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@freedomofthedarkendheart Im reading that you have an X51 with the i5 processor I will like to ask you if you can confirm if yes or no the i5 gets to 3.3 ghtz on Turbo I know he is cloked at 3 ghtz but I haven't found an answered to my question, It is clear that the i72600 don't Boost to 3.8 it only boost to 3.5 and this is been made by Dell to avoid overheating issues, so for those who dont know it is useless to buy any CPU with K as it will wont work ! Added after 9 minutes: x51 Pink issue read this >> x51 - The screen turned pink - the computer shut off - Alienware Forum - Alienware Club - Dell Community

1. I think one big drive is likely to be less hassle, I would be looking at an M4 or one of the new Vertex 4 drives. You should avoid previous generation Sandforce controlled drives. 2. A better CPU will help everything and is a highly worthwhile upgrade. Taking several small steps can be appealing in terms of $, however I believe it is a false economy overall, better to jump straight to the top of the tree IMO. If this is not a priority then you should look at the upcoming ivy bridge CPUs, gains are debatable at this point but should become clearer when they are released. 3. If the M17X has the same slot loading system as the M18X then I believe it's difficult to find bluray drives (could be totally wrong though ). An external sounds perfect for your needs as the desktop size drives are substantially cheaper as a rule. As for brand, Lite-on, Pioneer, Sony and Samsung are brands I've had good experiences with. 4. No idea, but lots of pics if you manage it. 5. See above. 6. 8gb is a bunch of RAM already, 16 is huuuuuuuge. As noted, using 8gb to create a RAMdrive would give big speed gains for certain programs. 7. Killer wireless is a great option for the price as mw86 said. I think you covered pretty much everything else, except to say the price of the best thermal compounds available is one of the cheapest upgrades you can do, dropping a few degrees can make all the difference. Just my thoughts but I hope it's helpful.

the i7 2960XM/2920XM is the best as on laptop monkey its barely over the next best 2860qm in price but can run a ghz faster without breaking a sweat... Brian and Michael might have theirs at 4ghz all cores turbo and heats not an issue i am using 4.2 but i keep my fans on high as precaution of heat build up. Maybe a 512-256gb SSD... and getting an optic bay HD adapter may benefit of putting a 1tb mobile hd as a second internal HD but it will run at Sata 1 speeds for that drive fine for DATA since it can go up to 150mb a sec still... and they make external cases for our slot load and standard optical bay drives for usb probably even find usb3 but unneeded as those media dont require high bandwidth. The Killer Wireless card seems to be a worthwhile upgrade at $43 since its been shown to get dramatically faster transfer speeds vs alternate wireless cards:) There is one how has tried to do a mod to the Alienhead led like that in one of our threads not sure if it was too successful... Thge 16gb wont hurt and it can be noticed on our modern OS because the OS of today been utilizing more ram better than they used too and even not running crazy apps the rendering you like to do is worth the ram plus if you have loads extra in your OS a ramdisk could improve your render times if you render to the ram disk and even house the 3d app in the ram disk I think you'd see much faster full AA renders in Bryce Staff Sargent the more SSD or cpu upgrades loading times drop large amounts and even boot times. and ram really does help in games its understated how even the aspect that ram is shared the graphics card to give it even more fast access texture memory and the modern OS and GPU make suse of that hence why we have on board videoram of the gpu plus shared graphics memory usually 4gb or higher the more ram you have its higher in a system with 8gb over 4gb and even higher at 16gb-24-32gb http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x/1675-interesting-comparison-killer-wireless-1103-vs-intel-wifi-6300-a.html

well tested out the unlocked version again and it works. Not sure what most of it does LOL but it works.

I think the main advantage of custom built desktops is that you get warranty for individual parts. That said, the failure rates are probably way lower as well. Oh and last but not least important, you don't have to deal with the miserable excuse of Dell "tech" "support". Also, you can cherry pick whatever parts you want for your comp. You don't need to rely on Dell or someone equally (in)competent to do it for you.

4/20 sale at head shop. yeah!!! picked up new awesome piece.

Well... we've got a response... and a status update. Not actually what Ihoped for. Status is now "not planned", here's the post from "Dell David_V": Not exactly something I'd call great news... but we'll see what the future brings. Btw, here's the profile of "Dell David_V", taken from Ideastorm: Pricing Analyst for the European division of AW... I think I have to write to him sometime regarding the European pricing strategy, his analyzing is way off. I hope it's the same for his predictions regarding the screens in AW systems.

From Eric G blog: M18X R2 GPU options:2x Radeon HD 7970M (CrossFire) 2x GeForce GTX 675M (SLI) GeForce GTX 660M