Got my M17x today from the dell outlet, looks like it was somebody's pet project

So my M17x arrived today. I opened it and was at first pleasantly surprised that it seemed to be in good condition for an outlet purchase.

When i opened the screen i noticed the touch panel on the right side was not flush to the rest of the case and the "end" key was depressed on the left side and the right side of the key was lifted. Of course that meant someone opened it up and broke the touchpanel in the process while bending the key. I also noticed that the right edge of the palm rest was also not flush. reinforced earlier conclusion. When i booted into windows i noticed that raid 0 wasnt setup for the 2x500gb hd's as well. I took care of that and did a respawn from disk.

So i contacted Alienware support and they are sending out a new keyboard and touchpanel.

My real concern is wondering how deep the person went into the machine? Cpu, gpu, motherboard....

I have every right to send it back. Thanks to Moo's video i fixed the palmrest.

What do you all think? remember this was bought from the outlet and i could get one in worse condition if i ask for an exchange.

 

Run it through the Dell diagnostics, then game on it for a couple hours. If it survives it's probably fine. Better to do a "burn in" while you have a warranty.

 

I would open her up and look for anything out of the ordinary. Look for scratches on any chips, glue residue from where tape use to be and is no removed, etc... These are very good indicators that the previous owner has gone into it in detail. I would also run complete tests non stop till I was sure there are no problems.

 

You get for what you paid for..lol j/k. They could have at least send out the most decent ones out of like what? 30+ Refurbs they have?

 

dam...Mandrake beat me to the punch!

 

lol thanks,

im currently getting HW monitor/cpu id and i'll grab some of the other suggestions from here. i have it at 2.93 so far no issues. though its not loaded up yet.

 

I've always maintained dell outlet is hit and miss and this post just reinforces that. My girlfriend's Studio XPS 16 was from the outlet originally and it had scratches on the lid, broken side hinge, a keyboard that seemed as if someone spilled coke on it and a few scratches on the lcd cover. Given that it had so many issues, I escalated it a few times with supervisors (the first few hung up in an attempt not to address it and even gave fake names + badge id's) and finally got a hold of one that took care of the issue by sending out a factory built replacement. The good thing is these outlet notebooks come with warranty so you can have basically every component replaced at Dell's cost.

 

What you got there is not a refurbish.

Side note: I use to remember that refurbish means only cosmetic damage. Dell has a new meaning to it.

 

90% of Dell outlet systems are sleeyO returns.

 

Haha..I wonder if he'll have the same luck returning that HP envy (because you know he will). I'm almost as bad as sleey0 so I shouldn't talk.

 

I've bought almost all my computers off the outlet and maybe 1 in 20 had any issue. Most are perfect. In this case maybe i just got someone else's reject because so far anything over 2.93ghz and it bluescreens.

I have reported the "damaged delivery" to dell's customer resolution team. Obviously i can return it based on it being someone's project and not a simple return. dell didnt check it when they got it back. They just rebricked it and put it up for sale. I bought it for 2799. so it was a great price. If it can do what i do daily on it then i'll keep it. If if has issues i'll return it.

I havent tried to increase the FSB or memory. Maybe that'll put me over 3ghz. what do you think?