as above (and assuming your HDD's would be Sata III capable) you would end up with your SSD on the primary port running at Sata III 6gbps, but the raided HDD's on the secondary & tertiary ports would be Sata II and not Sata III because of the middle/tertiray port effectively limiting the speed of the array.......if you chose NOT to raid the HDD's, your SSD would be the same but the HDD on the secondary port would run Sata III and the HDD on the middle port would only run Sata II.

This is assuming Dell indeed confirm that the middle port is only Sata II capable.

 

Hey guys, long time lurker first time poster. Not sure if this is the right place for this question. I work in the oilfield and spend 12 hours a day in my truck at work and need to power an M18x R2 with a 330W A/C Adapter. I’m trying to figure out if I need a bigger power inverter and if it will run just off the 12V plug in my truck or if I will need to hook it directly to the battery? Also how much bigger would I need if I added a Slim PS3 to the mix? I have a 175W that I use right now for my 17.3” HP with a 120W A/C Adapter and it works fine off of the 12V plug. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

First of all, welcome to the forums Grimy1. I hope you enjoy your stay.

I'm not to keen on this kind of stuff, but I've working with car batteries for powering solar panels. I believe the battery of your truck holds much more juice.

I'm inclined to think that there is a possibility that you may need a bigger power inverter. The M18x itself needs a lot of power. The PS3 still needs quite some juice even if this is the slim model. Now adding these two, well you get the picture.

The 120W A/C adapter for your HP is barely half of the M18x adapter. I would suggest you research further before trying anything.

 

One thing to keep in mind regarding power requirements is how you plan on using your M18x while in your truck.

The power draw is MUCH, MUCH less when you aren't gaming. 330W is MAX, and would typically be when simultaneously gaming AND recharging your battery.

Under normal use (including recharging while in use), you would draw significantly less. So, if while AT WORK in your truck (I assume your not gaming while at work), you're emailing, web browsing, etc., and need to power your M18x, you could get away with something much less than 330W.

If someone with an M18xR2 and a Kill-A-Watt meter can test how many watts the R2 draws while on full brightness, charging a partially drained battery, and say, playing a video, that might give you an indication of how much power you need.

I'd do it, but I just have an R1.

 

I would actually be gaming most of the time. Lol I have a lot of free time in the truck, about 45 minute of each hour I’m in the truck. The other 15 I’m out doing checks. That’s what I was worried about is when I have a full load on it playing games.

Also my work truck is a diesel and it stays running the whole time, so running down the battery is not an issue.

 

Check out this short thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/650644-m18x-car-charger-2.html#

 

thanks, thats what i needed

 

Thanks man I will check it out. By the way you guys are all awesome!

 

By the way here is what I have on the way. Alienware M18x R2 Black | Intel Core i7-3820QM | Dual 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 7970M CrossfireX | 64G mSATA Boot Drive + 500GB 7200RPM + 1TB 5400RPM | 8GB 1600MHz | Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Reader | Win 7 Ultimate EDD 5/23/12 Very excited, I have been looking at alienware for years and when they released the dual 7970M on the M18x I pulled the trigger!

 

Congratulations! - that's pretty much a killer setup you will have. You should be able to max every game out for quite some time to come with those specs!

 

Gratz on that beast thatll take you quiet far indeed

 

Thanks guys! I have spent a lot of time reading on these forms and I’m glad I finally joined. Hopefully I can be an asset and help you guys out one day in return.

 

Thats a fast delivery date Grimy1

 

Ok guys I figured it out, no more than about 150-180 watts of power can be drawn from a cigarette lighter. Anything over that will blow the fuse. So I will have to hook it directly to the battery. Hope this is helpful to someone else too.

 

Yes it is, I ordered it May 10th as soon as it hit the website! Had been waiting(very impatiently) for the dual 7970M's on the M18x. Called and ordered it over the phone. Don't know what was worse, waiting for the cards to be available or waiting for it to get here! lol

 

Grimy1, we're glad you joined our Community. Congrats on the awesome R2. I'm looking forward to seeing your benchmarks.

After you've had a bit of time to becoming acquainted with the new system, please check the mSATA drives with Intel RST and post a screen shot like the example below to show us whether it is 6GB/s or 3GB/s. That's a mystery to us right now.

Have a nice weekend.

 

I will do for sure! That was one of the first things I asked while ordering it. They said it was 6GB/s, but i will believe that when I see it. Don't want to get my hopes up and be disappointed. If it’s not I will probably put a 512GB Samsung 830 in it.

 

I would be tempted to go with the msata 240 gig, mushkin has one, little spendy but add a second 750 gig hd (thats if I picked up just one 750 to start with), raid them, you would end up with 240 gig msata ssd (I think worse case of 5 gb/s which I'm wondering how much slower that will be) and 1.5 gb for the raid hard drive.

 

Here's a 400W inverter, runs off DC outlet in car or cabled directly to battery, and has (2) 2AMP USB ports (iPad compatible). Not bad price, either!

 

I had never heard of Mushkin before, so I looked them up and they have some very nice read and write speeds. Definitely something to think about, Thanks tanderson.

 

I'm basically going the same direction as you are with 750GB as the stock drive, thats why I said that config. Might use just one of my ssd's with the 750GB drive or sell them both off and run with the msata like your doing with two 750's. So I've been doing some looking at msata's and the speed of the msata based on the h77 chipset which states 5gb/s, hence the reason why I was looking at the sata III speed msata, which is the pricier version...

 

That one looks great except the loud fan issue in the reviews. That is a big deal since I will be using this almost every day 12 hours a day. I have a 400W that I refuse to use anymore because it’s so loud. Here is a 400W Vector I’m looking at, I have a 175W Vector and I love it. Very quiet and reliable! Thanks for looking though.

 

When using a powerful inverter, but careful connecting and disconnecting devices. (Those under 200W usually are not a concern, but that's too small to use for the M18x.) A powerful inverter can really tax your alternator and huge power spikes can easily cause a failure. Be sure the inverter is turned off before connecting or disconnecting it to your vehicle. Also, avoid attaching devices to the inverter while is it turned on.

 

any idea when m18x r3 will come out LOL although its very possible i will be purchasing both R2 and R3

and also for the memory sticks, im looking at xmp profile to run at 1866 mhz speed, whys that? shouldnt the corsair vengeance or kingston hyperx both able to run at 1866 without any profile? iirc the chipset and cpu both allows memory to run at that speed without any profile.

 

Next year pal... ( take a chair, or, even better, a long nap)

 

I just installed my first SSD. Installation went OK, but I'm concerned about the benches I got. The other benches I could find were much higher in the 4k read and writes for the Kingston HyperX SSD's - often close to twice as high. Should I be concerned about numbers like these?

 

twice as high is VERY UNLIKELY. the highest 4k read so far found was the sandisk sandforce extreme 240gb drive and under compressible file it was only showing 40-41 mb/s, incompressible at around 36mb/s. (of course this was based on your testing system, some have the 4k reads for samedrive at 44mb/s for imcompressible files)

if your ssd is kingston hyperX, the 4k reads should be around 32 mb/s for incompressible, and 36 for compressible files. but yes 20 seems low especially you're not using samsung or marvel controller, especially low for sandforce ssd unless you're using ocz agility 3 or solid 3.

edit: i just realized your drive size is 90gb version, so it shouldnt be as fast as the 120gb version, although 20 mb/s seems just a bit low. maybe try doing secure erase, see if that helps.

 

IIRC, with the older Kingston modules (not the current plug'n'play versions) if you wanted them to run at XMP 1 or 2, you had to select which one in Bios to get the speed up..... With the new ones, just slap 'em in and you get a default speed of 1866mhz without needing to select an XMP or do anything else....

Havent personally used the Corsair stuff so I cant say wether or not that actually needs to be changed in bios - I wouldnt imagine so though....

 

yea thats what i thought, i have both kingston hyperx and corsair both pnp and i didnt need to change anything. i was wondering if this was due to the new chipset for ivy bridge cpu. if anything they do, should be upgrading not downgrade lol. onlything i could think of downgrading was probably 39*0 series desktop cpu doesnt come with integrated graphics lol

 

Anyone know why the 3D display isn’t available on the M18x with the AMD 7970M Since the card is 3D capable? Not really a big deal to me but have always wondered.

 

Although I consider it a novelty and would not be willing to pay extra for it, I have wondered the same thing. Some M18x owners have expressed an interested in 3D. I think the NVIDIA GPU may handle 3D better than AMD. NVIDIA actually made that an initiative and went the extra mile to provide support for it, and I don't see where AMD has given it any attention. It is 3D capable, but perhaps not as easy to execute without solid support in place by AMD.

 

Would a secure erase make any difference on a new SSD? Any idea on how off my benches are? The ones I saw from review sites showed 4k's in the 35-40 and 85-90 range. I'm not sure if those numbers are from ideal conditions not feasible on my system.

 

That makes sense and I agree with you about it being a novelty. I’m not willing to pay extra for it either, rather put that money into something else. Just always been curious, wonder if it would work if ran HDMI out to a 3D display? I will have to try that when I get mine.

 

In case you have not already discovered them, there are a couple of Alienware threads on this topic. It can be done, but you need extra hardware for it to work. It does not work through HDMI. You have to use DisplayPort. And, it varies by the display. With GTX 580M, you can run 3D on a Sony PS3 3D display without any extra hardware, but you need to do a hack to defeat the proprietary overlay in the driver. If the video card does not "shake hands" with a native (internal) 120MHz 3D display, there is an overlay on the screen. This is by design, unfortunately. (That issue, as well as the hack to turn it off, is covered in a thread also.) With AMD, I'm not sure whether the Sony PS3 3D display will work. The GTX 580M has hardware and driver features specifically enabling 3D functionality and I do not think the AMD hardware and drivers have any features specifically geared for that.

 

Here is the specs from Kingston, don't know if that helps. Also I can't remember for sure but don’t you need to optimize your OS for SSD operation? It will run without doing it but it runs better after doing it. Can’t remember for sure though.

HyperX 3K SSD
SPECIFICATIONS
>>Form factor 2.5"
>>Controller SandForce® SF-2281
>>Components MLC NAND (3k P/E Cycles)
>>Interface SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s)
>>Capacities1 90GB
>>Sequential reads2 SATA Rev. 3.0
90GB – 555MB/s
>>Sequential writes2 SATA Rev. 3.0
90GB – 510MB/s
>>Sustained Random 4K R/W3 90GB – 20,000/50,000 IOPS
>>Max Random 4K R/W3 90GB – 85,000/74,000 IOPS
>>PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite Score
90GB: 60,000
>>Supports S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, and Garbage Collection
>>Power Consumption
0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.58 W (TYP) Read / 2.11 W (TYP) Write
>>Dimensions 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm
>>Weight 97g
>>Operating temperatures 0°C ~ 70°C
>>Storage temperatures -40°C ~ 85°C
>>Shock Resistance 1500G
>>Vibration operating 2.17G
>>Vibration non-operating 20G
>>MTBF 1,000,000 Hrs
>>Total Bytes Written (TBW) 90GB: 57.6TB

 

Ah ok, well I will probably just drop it at that then. Sometimes my curiosity gets the best of me and I end up wasting a lot of time on something I really don’t even care about. Lol Thanks for all the info, saved me a some wasted time.

 

Your benches are decent for a SandForce controller. Nothing to be concerned about, even though they are not the fastest. Don't burn any calories trying to make them better. Running repetitive benchmarks is a waste of time and might affect the life expectancy of the SSD if you do so in excess. Samsung and Crucial drives are not SandForce based and perform much better. The new Indilinx controller also works well.

If you want to see advertised speeds with a SandForce controller, you need to test only with compressible data. Change your test from random to zero fill and it will make you feel better (see below).

Incompressible speeds with SandForce controllers are generally poor compared to the other options available. Below is my Agility 3 RAID0 setup. It's is very fast, but poor in comparision to Samsung, Crucial and Vertex 4 SSD speeds using incompressible data. The test on the left is incompressible data and the test on the right is compressible data. Advertising only the compressible read/write speeds and conveniently neglecting to disclose how slow SandForce drives run with incompressible data is considered by many to be deceptive.


Also, drop your test file size to 50MB or 100MB. Testing with 1000MB is accomplishing little more that increasing the wear on your SSD drive without good reason. The 50MB test is equally effective and takes less time.

 

Thanks for the info Mr. Fox

 

Did not know that Mr. Fox, great info. Thanks

 

So, the AMD 7970m's do not do a 3d output ?? - or were we just saying that the 18x lacks a 3d display? - if its the latter, I imagine the main reasons for that are twofold:

1. Dell already have a 3d model in the 17x
2. Cost would be prohibitive to drop in a 3d panel for the 18x - heck, Dell wont include a RGBLED for pretty much the same reasons....cost & supply restraints.

 

yeah the m18x dosent have a 3d screen because there are not many screens made for an 18inch laptop an it would cost alot to get one specially made thouh people would still likely buy it to have "the best"

 

Just ordered at M18x for $3580.34 (with taxes). Will also end up getting $369.17 in eGift card from Dell.
System specs are:

M18X R2
i7-3920XM
6GB DDR3
CrossfireX 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 7970M
500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3Gb/s
Blu-ray reader
Advanced Warranty

Is this a good deal? I also wanted the Orion backpack to go along with it but took it out seeing as I will get $369.17 in a eGift card to purchase the backpack seperately. Thanks

 

You can get the m18x Orion backpack off amazon for more than 20 dollars less than it is on dells site.

 

Yeah, after much thought I'm going to cancel the order. Thanks for your input.

 

awesome system config dude!!, mighty expensive though.

 

actually, the smaller file size test are different with bigger file size. 50 and 100 mb arent that much different but if you were to try 50 and 1000, u'll see some big difference. this also has to do with the format of your drive, ntfs, exfat, fat etc and as well as the formative block size 4k, 8k, etc

smaller file size test will show better performance with smaller block size 4k or less etc and most ssds came as 4k default, although u can format to change it depends on if you want to use it as work drive such as video editing. big block size >8k on vertex 4 or samsung controller drive will show promising results but do extremely poorly with small files that are compressible when compared with sandforce drives

and theres your answer and i thought u were using the first hyperx series, not the 3K. i believe hyperx 3k SSD uses TLC, which is about 5k write cycles or less, better not write too much to your drive or it'll die. and as it shows, 4k random write MAX is 85,000 iops but then again we all know thats for business and marketing purposes, they show these numbers to get people to buy them.

as you can see your sustained 4k read is only 20,000 iops, which is really low, like my old old solid 3 drive also 20k iops

edit: its better to get to know what you're really buying before you make the purchase, i learned my lessons on the solid3 drives as well as m18xr1, could have saved at least couple hundred more dollars if i were to research more lol

 

Yeah, mistake on my part hehe. I thought since most people loved the Kindston HyperX RAM that the SSD would be a good buy too. If I had to do it over again, I would have bought a different drive. Oh well, this is still a big improvement over the 500GB normal drive my M1 came with. Maybe I'll upgrade this SSD at a later time and give this one away.

 

i got a very similar config today but with 4yrs advanced and got it for a total of $3160.00. I was able to get $300 off the top and free shipping with an additional 5% card coming in the mail.