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Help me turn this M15x in to a gaming beast!!!!


shadowlid

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Hello all i recently was given a Alienware M15x from a co-worker. She stated that it did not work etc etc. Well turns out the only this wrong with it is it boots very slowly, im currently troubleshooting that problem but i believe it to be a harddrive issue or software issue leaning toward the HDD. Any way i have never owned a Alienware before and i want to upgrade this one to bring life back into it. It is a basic model I3 330m with the nvidia 240m :62: this will just not do. So im gonna upgrade the cpu, gpu, and put an SSD in it. My question is with this set up the I3 and 240m did dell put in poor cooling or is it the same as the higher end M15x at the time. If so what set up would you recommend i was thinking of the I7-740qm and on gpu im not sure i want something at least DX11 compatibility. And here comes the fun part i need to do this on the cheap. Im not shelling out $400 for a mobile GPU (well that is if i still want to be married) so what is the most reasonably price mobile GPU i can pick up that will get me gaming with this bad boy. I play games such as Arma 3, payday 2, arma 2, etc. Im not looking for this thing to max out any graphics. I have desktop and other gaming laptops for that i just thought this would be a good lappy for my wife to play on.

P.S. Im glad i found this fourm!!! Have two other gaming laptops that i cant seem to get upgrade information on! Hope i can contribute to this forum as well!!!

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Yea you should go with a 920xm or a 940xm processor (920xm should be plenty). As for gpu for a decent one expect to pay at least in the 300 dollar range. The higher end ones are 400+. Sometimes you get lucky on ebay so keep searching there. You could look for a 770m perhaps they have a good price to performance ratio.

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Ok i went with a i7-720qm and a AMD firepro M5950 same as the 6770m(I could not pass up the deal $29.99 free shipping). I read it will be a little slower in games but from what i seen no more then 5 fps nothing a slight OC wont fix. But i cant see dropping $400 plus on a GPU. When i could get a second GTX 970 for my desktop for cheaper then that not to mention i have 2 other gaming laptops.... this was more of a tinker toy then a dedicated gaming machine. Ill keep you guys posted when the parts get here. And i get them installed. Also i should not have to get another PSU/power brick seeing on how this will only pull like 17 watt more then the current set up! Thats not to say i would not upgrade the GPU later on just cant see the reason to now.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Ok i went with a i7-720qm and a AMD firepro M5950 same as the 6770m(I could not pass up the deal $29.99 free shipping). I read it will be a little slower in games but from what i seen no more then 5 fps nothing a slight OC wont fix. But i cant see dropping $400 plus on a GPU. When i could get a second GTX 970 for my desktop for cheaper then that not to mention i have 2 other gaming laptops.... this was more of a tinker toy then a dedicated gaming machine. Ill keep you guys posted when the parts get here. And i get them installed. Also i should not have to get another PSU/power brick seeing on how this will only pull like 17 watt more then the current set up! Thats not to say i would not upgrade the GPU later on just cant see the reason to now.

A 210w or 240w brick wouldn't hurt by why bother unless you really need it.

Yeah the GTX 970m is very pricey right now, but it wouldnt surprise me if along with the GTX 980m that they become some of the last new GPUs to fit in a stock M15x. Although there are always surprises waiting around the corner. Really the only reason to upgrade the GPU to a 970m is if that m15x is your primary gaming machine and you want the portability.

I'll be buying a 970m soon simply because i'll get more out of my m15x than I could on a comparably priced Desktop built from scratch. It is my high end gaming machine so it makes sense. But as you have 2 other gaming laptops you should really just treat this like a good midrange refurb job unless you want to sink money into it.

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Hi, i have an AW m15x here are my specs = op 64bit- 8GB ram-i7 720QM @160-GPU 970M 6GB (ordered installing soon) so my question is how well will it play batman arkham knight (game system requrements)-------

  • OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
  • Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
  • Graphics Memory: 3 GB
  • DirectX®: 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet Connection Required
  • Hard Drive Space: 55 GB

ULTRA System Requirements

  • OS: Win 7 SP1, Win 8.1 (64-bit Operating System Required)
  • Processor: Intel Core i7-3770, 3.4 GHz | AMD FX-8350, 4.0 GHz
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
  • Graphics Memory: 3 GB
  • DirectX®: 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet Connection Required
  • Hard Drive Space: 55 GB

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Ok i went with a i7-720qm and a AMD firepro M5950 same as the 6770m(I could not pass up the deal $29.99 free shipping). I read it will be a little slower in games but from what i seen no more then 5 fps nothing a slight OC wont fix. But i cant see dropping $400 plus on a GPU. When i could get a second GTX 970 for my desktop for cheaper then that not to mention i have 2 other gaming laptops.... this was more of a tinker toy then a dedicated gaming machine. Ill keep you guys posted when the parts get here. And i get them installed. Also i should not have to get another PSU/power brick seeing on how this will only pull like 17 watt more then the current set up! Thats not to say i would not upgrade the GPU later on just cant see the reason to now.

So do you have this up and running? I am looking at doing this at some point and I am really interested. I bought a i7-920xm when I found a good deal last year so I have that already.

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