Chris Duffey

Wow. For the cost of an Alienware, their customer service should be on point. Hopefully, that Kevin Peesker guy will get back to you soon, but if not you can always file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

Did that scratch affect the performance at all?

Also, you can always use mayonnaise for thermal paste: Does Mayonnaise Last as a Thermal Compound? | Hardware Secrets

This may have helpful information:Halo 2 Mouse Problems - PC Gaming & Consoles - TheHotfix.net Forums

I'm considering buying this game, but there's been so much negative discussion on reddit about the pay-to-win mechanic that was slipped in right before the public release. Have you noticed the air-drops making the game unbalanced at all?

I've purchased 4 refurbished Y510p's from a vendor on eBay. All 4 came with in-home 1-year repair warranties. Of the 4, one had a keyboard issue where the 'w' and 's' keys sometimes stuck when pressed. The keyboard was replaced and the problem was solved. The other issue was on the second machine I bought. The left speaker sounded like it had a small bead or screw or something sitting on the speaker cone. When (especially) a system noise played, it sounded like dropping a marble into a glass. Anyway, I contacted Lenovo and they sent out the repairman again with two new speakers. That didn't solve the issue so the sent him out again with a new motherboard and that solved the problem.

All 4 machines are i7, 16gb mem, sli 750m's, 1tb hhd, and a 24gb ssd. Other than the problems I mentioned, theses machines have been fantastic.

I would say that if you're going to buy one, spring for the in-home repair warranty so you don't have to ship your PC off someplace. It's also nice to actually supervise the repair. At one point I provided my repair tech with better thermal paste than the shit he was given when he swapped the motherboard.