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

Hi folks,

I asked this question in the AMD GPU thread also, but figured I would have a more general audience here. Would you recommend one of the steeply discounted M18s that Dell has on their web site (16GB RAM and Dual M290X for 2100) over purchasing a new Alienware? Specifically I'm concerned with how the GPU has held up, and what support I can expect considering this is a discontinued model. Thanks...

In Dell's defense, on the support side, I have a XPS 1702 which is nearing it's 4th year now. It has had it's motherboard and display replaced twice over the last 3 years, but Dell has always come through despite it being a discontinued model, so I'm hoping for the same level of service with the M18 also..

 

hi TBoneSan,
sorry for the late post. i ran the alienware stress test on the GPU and the temps were around 44C-55C but the fans starting kicking on high even on the 2nd GPU which i had it off. (all the fans, gpu both sides and cpu kick simultaneously within 2 mins of starting up my laptop after windows 7 loads) i shut down the test after about 10 mins midway because my laptop was stuttering in and out momentarily: but the temps were steady. i found out the issue was a bug in the dell support agent that i recently installed
i was getting all the symptoms described in the link esp the buzzing noise streaming videos,

other people were having the same problems on the board:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ning-up-when-idle-but-not-turning-off.771179/

link to solution:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ist-agent-version-and-dell-data-vault.771147/

and from dell
http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19620415

so i uninstalled it. i'll report back in a week if it didn't solve it.

 

still worth to buy alienware m18x r2 3720qm 7970m cfx for $1350?

 

update:
so far it's been all back to normal. so if anyone is having problems uninstall dell support assist and agent. dell installed it without my permission.

 

Depends on the ram amount, and if it has warranty. If the ram is 16gb or more and I would say yes.

 

That's a good buy. Even if it's out of warranty. Sell the 7970m's and wack a couple of 980m's or 780m's in.

 

Intel i7-3720qm Quad core processor at 2.6 GHz.
16GB DDR3 Ram (4x4gb dimms)
18.4" 1920x1080 LCD panel. In beautiful condition
Dual AMD Radeon 7970m graphic cards each with 2GB DDR5 VRAM running in crossfire
Crucial 240GB mSata boot drive.
500GB storage hard drive
Blu-Ray DVD/RW optical drive
Killer wireless N network card
Fresh install of Windows 7
Comes with 330 Watt AC Adapter and Dell reload discs and red AW sleeve.

 

Jump on it, a plus is the red sleeve. I have seen that go for 50 bucks on eBay.

 

I see nobody answered... yes, this is normal. Windows will poll the ODD for the presence of a disk periodically.

 

Hello all,
I know it has been a while since I posted. Well come to find out the reason my Sli wasn’t working probably is because I got a bad motherboard. After I took the suggestion of putting my card in at a certain angle my mobo shorted on me and I was without a laptop for about a month before I got a new one. Then I went ahead and bought 2 Clevo 980m’s and OMFG this was the most painful install I have ever had to do…. Really, after fighting my laptop and pissing those off around me with the 8 beeps of ha hah haaah haaaah haaaaah I finally was able to get it to work using the walkthrough on this website http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-18-m18x/765169-aw-m18x-r2-dual-980m-sli-upgrade.html

Now, the one thing that was annoying was creating the bootable drive to use UEFI so I no longer got the 8 beeps. Please use this weblink to get rufus to create the bootable usb drive https://rufus.akeo.ie/ and use google to find the ISO for windows 8.1. For me my windows 8 product key worked for the 8.1 ISO. I was reading in earlier post that 8 only works for 8 and 8.1 only works for 8.1. Ohhh yea forgot one more thing please back everything up because you will have to format and restore windows.

I am just sharing my experiences and I implore you please, please, and please follow the walkthrough to the tee and the upgrade will be working in no time. It took me a whole day to get things right and it was worth it. I have not done benchmarks yet but I was able to play witcher 2 with everything maxed and even with ubersampling at what seemed 60fps 1920*1080. I also uploaded a screenshot.

 

Hi,

Wanted to ask, if it is OK to buy this Alienware M18x R2 laptop for around ~1300 euros (Warranty until June of 2017)

Screen
18.4" 1080p Full HD WLED LCD display
Operating System
Windows 8.1 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7-3840QM (8M Cache, up to 3.80 GHz)

RAM
32,0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard

Alienware M18xR2 (U3E1) 28 °C
Graphics

Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M (Dell) 38 °C
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M (Dell) 33 °C
SLI Enabled

Storage
698GB Western Digital WDC WD7500BPKT-75PK4T0 (SATA) 25 °C
119GB Micron C400 RealSSD mSATA 128GB (SSD)

Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GA31N

Audio
Sound Blaster Recon3Di
_____________________________

Is it easy to switch out those GTX680M's for dual GTX980M's?

 

That's a very decent deal, especially given the warranty.

The M18X R2 can be upgraded to the GTX 980M SLi, but it takes some work and I believe you'll need to get Windows 8 running on the system. Here's a thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/aw-m18x-r2-dual-980m-sli-upgrade.765169/

 

hey guys !
i saw an m18x r2 with a 3920xm 16 gb ram 256gb ssd 7970m cfx for $1550 i should grab it or not?

 

I would recommend to keep looking and find one with 680M SLI or 780M SLI instead. It seems like most of the 7970M CrossFire systems have expired. They are not a durable product and your chances of having issues with the AMD video cards is much greater than if you were to find one at a similar price with 680M SLI or 780M SLI.

 

Hey fellas - some of the links in the first post don't work. One in particular I was looking for is the 18x r2 parts list.. Anyone have a link o the parts lost for 18xr2?

 

Hi people,

I have an Alienware M18x R2 with 7970m Xfire.

Have any of you gone from 7970M Xfire to 780M SLI on this machine?

According to Mr. Fox the performance increase is huge, but seeing the price of 1 single 780 m = 2x 7970m, is it worth the bang?

I have read that for the moment, the best GPU combo you can put in the M18x R2 or 18 is a 780m SLI, as the 980m (Maxwell) doesn't work well our beast...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-18-with-980m-sli-by-hidevolution.763915/

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/aw-m18x-r2-dual-980m-sli-upgrade.765169/

 

It's a bit garbled, but here is a link to the R2's list - looks like the formatting has gone up the wall though.....

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m18x-part-number-list-reference.579752/#post-8506918

 

It's true, the best SLI that you can get is 780M 4GB or 880M 8GB with modified vBIOS. 7970M is slower than 780M but not two times but I still recommend Nvidia card instead of AMD.

Check performance here - http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

 

MR. Fox and other users say the the comparison chart @ notebookcheck is

 

Thanks Stevie!

 

Is the 18x r2 keyboard the same as 17x r4?

Part #PW56N

?

 

Yup. Same as......at least according to this link: http://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=13918 - same part number, so should be universal to both machines.

 

Tnx brother

 

No probs fella.

 

*Finally an Alienware owner!!*

Hey guys,

Well I am really really happy to finally be able to report that I am officially an Alienware owner. I purchased a Space Black M18x R2 and received it a couple of days ago. I am learning a lot about my new rig and goodness, it's wonderful. The M18x R2 model has always looked the most aesthetically pleasing to me. I am happy to report that the build quality did not let me down and is simply the nicest built, both in terms of design and materials, laptop I have ever seen and/or handled. With that said, I know Alienware today is not what it used to be, but I always wanted one but could not afford one. Well, a wonderful member here, @pathfindercod , had an extra Space Black M18x R2 that he was not using and it had the quality components I wanted, detailed below. Not to mention it still has a 2.5 year warranty, which is very important for me. Let me tell you, @pathfindercod was very honest, helpful and great to work with. This is totally new to me, as I am coming from a 4.5 year old laptop that could not be modified in any way, and he was patient and understanding with questions. I wanted the laptop so badly, that I paid for overnight shipping and I could not sleep. I cannot remember the last time I was that excited for a new purchase. It was a gift to myself that I received on the day I medically retired from the military. I only wish I had had a video camera, a GoPro 4 Black, to record an unboxing and my excitement.

I received the well protected package the next afternoon and could not stop smiling. When I took it out of the box, it was in pristine condition with no rub marks or anything. Looked brand new as he used an external keyboard, mouse and monitor. For a couple years old laptop, it was practically new. Not to mention, someone correct me if I am wrong, this rig with the options was like $6000 when it came out. He offered me a very fair price, with the options I wanted and the warranty sealed the deal. The warranty was immediately switched to me and i received a confirmation email from Dell letting me know.

The only game I have played thus far has been Battlefield Hardline, and even being a couple generations old graphics cards, it runs 85-120 FPS on ultra settings. I was blown away as I thought the graphics cards may be a little old for the newest games, but I was wrong. Not to mention, I was able to overclock the graphics cards to something crazy. Dell/Alienware shipped caged beasts. I was able to get a stock voltage 1010MHz / 2415MHz overclock and was able to complete 3DMark Fire Strike. However, anything more and the computer would black screen and freeze up. I tried to go to game, but would crash, so I backed it off some. I am now running the game stable at 953MHz / 2316MHz with a max GPU temperature of 70 degrees Celsius. I am still fairly new, but believe those are very good temperatures and could probably go higher if voltage wasn't locked in both MSi Afterburner and EVGA Precision X. My CPU runs at 4.3GHz on all four (4) cores and reaches a max temperature of 82-85 degrees Celsius under heavy load. Again, I am new to this, but I think those are very respectable temperatures on an overclocked extreme CPU. Those temperatures are with stock Dell TIM with the rear slightly elevated with bottle caps, something I learned from you guys. Seems like this computer has great cooling, but the only negative thing I can say is I do not like how the keyboard gets pretty warm. However, with the high performance parts under the hood, it's kind of a moot point.

The computer will be used primarily as a desktop replacement, for gaming and minor audio / video editing. Future plans will be to learn more about overclocking and learning the system inside and out, which should be fairly easily accomplished with the knowledge base and resources on NBR. I will eventually want to upgrade to nVidia GTX 780m SLI unless Dell / Alienware implement a future fix to easily accept and support Maxwell architecture, specifically the GTX 980m SLI. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has helped me with knowledge and specifically to @pathfindercod for making this a possibility! I look forward to getting to know you all more. It seems the Alienware community are all close knit and I am happy to be a part of the community and call you my brothers and sisters. My new system's details are outlined below.

Alienware "Space Black" M18x R2 - A03 Modified BIOS
Intel i7 3940XM - 4.3GHz
2 x nVidia GTX 680m SLI - 953MHz / 2316MHz
16GB Kingston HyperX 2133MHz
2 x Samsung 840 Pro 500GB SSD (1TB Raid 0)
Western Digital Black Scorpio 750GB HDD
Klipsch Audio
Killer 1103 NIC
Windows 7 Ultimate
Dell Warranty - 2.5 years remaining

 

Thank you for the kinda words, Kyle. It was and is a great pleasure to talk and work with you. You are a great person and a asset to our community and a great person in proud to call a friend after all our interactions. I'm very happy for you and know the feeling you get when anticipating and receiving a machine from Alienware. You got my number and email, I'm always radio wave away. many guys on here much more knlowesgable than me for sure, but I'm always around to help
All I can.

Great guy here all my AW brothers.

Welcome to the closest vertual family on the net. Glad to have you here!

 

Thanks brother Pathfindercod.

 

Awesome! Welcome to the club, @KTHIRY. Glad you're with us. Congratulations on owning the best high performance laptop that has ever been made... by anyone. It used to be the fastest, still holds second place (against a beast with a hexacore desktop CPU) and still wins decisively in every other measurement.

 

Thanks brother Mr. Fox! Yeah, this thing is incredible.

 

is there a more recent modded driver available than 344.75? for those that have an m18xR1 with a 780m

 

I see 347.88 for 780M on the Nvidia website.

Unless something has drastically changed in the last couple of months, all I do is download the newest driver from the Nvidia website, and then trick it into installing on the older hardware using a modded .inf file.

I didn't go into the .inf modding because the information is easy to find already published elsewhere, but please don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.

 

Has anyone ever heard of a X18 bios version? It's on a weird M18x R2 I have, completely new.

 

Hi peeps!

What's the best bang for the buck 16gb DDR3 upgrade for the R1 / R2 laptops?

pretty nice list here:

DDR3 - 12800 (1600 MHz)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...57&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=30

It looks like the Ripjaws have the best ratings, what do you think?

DDR3 - 14900/15000 (1866 MHz)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9511 600559387 600213067 600006159&IsNodeId=1

Ripjaws again and Corsair's look pretty good ?

 

Say hello to my little friends



For specs see sig.

 

Why 3 of them?

 

Why not!

 

This guy gets it

 

Seriously though, does anyone have any idea what the X18 bios could be? I seem to have more options too that you normally would only find in an unlocked bios.

 

up!

 

The best bang for buck is the cheapest ram from a reputable vendor. Unless you are running ram intensive programs or are into ram benchmarking, its seems to me as though you will be hard pressed to tell the difference between 1600 and 1866.

 

If the BIOS version starts with an "X" instead of an "A" it is a pre-production or engineering version that is not intended for public distribution. Do one or more of your machines have a BIOS version like that?

 

No this is the only one, check out these fotos I made

http://imgur.com/a/F0KxQ

Notice the blank name plate, also the service tag in the bios isnt reqonized by the Dell site (also has the usual sticker with the samd service tag, same goes for the express service code)

Only problem I'm having is that it states that the xfire bridge isnt connected properly. I've ordered a new one but from your experience could it also mean a defect card?

 

I wonder if the blank plate could be a giveaway that the unit was some kind of test or review unit from Dell - never seen a blank one before, and coupled with a test bios (X18) seems very coincidental. As for the C/F cable, it might just need reseating on one or both of the crossfire connectors on each card. It doesn't necessarily indicate a bad gpu.

Nice pics by the way...lovely machine.

 

Thanks! I've already reseated the cable a couple of times. Even switched it from left to right if you know what I mean.

Also note that the components used (mSata + HDD) are both models introduced in December 2013. Likely being that the laptop was only produced begin 2014.

P.S. I already have buyers lining up for this thing,it wont be in my hands for much longer. If theres a way, should I dump the bios?

 

Actually, the laptop is being picked up in less then 2 hours. If you guys want this bios you gotta hurry up and tell me how

 

Aaaaaaand its gone

 

I have a question about m18x r2
I'm purchasing m18x r2
the spec is i7 4900mq, 16g ram, gtx 780sli, 1tb fusion drive
the person selling is telling me that he bought it 2014 in best buy, I know that M18x r2 got replaced by the newer model in 2013. So do they still sell it in 2014?

 

Hey everyone I have a problem that I hope someone on here can help me with.

I just bought a M18X R2 and honestly I love it, coming from a Sony-AW laptop its a improvement, it works like a charm for the most part but I am having some issues.

1) I have noticed that the left speaker light does not work, sometimes it is visible like it is dimmed but changing setting does nothing to it. when restarting it will act normal lighting up brightly but them die once again. But given the moments it does light up the majority of the time it is dark.

2) Illumination problem with the 6 macro keys, the last key is lit up brightly while the other remain dark. There are lights under them all just not bright so I am wondering id I have a few bad LED's ?

3) I don't know if this is meant to be like this or not but when pressing the wifi button on the media board I find I really have to press it down more than the others to get it to work. While the other buttons give me a nice pop when pressing down the wifi button does not ..if this is not meant to be I feel a replaced is needed.


I have tried every "solution" Dell has to offer but none have worked, I have done a clean install of windows 7 - 8.1 with no difference with either. I sadly have no recovery media or original disks since it's not new, and even though I downloaded all the drivers from Dell's website I feel they are not all there.

If the problems I have can be fixed by replacing them that is all the better but if I would like to know peoples opinion before buying stuff though.

 

you could check all the led power strip connections, but otherwise I think you may be stuck with buying new gear...

 

Just wondering does anyone still have their factory partition and respawn?