Advice on my new M17x Purchase tomorrow

Hey everybody. First off I'm new here but over the last few days I've spent a LOT of time reading pretty much every thread on the M15x and M17x laptops. I'm ordering a laptop tomorrow. In case you're curious I'm getting:

Intel® Core™ i7 920XM 2.0GHz (3.2GHz Turbo Mode, 8MB Cache)
Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate, 64bit, English
Dual 1GB ATI Radeon™ Mobility HD 4870 in CrossfireX™
17-inch WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 RGB LED (1200p)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz
1TB Raid 0 (2x 500GB 7,200RPM HDDs)
Slot-Loading Dual Layer Blu-ray Burner (BR-R, DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
Intel® Ultimate N WiFi Link 6300 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO Technology

I do have a few questions I was hoping some people here could possibly answer. First of all I am unsure of whether or not I want to go with a black or silver case. I'm leaning more towards black, but am worried that silver would look better in the long run. I was hoping some people could post pictures of their M17x in silver and black? Somehow I haven't seen pictures of the silver or black M17x's on these forums. I have seen lots of black pics on the alienware page but not many silver. I've also seen red on these forums and while I do like the red I just don't feel that it is professional. And I am a college student majoring in game and simulation programming and am hoping that this laptop will still be good enough for me to finish through college and maybe some years of work after college.

Next, I plan on upgrading to Dual 1GB ATI Radeon™ Mobility HD 5870 in CrossfireX™ when it is available. So should I get a single 1GB ATI Radeon™ Mobility HD 5870 now and then when they do release it in dual with crossfire purchase another 5870 with the crossfire cable and do crossfire? I already talked to an Alienware technician (I'm ordering from him, he offered me 12% off and free future upgrades) and he said that as long as I purchase the parts through them they will have a technician install the parts and my warranty will not be void. But if I change the parts myself I risk losing my warranty.

So which is best? Silver/Black? I know its personal preference, pictures of the silver laptop please? And as far as the video card(s) go? If I'm guaranteed to upgrade to dual 5870's in crossfire at some point in the near future, should I just purchase a single 5870 now or should I get the dual 4870's?

I'm ordering first thing tomorrow so the sooner you can help me out the better

 

Thanks for the quick reply. And yeah it's going to cost me a lot, but its all on credit with 1 years worth of 0% interest The more I think about it the single 5870 seems like the way to go. Would suck running a single 5870 for 6 months though waiting for alienware to offer dual 5870's in crossfire. As for the color, I'm still leaning towards black, like I said I think the red looks really good, but for me its just too unprofessional.

 

Black attracts finger prints, dirt, etc very easily. Don't get me wrong though. Black is indeed a sexy color for AW and I did try it out on my M15x. Too much hassle for me to clean every day with small dirt and finger prints over so I ordered it with Silver this time on my M17x.

 

Yeah doublee I've heard that a lot. And thats my one worry with it. Fingerprints and dirt. But I'm sure that I'll be able to keep it clean, it's just the hassle of doing it. If black looks best I'll still get it in black, but if silver looks just as good, i'd rather get silver. My thing though with the silver is I don't like how the color changes from silver - black on the inside. Or thats how I saw it in pictures. Again I'm still looking for actual owners pics of the silver M17x.

 

Awww I would post some up but I get mine on Thursday

 

all black. silver trim will make it look like a toy.

5870 x 1. if it takes mxm cards you can already order spares 5870 from some guy in the F/S forum, around $400 IIRC.

also getting the top end CPU is pretty much a waste of money unless you are going to do a lot of video encoding, rendering, etc. the i7-620 will be just as fast for gaming. better to put money into an SSD RAID 0. skip the hard drives, they're a joke compared to a good SSD.

and a bluray burner, really? when are you ever going to use that? Hard Drives are so cheap that burning physical media is a waste of time. get the bluray reader if anything, it'll still burn DVDs if you must.

Win 7 Ultimate is unnecessary unless you need Bitlocker, but there are open source alternatives like TrueCrypt that are more trustworthy IMO. if you just need XP mode for older games, get Business, or if you don't need that then Home Premium is perfectly good.

 

I want to keep my warranty valid so I would rather purchase it through dell and have them install it for free.

I will be using my laptop to develop video games. It will be worth it for me, I think anyway. Regardless I'd rather have it and not need than need it and not have. I am still undecided on this though.

My bluray burner will get a LOT of use. I know some people that work at movie rental places and let me borrow copies of movies, both dvd and blu ray, about a week prior to those movies being released. If I can watch them AND copy them? Can't go wrong there. It'd also be nice to be able to back up the dvd's and blu ray's I already own.

My thinking here was I want Win 7 Professional at the very least so I can still run programs in win xp compatibility mode. The upgrade from professional -> ultimate was just $18 minus my 12% off. Is ultimate worse than pro? I don't see why it would be, unless its full of more junk?

 

Sorry for the double post, also wanted to point out that I will using my laptop for a lot of things requiring a large amount of space on my hard drive. That's why I decided to get the 1TB option (2x 500GB HDD Raid 0). Though I would much prefer a single 1 TB hard drive and not get the raid 0 at all.

 

Those cards don't have crossfire connectors on them.

Before you order I would check to make sure that the single 5870 that comes with it has a crossfire connection. The current single 4870's do, so chances are the 5870 will, but you might as well check. It might be a little hard to get that info from a dell sales rep because they aren't technical at all.

IMHO you should just wait for crossfire 5870's. It will be cheaper than adding a card later, and they should come out within the next two weeks or so, assuming you can wait that long.

 

Good idea. I'm actually ordering through an alienware technician so he is able to answer EVERY question I throw at him. When I order tomorrow I will be sure and ask if the 5870 coming with my M17 (Assuming I order the 5870) will have the crossfire connection or not. If it won't have the connection I may wait to see if the 5870's will come out with crossfire in the next couple weeks. But people have been expecting the 5870's in crossfire for months now and I don't want to wait for months before it does finally appear. I am getting a technician to come and install the card for free when I upgrade later, so as long as the card comes with the crossfire connection I think I'd still be getting a good deal.

 

so if you don't have a problem with copying movies, it's still a waste of time to do it yourself with a burner. there is this thing called usenet. aaanyway.

back to your storage choice, you still want SSD RAID 0 for your main system. any PC in the $2k+ range should be on SSD these days, there is such a big difference in system speed. i'm guessing you aren't familair with SSD yet but if you recall going from a single core system to dual core, it's something like that. if you need 1TB+ just get a spare drive and enclosure, it's not like carrying a bit more is an issue when you're talking about a 10 pound alienware.

 

If your going to be Using RAID 0 be sure to backup weekly. In my opinion RAID 0 is flirting with disaster since you must rely on two HDD"s to access your data. It doubles the odds of something going wrong HDD wise, and when one goes down all data is inaccessable.

That said, unless you do heavy multitasking or RAM intensive things like photoshop or CAD, you can cut back to 4GB and save some money. Most people don't need more the 4GB. Good luck with the purchase!

 

ya i never liked RAID 0 with HDD, seems risky. but SSD, OK.

system comes with 6GB standard but ya the jump to 8GB is pretty much pointless for anything other than hi res rendering. the extra cost is like $100 though which is small potatoes compared what this guy wants to spend overall.

 

Problem is that the SSD are so expensive @_@ Right now I'm at my budget. While I could always do an external hard drive, and that is a great idea, I just don't have the money to get 512 GB (2x 256 GB) SSD. I could probably do a single a 256 GB SSD but that is quite small. I'm sure speed wise it is much faster, but because I gotta pay full price up front for it and then get refunded my discount, I don't believe I will be able to afford the SSD.

 

There really isn't much need for 2XSSD. If you need storage space, I suggest saving the money and spending it on an Intel 160GB X-25M for your O/S and programs, and then purchasing a 750GB HDD found here. Though it's 5400RPM, it will be a little faster then the older 5400RPMs and rival the 7200RPM drives due to the density. Use the SSD to install your programs and operating system, and then the 750 for all file storage, videos, music, documents, program setup downloads, ect. This way you only have to backup the 750GB.

The Intel SSDs can be found in the NBR Marketplace for reasonable prices. The intels also have better TRIM support and suffer less SSD degradation. They tend to keep their performance much better then the Samsungs. I have two Samsung 256GB SSDs from Dell and three intel SSDs

 

It's not really that I need a LOT of storage space on my laptop. I would like to have at least 500 GB's of store space on my laptop so that I don't have to rely on my external hard drive. Like I said I will be using my laptop for developing video games, making videos, photoshopping, college classes, etc. So I do need quite a bit of space on my laptop which is why I originally went with 1 TB. I think 256 GB would be too small and I'd be dependent on an external hard drive. As far as using other hard drives for storage space, while it is a great idea, spending this much money on the laptop I don't want to do anything that will void the warranty (So I won't add in my own internal hard drives). So once I order with the parts inside the laptop I won't ever be opening it up. I just can't afford to purchase the laptop and have anything go wrong that isn't covered by warranty. 2x 256 GB ssd's would work perfectly and if I had the discount applied BEFORE purchase I could afford them, however the discount being applied afterwards as a refund I am unsure if I can afford them or not.

Off topic: The technician I am ordering from is at home replying to emails giving me advice still on the laptop. He told me that the current 5870's may not be compatible with the other 5870's when they become available in crossfire. So I will be getting 2 4870's in crossfire when i order and when I upgrade I will be selling the 4870's on ebay.

 

Yea, I'm not sure the single 5870 GPUs that are currently shipping will have the x-fire interface on the card. Sounds like they won't. Another thing to think about is the drives would be warrantied under intel/westerndigital. So if something went wrong, you could turn to them. As far as the M17x, the HDD's are user changable and won't void your warranty. Easy to install. Dell however won't offer and support if you damage the laptop installing the HDD's. Which I dont see happening. But its whatever you feel comfortable with. I'm sure you'll enjoy it either way. Alienware makes great laptops and as far as build quality, they can't be beat.

 

that's what i did. bought my Envy with a 500gb/7200 rpm drive and swapped that for an x25-M 160gb and man is it faster. stuck the HD in an enclosure that fits in my pocket. now the PC boots to desktop in like 10 seconds, zero delay for program launching, unrar a 5gb ISO in seconds, etc. i'm done with using HD as a system drive, it's such a bottleneck compared to any other piece of the PC.

also it's better to do it yourself so you know you're getting a good SSD. the performance varies wildly between models and most of the time when ordering a laptop they don't give you any guarantee or specs for which SSD you are getting.

 

If it was a desktop pc I would feel comfortable swapping out parts considering I have a lot of experience doing that. As far as laptops go I have never swapped out any parts before and I don't want a $4,000+ laptop being my first one. Maybe I'll just use another credit card and get the 512 (2x 256 GB) SSD. Considering I'm spending so much I may as well. And if I do get SSD my laptop should last me a LONG time.

 

n the M17x all that you need to do is unscrew the base plate, which is 2 screws, and then the HDD caddy, which is another 2 or four screws. You don't really even get to the inside of the laptop. Unscrew the caddy, unscrew the HDD from the caddy (4 screws) then put the interposer from one HDD to the SSD, screw the SSD into the caddy and caddy back into the laptop. Easy peasy

 

That does sound easy. I guess I will take your advice and get the Intel 160GB X-25M probably with the same exact 750 GB HDD you suggested. So I suppose I may as well just go with the absolute cheapest HDD Alienware offers then? I will need to keep it in case I need to send my laptop in right? I'd have to put all the original hardware back in it? Thanks for the reply, I almost spent a lot of money that I didn't need to spend ^^

 

I think getting the x25m is a great choice (make sure to get the second generation). If you don't need the extra space, you might as well get a 500gb 7200rpm drive instead of the 750gb. A good 7200rpm drive will be pretty noticeable against a 5400rpm drive.

 

Well its pretty much some things I want to run really fast and others I don't need to run fast at all. Intel 160GB X-25M for my OS, apps, games, that I do need to run fast and then the other HDD (Biggest one I can find that is a good deal) for storing other stuff. It's pretty much going to be a work/play laptop.

 

Yea, I would keep the original HDD in case you have a problem. Will also give you a drive to test if your want to mess around testing things to get an idea of what works, what doesn't. When you order, be sure to include the HDD Caddy. I'll see if I can find the part number.

 

Ok, so my big fat hard drive for storing stuff, It's pretty much come down to 2 options. The 750 GB you suggested or this fatty 1 TB:

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10TPVT 1TB 5200 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

My only question is, the height is 12.5 mm, will it fit? Or is the 750 GB the biggest I can get?

EDIT: Every time I go on newegg I always find myself wanting to build a desktop. More so now since I wanna try out that 4 way SLI.

 

I don't think the 12.5mm will fit. The caddy will be too short to attach to the laptop with a 12'5" HDD. But it looks like the new M17x's are shipping with the second HDD caddy, interposer, and screws. It should be in the HDD1 slot when you recieve it. If you don't get it, call support and let them know that your M17x was missing the HDD caddy, interposer, screws. Make sure they send four screws. I think it's part part # F584N. That may just be the number for the interposer, so you may want to double check. Chances are that the system will have the parts in it when it ships.

 

Insted of ordering i7 920XM go with 620 or if you really want a quad i7 820QM

Color >> Silver and really recommend you getting a backpack .

And 5870 if it has crossfire connection, plus 3 years warranty is a must !

 

The 820 is probably the worst choice. Unless they've changed their prices recently, it's half the price of upgrading all the way to a 920XM. For the extra 0.13GHz, it's not worth the money.

Either go with the 720 or go all the way to the 920.

 

I disagree. I know i'm biased since I have the 820, but it's not just the extra ghz its also the extra cache. Also, its not halfway to the price of a 920. Go configure with the 720 (on the US website) and you will see the upgrade is 1/3 of the way to the 920.

 

About the only advice I can give is for you to be patient after ordering, myself and others here have been waiting over a month since submitting our orders and we still have not received our systems.

But what you can do after an extended wait is call your rep back and express your need for your system, you may be able to get free overnight shipping. The best way to get the newest update on your build that I know of is to call 1.800.283.2210 then press 4 2 1 1 then wait for the system to ask for your order number and enter it using your keypad.

 

ive seen benchmarks of 720, 820, and 920... they perform very close to each other. 720 is definately a value/performance! The 820 does have more cache but the increase in performance is marginal.
According to a benchmarke on notebookcheck with Crysis:
820 will have 5-10 more FPS than the 720
the 920 has 10-20 more FPS than the 820 or 25-30 over the 720 processor

Im not dissing the other processors but you pay a premium for the 920, dont get me wrong its a great processor but im not willing to spend a $1000 over the 720 processor for it. Save your money for an upgrade down the road! Also why not wait for the dual 5870's rumored to be released on May 5th?

 

Make sure you can pay it off in a year.... otherwise if you dont you will end up owing interest for the entire year at >20% interest rate. Dont be fooled by 0% interest offers... they are great if you pay them off before the end of the year!

 

You might want to rethink purchasing from Dell. I have been a loyal Dell customer for 24 years ordering laptop after laptop after laptop. I own an Alienware 17 which has become the biggest albatross I have ever encountered.

I wish I had read the numerous negative post regarding dell support before I purchased mine. I was blind and in love with Dell, now I ffel like im in a divorce with them. After 6 tech visits in 2 weeks Dell offered to send me a refurbed replacement, I have been without my system for 8 weeks and Dell won't(or can't)tell me when I will ever get a system!!!

I have complained to tech support but so far have been unable to reach anyone that can help me (or even cares that I have this problem)

It appears to me that I am doomed into a never ending loop of send my system in wait forever receive replacement, its not working, loop again!!!!! At least the loop will end after Dell expires my wauranty in 3 years....

How sad.......

Ben Cranmore
605-977-7934

 

Having until May of 2011 to pay it off is pretty easy. Especially since even if I can't pay it off by January/February, my tax money I'd get around end of February - early March would pay off the balance on my Dell account.

Already got free overnight shipping I order through an Alienware Technician and he gave me many many good deals. Never will I order through Dell or Team Blackhawk. I can never understand anybody from Dell and Team Blackhawk doesn't offer any deals.

Sorry to hear that. That's why I am not dealing with Dell directly. Sure Alienware is owned by Dell but they do still run their business differently. I've been dealing with an alienware technician, had great service so far. He said if I do have any problems they will send a technician to fix it free of charge (under warranty) and if the technician can't fix it I can mail it in and have somebody from Alienware look at it. I know personally, if I have something wrong with my laptop, I'm going to try and get my laptop sent in to him and not some random person. There are very few people who actually seem to know what they are doing and this technician I've been talking to seems VERY good at what he does.

If they fail to fix your laptop three times in a row can't you ask for a replacement system of equal or greater value and they HAVE to replace it? Don't let your warranty expire and demand a replacement.

 

The difference is with the 720 to 820 is really the dual core turbo boost, 2.4ghz with the 720 2.8ghz with 820.

 

Alright so I just got off the phone with Alienware, my laptop is all paid for and I am now waiting for it. Expected delivery date is 5/27. It's going to be a long wait.

DR650SE I know you suggested the Intel 160GB X-25M SDD at the NBR marketplace. I didn't look there for it but I did check newegg, the price was just over $400 for it, I told my technician who I ordered through that I was thinking about getting that and a fat hard drive to stick in the other slot and he offered to sell me a 500 GB HDD through them with a discount, I believe it ended up being about half off, and he offered to sell me a 256 GB SDD through them for about $550 I guess they normally charge $880 or something like that for this!. So I took that offer. I'm happy with it and can not wait to show this baby off.

 

What did you find out about the CF connection on the single 5870 card? The rep I spoke to said it was possible but you know how that is.

 

I talked to a technician who told me that the single 5870's they are currently selling may NOT be compatible with crossfire. My suggestion if you're planning on going with dual 5870's in crossfire is to just wait until they are available to be purchased in crossfire. The tech said something about if they do get it in crossfire something about the card would change and it most likely wouldn't work. I don't remember exactly what he said about it, but it sounded good to me.

 

how much did you end up paying... did you get any discounts?

 

yeah, toy is what most folks think when they see my Lunar Silver M17x

To the OP: No reason to get anything but Windows 7 home and do the anytime upgrade from the cheapest source you can find, it's just a key really and activation. Dellienware screws you on Windows 7 prices.

Also, consider waiting for the ATi 5870x2 setup if you can, but be prepared to wait a month or so for delivery.

I'd also rather get something instead of 8 gig of memory, few things you will run will every need more than 4 gig.

 

You can upgrade from Windows 7 Home to Professional for free? I want at least professional so I can run some programs in compatibility for Windows XP. Some things still don't run well or at all in Windows 7 right? And I figured I may as well just get ultimate, since it costs $18 more than pro.

Is there any PROOF that the 5870 crossfire set up will be available on May 5th? I've yet to see proof, only heresay. And FYI, it isn't the first time it was rumored that the 5870's crossfire would be available on x date. And guess what? Their still not available.

I already ordered just to get things moving. If the 5870's aren't available in crossfire on May 5th I'll be glad I ordered. If they are available on May 5th, I'll either cancel my order, or maybe change my order. All depends on what they do, but I will get the 5870's in crossfire.

 

If they come out on the 5th you won't be able to cancel the order if its already in production. You also won't be able to change the order because Dell's system is screwed up.

What you can do you is order the new one, if x fire comes out, and return the first order. Dell lets you return your laptop within 21 days from date of invoice/shipping (in the U.S.) if you order another one, without having to pay restocking fee or shipping.