m17x R3 upgrades

[Staff Sargent]

Ok this is basically just the start of the questions I have about upgrading. As its been about 8 years since I really did any builds or upgrades I have fallen behind in the new stuff out today.

I am looking to upgrade everything that I can in the system speced in my sig. granted not at once but over time I want to max out what this system can have in it.

1. SSD - was looking at the M4 drives. I do tons of large file copies, rip DVDs I buy, tons of photoshop work and bryce renders. How long should an SSD last when any given day I could move 20-30GB of data around? should I get a small drive and work with 2 HDDs for my work load? or get a large drive for the speed.

2. CPU, I got the lowest CPU I could so I could get the best GPU off the start. I see on laptop monkey that there are tons of better CPUs. So would it be best to jump to the fastest CPU or maybe take 2-3 step ups. what is currently the best CPU that will go into a R3?

3. bluray, have thought about this and wonder if I should replace or just get an external since I don't use the drive for anything but ripping new DVDs I buy or burning backups of my photos. what brand would be best?

4. colored LED in the lid alien head, would this be possible? is the lid easy to open? have been inside the main part but don't want to break anything and have not seen any videos on this matter so not sure where to start.

5. would a laptop skin hurt the finish on an R3? I want to get a custom skin made up of one of my space scapes to put just under the alien head but little worried about messing up the finish. Also thought of custom painting the entire thing but again worried it might void the warranty. Any thoughts suggestions?

6. RAM, already have 8GB of Corsairs Vengence and going to get 8 more. would anything over 16 really be ever be used? have done some heavy renders and think I only used about 9GB of ram so I think even 16 might be over board. Also would having the mix be hurting performance ?

7. anything else I might have missed upgradable that could be worth the upgrade?

well I think I covered everything and I will be reading posts about these upgrade plans on any post that covers that subject or reading it a second time to make sure I understand the new tech without having to ask all the time LOL. Thanks for reading this and any possible answers that might come of it. Like I said this won't be happening any time soon but it will at least get me up to speed and see what kinda $$$ I will need to save up for upgrades and just plain fun of opening such a sweet laptop that truly can have upgrades.

[mw86]

the i7 2960XM/2920XM is the best as on laptop monkey its barely over the next best 2860qm in price but can run a ghz faster without breaking a sweat... Brian and Michael might have theirs at 4ghz all cores turbo and heats not an issue i am using 4.2 but i keep my fans on high as precaution of heat build up. Maybe a 512-256gb SSD... and getting an optic bay HD adapter may benefit of putting a 1tb mobile hd as a second internal HD but it will run at Sata 1 speeds for that drive fine for DATA since it can go up to 150mb a sec still... and they make external cases for our slot load and standard optical bay drives for usb probably even find usb3 but unneeded as those media dont require high bandwidth. The Killer Wireless card seems to be a worthwhile upgrade at $43 since its been shown to get dramatically faster transfer speeds vs alternate wireless cards:) There is one how has tried to do a mod to the Alienhead led like that in one of our threads not sure if it was too successful... Thge 16gb wont hurt and it can be noticed on our modern OS because the OS of today been utilizing more ram better than they used too and even not running crazy apps the rendering you like to do is worth the ram plus if you have loads extra in your OS a ramdisk could improve your render times if you render to the ram disk and even house the 3d app in the ram disk I think you'd see much faster full AA renders in Bryce Staff Sargent the more SSD or cpu upgrades loading times drop large amounts and even boot times. and ram really does help in games its understated how even the aspect that ram is shared the graphics card to give it even more fast access texture memory and the modern OS and GPU make suse of that hence why we have on board videoram of the gpu plus shared graphics memory usually 4gb or higher the more ram you have its higher in a system with 8gb over 4gb and even higher at 16gb-24-32gb

http://forum.techinferno.com/alienware-m17x/1675-interesting-comparison-killer-wireless-1103-vs-intel-wifi-6300-a.html

Edited April 15, 2012 by mw86

[Jimbo]

1. I think one big drive is likely to be less hassle, I would be looking at an M4 or one of the new Vertex 4 drives. You should avoid previous generation Sandforce controlled drives.

2. A better CPU will help everything and is a highly worthwhile upgrade. Taking several small steps can be appealing in terms of $, however I believe it is a false economy overall, better to jump straight to the top of the tree IMO. If this is not a priority then you should look at the upcoming ivy bridge CPUs, gains are debatable at this point but should become clearer when they are released.

3. If the M17X has the same slot loading system as the M18X then I believe it's difficult to find bluray drives (could be totally wrong though ). An external sounds perfect for your needs as the desktop size drives are substantially cheaper as a rule. As for brand, Lite-on, Pioneer, Sony and Samsung are brands I've had good experiences with.

4. No idea, but lots of pics if you manage it.

5. See above.

6. 8gb is a bunch of RAM already, 16 is huuuuuuuge. As noted, using 8gb to create a RAMdrive would give big speed gains for certain programs.

7. Killer wireless is a great option for the price as mw86 said. I think you covered pretty much everything else, except to say the price of the best thermal compounds available is one of the cheapest upgrades you can do, dropping a few degrees can make all the difference.

Just my thoughts but I hope it's helpful.

[Staff Sargent]

Mark thanks for all that info!

I knew about the USB cases as I have one for laptop drives and have seen them for optical as well. I think the first upgrade I do will be a SSD drive as that should be the most noticeable in the short term. never thought about swapping out the DVD for another HDD. I currently have 1.1TB in total space right now and have a 314GB download I am working on and only have about 600GB free lol. I almost bought the killer wireless but wanted the mifi feature of the 6250. I also liked the wimax feature.

going to have to read even more about SSD drives, I understand they are still pretty new and getting better almost every day. I figured doing a lot of large file transfers etc would wear them out faster but I guess I could be more careful with it.

will have to do a better search about the LED alien head mod.

[mw86]

great advice Jimbo 100% good info there pasting is definitely cheapest best upgrade, next is SSD, then cpu then ram although less spoke of faster ram with okay latency will make a system more responsive. 32gb 1333mhz may less responsive than 4-16gb of 1600mhz, 1867 mhz or in my crazy case haha 2133mhz all operations between all hardware is effected by ram speed. anything over max system memory bus interface improves ram intercommunication more than actual throughput since reaching max memory speed for cpu side of things is a bottleneck in itself but ram inner operations can be vastly improved.