Decided to make some major upgrades to my m17x. Are these things possible?

I haven't done any major upgrades to my m17x since i first bought it and changed my processor to the 3.06ghz t9900 since the only 3.06ghz that dell offered was a higher tdp for the same performance. Now that I've come into some money I've decided to further upgrade instead of selling and buying something else.

I'm looking to make 3 upgrades.

1.) I want to upgrade to 8GB of 1333MHz ram from my current 4GB 1066MHz. Reason being is I play this game a MMORPG and I have this hacked client that allows me to run many copies of the game when you are only supposed to be able to run 1. So I want to be able to open as many of these as possible and I'm saturating my 4 gigs. Also since I've been messing around with OC I can benefit from the faster speed ram.

Questions:
a.)What is the best DDR3 SO-DIMM 1333MHz RAM?
b.)Where can I get the best prices?
C.)Whats the best ram to OC with?

2.) I want to upgrade my dual gts 260m's to dual gtx 285m's. Mainly for the same reason as above I need the most power as possible to run as many instances of this game as possible. Plus I just like having the latest and greatest and because of funds I couldn't get the dual 280's when i first bought it and now that there is 285's seems like the perfect time to upgrade.

Questions:
a.)Where can I go to buy these cards?
b.)What price will 2 of these cards cost?
c.)If purchased from Dell can I get all the hardware for hooking up 2 cards so i can sell my dual 260m's as a complete kit?
d.)Do I have to get them from dell or can i find other sources and make them compete for the sale?

3.) I am almost out of hard drive space with the 320GB (less then 70GB left) of SSD space i currently have. I do have a 1.5TB external (so I'm in no serious rush of losing out on things) but I like to have all my files on my laptop so I was thinking of using the optical bay to hold a RealSSD c300 256GB 2.5" SATA III Drive. This will also allow me to upgrade to an external blu ray burner instead of just an internal reader that I never even used to read a single blu ray. The Lacie d2 Firewire 12x blu ray burner seems to be the fastest external burner on the market and looks like a nice choice. Don't think 12x certified discs are even out yet. It will only run at 8x burning if you use USB 2.0 but I have the Firewire port free as the 1.5TB HDD uses eSATA.

Questions:
a.)Will a 2.5" SSD drive fit in the optical bay?
b.)Will I be able to keep my raid running on the intels and have this SSD just normal.
C.)Is there an easy way to test the boot speed on both SSD's to find out what gives the best boot time? I suspect the c300 may be the fastest drive even with the intels in raid.



I love all you guys here. This site has helped me make my notebook the way it is today. I never had the confidence to open up a laptop until I saw the tutorials on this site. I really want to thank every 1 in advance that is gonna help me make my 2nd major set of upgrades to this notebook. My notebook is so fast and powerful it's just a joy being on it and I have a lot of it because of you guys helping me on here, so thank you again.

 

You are talking about $3,000.00 of upgrades. 8gig of DDR3 @ 1,333mhz is roughly $1,000.00. GTX285M in SLI count about $1,200.00, and SSD in RAID let's say two intel X25 160GB each is going to be about $1,200.00.

Just get a fully loaded R2 and sale your R1 and you will save money...

 

^ Exactly, there is no point. Unless your in the mega money!

 

Another question is if the bios in the r1 supports 285m in sli?

 

I have no clue...

 

8 Gb of 1333 Samsung RAM cost me $315 on eBay, if you want an additional SSD that you can use simply as a drive other than your RAID I'd consider purchasing an external drive bay that can be used either as USB or eSATA and connect it to the eSATA port on your M17x. I would not convert the internal optical drive bay to use an internal HDD since I use my Blu-Ray drive.

As far as 285's are concerned I don't know if they are offered with the kind of connection DELL/AW uses nor if BIOS recognizes it. The ATi 4870 in Crossfire can be had for about $1K on eBay, add an additional $35 for the drive enclosure, $315 for 8Gb of Samsung 1333 RAM and you're looking at $1350. I purchased a drive bay enclosure for my XPS Gen1 laptop that allows a HDD to be used in it but it was for PATA drives and not SATA, if you could find one that is SATA in and SATA out then it would fit in the internal drive bay as it uses a standard SATA connection so an SSD would work.

You may be better off selling your M17x and purchasing the M17x R2 with 4870's in Crossfire, 2 SSD's in RAID and 8Gb RAM and an external HDD.

 

well Im Anti ATI I have always used nvidia and always will. I refuse to ever buy an ati card. No specific reasons thats just how I am and what I like. I dont want to sell my laptop and buy something else I've already done a lot of work to this 1. Also I don't want a quad core cpu either. I'd much rather have a higher clocked 2 core. I've ran this one at 3.67Ghz. I've noticed with the new core i7 if you don't get the quad core one it limits your choices on the graphics and ram. I don't want to be forced to use a quad core. I also like the low 35 watts it uses.

It says the GTX 285m is mxm 3.0b is that not the same as the alienware. There has to be a way to make it work hasn't anyone done it yet???

I already have a 1.5TB external hooked to eSATA. I dont use the optical drive for much at all. I've burned a few dvd's and audio discs and thats it. I can get a nice external drive and connect it via firewire and be good. I think an ssd in there may give better battery and less heat too. I just would prefer more SSD space I'd be at about 550GB then of internal SSD space.

So am I stuck with upgrading to gtx 280's?

 

Your sig says you have 285's. You bought them already?

 

Just buy a new R1 GtX 280 for around 2200 and ones yo have them both put your T9900 on the new system. And then sale the previous one lol

 

no just changed it already cause i figured since they were both mxm 3.0b it wouldn't have a problem working. I guess I'm gonna order the 280's and slightly overclock it to = the 285 since i wasn't gonna overclock the 285. I'm not usually a fan of overclocking gpu's.