What Sort Of Upgrades Do You Have Planned?

Hello there! Since everybody is (rightfully) losing their minds over the fact that Alienware has decided to go soldered, I thought now would be a good time to ask what sort of upgrades those in the community have planned for their machines. At least, the parts that can be upgraded. Bear in mind I'm not a serious modder at all, so the fixes would have to be easy ones. A minimum amount of hoops to jump through is always appreciated. My quick wish list is as follows:

1) 120 Hz screen. I really want this one. Parts look a little sketchy to get lately, and I'm unsure as of yet how the 880m plays with the screen, but it's something I really want. It looks great.

2) 900 series card. I'm going to hold off on this one until all the weird BIOS compatibility issues are sorted out (or until stability through hacks get a lot better), but there's also the probability that the 900 series cards will never work properly with the 120 Hz screens, so in that case, scratch giving more money to Nvidia. Fix your product, jerks.

3) SSD drive. It would have to be a big one, like 512 MB, so I'm willing to wait for the cost to come down a bit more before investing in this item. The transfer rate is actually fairly decent for my needs on a 5400 RPM drive, so it's more for installing games than storage. Cheap storage space isn't an issue.

4) 32 GB RAM. More of an afterthought, but hey, if you can put a little more chrome on the Ferrari, why not?

What about you folks? What sort of plans do you have for your technological terrors?

 

I am going to upgrade my GTX 980M SLI to a Panther 5 (P570WM).

 

Brother Fox, that thing is just gross. Wow. More power, indeed. Have fun with your McLaren!

 

I think you could go bigger than 512 MB


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

No upgrades for me for a while. Despite being forced to use W8 my 980m's are doing a fantastic job (although no fun for OCing) for pure gaming and helping me get 144fps on my external monitor.
I have no idea what my next machine will be. Probably once DDR4 comes to a non soldered upgradable laptop sporting hopefully more cores I'll think about grabbing a new machine. I've got my hopes pinned on Clevo delivering that to me since AW are going backwards and in the business of disposable all in one consoles .
Happy for now, my next upgrade might see me reluctantly move on.. But only if what's replacing it can truly spank it and offer me freedom to upgrade ... Otherwise what's the point

 

Domination and the use of excessive force are the spice of life. That probably qualifies me as a racist to folks that prefer to invent their own definitions instead of using a dictionary.

That said, had 980M SLI functioned properly in my M18xR2 I wouldn't be buying the Clevo. There comes a point that performance trumps brand preference, and I smacked that brick wall pretty hard with the 980M upgrade. My beloved M18xR1 and R2 are not going anywhere... they're way too awesome to turn loose of them.

 

At the moment, I'm fairly happy with my M17 and see no reason for an upgrade, well until Windows 10 comes out anyways.

As for my partners M17x R4 I've already upgraded the standard hard drive to a Samsung 256gb 840 SSD and recently took it from 6gb Ram to 16gb for her music software, which she is more then happy for, plus I'm still toying with running Virtual OSX on her laptop (I don't think much of OSX)

So that's it from me, not much hardware just more software 'upgrades'

 

Since i pretty much maxed out my R4 (see sig) i guess there is no more room for actual performance gains... I mean i don't see the next line-up of GPUs being PnP so i believe this is as far as i can go.

 

Have you overclocked the display mikecacho?

 

Nope, im only running the 60hz display. How much of an OC can it achieve?

 

Not much if it is like all of mine. Between 70Hz-85Hz most likely.

 

1) 120Hz screen: Never more without it!
2) 900 series: i still don't know about it
3) SSD: i've already upgraded my AW17 with Samsung 840 500GB, nerver more without it!
4) 16Gb it's enough for me now.

 

LOL on point 2.. What do you not know about it? There is too much info about it already

 

Hehehehe i mean that i didn't have it yet

 

If i didn't hated Windows 8 so much I would probably get a 970m.

 

why not use the several programs out there that makes it look like and feel windows 7? or is it something about the OS itself you don't like?

 

Tried it but you can't lock out all of the Windows 8 menu's and quirks, I just can't get used to it. I might just wait for Windows 10 and hope it's somewhat more a mix between 7 and 8.

In the meanwhile I'll just get a better cpu first (something like a 3740qm or other high end ivy bridge, no need for a XM since I mostly only overclock the GPU anyway).

The R4 will be here for quite a while since I don't want a BGA laptop but do want to keep an Alienware.

 

I can understand where your'e coming from but 8.1 is actually a great OS once you get used to it.. sure thing, it's irritating not to have the start menu but the stability it offers + all the improvementes below the hood really make it up for me and I got used to it quite quickly.. Like you said, there is no rush.. I would suggest getting a 3820QM/3840QM though as basically the max they can be oced to is 4.2GHz on 4 cores I believe which is pretty much the limit at which the R4 can OC the CPU... The 970M/980M works in Optimus mode perfectly so worth upgrading to it when you get some cash..

 

I actively use both Windows 7 and 8.1, and have been since Windows 8 was in beta. Other than doing better at Fire Strike, Windows 8.1.1 is a pile of feces. That has nothing to do with its UI... I have that totally conquered and conformed to my will. Although personal opinions and preferences certainly do come into play, I find that Windows 7 simply works better at almost everything.

The sad part is (based on impressions from using it) that Windows 10 will have some aesthetic improvements, but it doesn't appear to fix the problems with Windows 8.X.X that need to be fixed. Overly aggressive handling of file and folder permissions, restrictions that pretend to make our machines safer (but actually give Micro$haft more control) and the RTC errors are a few examples of the nonsense that will be expected to continue.

 

1) 120 Hz screen. Checked
2) 900 series card. Checked
3) SSD drive. Checked
4) 32 GB RAM. When need to down the road
4) CPU. Currently shopping for intel 49xx series cpu.

 

1.) detachable hybrid water cooling
2.) New SSD
3.) 16GB CAS 7 1333mhz ddr3 ram
4.) AMD card that beats 980M and supports OCing
5.) New screen

Once that is done essentially a new machine with the same power as certain Alien 17's

 

Hmmmm along comes M295X MXM hell yeah!

 

I am really hoping AMD's middle chip has crossfire over PCI-E and stacked video ram to give something special.

 

I wasn't particularly impressed with R9 M295X... not a very powerful GPU from what I can tell. Even if it overclocks well, the stock core clock speeds are so low that you would need a massive overclock (around 50%) for it to be competitive with NVIDIA's current offerings running stock, and darned near 80% overclocked to keep up with a handsomely overclocked 970M or 980M. [ LINK] For a basic gamer on a low budget, it's probably a fair compromise. If it compares to 980M similar to how R9 290X compared to 980 in AnandTech's testing in this review, it will leave something to be desired with Win10 and DX12. [ LINK]

It appears the saving grace for the newer machines is they will be able to limp through life with a totally pathetic CPU under Win10 and DX12. Since the fad seems to be trending toward a truly massive dumbing-down of CPU performance, that's a stroke of good fortune for everyone that plans to join the compromise revolution and buy something with a low-TDP BGA turd CPU. Having a wicked GPU to help bridge the gap is going to be more important than before, which begs the question of where that will leave AMD, and how much more apathetic and complacent NVIDIA will become without any kind of meaningful competition, especially in the increasingly lame land of notebook gamers.

AMD could certainly do something totally unexpected and pull a rabbit from their magic hat, and I certainly hope they do. NVIDIA's monopoly seriously needs to be broken. However, I do not think the R9 M295X is going to turn out to be the silver bullet that some are hoping for.

 

Nope the R9 295MX will be a epic fail.. They really need to get some new architecture into their mobile cards+HBM memory and then only can they compete with NVIDIA... We just have to wait and see..

 

I'm going to add these to my GTX 980M cards:



And add in some liquid metal

 

Umgh what is this?

 

(To do this with, note I just placed them on the pads, they are not soldered in this picture)

 

Something you're planing to solder next to your VRAM chips... Are you going to tell us what it's about seeing as you've begged the question

 

MOSFETs involved in delivering and smoothing power to the GPU (They generate the over 100 amps your GPU needs when being heavily overclocked).

 

I noticed on my 980M cards that they are not even soldered in exactly the same location. It's like they just randomly selected whatever pad they felt like using on a whim instead of at least trying to be consistent.

 

They will be done in batches and selected for each batch, there is no design reason to worry about which is used so long as each phase has one.

 

Well I bought a used AW17 Ranger for a pretty good price last week.

I've ordered a GTX 970M from Eurocom, should be here this week.

I've also ordered a new display panel (the laptop currently has a pretty pathetic 1600x900 display). I have an AUO B173HW01 v5 incoming, should also be here this week.

I replaced the default 8GB of RAM with 16GB of Crucial Ballistix I had previously ordered from Amazon on sale.

Once that's done, this should be a pretty sweet machine. After all is said and done (including selling off the old GPU, RAM and display panel) the cost should be about the same as the deal I got on the AW17 R2 (which itself was pretty good).

Oh, I also got a 2 year extended warranty from Dell. Took looks of haggling to get a somewhat-decent price on it though.

I must say that the default display panel is horrible. I had no idea Alienware laptops were even permitted to ship with such an abortion of a screen. Why would you spend the money on an AW, yet cheap out on one of the most important parts of it?

 

People that buy Alienware (or any other brand of good quality gaming notebook) with a 900p display either do not have a clue what they are doing, or they do it on accident. I know that many assumed 1080p was the minimum standard display option for the 17" Alienware form factor and did not happen to notice the gimped resolution on the order configuration until it was too late to fix it. I find it really puzzling that they even offered such an undesirable configuration option.

Oh wait, they sell BGA CPU and GPU "gaming" machines now.

 

I would hope it is a mistake on the buyer's part. It is definitely a mistake on Dell's part to even make this abysmal 900p display an option. Poor colours, poor contrast, poor viewing angles. And 1600x900 resolution on a 17.3" display. It is actually painful to look at. That AUO panel can't get here soon enough.

 

Some people like a slightly lower pixel density, but not all 1600x900 panels are total garbage, one of those as an option would not have been odd.

 

Hmm, the GTX 970M would run me around $735 CAD.

Getting the 980m + 100w heatsink would cost me about $1100 CAD.

Thoughts? Worth the price difference?

 

Seems a bit expensive (checks exchange rates)

The 970M should be around $560 CAD (plus shipping) and $930 CAD (plus shipping) for the 980m. Are the heatsinks that expensive?

 

I've ordered my first Aw17 with 900p panel, bad mistake. I've returned after a day ad ordered a new one with TrueLife. Now i'm happy
I falling in error cause i didn't think was so bad screen.

 

Heatsinks are $85.

Don't forget I have to pay 13% sales tax on everything. So $1100 for the 980 + heatsink includes shipping and tax.

And you can't just do a straight exchange rate comparison - prices here are just higher.

 

Do you mean the AW 17 R1 or R2?

The R2 doesn't even have the option of having a 900p panel.

 

I mean R1. Look my signature

 

I did, your signature simply says AW 17 - hence my confusion. You may want to specify R1 in that case.

And I agree, the 900p panel is just awful. Resolution, colours, viewing angles, contrast - all are just plain bad.

 

Upgraded the CPU from a 3610qm to a 3740qm
Ditched the dual 840 Evo drives with still having read speed problems for some older but far more reliable Toshiba drives (still hitting 1gb/s sequential read, pretty fast drives for it's age)

Next up will hopefully be a new AMD gpu, gonna skip the 970m/980m.

 

Bought the base model and upgraded it as soon as I got it to 16GB of RAM and also a full SSD.

You can find the items you need to do this here (you save over $300 doing it yourself partly because you have the old items to sell to supplement the cost):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KQCOV5C/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OBRE5UE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HJZJI84/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1