prockish03evo

Just to add to the discussion my sata connector going to the hdd, on my r1 is broke also. It was like that when I first got it thou. I just hold it with small tweezers, put the ribbon cable in, than press the connector in place. Haven't had any problems with it this far, but I did just by a new motherboard a few weeks ago because I've been chasing the whole black screen windows update thing around like crazy so hopefully I don't brake this one anytime soon.

I would have to agree I was preparing my m18x r1 to go to Windows 10 but after the update I got 8 beeps. I get 8 beeps with my gpu installed or trying on IGFX only. So it fried my LCD screen so there went another $250 and hopefully my 780m is ok. Even though you have a m18 i would wait till it gets all sorted out or it could get very expensive if you dont have a warranty Check out this thread for more info *** Windows 10 Upgrade Warning for Alienware Owners *** | Page 58 | NotebookReview

Well I would definitely hold off on the nvidia 800 series gpu for your m18x. They have massive throttling problems and even they few I have seen that have managed to get them to work don't perform any better than 680m/780m, so in otherwords buy a 680m/780m and have a very stable machine.

Another choice, which is what I did , is to use Mr. Fox 344.75 drivers because they were proven to perform in gaming and very stable. His drivers are already modded to work in an m18x r1 so it makes it very easy to use.

When I upgraded my gpu I used IC Diamond compound and it works amazing! Also it's a very popular compound amoung the community and its cheap.