Best M15X revision for modding

What is the best M15X revision for modding? I have been doing some research on them and think they started the MXM 3 cards on the R2 but I am not sure. I may pick up a used unit sometime to play with.

 

You are correct. MXM 3 card are only on the R2.

 

There aren't revisions on the m15x. The usual is that people confuse the old Alienware Area 51 m15x with the newer DELL-Alienware m15x.

 

So the R1 is the older pre-dell Alienware, and the R2 is the Dell-Alienware. Is there a R3 and R4 in this series?

 

You are misinformed. There is no R1 or R2 of the M15x.

There is just the m15x Area 51 that featured Core 2 cpu and MXM 2.1 III graphics cards. This laptop was released when Alienware did not belong to Dell.

Then there is the Alienware M15x. This is Dell's only M15x release. Already into it's 5th year it features support for nehalem core i7 chips and features the newer MXM 3.0 GPU specification that has proven VERY compatible with all if not most mxm 3.0 cards released so far including both type A (small) and type B (larger) cards.

We wish Alienware (Dell) would release a M15x but sadly this would loose them too much money to be a viable project. The current M15x is old but still does very well due to the incredibly upgradeable graphics slot and the nehalem cpu's performance longevity. Dell instead offers the M14x with soldered on graphics and inferior build quality. This way they ensure customers will be back quickly to upgrade to a faster machine as their laptop falls apart and falls behind in games. A new M15x would mean customers would hold onto it for so long that Dell would suffer financially from loss of repeat sales.

It is a cynical but truthful view. The M14x is into it's R4 era I believe but still cannot hold a candle to the OLD 2009 M15x graphically. Sad really. Just pop a 7970M, 680M, 780M or even the new 880M inside and see. They all work lol

 

There aren't any.

 

Thanks, that was just the info I was looking for because getting one and swapping cpu/gpu is just what I had in mind. From what I had read I seen a lot of cards worked with them and that sounded up my alley. Now I will just have to research what card/cpu works with what bios revision. This will be replacing my M9750. It's been a good computer but it just doesn't have the graphics I need. Finding another card that can work with it is tough as well, then many of them run hotter than the original card. Being socket M holds it back as well.

 

You want the A09 system bios revision. Then you can use up to a 920/40xm. Any GPU works that is MXM 3.0

Another thing to consider is RAM. With an i7 part (720qm-940xm) you can put up to 2x 8GB 1333mhz ddr3 ram inside so up to 16GB total.

If you only put an i5 inside you will be limited to 1066mhz speed and only 8GB max.

 

One other questions I have thought of is I have seen some the lights don't work on on some of the used ones I have seen for sale. I doubt I would worry about the lights not working that much, but would like to know if that means bigger problems are coming down the road for it. (example is a HP 1420 tablet line had a problem of over a year or two the wifi card would quit working, the card was fine, it was the mother board slowly going bad).

 

Some people accidentally fried their alien fx by simply installing the alien fx software from the resource disk. Don t do this. No it won't affect the rest of the motherboard.


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Is the TS asking regarding the Mainboard revision for the M15X? I do remember seeing older and newer revision of the Mainboard denoted by A00, A01 or A02. *correct me if I am wrong I cant remember much as its been a while since I last open the unit and have traded it off for a Y510P.


Some board can do the FSB overclocking, some cant.