*OFFICIAL* "All Powerful" M15x Owners Lounge, *Part 3*

batteries can't supply enough power to the laptop for it to perform at maximum speeds. it automatically down clocks your system. you can mess around with the settings in alien fusion to get alittle bit more performance but you can never get max performance.

 

For the record, I just noticed that creating the new theme from scratch has fixed the glitch I had with the alienhead not pulsating properly in sleep mode

 

Im a 5'10" guy and it feels extremely comfortable, weight wise. The m17x, which I had, was WAY too heavy and actually embarrassing to take out in public bc of its size. Im SUPER happy with the m15x'x size and unless you are a petite female or a dwarf, then no worries

 

Is there a 3rd fan besides the CPU & GPU fan?

Reason I ask is because I was hearing a fan noise earlier...you know...the sound of a fan about to die (like helicopter type noise)..I removed the bottom cover and it wasn't either CPU or GPU fan. Sounded like it was coming from area below the left front area. I have a SSD so there is no HD noise.

 

nope just 2 fans, are you putting it on a smooth surface. also see if the fans are dirty, they tend to suck it alot of dirt. so blow it out once in a while. i personally do it once every 2 weeks.

 

Wow, thats really strange then. It's on a NC2000 pad but I know it wasn't a fan in the pad (I removed it from the pad, removed the bottom panel and could hear the noise & was definitely not either of the two said fans. I must be tripping). oh well, it is no longer makign the noise. thanks.

 

Hey guys,
I'm considering buying the M15X after encountering problems ordering the M17x in the UK (Rep over pricing the 720qm option cause its not available on the store and the RGB screen not being available anytime soon in the UK).

Is the only problem with it the throttling issue that can now be stopped by throttle stopper? Will that void my warranty? Is it like overclocking in as much as it will be saved on the logs if anything goes wrong and they'll write off the warranty? Are there other problems I should be aware of?

Also how future proof is the M15X? Its weak point is obviously the graphics card I was just wondering if a new one would be out soon or if the GTX 260m will see me through my 3 year warranty.

I would buy a clevo and have the nice gtx 285m but I really need the 3 year accidental damage cover Dell offers cause I'm extremely clumsy (I seem to destroy laptops in a drunken haze lol).

Edit: Also do they allow you to change the hard drive yourself without voiding the warranty? I'd love to stick an intel gen 2 160GB in the bad boy =)

Many thanks,
Joe

 

No the laptop doesn't get hot at all. It is the coolest laptop ever made
(in more ways then one)

 

Unfortunately they couldnt help me with my problem either. What I wanted to change is the color... instead of Nebula Red, I wanted black. Anyways, to the owners with Nebula Red how is it? Hows the finish? Pics from the web differs from each other so I dont have any clue how this color looks in person. Thank you!

 

yes you can swap out the hard drive yourself, but keep the old hdd incase you should ever need to return it. the difference between 285 and 260m is just a few fps in games, by the time the 260m become obsolete, so will 285m. as for future, we can dream but i feel the 260 and i7 will be good enough to run most games a max for 2 year. game development has been behind hardware development and game maker won't make a game that only a few can play. and don't worry a throttling, you will probably not see it, but if you do there is a fix.

 

Edit: Inapropriate beat me to it answering a lot of my questions.

The throttling isn't as bad as it's made out to be then ? I thought it happened on most High end games, I really intend on playing Battlefield BC2 and hope it won't cause throttling, I believe it's quite demanding.

Also any further info on if using the fixes in place will void my warranty like overclocking does?

Many thanks,
Joe

 

i'm only speaking for myself, i have played many games and have yet to see the infamous throttling. as for the fix voiding the warranty, i don't really know. but they won't know if you do the fix or not, its just all software. so one quick hdd wipe will leave no trace of it. i have heard bc2 plays really well on M15x, but i have yet to try it out myself.

 

Thank you ever so much for your help, you have reassured me somewhat.

I'm almost ready to hit the buy button (EPP store with 10% discount ) but I would really like to have a definite answer on the throttling fixes i.e if they will void my warranty, just incase I need them. I've heard that overclocking stores some form of data actually on the GPU in some form of log that we can't modify. It's apparently common practice to check this before changing GPUs under warranty.
Anyone else have more info on this?

Hopefully the throttling is indeed less wide spread as you said and I won't need them and I'm very happy to hear bc2 plays really well on the M15X

Thanks again,
Joe

 

Also, i think it's good practice to call and order through the phone since you can get a better discount haggling with the rep.

As for throttling, i think it's the principle that's the issue more than the throttling itself. The throttle has a fix but the fact that Dell won't fix it is what's getting it the attention.

 

yeah try it out, if it doesn't work out then you can return within the first 21 days.

 

Yeah I understand that totally, I mean if third parties can come up with a fix you'd think the alienware techies would be able to
I would still like a bit of clarification on the throttling fixes effects on my warranty though

Cheers,
Joe

 

actually they don't consider it an issue, they claim it is powermizer doing it job.

 

Brilliant, I will most definitely put the order through first thing tomorrow then got the basket saved and everything.

I'll give the EPP store a ring instead of doing it online then as suggested. I doubt they'll give me more than the 10% already given but hopefully the sales rep will expedite my order.

Thanks for the help guys,
Joe

 

i've been hearing that getting deals is real hard now, so don't expect much.

 

Nothing is future proof. The grafics card slot is a standard one so you can buy a 280m an put it in there.

There are no "Void Warranty" stickers anywhere in the laptop.
Don't buy a Intel Drive. Buy a 120GB OCZ Vertex Turbo.

 

No I don't expect anything extra as long as I get that 10% EPP discount for being a student I'll be more than happy if the sales rep expedites my order well that'll be just terrific.
10% EPP, I have to admit is a great deal

Joe

 

Sorry I would have multi-qutoed but you replied while I was writing out my post its good to hear that I can open the laptop up without worrying too much (something I'd rather not do all the same ).

I heard that the current gen2 intel was at least as fast as the ocz vertex turbo and has a bigger capacity for the price with better support from intel. Granted OCZ do have a nice forum though

Many thanks,
Joe

 

Intel G2 (check my sig I have one) I has Less then Half the write speed as a OCZ Vertex Turbo.

Intel G2 160Gb
~250MB/s READ
~100MB/s WRITE

Vertex Turbo 120GB
~270MB/s READ
>200MB/s WRITE

-----------------------------

Intel is ALL hype. They wont tell anyone how their Flash works or how their SSD Controller works. They have the SLOWEST Write speeds of all second gen SSD's.

OCZ Tells everyone how there SSD works.

 

Ok fair enough thanks very much for the advice, I will most definitely buy a vertex turbo when it comes to it there doesn't seem to be much reason not to thanks to your reply.

Haven't been around here long and already I appreciate how good the Alienware community is
Cheers,
Joe

 

ocz turbos only go to 120 gig? grrr

 

No you can get a 250GB OCZ Vertex Turbo
They are about $900 though.

I just suggested the 120GB because he was talking about a 160Gb Intel G2.
120GB for $369 on newegg.com

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227470

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That is the one good thing about buying the 256GB SSD from Dell. It is only a $570 upgrade. Not to bad of a price really. I just would not trust it.

I think it is better to get the 120GB Vertex Turbo and save $200. + you'll have a 250GB Hard drive to pop in a $30 eSATA external enclosure.

 

Hi following this conversation about SSD with keen interest. I've got a Samsung that came with the M15x.

Two issues:
1) How do I find out if TRIM is supported?
2) What benchmarking tools do you owners use for SSD performance? (I'm sure this has been posted somewhere in the last 50 pages but forgive me if I'd rather get it straight from another owner!)

 

By the way, having reinstalled everything after wiping the entire drive, my Aliensense face recognition no longer works i.e. it tells me it's starting up / one moment please but never gets anywhere. I'm using the second most recent CC version. Thanks.

 

use this to see if you have trim enabled: if not try to find the model number.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/sorkeh

also use crystal disk mark of ssd benching

also try reinstall cc to see if it fixes the problem. but alien sense is kinda a resource hog.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/cdiskmark.html

 

here is an example of both utilities.

 

I am sure your Samsung SSD is fantastic. I'm just advising people that have not gotten one yet.

Like I said. It is a vary good deal for $570 a 256GB SSD. Not bad at all. i think the worst case is that you may have to flash the firmware on your SSD to get TRIM.

I mean really we are talking about one drag racer being 3/10 of a second faster then the other drag racer. In real life I don't think anyone could really tell the difference. But to us drag racers 3/10th is a vary big deal.

You do want to get TRIM going if you can though.

-------------
I don't mean to sound like I am backpedaling. I just don't want people pissed off thinking they got riped off.

 

just a quick question.. those with 80gb ssds...how much space u got left with the os...about 40-45gb?

 

Wow.... customer service is horribly rude now. I went on to try to get a new quote, and she was angry telling me how I keep placing orders and canceling them. Then I went ahead and told her that I've placed and canceled 1 order due to horrible customer service and that I have a few different builds quoted. She then went to check and apologized. All I was trying to do was to get an advanced warranty onto one of my quotes, but she told me is was going to be $99.... When on the site I told her it said $89. .

 

i think you will have more than 45 left, my guess would be around 55-60gb. win 7 around 16gb and minus a few gb for the stupid conversion.

 

The long wait comes to an end ... I will get my M15x tomorrow!

My Specs: Cosmic Black - i7 920xm - 260M - 1080 Screen - 8 GB 1333 - BR-RW- 500 GB HDD - 3 years care

 

sweet congrat, btw really nice specs.

 

man slow day at work. i'm so bored...... can someone break something, so we can have something to workout. lol or better yet go off jstarnino so he can write one of his infamous rants.

 

install latest CC and try to make your alienFX work properly

 

hahaha thanks but done that already. everything works fine.

 

I have to say you are wright steelcurtain11 Dell customer services sucks. After dealing with them on the phone I just got mad and order it online. It cost me $27.00 more online but didn't have to deal with customer service people.

 

Its so hit and miss...The last guy I dealt with in El Salvador was top notch and all about the customer. He was professional, worked with me to give me some discounts and also threw in a headset. Ive pretty much learned one thing....The indian department is HORRIBLE. If you hear an indian accent, hang up.

btw, I have nothing against Indian people.

 

You are going to Love it the minute you push the start button! Enjoy.

 

lol, its always the guy with the most heavy accent that has the most american name.hahahhah i had this one rep that i can barely understand and he told me his name was steve. sure.........lol

 

Yeah and when you tell them you don't understand them....well, they get an attitude and it's downhill from there.

 

I loved it the minute I saw the blue glowing ring around the DC plug.

 

Thank you! It is my first Alienware. My games should run fine in full resolution (Age of Empires III, Civ IV, Anno 1404 ...)

And I also purchased it for developing photos with Adobe CS4 and LightRoom.

I ordered it at 02/01 ... so it took more than three weeks to get it ...

I will report, as soon as I have tested it.

Greetings,
Sascha

 

Hell of a computer you got yourself!
You lucky rich s!

 

75GB Partitionable
74GB after a small /boot partition and the rest one big / root parition. Then after the ext4 filesystem is installed on the / root partition. There is 74GB of usable space.

My Archlinux OS is 2.46GB

So,

I have 71.5GB usable space.

Code:

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2              74G   31G   39G  44% /
udev                   10M  260K  9.8M   3% /dev
shm                   2.0G     0  2.0G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                 3.0G  188K  3.0G   1% /tmp
tmpfs                 3.0G     0  3.0G   0% /var/tmp
/dev/mmcblk0p1        7.4G  5.7G  1.8G  77% /mnt/sd
/dev/sda1             202M   15M  177M   8% /boot

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
224 heads, 56 sectors/track, 12460 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 12544 * 512 = 6422528 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4b2d346c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           5          38      213248   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              39       12460    77910784   83  Linux

-----------------

My VM of Win7 is 11GB with M$ Office 2007 Enterprise. (All stolen key codes HA! M$ - I've now installed Win7 with this Activator on 5 Laptops and 3 VM's) But windoz gets bigger and bigger every day. It is up to 13GB now that it is a few weeks old with NO new software installed.

 

hey i hear windows slowly expand to about 16gb max.

 

Anyone know what game they're displaying on the m15x page? The elf guy popping out of the screen with the hammer.