Praetextus

I have been trying to figure out what is going on with my Laptop to no avail. I was hoping some of you guys might be able to shed some light on things for me. Friday night the computer just shut and when I tried turning it on again it gave me 4 beeps. I know that means Memory error so I figured one of the rams might be damaged. I started the painstaking test of every module but nothing worked. I tried each one in each bracket by itself but I kept getting the 4 beeps. So... Either all my rams died or all the brackets failed?! It seems so unlikely. Even weirder. If I leave it for 10-20 min it starts again with all the ram modules inside. It works for everything between 10 min and 2 hours before shutting down again. I have tried running diagnostics on each ram module but no matter the combination it shuts down when it reaches WCM tests (don't remember the whole name). Could this be related to the modified Bios from here? I have a Dell guy coming on site with a new motherboard and Ram but that might take another week. And it is still sketchy since they claimed my warranty was up (it has been a year) but when i explained to them that EU rules give all customers 2 year warranty they actually agreed and said I wouldnt pay for it. Anyone who can help a guy in distress? I found this Fix Alienware Memory Shut Down Errors in Windows XP, Vista & Windows 7, 8 But I can't figure out if it is related to what I am experiencing. Thanks for reading and any help you can give.

Hi guys. A quick question. Has anyone had the experience that Afterburner and Nvidia Inspector mess each other up? When I ran the fixed overclock VBIOS Afterburner showed the correct MHz but when I tried the Overclocking edition Afterburner always runs on 435 Mhz while Inspectors says its running at the MHz I clocked it too... I guess Inspector is correct and Afterburner wrong...

I just finished installing my new Crucial SSD! I must say I am very please with what I am getting so far. It was actually pretty easy to do. I got mixed up in the boot settings and got a few scares but everything is installed and I just did a test. above 400mb read write and the computer started up in under 20 sec. It was around a minute before. The SSD is pretty inexpensive now so I would recommend it.

Thanks for the reply guys. It does seem like it was because of idle mode. I just thought it kept the MHz clock stable as it was doing that before. But after a long night I managed to make the SSD work and everything is installed. Still updating windows and installing programs. I reflashed the VBIOS as I thought it had been reset. Looking forward to my first startup test. Hope it beats 42 seconds or it was a waste of time and money Hopefully i will know in a few hours.

Was curious to know how other people with the 660m fared on the benchmarks? I just tried the 3dmark Ice storm test ad that went very well. But the Fire test failed miserably. It was running with 9 FPS?! Ice Storm ran around 400fps while Cloud gate ran at around 60-100. Why the extreme drops?

I'm using the MSI Afterburner. But now that I am looking I might have missed something since NVIDIA Inspector still says that the Current Clock is 135MHz and the Memory is 405. The GPU Clock is at 1000 MHz while memory says 2700. Help?

I just now started overclocking my m17x r4 with the unlocked bios and the unlocked vbios. Im pretty astonished over how much better it is performing in Total War Rome 2 and Farcry 3. significant fps improvement on better settings. Still not max setting but I think the 680m would take care of that. Plus my RTS such as EU4 and CK2 games have improved a lot in heavy late game where it was getting unplayable because the speed slowed down so much for each 100 years. I'm really happy so far and thanks to everyone on the site! I will definitely donate as soon as I can First off I have a SSD to install and then hopefully a new 680M. Already ordered a better power adapter as the 180 wont cut it :/

How about power supply? I was looking at my order details and the adapter is 180. I guess I will need a 220? That's what Dell told me. Oh... And almost 1000 euro if I want to buy it trough Dell Its around 500 from upgrade monkey. They told me I will need a new heat sink too but from what Ive read that wasn't necessary?

I wont for some timne so that answers my question! Thanks so much, Been on the phone waiting for 30 min to speak to dell.... Guess I'm better of buying it from Ebay...

How safe is it to overclock the 660M? I have never overclocked a video card. I might not even need to upgrade to the 680m with this?!

The temps for me are around 45-50 on iddle. Even after overclocking it in the Bios and with the programs it never reaches above 65.

Hi, I am looking into upgrading my graphics card for my m17x r4. I currently have the nvidia 660m. I was looking into the 680m as it looks like a reasonable priced card. Anyone who has any experience with this? And is 4gb cards overkill? They are really pricy but are they worth the 300 dollars extra? And last. I have watched a few videos of people changing the card and it seems pretty doable. Is that a true assessment?

I am considering getting the unlocked bios for my m17x r4. Is it worth it? I already have access to some overclocking but some of it of course greyed out.

Hi! I am a new guy who stumbled on the site when looking into some upgrades. There is a lot of good info here so thanks for that! I am looking into upgrading my Alienware m17x r4 so hopefully i can find some help here