deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Hi all :-)I was reading through the forum and got one question stuck in my head: What is there to do, after the M17X-R3 arrived?I have been reading a lot about the different BIOS, BIOS unlocks etc., all the different drivers and so on.Besides configuring Windows and getting rid of all the unwanted stuff which comes pre-installed, updating the drivers etc. what are the first steps any of you M17X-R3 experienced ones would do? I mean special stuff like, if you would install a specific graphics driver which works "best" or flashing a special BIOS.I'm trying to get a checklist together, maybe it's even possible to update this list as time goes on (Updates, Mods etc.) and use it as a reference for new installs etc.I was reading quite a lot, now the only thing for me to do is to pray that there isn't already a thread like this anywhere on here in order to save myself from the digital executioin because of double-threading ;-)Best regardsdeadbydawn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted November 15, 2011 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2011 Hi deadlybydawn, welcome to T|I! Congrats on the new M17x-R3. Before we can advise you on optimizing your setup, what is your current configuration and what do you plan on doing with your computer? If its mainly for gaming, then you may want to start with a fresh Windows install and the latest AMD/nVidia (depending which graphics card you picked) driver. The rest of the drivers you need are found on Dell's website at Welcome to Dell Technical Support Once you become a bit familiar with your new system, then you can start delving into more advanced things such as overclocking and adding aftermarket thermal paste to your CPU/GPU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 Hi Brian K., thx a lot for the welcome! Oh crap, I thought I included the specs... - M17X Stealth Black - FHD-WLED-LCD (1920x1080) - Intel 2670QM - 8GB Dual Channel - 640 GB Raid 0 (2 x 320 GB) - 2 GB HD6990 Okay, so you recommend e complete new installation right to begin with. Good thing to know! The machine will be just for gaming, nothing else. I plan on adding better Memory (thinking about HyperX) and RAID 0 SSD in the future, but as RAID 0 SSD will be e "little" bit expensive, this will be a future upgrade. Can't wait to get the machine! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted November 15, 2011 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2011 I advise against upgrading the memory. You already have 8gb, replacing those with Kingston sticks or any other brand for that matter will give you almost no improvement at all. Same goes for RAIDing SSDs, you will lose TRIM capabilities and will gain much higher numbers in synthetic benchmarks for sequential reads and writes but no real world improvements at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 Ah really? I thought of a RAID Stripe of two SSDs as to be the best drive-configuration there is. So what would you recomend? To get rid of RAID0 and use a SSD + HD Combination of two discs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted November 15, 2011 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2011 Exactly. I'd recommend a SSD for OS + APP/GAMES and a large HDD for storage needs. Even if you do get a little performance bumb with RAIDed drives in my opinion it's not worth the hassle.Oh, and congratz on your purchase + welcome to T|I! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robby_hd Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Exactly. I'd recommend a SSD for OS + APP/GAMES and a large HDD for storage needs. Having 2 SSDs with 120GB each and 1 eSATA HDD 1TB and 1 USB 3.0 HDD 320GB First SSD for OS + Programms + Music, second for Games. If I need Storage, I use my external devices. These combination is so great, because USB 3.0 is really fast and on the eSATA I have so much storage and can copy with around 90mb/s. Would reccomend it to everybody else Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted November 15, 2011 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2011 Additionally one could replace the BD/DVD drive with a 3rd HDD/SSD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 Exactly. I'd recommend a SSD for OS + APP/GAMES and a large HDD for storage needs. Even if you do get a little performance bumb with RAIDed drives in my opinion it's not worth the hassle. Oh, and congratz on your purchase + welcome to T|I! Okay, then I'll do this instead of the RAID0 stripe. Thanks a lot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 I Actually don't need a huge amount of storage, as it will only be used to do gaming on. I got a Macbook Air and a Macbook Pro to do work on. But anyways, this will be my next headache... what i surely do want is the pictures to be available on all of my machines. Now before it was no problem, as some tools synched it perfectly between different iPhotos (never mind my opinion on this software..........) but now, since Windows comes into play again, it will be a whole new story ;-)By the way, I'm using Avast Free as my Anti-Virus software, as I experienced it as not using a lot of resources. What do you guys use as AV protection? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted November 15, 2011 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2011 Avast is pretty awesome, used it myself for quite a while but ever since Microsoft Security Essensials came out i just use that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 i read about that, but i haven't tried it yet nor do i know someone who did. so it's usefull u say. hmm, i think then i will probably give it a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Michael Posted November 15, 2011 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2011 you should, it's really light on resources and it's detection rates are pretty high Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder StamatisX Posted November 15, 2011 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2011 Yeah I can vouch for MSE as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 ok cool thing, thanks! in the end, what i want to do is to keep the "unnessessary" stress on the machine as low as possible, also with only running as many services as nessessary. i'm really psyched to see how it will perform. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unreal25 Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Yeah MSE rocks. I use it for a while now and never had any problems. It stays quiet, put, automatically updates without any annoying popups. Its an example how software should be designed tbh. I wish the rest of the Windows was the same. Also btw, the first step is *obviously* to run a game of your choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 Yeah MSE rocks. I use it for a while now and never had any problems. It stays quiet, put, automatically updates without any annoying popups. Its an example how software should be designed tbh. I wish the rest of the Windows was the same. Also btw, the first step is *obviously* to run a game of your choice. Nice! That was the only downpart on Avast i think. Those Update-Popups. Especially when listening to music and suddenly the popup appears...had quite a few shock-moments ;-) Haha, well yeah, I will do that for sure :-) =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mw86 Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 Having 2 SSDs with 120GB each and 1 eSATA HDD 1TB and 1 USB 3.0 HDD 320GBFirst SSD for OS + Programms + Music, second for Games. If I need Storage, I use my external devices. These combination is so great, because USB 3.0 is really fast and on the eSATA I have so much storage and can copy with around 90mb/s. Would reccomend it to everybody else @deadlybydawn welcome to Tech Inferno, congrats on your purchase. Do a clean install and dive right in. I am with Michael on your ram upgrade... unless going from 8 to 32gb or from 1033mhz to 1600mhz,1866, or 2133mhz on ram then you will see no benefit for the cost. Gaming wise 8gb is enough... and in fact if you overclock ram... 32gb uses higher density chips as well as 16gb and therefore will heat up more giving less overclock headroom. I plan to raid my SSD's didn't know trim wont work then which is a bummer. BTW i set mine up like you robby... I plan to have os and apps on the two SSD's and I already have an esata enclosure i use for my 750gb hd that came with my system. I might pick up a usb3 enclosure to have an extra fast plain hd to house older apps and maybe a classic XP VM for older stuff. since about a few years ago i have never kept my documents on my main hardrives so if I ever had a failure my data isn't even on the system. apps can be reinstalled... data cant just be refabricated out of nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 @deadlybydawn welcome to Tech Inferno, congrats on your purchase. Do a clean install and dive right in. I am with Michael on your ram upgrade... unless going from 8 to 32gb or from 1033mhz to 1600mhz,1866, or 2133mhz on ram then you will see no benefit for the cost. Gaming wise 8gb is enough... and in fact if you overclock ram... 32gb uses higher density chips as well as 16gb and therefore will heat up more giving less overclock headroom.I plan to raid my SSD's didn't know trim wont work then which is a bummer. BTW i set mine up like you robby... I plan to have os and apps on the two SSD's and I already have an esata enclosure i use for my 750gb hd that came with my system. I might pick up a usb3 enclosure to have an extra fast plain hd to house older apps and maybe a classic XP VM for older stuff. since about a few years ago i have never kept my documents on my main hardrives so if I ever had a failure my data isn't even on the system. apps can be reinstalled... data cant just be refabricated out of nothing. @mw86 thanks a lot yeah i was not planing on upgrading to more ram, but to faster ones. but i will at first sort things out like you said. i will do a clean install using windows ultimate .i left the home premium on the order, as i have plenty of other (original) windows 7 versions flying around here. only thing i'm a bit worried doinga clean install is that all the tools that came with it are wiped. especially as i don't know what tools are really needed at first. i will probably do the same with my data, as i got an external USB 3.0 1 TB hd which i'm not really using at the moment. and since evn my macs can write on to NTFS disks, i won't have to worry about file-system compatibility throughout my own computers.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mw86 Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x/177-official-alienware-m17x-r3-owners-lounge.htmla lot are here but i think you seen this already.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 yeah i already read this, thx!what i'm wondering, is: is i.e. alienrespawn included in the commandcenter? if this list is (pretty) much everything that is needed then i find it quite awesome as it is not a lot of crap plunging the system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mw86 Posted November 15, 2011 Share Posted November 15, 2011 right its not much 3rd party bull. BTW alien respawn is useless since it remakes all partitions as was including the stuff you would have done a clean install to get rid of. But if you want what i do is i go to the restore app when my system arrives and before the clean install burn the back up disks that restores respawn in case you needed it factory restored..... but it will need same hardware in as the system came... so better off burning the disks and doing clean install and forget about Alien respawn although it is now atleast backed to dvd.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 yeah that was what i just thought...no need of alien respawn if i clean install it anyways..i probably won't even bother about the factory restore disks as i won't need them anyways. i will probably take an image as soon as i got everything set up the way i want it minus the games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder StamatisX Posted November 15, 2011 Founder Share Posted November 15, 2011 All I need is the Windows 7 disk and a folder on an external drive with the latest drivers, Steam is installed on my second hard drive anyways 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deadbydawn Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 I'm downloading all the neccessary drivers and Tools now Is there a software which controlls the switching of the internal HD3000 graphics adapter to the (in my case) 6990m? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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