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To me the M18x is the best looking AW laptop made so far. The R3 is obviously almost as nice since they have similar designs but construction quality difference between the two will be huge. Bottom line is they address two very different markets. The R3 is for people that want a semi portable gaming laptop and the M18x is for full on performance enthusiasts that demand the absolute best in everything. For me neither is really the ideal fit, the M14x fits that perfectly so once I review the M18x, it's going up for sale most likely.

Hello fellow Aliens, Since our ships emit different noises; Since this is NOT why we bought them; Since Dell's Engineers did not care about them; Since some of us are SEVERELY affected by those; Since at least 2 of these horrible noises can be shut-off; I created this thread hoping it will help people getting the HELL outta their DELL Most likely, you all know by now the four (yes, that is 4) different noises that come out of our ships,as they have already been described, but as a quick recap, we have: CPU Whine: Easily audible whenever one core is heavily sollicited, tend to be less audible if more cores are sollicited, or if the fans kick-in like crazy; this sound seems to be inherent to Intel's I-core's CPUs, not much can be done here I guess... Actually, you may get rid of the CPU WHINE by downloading and merging this file to your registry, and by applying the tweaks found here. Note that the specific setting which makes the CPU WHINE much more acceptable is this one: Minimum processor state = 0% GPU Coil: Easily audible whenever the GPU is sollicited, for instance if you quickly scroll up&down a web page, or if you stay idle on a web page that has a lot of flash animations; this sound seems to be inherent to GPUs, not much can be done here I guess... Transistor Off: Easily audible from the left side vent area when you plug the A/C adapter to your machine, without powering it on; this sound seems to come from a faulty transistor, capacitor, which seems to be unable to properly deal with the power (current) that is fed into it, so it kinda suffers from this and therefore emits a noise like an high-pitch EEEEEEE, constant. This sound shall stop about 10 seconds after you disconnect the A/C adapter, or as soon as you power on your system. Transistor On: Easily audible from the right side vent area when the computer is running; this sound seems to come from another/the same incompetent transistor/capacitor, which seems like the previous one to NOT be able to deal with the power that is injected in it, or so... This jerked transistor will then emit a constant but intersected, cut across high pitch noise, more or less like Morse Code, going like EEEEEEE-EEE--EEEEEEEEEE--EEE--EEE-EEEEEE-EEEEEEEEE-EE-etc... In my humble opinion, this last one is the most annoying of the four described above, as this one is giving me headaches if I work for, say more than four hours in a row on my M17X... Well, since it seems we can't count on Dell to first, aknowledge the problem, and, needless to say, to fix it, well, here's the cool part: a French guy found a way to solve it, it's not a manufacturer's solution, mind you, still it works, so let me entertain you here...What you wanna do is the following: 1. Right-click on the Sound icon of your taskbar; 2. Click on Recording Device; 3. Double-click ANY Mic in the list (Mic or Mic In or Microphone Array); 4. Click on the Level tab; 5. Slide the volume down to zero, click on the speaker on the right to mute the sound (red circle appears); 6. Click on the Listen tab; 7. Check the Listen to this device box; 8. Click Apply, then OK... 9. Believe it or not: YOU ARE NOW THE MOST HAPPY CAMPER OF THE WHOLE ALIENWARE UNIVERSE !!! Enjoy ! eYe

Yeah, so sign up Loved the "you've heard the rumors, discover the truth" quote Can't wait for those "latest products" to hit the shelves

just added a customize name plate:

Hard to get the blue right - very difficult. -Ash

lol, make no mistake - recall persuading my brother into his first m17 a few years back (and now all family/friends are owners!~ ), and have been an alienware fan for years!~ more rather the point was/is to at least take usage into account when considering the right *alienware* to fit ones needs (especially if it will be their sole/primary system), despite the very nature/tendency of the typical enthusiast/alienware customer to want the very 'biggest/baddest/bestest' regardless (such as myself even), lol!~

Otherwise here is the fan control thread for the R2. http://forum.techinferno.com/hwinfo32-discussion/65-alienware-fan-control.html My experience with it was great, and the setting that worked for me were on my post here http://forum.techinferno.com/hwinfo32-discussion/65-alienware-fan-control.html on page 15. The modified bios unlocks the display of the fan controls but they do not actually work yet, hopefully The Wiz finishes his second version soon.

It does sound pricey. But keep in mind that you are getting an equivalent of a pretty good desktop performance, with all the newest features. Whether you actually *need* it over M17x-R2 that's a different matter. But if you're replacing an old computer - why not?

Where did you hear about the 120 hz panel? This isn't the case afaik.

Hi vkingrinn, I read your post here and in the other forums and I have to say You make a lot of sense, but also we are talking about Alienware. and alienware owners are a different bread. As you probably know, if you wanted just a capable machine I bet you many people will be just as happy to have on of those Asus Gaming republic that cost half the price of the Alienware and come with almost identical configuration, or the ones that fancy themselves as connoisseurs might choose one of those useless piece of overprice crappola with the vaio sticker. Alienware owners are just not that type, they are more demanding and they like to research, discuss and customize their machines extensible. You are correct pointing out that the m17x-R3 is already pushing the envelope, but you also gotta remember than is not everyday that Alienware releases a new line, and in this case starting to look like 2 the 14 and the 18.

AMD, mostly because of the price... About the heat, you have to be careful... The TDP you find on the Nvidia site is usually meant for the whole card, whereas the AMD TDP is usually only for the die.

April 18th maybe and hopefully in Canada!

Can you try a dark blue for me?

It is still a laptop though (even if it uses a desktop CPU) so we can compare the most powerful laptop offered by Clevo vs the most powerful laptop offered by Dellienware.

Hay brian, just for info sake how much shipped did your r3 come too? I'm thinking when It comes time to order 18xs maybe if we all go through the same rep we can convince him of a group buy price? Anyone have any experience with Dell on this? Would be nice if out collective buying power could work for us.

In terms of performance the X7200 still beats the M18x but it would take 2 PSUs in parallel and a desktop CPU (poor battery life), plus the design needs improvements... so overall I prefer the M18x

The problem is you can't have both. If you want power, you have to add in adequate cooling and the build quality can't suffer at the same time. Since M14x is plastic/rubber like the M17x-R3, they obviously made trade offs with material used. Plus the AW design lends itself to being thicker than other notebooks since they keep the height uniform throughout the chasis. If they did the Asus approach and created a huge ass for it with the rest of it being thin, then most people would be fooled into thinking it's a thin notebook.

Like stam said, getting the dual GPUs is critical because aftermarket sales is expensive, warranty isn't guaranteed and most of the time you have to wait months.

I think it's because they have to use an NEC controller for those USB 3.0 ports and it likely only supports 2 ports per chip.

What sucks though is that here in US the latest models like those from HTC come with a 3-6 month delay contrary to EU and most of the time with less features... that's why I am thinking of getting an iPhone but with this delay I am reconsidering..

The GPUs should be included on your base config, if you order them yourself separately, they will cost more and you may never receive them... (same happened with the 5870M)

I said by default the fans weren't working properly. I used HWINFO32 to force fans at a decent RPM

With default clocks I am playing Metro 2033 everything maxed out and the GPU fans never kick in either, only the CPU fan is on and that's because I have it OCed

Great, thanks! I am actually also looking for a way to override default fan settings. I thought that was also the feature of the modded BIOS? (I remember reading somewhere around here that the manual fan setup exists but I can't find it now.) I'll do the Ashtere's cooling mod and was hoping the laptop could run more quiet when I am just surfing and not doing anything too CPU/GPU heavy. My idle temps for CPU/GPU are in 30-40C range with fans always at min working @ 30%.

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x/64-unlocked-alienware-m17x-r2-bios-version-1-released.html To let you know I've tried it myself, it's not bad but there is nothing special in it at all yet at version 1 that it is at except unlocking bios 1-5% overclock on non-XM cpu's. That is pretty cool, I have an XM though so it doesn't help me but very well could help you.

Hey guys, I see people here have a modded BIOS A10. Where did you get that from?