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Usually i mod my Alienware's to make them unique but in the case of the M18X is not much i can do because i love the Gunmetal" color so the only thing i tough would be good and protect the machine was this carbon fiber vinyl over the palmrest I didn't realize how good it feels and look until i install it makes the palmrest a lot better than the stock because is not sticky and there is no more fingerprints all over the place also protect the finish what i think is really important for a lot of people

I modded my CM storm SF-19 to filter dust and to vibrate less. The result turned out to be excellent. Q&A Q: Will this block my airflow? A: Not much, further down in the guide I am showing you the famous paper test after modification. Q: Does the anti-vibration mod work well? A: There will still be vibrations, but much less. What do you need? -Rubber tape -Electical tape -Mosquito net The dustfilter mod Step 1: Cut your mosquito net to fit the underneath of your cooler Step 2: Tape it to the bottom of the cooler The anti-vibration mod Step 1: Cut your tape to the correct size. Step 2: Wrap the plastic knobs with the rubber tape. Step 3: Reattach the fans to the grill step 4: Tape the mosquito net over the grill. Airflow is still strong As you can see in this picture, the paper is lifted quite high into the air. I am holding down one corner of the paper with a rubber hammock feet. Just as a safety precaution I am not responsible if any damage occurs The End

JapzT- Here is some good info from NBR. Good Luck HOW TO: Clean Windows 7 Install (Driver Install Order) Guide for Alienware Systems

Here's the official disassembly guide for the Asus G73 (JH, JW, ...). It shows all the necessary steps to take apart the system. When you do it several times you'll see that there are faster ways than just following each step, but it's a great help anyway. In case you need some specific pictures (more detailed than in the guide), let me know, I'll see what I can do. I still have some of the pictures I took while disassembling the G73JW.

I've owned a lot of high end gaming notebooks since the Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2. I haven't owned a mainstream or a multimedia powerhouse notebook since then; strictly gaming notebooks. My first notebook mod was making a hybrid between an Inspiron XPS Gen 2 and the newer XPS M1710 (Gen 2 Lid, M1710 base and motherboard). That experience got me hooked on modding the other notebooks I got my hands on; from green palm-rested M9750s running Radeon 3870s in Crossfire to a OCZ Whitebook that was actually white and carried a TV tuner. Now comes the M17x-R2. In terms of functionality, specs and everything in respect to its time of introduction, this is the best gaming notebook I have ever owned. Attractive design, modular components (MXM, Mini PCI-e), amazing screen; it's hard to find a notebook that can beat the M17x in terms of the overall package today (and I think the M18x has the best shot of doing that). So now comes that time again to fully mod this machine before I send it off and upgrade to another gaming notebook in the late future. This time, I'm going all out: from changing the GPUs to reanodizing the frame (yes, reanodize it) and I've already gotten started, despite it being exam week for me. Now since most of you guys are notebook enthusiasts like me I'd like to hear your input of what I should add/upgrade to this machine. Here's a check list of what I've done so far: Keyboard/Key Replacement (darker, but more luminescent keys) Unlocked A10 BIOS V1 IR Remote And here is what I plan to do: 1) WiFi/Mini-PCI E replacement: getting rid of the Ultimate N-6300 to possibly the following: - Intel Advanced N 6230 (since it has bluetooth, it opens up the other Mini-PCI E slot for something like a TV tuner or a WiHD module) - Atheros WiFi/Bluetooth combo (similar to the 6230) - BigFoot Killer N 1103 (and deal with the loss of bluetooth and upgrade the second slot to TV tuner, WiHD module, or something else) 2) GPU Replacement: I already tested a 6970M in the system and there are still things to be worked out. Thanks' to Mumak's progressions, the 6970M in a R2 seems to be more practical. Though I got rid of my 1120 shader card, I bought an even better setup. Probably not as exciting and most can guess what it's going to be... 3) Optical Drive replacement: This system came with a boring 8x DVD burner. Time to upgrade to a Blu-ray burner. There's the 4x BD-R Panasonic UJ235A that's on ebay, or I can wait for the slot-load version of the UJ240 with 6x BD-R. I'm still looking for a Sony/NEC slot-load BD-R as I've had a better experience with that brand for optical drives 4) Body work: I thought about powdercoating or just spray painting, but something about anodized coating stands out more. So, I decided I'm going to go with that. I've already bought a spare lid and a spare bottom base that I've already stripped down so that it's just the aluminum pieces. I'll have to remove the current anodized coat using Lye and send it off to the nearest plating firm to coat it. That, or I can do it myself... I haven't decided on the color yet, but I'm leaning towards a dark sapphire blue. 5) Power: Thought about getting an extended life version of the M17x battery, still looking into that. All depends on how much of an improvement in average life and average decay they provide. Also, depending if the new 330w PSU that comes with the M18x works in older systems, that's another option. Nothing too fancy or ambitious. 6) Heatsink modification: This is probably the most ambitious of all my goals, but I know a few shops that could help me out with this. Basically my goal is to completely redesign the GPU heatsinks to make it more focused on dissipating heat through the vents. This includes adding three copper pipes for each GPU heatsink (the third to soak up the heat from the memory banks, which the current heatsink doesn't have. And if I can't make my own, I'll see what I can do to improve on the current one. So that's what I'm looking at now. What do you guys think? any suggestion of what to do/what not to do? This project should easily replace the amount of gaming I do and also reduce my daily caffeine intake. EDIT: Also, I'll use this post to document any updates on this project if you guys are interested.

Epica - Cry for the moon

Since I like both bands I will post one vid for each

I never really got into Nigtwish, I liked some of the guitar stuff, but I always have to change to another band after some songs... @Stevenxowens: Yeah, Within Temptation are pretty popular in Europe, didn't know the difference to the US is that big. Iced Earth - I died for you

Thanks that fixxed it

I will make pictures outside when its not raining I need help guys: How i get my themes and my backgrounds back !? Reinstalled my M18X now i got the thing for the keyboard colors back but miss a few other things. and cant seem te get all devices to wrk again in device manager... HELP!

Dont know if we have any Nightwish Fans here. I love them... Some refuse to acknowledge the new (4 yours later) lead singer but I love Annette. She's awesome in my book. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9MsW1b0QAA I present.. for your viewing pleasure... Amaranth

Sure will post some in 10-20 hours

@JapzT Congrats and thanks mate, I'm tempted by the black, especially with the red apparently backordered. If you've got a good camera could you take a detail shot of the colour outside in sunlight, I've heard it's not exactly plain black....

Im going to steer away from all of this generation's sandforce drives TBH. They have a linear auto-throttle that is constantly kicking in depending on the amount of writes left on the flash. One of the key features about sandforce drives is that they can use "cheaper nand" for the same performance - and believe me they all do. This cheaper nand has less write cycles, so before 5 years is up the drive will actually be throttled as low as 20% of its "new" speed. Not a typo. 20%. This isnt including the trim bug that still exists on the new sandforce drives. If your drive ever gets totally covered in dirty blocks trim STOPS WORKING, and you need to secure erase the drive to restore it. Which reduces writes. Which kicks in more throttling. All the tests I can see show the king of the hill to be the Crucial M4 and Crucial C300... Hilariously, they are about the same performance - c300 being better for randoms, M4 being better for sequentials. In iometer benchmarks a pair of 120gb m4's is actually faster than a pair of V3's in raid 0 by a good 20%. All the benchmarkers for sandforces new drives had to ask for a "Special" firmware version that switches off the throttling, but also disables the warranty on the drive. The IO for 4k reads on a retail drive is no ~80k like the marketing department says. Its actually closer to 5k. Thats just woeful performance. CDM uses purely compressible data so the sandforce drives run at max theoretical performance with CDM. Real world data loads dont get even close to this. -Ash

Congrats mate, let us know how it goes. Double congrats on the battery BTW, those prices are hideous....

And boom. CrossfireX with the added benefit of proper fan control and shut down/sleep/battery works thanks to a nice flash of X7200 6970M VBIOSes (master and slave)

Speedy- Your Avenger will be the envy of all Aliens. You really di a good job. Where did you get the CF vinyl? +1 rep

@chiefule you can always list your R2 on our classifieds here at T|I... someones bound to want it... heck if it was priced right I'd jump on that lol! I miss the precious! lol.

indeed, not very promising...

Glad it posted for you correctly now @Simplified Edit: Less dust in my system I have to clean from the cpu/gpu heat spreaders the better. Nice Guide.

Cool idea! Let us see some pictures of the mosquito net after a couple of weeks, I wanna see how much dust it holds back.