M11x R3 Review by Yiddo

That's an M17x, Magic, with a AMD 6990M GPU. It will be much more powerful than a GT 555M in the M14x.

 

That is the same spec as my Clevo fella that is not an M14x apart from the SSD exactly the same as my Clevo so it will fly Just make sure you are not paying out too much for it most people buy the standard model of RAM and HDD and upgrade themselves as Dell seem to be on another planet when it comes to upgradeables.

 

I'm really gutted, I ordered mine Monday and it's pre-production! Ah well, best things come to those who wait and all!

 

Totally missed your post and was trying to respond to everyone. That is quite a long time but I think it really depends where you live and how long it takes for the home base to process the order. Mine bypassed pre production and production and went straight from purchase to delivery so it appeared to just be routed straight to the factory in China. Alienware is very popular in the US so could be why they have a backlog.

I try to review every model I own as it is good to get several opinions on something that costs so much money and prior to these I reviewed my Asus models G70s and G73JH

As above its totally random depending where you live and the queue of the factory, keep a daily check and the time will fly by

 

Sweet Dude, thats what I wanted to know. Hopefully everything will work good!! I don't mind to spend a little bit more on a good quality so...

 

*Bumping this thread up because it's just awesome
Question: How's the fan on your R3 now? Have they fixed the "hairdryer" sound yet? This laptop is definitely on my list of considered purchases

 

Was bashing out Starcraft 2 earlier, completely ultra/maxed 768p at 60fps might I add and sadly yes the fan was at full pelt haha!

There is a way you can fix the fan issue by using Hwinfo but the only way to prevent it crashing is to remove the battery but honestly it is not really bad enough to warrant that and the majority of the games I play on this bad boy run perfectly well on the integrated GPU even skyrim runs at 30 fps medium on the HD 3000.

The new clevo/sager 11 inch is no different and when running high performance is a good 5-10db louder according to the reviews, one fan cooling two chips in such a small space not really much else you can do sadly, but it makes sure the CPU and GPU stay below 70oC for me even in a hot ambience.

If you are considering buying one new do it ASAP they wont be around for much longer.

 

Those are some mighty-fine settings

So you're saying that when you are using the integrated gpu the fan isn't as loud? Honestly though, the main reason for my concern is because after the likely initial shock of hearing a loud fan comes the fear of it damaging the computer--but it seems to be doing far from that? (I guess I'm just used to these '07 comps at the house currently haha)

I'm patiently waiting on some sort of deal or coupon to come out before buying actually, $1099 CA is a little to steep for me at the moment for about the same specs as yours :S

edit: sorry one last question, would this laptop be ok without a cooler?

 

You want the fan to come on, that's good. It means its cooling down the components. The components WILL heat up under load, nothing can prevent that, but having the fan going that fast significantly cools then down so it's perfectly normal. the only issue with these machines is that they haven't set many cooling profiles - you get low fan and high fan, that's it. they haven't put in a mid-level fan stepping so it will occasionally get loud even under moderate use even if it doesn't need that much cooling but IMO that's a good thing because that keeps the temps down. Please do not read the "loud fan" complains as indications of overheating, these things run very cool compared to others.

When you use the GPU integrated into the CPU, it turns off the 540M and hence ALOT less heat is produced so there's no need or the fan to come on. It is just an integrated GPU though, so don't expect to be playing much on it.

I have my R3 (specs i sig) connected to a TV @ 1080p almost always, and i never use a cooler. I haven't had any issues, nor has my temps been high.

 

Medium fan speeds upto 6000rpm when the CPU and GPU are both running is not good enough sadly I tried numerous speeds with HWINFO and it is Off Low and High for a reason anywhere in between low to high means the temps just keep rising and then throttling.

I find the integrated card is top notch though any games pre 2010 apart from Crysis run fine on it and any RTS or strategy games you can easily get away with it as long as you limit the settings. As mentioned when I was travelling I managed to get 30fps from Skyrim by limiting the settings to low-med

 

wonderful, thank-you for the detailed replies, this has pretty much helped alleviate my worries of buying this computer