-->*OFFICIAL: Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge*<--

I spend two hours on the phone and just because i wasn't the one who bought it the are not able to send me nothing, they said if i could get a copy will be better. The CD's for the M1730 are all the same, it just make it easier for me to reinstall and install the drivers. If you can send me a copy i will really appreciate it.

Let me know please who can help me.

 

If you could take a nice, high res lid pic of your blue m1730 that would be fantastic!

Anyone with a red m1730?

ifti, can you buy one in red as well and take a picture of that too?

 

Cheers for the link, much appreciated

cool, will read through it all later
Maybe there is an easier way to install the CPU after all!

Remind me on Sunday

lol, will take some pics later, playing with my cooler at the moment!
Ive considered buying the red and white to complete the collection..........hmmm..........lol

 

Ive received the cooler.
Ive created short video of it, and will upload it later on tonight.

First inpressions are good.

The cooler is well built, and the aluminium is always cold to the touch. Looking at the bottom you could probably cut the spare fan bays out and insert more fans with some simple modification - but whether that is necessary is unknown at the moment.

The inside of the unit looks hollow. So there are no ducts etc stopping you make extra holes. BUT if you do make extra holes, the air will be pused straight up through them, and wont come down to the bottom of the cooler so effectively.

When on, the cooler is VERY quiet. On the lowest speed I had to check it was on. Even at the highest speed its very quiet. At the highest speed it sounds like the laptop fans are on at low speed.

I can actually feel the cold air coming from between the cooler an dthe laptop from all sides, so its definaely doing its job. Ive only had my system on 5 mins or so, but at the moment my GPU temperature is still at 46c! Whereas before it would climb quite quick, the temperature is climbing much slower now.

Ive post the video up later, but it seems pretty good right now. Im definately happy with it so far......

 

Do you find that your fingers get really cold after a while when running the fans a fully blast if you're using an external mouse? It really gets to me so I put a little paper in between to shuttle the air else where - you should try this too before cutting holes in anything. Get 3 strips of paper, roll them up into maybe 1cm wide rolls and place them at the left, bottom, and right. That way ALL the air goes to the back - i.e. via the cooling fans! It cheap as chips and doesn't mess up the lovely finish on the aluminum!

 

Cant wait for that Nvidia 174.20 driver!!! Look slike quite a performance increase!!!

Thats actually a pretty good tip!!!
Do you have your laptop a little further down, or do you just leave it flush with the cooler?

 

hi guys
i had a problem with my xps notebook when i opened it out of the box. i tried directly connecting the ethernet cable from the modem (not router) to the back of the 1730, and i had an unidentified network problem where it essentially wouldnt connect to the notebook. The recommendations were:
1) Reinstall driver for network card - FAIL
2) Flash old bios with new bios update - FAIL
3) Disable McAfee through Safemode - FAIL.
The other thing I noticed was that I got the grainy (the Sharp one due to the SHP149 code on the Device Manager) LCD. I have now asked for the system to be returned due to these problems, however Im just thinking of getting it serviced next day cause I really like it. Anyone have a part number for the screen for the 1730 (the good one) cause the techsupport lady tells me that there is only one part number and it doesnt guarantee that Ill get it which is getting me kinda irritated.
Please any kind of advice would be greatly appreciated

 

Jezz! Don't sound so surprised!

At the moment I'm using a 15.4" Dell Laptop so it's a little different than 17" but I would image the best results would be got by moving it down a little to the front.

There's probably more attractive ways of making it permanent, like if you were to get some of those little black fuzzy strips that you can put under door to stop drafts - i.e. draft excluders. 3 nice thin ones could be stuck onto the cooler, and that way - volia all air to the back vents and no cold fingers!

So Ifti you think this might be a big chunk of your cooling issue sorted??

I definitely going to do that when I get mine!! (laptop that is!)


72oo

 

The laptop still gets hot, but it gets hot slower. When the fans kick in and lower the temp down, the cooler makes sure they go up a lot slower altogether, so the fans kick in less.

Once I figure out how to open the damn thing up I may try installing another 1 or 2 fans as well lol I want it running like ice! lol

 

Unfortunately the CC person is correct. There is only 1 part number. The actual screen you receive is down to luck.

 

So do you think I should risk it and get it replaced then?

 

^^^^

Could you get the service guys to come and replace the screen within your return week and if you don't have it (an LG screen) by the end of the week then call up and say you want to return??

 

Hello, great forum here on M1730 info. I have gone through about 150 pages of the ~525 or so. I hope you stand some a couple of questions from a newb.

1. I ordered the M1730 on 2/25 and I have coming a Intel Core 2 Duo T8300(2.4GHz, 800Mhz, 3M L2 Cache) processor. I see most of you have the 2.8Ghz processor. That was not even an option during build. How much worse off am I going to be?

2. I couldn't go with the 8800m SLI due to cost constraints, but did get the 8700m SLI. I have gone through lots of posts, is the 167.51 driver the best combo of speed and stability right now?

3. So far I have figured out that I have to turn on SLI when the thing boots up. Check the chipset driver version, turn off auto-defrag, UAC, disable Windows defender (have my own AV). Any other tweaks I should know about?

4. Will I need a third party tool to install non-Dell approved drivers? I have a Dell I9100 (It's a beast too) with an ATI Radeon 9800. To install more up to date drivers, I had to run a third party utility to run the latest driver set.

And Ifti, saw your vids on Youtube before I came here. Great show, I am sure I will be watching them many times as I plan my upgrades.

 

im also getting 2 gigs and installing the 2 2 gig cards i have already and the HDD's are only 200 more so the price differnce is still noticable
but yea you are awsome teach me you wise barganing ways

good review sofar ill be waiting on the vids to go with it

thats a really good idea that way it cools off your ram and HDD's and then the air passes to cool off your GPU's and processor which produce more heat so it would have the most effective cooling for the entire laptop

You and ice cold you should just get a mini AC and rig it up to it or maybe look into that liquid nitrogen cooling

 

I'm a very happy XPS 1730 owner.
My conf is : 7700, 2 SLI GPU 8700M, 2GB ram.

I have to say at the beginning I wasn't so enthusiastic, because SLI conf wasn't properly configured and manage SLI settings is not so intuitive (Crysis and Call of Duty 4 experiences were really "unhappy")... but then, whit the help of XPS owner community, I was able to set properly the graphic system, now I really satisfied about performances .

It's a great machine...

your Pet

 

1. You'll still be more then OK. The 2.8 is obviously better, and is factory overclockable. Nevertheless its the GPU that makes the bigger impact when gaming.

2. I used the 167.51 drivers, and had little issues with them. If you are not geting BluRay then you may want to try some other driver from LaptopVideo2Go to get some better performance....

3. I think you've got it pretty much covered there. Just the usual Windows tweaks will make a big difference.

4. You can get up to date drivers from LaptopVideo2Go. They are already modified to work with mobile chipsets...

Hope that helps

 

not only download driver from laptopviedo2Go... he could install nHancer to tweak SLI rendering modes, and at last try to install Omega drivers.
There's much to do to improve perfomances...

your Pet

 

Microsoft does not allow the user to make copies of Vista Installation disks, the person who sold you the laptop should have supplied the original disks as well.

You can download the contents of the Resource CD, which are drivers, from the Dell Web site.

 

Zalman overview video is up on Youtube - I'll be updating the links in the M1730 videos thread shortly.

For now - here it is.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU1Y-7xPjqQ

 

Yeah I solved the issue. You're right it wasn't raid drivers, it was dell media direct that was corrupting my OS. I've just been avoiding DMD and have had zero issues since. I can run it fine off vista, but trying to boot into it constantly corrupts the vista install.

Regarding everest, it's $35US for a full personal version of the software. I tried getting a few "free" copies off some torrent sites that were nothing but viruses and spyware. I gave up, caved in and bought a copy. I figure for 35 bucks it's worth it for the added functionality of the mini LCD on my laptop over the course of 3 years that I'll have this thing.

Temperatures, with room temperature around the 25-27C mark, I was getting 84C under full load running a graphic intensive game for 2+ hours (playing for 4 straight hours didn't increase it any further, I think that's the peak). Having this cooler in the "optimal" cooling position brought it down to roughly 68C. That's a 16C drop, money well spent I would say.

 

Yeh I think Im going to buy Everest as well TBH.
It seems pretty useful.....just for the LCD display!

 

No difference in temperatures. In reinstalling I figured out why my temps are so high. I'm capping out around 74C now instead of 78C with the notebook cooler. I had originally installed desktop drivers for the 8800 GTX, and even though I uninstalled and cleaned the drivers in safe mode, I think remanents of the desktop drivers were still there when I installed the dell supplied 8800M GTX drivers.

But yes, temps are the same. 100% myth. As long as the memory timings and speed are the same (most 800HMZ DDR2 ram will run at 667, it not all of it) temperature will be the same.

 

Thanks, check out http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/index.php?sort=date&w=1920&h=1200 for tons of free high res wallpaper. I think mine is on the 3rd or 4th page if you filter this resolution type.

 

Keys are built into the install disk. I wouldn't recommend anyone sharing their disks with you. Contact dell for a replacement, they'll accomodate free of charge.

 

Awsome job on the videos Ifti. +rep for you ^^.

I never got a chance to see them before today since I usually read this forum at work (they block youtube, image shack, etc.)

 

Im hitting the same kinds of temps, even with the cooler. Although when the laptop fans kick in they lower the temp to around 58c, and the it takes a lot longer to get back up to 70 with the cooler on....
Still thining of a way to cool it further....

Cheers mate





On another note - Just purchased Everest since I would like to see my temps etc in the LCD display. Downloading now......

 

I'm writing here because I see many technical questions and answers, I have to say haven't received an acceptable solution from official Dell Support :smileysad: (3 messages..) so I'm trying here, hope to be more lucky....

I have a big problem with Media Direct booting from "house" button.
Few days ago Dell Media Direct told me that wasn't able to find any drive, and it make auto shutdown... after some reboot it started in low res mode and I suppose 16 (or 32) colors...

Now I'm not able to use Dell Media Direct from the "house" button because it start in low res and 16 colors mode, and it is not usable..

I have to say that Media Direct from Vista work perfectly.......

Is it possible to fix Media Direct without erase all data in Vista partition (reinstallation)?

There's a way to make DMD work properly?

Could someone help me to fix it without loss my data ? .....

 

Hello All. Busy working and playing with my Beast when I can.

Just wondering if anyone knows how to get LCD to show plug-ins for games. Supposedly it is capable of doing so for certain games. Just give a shout out if anyone has an idea. Thank you!

 

* America's Army
* Thrillville: Off the Rails
* Bioshock
* Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
* Commandos: Strike Force
* Crysis
* Empire Earth III
* Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars
* Falcon 4.0: Allied Force
* F.E.A.R.
* F.E.A.R. Extraction Point
* F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate
* Gears of War
* GTR
* GTR 2
* Halo 2
* Hellgate: London
* Medal of Honor: Airborne
* Neverwinter Nights 2
* Rainbow Six: Lockdown
* Shadowrun
* SimCity Societies
* Soldier of Fortune: Payback
* Star Wars Battlefront II
* Supreme Commander
* Tabula Rasa
* The Witcher
* TimeShift
* Titan Quest: Immortal Throne
* Tomb Raider Anniversary
* Unreal Tournament III
* Vendetta Online

-Added in 2.00-
* Battlefield 2142
* Civilization IV
* Dawn of War
* Dungeons'n'Dragons Online
* Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
* Gun
* Hereos of Might'n'Magic V
* Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
* Prey
* Rise of Legends
* Star Wars: Empire at War
* The Movies
* Titan Quest
* War Front - Turning Point

A few to mention, get the latest driver for the g15 screen here: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/434/3498&cl=gb,en

They should automatically activate in-game. (They do on my g15)

Ah, someone with a red m1730, do you have a camera?

 

Nice vid ifti i was hopin to get an inside look at that though
I would have though u would mention 72hundred's idea about the strips to direct the air up just a thought for the next one
but i like the way it fits cant wait to get mine

 

Wow this thread moves quick! Still don't have broadband, dial-up is a nightmare.

Ifti, its taken me ages to download half of your Zalman cooler Youtube video review. From what I've seen so far, nice job! Another informative review, which covers just about everything I wanted to know.

Spent most of yesterday hobbling around the local mall, trying to find a bag for my machine. Didn't achieve much. Checked out Strandbags, Target, K-mart, David Jones. DJ's had a couple, but I didn't like the look of them that much, and they were around the $169AU mark. Not thanks.

Looks like I'll be hitting up rushfaster.com.au, yes they're expensive, but they seem to be good.

 

You made me remember that those have louder cooling systems...I didn't deny that it performed better in CPU bound taks...but heat development prevents getting full performance when you need it most (=games) so it is not really worth it. And to prevent heat, the CPU reduces performance automatically.

Besides, over time all laptops get heating problems and lose performance, it is just Dell will fix those for free and on site, whereas the poor Sager/Rock/Clevo customer gets deprived of his system (they guarranty policy doesn't allow you to open up the system yourself like Dell does) for a period of time.

I have been through this and I would never ever again purchase a laptop with a desktop CPU especially as long as the guarranty policies don't get improved.

But my point was not only regarding the CPU. Dell is the only company able to optimize the cooling so much, because they are not dependent upon the MXM platform.

 

Well just spoke to Dell. First question they asked was do I have internet... Which I responded with a no too :S

So we went through the painful process of re-installing the webcam drivers/program, which I've done already, to find it still asks to plug in a webcam. They're sending a tech out Tuesday. I have to speak to customer care about getting a remote sent out, but they're closed. So yeah, not too happy with Dell at the moment, but hey, these things happen I guess.

I seem to remember posting about how I didn't want to send back my original machine because everything was perfect on it... Got my new machine, yes, its powerful and performance is great, but now I have an annoying problem with it lol.

 

Unfortunetly Dell isn't very useful when it comes to their own software....lol

I spent 3 days trying to get dell media direct to work. I'm very savy with computers, build tons, managed tons, I know my way inside out of them hardware/software-wise.

I eventually caved in and called dell. They told me they didn't know how to fix my problem and couldn't help me. They're suggestion was to not to use it.

My suggestion is to google a method to kill that DMD button and never use it outside of Vista. The software is junk and even dell admits it.

I've gotta say at least yours boots into DMD. The only thing my "house" button does is corrupts my vista. From what I've read there's no battery savings using DMD from boot, so your best to just always use it inside of vista anyways.

 

So are they offering the 8800 upgrade yet?? Anyone get a response? I keep getting the $2K USD offer... not up for paying three times what it's worth... I'd prob go 1K... but not 2, that's just stupid *blankstare*

 

Hey 3nzo, there's more then just these.

I'm really dumbfounded by how many others applications use this lcd.

I espcially like how it gives you all the ventrilo details when you're connected (who's talking, connection speed, who's joining/leaving the server).

I'm playing vanguard right now and there's 2 windows the lcd supports for this game. 1 is a compass/navigation mode, another is party mode so it monitors all your parties stats and displays in a easy to read format.

 

Yeah there's just no way you can justify spending 2k on gfx cards. You could make an entire desktop for that price.

 

I didn't have such harsh probs with media direct... I've reinstalled dozens of times with both 32bit and 64bit... gonna go back to 64 bit tomorrow I think - or trial it anyway again. Anyone here have probs with 64bit that made them resort to 32bit?

Media Direct is a two part deal - first part is formatting your HD with the disc - you boot off it and let it format the HD for the pre-operating system part (the part the home button activates)... then after you install windows, you install the second half. I've done it manually and had it work fine... BUT I hate it and end up using media center for most everything except powerdvd ultra for bluray... so go figure, mine works and I don't use it?

TBH it's not worth the hassle and I'm pretty sure Dell just doesn't want to deal with telling people to reformat their HDs and lose it all and hope the restore still works from the recovery partition which probably gets deleted from the media direct disc too... but I don't recall it all... my HDs are clean Plus I backed up the WIM from the factory partition to an external HD just incase I want to go back to the defaults (why?).

So how does everyone feel about 64bit? Have enough people tried it to talk me out of it again? Last time the only thing I couldn't get was quickset to work in 64bit... and my lights kept changing colors and annoying the crap out of me.

 

Anyone tried Frontlines:Fuel of War out yet?

 

I was on 64 for some time on my M1710. No real problem with finding drivers BUT

1. I hated the fact that there are 2 "program files" folders, 1 for 32 bit programs and 1 for 64 bit programs. It made the Hard Drive folder architecture look untidy and I always had to remember which program got installed where! I am a bit anal about hard drive orderlyness...
2. The right mouse click options were more numerous, it just complicated everything.
3. There is no real performance gain

The big issue with 64 bit is that Vista needs to preserve 32 bit functionality and as mentioned about this resurfaces at every corner. Not worth the hassle.

Also one common misconception is that under 32Bit some memory cannot be used when you have 4GB. This is wrong. the amount not shown is used as shared memory for several core processes.

The update to Vista 64 only costs around 20 USD if you already have Vista 32 installed. but I wouldn't purchase it again (I sold it with my M1710 on ebay).

 

Since the X9000 is now available I will send back my X7900 system. I only had it for 2 days. I knew I would send it back, just couldnt wait to get a look at it.

The cool thing is the X9000 costs almost the same as the the X7900 (the gap between those processors and the other ones is similar). I am sure my account manager will update my order without changing the price tag...Overall I will have saved 1800 USD just through negotiating ;-)

When I think that some people purchased the 8700 system for 50% more than what I am paying...

 

Cheers.
I didnt think up that idea, and didnt hear about it from 72hundred until after I made the video. Couldnt be bothered to remake it! lol

Some silly people have two

 

Ok, with all the temperature talks, what are the danger levels for the GPU and CPU?? At what temperature can they get to and still be relatively 'safe' and what do they get to before overheating?
Anyone know?

Ive got Everest running now, with al my temps etc on the LCD display, so I'll be keeping an eye on them
Everest is great by the way. Seeing the info on the LCD while gaming is so easy now!

 

Hi!

I live In france and I bought a XPS M1730 yesterday.
I would like to know where to buy the "Multimedia Cable Kit " (Multimedia kit includes a component video and SPDIF adapter, a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, and a DVI-to-VGA adapter).
On French dell's site, it's not possible to order it.
Is it possible to order it on DELL US please or on an other place?

Thanks very very much for your answer.
Best regards.
Fred.

 

Rig customer care and ask them. They send me a DVI to HDMI cable straight away, so they definately have them available.....

 

Thanks for your answer Ifty...
I've got an other question: I bought my M1730 with 2GB DDR2 667Mhz.

Is it possible to order 4GB DDR2 800Mhz (I don't understand Why Dell provide 667Mhz RAM whereas Penryn T9300/9500 have a 800Mhz front bus....)

Which RAM could I buy?

Many thanks!

 

It is not a misconception, Vista/XP 32 bit cannot use full 4GB ram due to address space limitations. The exact amount of memory that will be available will depend on the system, but is usually in the region of 2.8 - 3.2GB. Please check your facts before posting.

 

Dear Kermit

Really TnX for your answer , is not a fix to my problem, but you confirm what I supposed. I'm happy to hear that not only I have problems with this damn DMD. Simply I won't use DMD from "home" button, that's it.
I won't spend time to reinstall it because there are high probabilities to have problems again.

TnX Again
Pet

 

I saw in some others threads that the LCD display of xps 1730 is a logitec g15.
Is that true ? that mean installing g15 software from Logitec will add some features ? as for example show games updates ? or show system temperatures ? and if yes... how ?

The last is important for me because I experienced an overheating problem, ....

TnX to all Pet

 

Peter it is a Logitech G15 LCD display, the same as on the G15 keyboard. Any software that works with the G15 keyboard works with the Dell XPS M1730's display. A few pages back someone linked to the Everst temperature monitoring tool. Its a great tool that enables you to monitor temperatures on the laptop, but it does cost $35US. Do a search, you'll find heaps of programs that you can use with it. Also, check logitechs site, they list all the games that can use the screen.

Just installing Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance now. This game will be an excellent test of this machines power!!