Cheap Alienware, think it's worth it?

My buddy is willing to sell me his old M15X Alienware laptop. It has the basic options of:

Intel Core i7 Q720QM @ 1.60 GHz Quad Core (8 Threads)
4 GBs of RAM
Dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M w/ 1 GB DDR3
500 GB HD

It's in flawless condition and he offered it to me for $250 because he's getting deployed soon.

Would this laptop run WoW on high-max settings? I plan on upgrading the ram ASAP, but is this a decent deal for a mobile WoW rig?

Thanks!

 

Dude don't even think twice! 250 bucks for an m15x is imo a great deal! You can always safe up and gradually upgrade the CPU to an 920XM and an 580m, those parts are cheap these days. When you wait long enough you can even put in a 7970m for 300 bucks and you got yourself a nice fast machine.

Plus you don't need an SLI if you would primarily run WoW, I believe that game is more CPU dependent during bigger Raids etc. With the current setup you could get decent quality graphics in WoW.

 

Get that machine before he changes his mind! That is a bargain! Get a 920/940xm! I love my 940xm which I upgraded from 720Q. It can run huge overclocks! I also managed to sell my 720Q for $70!

GPU-wise gtx 660m can also be overclocked hugely! $250 new!

6970m or 6900m also great options!

 

I runned Arma 2 (CPU killer) on a 720Q a good while, hold up pretty nicely actually, but nothing compared to a o'clocked 920/940XM for sure

 

For sure the 720Q is pretty darn good but I'm finding I can run new cpu intensive games on higher settings due to the 940xm. I'm able to run Bioshock Infinite on High with my lowly gtx 460m!
Lack of overclocking on the 720Q is a problem too (for me).

 

Just to clarify...the 580m is def not something the M15x can upgrade to. As for the laptop, get the $250 to him as fast as possible and grab that M15x lol.

 

An m15x handles a 580m for sure, it requires 100Watt from your 240Watt PSU, so that would leave some for your CPU as well, not sure how much more power the oc'ed XM CPU requires?

 

WOW! if you don't get it let me know and I'll get it for myself! Don't even think about it .

 

@rusty_dough not trying to put anyone down or anything, but seriously bro you gotta do a little more homework than that before guiding someone to throw his money down the drain. Just because you have a 240w psu does not mean you can use 240w in the M15x. The power it can draw is limited, otherwise we would have people using 330w psu's from the M18x and easily smacking in a 680m. The 580m is a no go, trust me.

@OP do not get the 580m!

 

580m doesnt work but 7970m does? can someone explain?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

M15x has a fussy motherboard in terms of voltage and is partially power limited by psu and m/b.
From my understanding 7970m uses less power than 580m. It does however throttle in the M15x if you run an OC xtreme processor.
AMD cards just seem to be plug and play in M15x.

580m might work if you modify the voltage in BIOS, seeing as how svl7 got a 680m to work but maybe there are driver issues or power draw of 580m is just too high. 680m obviously uses less power than 580m due to Kepler.
Why would you get a 580m over a 7970m or even 680m?

 

The 7970m is more power efficient and the throttling has been fixed for the most part by king of interns. I believe the 680m as well isnt fully utilized by the M15x so its a pointless and fussier upgrade.