Ozwald

Have you repasted it yet? A quality paste will help a lot with those temp spikes when gaming. Before I did mine I was running in the high 60's & would spike up in the high 80's (or 90's on a graphics heavy game). After, I'm running in the 40's and I only get into the mid 50's when pushing it really hard. Skyrim on maxed out settings for a few hours only pushes me to about 53 or so.

They make caddies just for that. I've seen them on Amazon & eBay. I use my optical drive & really don't need the extra storage so I haven't looked into them any further than that.

I use a cooling pad as well, but it's no replacement for a repaste job. Mine was pasted just as bad as SetupTech's was. I dropped 25 degrees after repasting & I'm not getting the temp spikes like I was.

From what I've seen of Windows 10 so far, I think it might be the final push for me to go 100% Linux.

IIRC, that's for a Bluetooth card.

Personally I've never seen a reason to "upgrade" to Win8 on any of my machines. Just my $0.02

IIRC, the WEI scale only goes to 7.0.

And keeping the Nvidia drivers updated.

I've only run a 2nd monitor via HDMI, but I have noticed that it taxes the system a bit with an extended desktop.

Agreed! I'm in the process of building a NZXT/EVGA desktop, but I'm not carrying that Phantom 820 tower around anywhere! The m14x has been a great machine for me for the past few years of daily use. No laptop can go toe to toe with a primo desktop, but as far as laptops go, the m14x is everything I could ever want.

Has this been a common problem? My m14x is 95% desk-bound with a simple external speaker system, but I've been using the same audio jack this whole time. No issues yet. Pretty sure the other jack still works but I haven't tried it yet. I've never used the mic port at all.

I'm having the same problem. It's rather frustrating. In the meantime I've settled running the stock A08 bios just to keep Nvidia happy.

I keep mine on a dual-fan cooling pad & the difference in heat is huge. It's not really all that practical for mobile use, but mine doesn't leave my desk all that often.

I'm still running the 555... oh to dream

I'm running a 2nd gen i7 in my m14x r1. If I'm looking to upgrade, do I have to use the XM chips?