Ixel

Hi all, I have a question. I am considering going the SSD route, but prices remain fairly high still, especially UK retailers, so I am thinking of perhaps getting a 100-200GB size range SSD. Well, firstly any recommendations for an SSD of that size range, not so fussed about performance as long as it beats my current hard drive (Seagate Momentus XT), which I'm sure most would due to their low response time for a starter. Secondly, the question, I am going to use the Momentus XT in a USB3 caddy, but was wondering before I go ahead (in the next 1 hour or so before order cut off time) if it's worth doing. Will the speed of USB3 be good for running large games or files off the Momentus XT via a USB3 caddy?

In my personal opinion the colour profile I am about to share here has changed my colours radically, what was once a blue tinted grey is now a much more realistic grey for example. Colours stand out slightly better too. Anyway, a few days ago a new review was posted on Notebookcheck about the M14x, if you have some time and are interested in their opinion then read the review, I have and have to say it's detailed and interesting. The link to the review itself is Review Alienware M14x Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews. The link to downloading the ICC colour profile file is http://www.notebookcheck.net/uploads/tx_nbc2/ICC_M14X.icc. Best way to download this is right click and save as, don't directly click on it or it may not correctly download. To install this profile (for newcomers, Windows 7): 1) Right click on your desktop 2) Left click on Screen Resolution 3) Left click on the 'Advanced Settings' link 4) Left click on the 'Colour Management' tab 5) Left click on the 'Colour Management...' button 6) Check the 'Use my settings for this device' checkbox 7) Left click the 'Add...' button 8) Find the ICC profile you downloaded and choose that 9) Ensure it's the default profile, if not then left click the 'Set as Default Profile' button 10) Left click the 'Advanced' tab 11) Change the 'Device Profile:' to 'System default (Monitor_10.05.2011_1)' 12) Left click the 'Change system defaults...' button 13) Repeat steps 6 through 11 as necessary 14) Finally check the 'Use Windows display calibration' 15) You should notice a difference, hopefully for the better, you can now close the dialog windows This is done at your own risk, there might be other ways of applying colour profiles that I don't know about, this is the first time I've applied a colour profile before. Finally, this colour profile does NOT guarantee complete accuracy of your own screen on the M14x, all screens have slight differences and therefore should be calibrated with the Spyder 3 Express device.

I can only wiggle mine about 5-10 degrees either way, hardly anything worth worrying about in my view, but 45 degrees is a bit much.

Hi all, So yeah, this faint hissing that some people get with their laptop, sometimes even a slight crackle occasionally, has proven to be annoying to me with wearing headphones. You hear this sound usually when nothing is playing, yet some devices are capable of not producing this background noise. Anyway, this post will hopefully help you: - Fix the problem - Download possibly newer Realtek drivers (this post is oriented towards the ALC665 audio) Driver date: 2011/6/3, assuming that's year/month/day then that's newer than the Dell driver I believe. I noticed a big difference when I went to the Playback Devices and disabled all enhancements there. Anyway... 1) Get the latest, and possibly newest Realtek audio driver if you're using ALC665, from Realtek. 2) Go to the Control Panel, Sounds, Playback Devices, Properties of your sound device listed there, Enhancements tab, and then check the 'Disable all enhancements' checkbox. Reboot if necessary and hopefully your hissing won't exist anymore, mine doesn't at least. Hope this helps. If you try this then please post feedback, if it has helped somewhat, completely, or not at all. I might have just been lucky. Remember the above is at your own risk. I discovered after disabling all enhancements that re-enabling them doesn't seem to work, unless I have to reboot which is probable. Either that or reinstall the driver.

Hi all, I'm seeking some opinions and advice from those who are reasonably confident at overclocking components on a system. I've overclocked the GPU to 775/1120 without artifacts, much higher either crashes the system or causes artifacts to start appearing. The CPU is using a bus speed of 103.1MHz with turbo settings overridden to the ones used in that Youtube video some of us are familiar with. Anyway, to the point, I recently bought the memory mentioned in the thread title, Kingston KHX 1600Mz DDR3 NonECC SODIMM Memory Module (2 x 4GB). I was wondering if I should do anything much else than what I've done, which is set XMP to use Profile 2. Profile 1 has the following settings: 7-7-7-20 at 1333MHz Profile 2 has the following settings: 9-9-9-27 at 1600MHz Alternatively I can obviously manually specify the above information as separate values which don't use the XMP profiles. Let me know your views on this. Many thanks.

PCFx 0.5 released, changes include: + Added integrated support for reading sensor data without depending on third party programs. + Added support for status lights. + Added a 64-bit version in addition to the 32-bit version of PCFx. * Changed temperature gradient to have a minimum low of 1C and a maximum high of 100C, colour depending on what the current temperature is of course. Previously this was low of 40C and high of 100C. * Changed GUI width to be wider, to allow for wider dropdown boxes due to the longer texts in them now. * Changed delay between updates from 200ms to 300ms, some hardware limitations made issues from too fast updates. - Removed dependency on CoreTemp for sensor data.

In the next week or two, when I get time between final assignment and exams, I'll be adding what I hope will be a way to automatically identify zones on AlienFX devices. So my program will ask the LightFX library for the zones the primary device supports (it's not likely there will be two AlienFX devices on one system, but possible, sadly I can't support secondary devices for now) and query each zone for the 'description', 'description' will usually give an output like "Keyboard Left", and then once it has the 'description' and recognises that 'description' it will associate the zone with PCFx accordingly. Call it a way of automatically calibrating to support your AlienFX device.

Update for 0.3 alpha released. + Added fading gradient options to the dropdown menus with varying speeds. + Added tray/notify icon support. * Optimised code further, removed .NET assembly LightFX.dll and changed it to work with the LightFX.DLL in System32 folder.

Good news, adding support for HWiNFO32 should be possible, though it's not a brilliant solution, it's easy enough to implement. Mumak has explained how to go about it and I'll explain nearer the time what one may have to do in order to get it to work with your copy of HWiNFO32 as he explained to me. I'll look into adding it into 0.3 which will hopefully be ready in the next few hours. Also I'm eliminating the need to use the LightFX.dll supplied with the program, and instead link up with the unmanaged library at C:\Windows\System32\LightFX.dll. This will eliminate many issues with referencing .NET assemblies and then finding they're a different version on another system.

Strange, when I use your DLL in mine it throws the same sort of error upon executing the compiled EXE. Perhaps it does that because I'm using a different version of AlienFX on my laptop, where as yours it may work as that's your version. Your DLL is definitely different in size to mine so perhaps there's a DLL specific to each model, though personally I find that a bit odd and a badly designed approach. In a few moments I'll upload another version just for you to try, initially you might get a model not supported error, but if you don't see the error regarding that DLL then it's another move in the right direction to getting your model supported. Keep an eye on this post for an edit. Edit: Uploaded a dummy version, 0.2 with alternative LightFX.dll supplied with an M17x model. PCFx_0.2_Alpha_M17x_dummyver.zip

From what I can see the program either can't find the DLL (LightFX.dll) supplied with it, or the LightFX.dll is being found somewhere else and doesn't match the version of my LightFX.dll built with the program. As I suspected it looks like I might have to make individual versions for each model. If you're using UAC ensure it isn't being a pain and hiding the supplied LightFX.dll from the program by running it as Administrator temporarily. Let me know what happens. I'll also look into making a small console based program which outputs the zone identifiers specific to an Alienware model, I can use this information to help develop specific versions. If it still persists in being a pain could you send me your LightFX.dll from your "C:\Program Files\Alienware\Command Center\AlienFX SDK\Managed\DLL\" folder.

Hi, Thanks for your replies so far. In reply to the quoted message, that would be wonderful. Obviously more testing is required as I've only tested this on my own system (M14x), so it's quite possible other models will have different zone identifiers which means I'll need to make some changes specific to each model if that's the case. I'll look into PMing Mumak and see if there's a way I can interface with HWinfo32 from my program, currently designed in C#.NET.

PCFx 0.5 (Supported M14x Chassis, possibly others too) Other chassis can be supported, let me know if you have problems. Description: Allows the user to identify computer activity or statistics such as CPU temperature from colour variations on the AlienFX laptop. Simply select what you want the zone to show and the low and high colours. Values that are in between low and high colours will be visualised as a gradient, so gradual colour changes rather than sudden colour changes. PCFx currently updates colours every 1/5th of a second (200ms), uses the LightFX.dll from the AlienFX SDK and is able to retrieve the sensor information such as CPU core temperatures without third party programs. Screenshot: Known Bugs: - Status lights dropdown box has some old options that are no longer required. This will be corrected in version 0.6+. Future Improvements: - 'Battery Capacity %' added to all dropdown boxes as an option. Virus Scan Report from VirusTotal: VirusTotal - Free Online Virus, Malware and URL Scanner - Version 0.1 Alpha x86 Download is attached to this post. Extract it, run it, and enjoy! Any questions or ideas please feel free to suggest, and as always if you find the program useful and want to make a donation please do so via the donation button in the program. Please choose the correct version for your operating system, e.g. if you run 32-bit please download x86, otherwise download x64 if you run 64-bit. Download: - x64 (64-bit): Download PCFx_0.5_x64_64bit.zip for free on Filesonic.com - x86 (32-bit): Download PCFx_0.5_x86_32bit.zip for free on Filesonic.com PCFx_0.1_Alpha.zip PCFx_0.2_Alpha.zip PCFx_0.3_Alpha.zip