I love my new Alienware gaming laptop!

[BlueThunder]

I've had it since late July, and I can take every game I have and turn everything up to Max, and not even a hiccup. Nice and smooth. MW3 looks amazing on it, especially when I plug the HDMI cable into my 65" 3d Plasma. Crysis is a good benchmark, and no problem at all. I bought this hoping it would last me at least 5 years. I think it will be awhile 'till a game comes out it can't handle. That was my goal with this computer. I'm surprised they can stuff all this into a laptop...well, it is a pretty hefty laptop. I think I'm about a year from upgrading our main desktop computer that my wife uses. She's a little jealous of my little monster here. Why a laptop you may be wondering? I use this in my living room from my recliner. I have a side table for the mouse, and a laptop stand that pivots, and I put the external keyboard on my lap. So I can watch tv, and when I want to use the computer, I just pivot it in front of me. It's a pretty sweet setup. XBOX and PS3 can suck it! ( I do own an XBOX though, and enjoy it). Anyhoo, here are the main stats...


Alienware M18x Space Black Anodized Aluminum

CPU:

Intel Core i7 Extreme Quad-core 2920XM Overclocked Turbo Boost to 4.0GHz (8MB Cache)

RAM:

16GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (4DIMMS)

GPU:

Dual 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M NVIDIA SLI Enabled

Drives:

1TB RAID 0, 2x 500GB, 7200RPM Solid State Hybrid

Display:

18.4-inch WideFHD 1920 x 1080 WLED

My add-ons:

Mouse:

Razer Mamba wired/wireless gaming mouse

Keyboard:

Saitek Cyborg Gaming Keyboard with Tri-Color Backlighting

Headset:

Logitech G930 wireless gaming headset

Whoohoo!

 

[Galen96]

how much did THAT run you? 1tb solid state? holy shit!

 

[Galen96]

sounds like a beast. I just build a pc this last weekend.. granted its not quite an alienware...

AMD hexcore 3.7ghz x6
8g 1600 DDR3 ram
32gig solid state main drive
70gig 10krpm HD sata
130gig 7200rpm HD sata
Geforce GTS 450 1gb GDDR5 (soon to be 2, SLI)
2 22" HDMI wide screen monitors
and a wind tunnel of a pc case. 5 7" fans.

 

[BlueThunder]

sounds like a beast. I just build a pc this last weekend.. granted its not quite an alienware...

AMD hexcore 3.7ghz x6
8g 1600 DDR3 ram
32gig solid state main drive
70gig 10krpm HD sata
130gig 7200rpm HD sata
Geforce GTS 450 1gb GDDR5 (soon to be 2, SLI)
2 22" HDMI wide screen monitors
and a wind tunnel of a pc case. 5 7" fans.

Wow, impressive system! I can't wait to build the new desktop. I'd rather not say what I paid for the laptop. I bought it with the "You only live once" mantra, plus I wanted something that would last a long time, so I didn't have to worry about buying another one for a few years. And my drives are not pure solid state, they're Hybrid drives. Regular hard drive with a 32 gig Solid state cache. They "Learn" what applications you use most, and store that info in the solid state area of the drives so they boot and access that info faster. I would have loved to go full solid state, but the largest available was a 256 gig, and I needed more than that. Plus the prices were outrageous! When they come out with larger SSD's and the prices drop, I'll probably upgrade. Hope you're enjoying your new system!

 

[Galen96]

The thing with solid state, is you want one dedicated to your most essential programs. For everything else, a standard 7200 drive is just fine... Hell, my 10k rpm drive is amazing for gaming, but it cost a ton.

In reflection, would get a 100gig SSD and a single secondary drive. I didn't really think about it that win7 64bit was going to essentially take up the entire SSD.... my bad

 

[Galen96]

And I can't wait until I can find a game I like on PC to push this thing. I am stuck staring at a blank desktop and flying through .NET at the speed of light...

 

[BlueThunder]

And I can't wait until I can find a game I like on PC to push this thing. I am stuck staring at a blank desktop and flying through .NET at the speed of light...

LMAO!

 

[RolandDeschain]

He doesn't have 1TB of SSD storage, he's got a solid state hybrid, (which I believe generally means a motherboard with a 20-40GB SSD on it for boot, or a hard drive with the same on it, or a smaller SSD built in just for caching) but still; that's a beast of a laptop, dude. Must have set you back like $4k at a minimum, considering it's got an extreme edition processor and whatnot.

Don't let anybody steal that thing. Also, with SLI cards in there, they should be ones you can replace; (as in, the GPUs aren't soldered into the motherboard) so you could drop a grand in 3-4 years on brand-new GPUs to put in and extend the life of it even more.


General tip for other people that might want to drop a lot of dough on a gaming laptop; make sure the GPUs are using PCI-Express slots, and that they're not soldered to the motherboard. That way, you can remove the existing one(s) and put in better ones down the line, delaying the point where you need to buy an all-new machine.

 

[BlueThunder]

Roland, you missed my previous post where I explained that.

"And my drives are not pure solid state, they're Hybrid drives. Regular hard drive with a 32 gig Solid state cache. They "Learn" what applications you use most, and store that info in the solid state area of the drives so they boot and access that info faster. I would have loved to go full solid state, but the largest available was a 256 gig, and I needed more than that. Plus the prices were outrageous! When they come out with larger SSD's and the prices drop, I'll probably upgrade."

And the GPU's are removable and upgradeable, as well as the HD's. I hope I don't have to worry about that for quite awhile though.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Roland! :thirishdrinkers:

 

[RolandDeschain]

D'oh! You're right, I normally read through threads fully before responding, but I only half-read this one, lol. : /

Thanks for the b-day wishes =P