New Member has Alienware questions

[thcatbob]

My first laptop was a Dell Inspron 1720 I have currently had it for over 6 years now and decided it was time to up-grade. so I recently Bought my first serious laptop, An Alienware 18R1 I don't really know to much about computers or laptops and wanted a few suggestions. I wanted to List what I have in the AW18, what my plans are with it, and I would like you to give me feed back on what you would do, what I should do, and what I shouldn't do with it as far as upgrades go.

My uses on a computer are- ALOT of day to day use such as Downloading movies and music as well as extensive playback,Email Web browsing..ect, As of now I do Minimal gaming (I'm interested in PC gaming and want to play more than minecraft in the future), And basic High Res video and photo editing.

I plan on keeping the AW18 more than 6 years and not picking up any other machine.

 

 

Processor

Intel® Core i7-4700MQ Quad Core Processor @ 2.4GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache, 8 Threads)

Operating System

 Windows 8, 64 bit, US English

Memory

16GB, DDR3, 1600MHz

Hard Drive

750GB 7200RPM

Graphics Card

Dual 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M , SLI

Display

18.4" FHD(1920x1080p) Display

Primary DVD/CD drive

8X DVD RW

 

 

Networking

Broadcom 4352 802.11 ac 2x2 and Bluetooth 4.0

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

I was thinking of getting 4 SSD's and setting them up in RAID,

My first questions are

-What am I looking at when selecting SSD's?

-What brands of SSD are good?

-What RAID do you recommend me setting up? ( I have no issue backing up my computer monthly)

 

Sorry for the long write and thank you in advance for the help.

[Scia]

My first laptop was a Dell Inspron 1720 I have currently had it for over 6 years now and decided it was time to up-grade. so I recently Bought my first serious laptop, An Alienware 18R1 I don't really know to much about computers or laptops and wanted a few suggestions. I wanted to List what I have in the AW18, what my plans are with it, and I would like you to give me feed back on what you would do, what I should do, and what I shouldn't do with it as far as upgrades go.

My uses on a computer are- ALOT of day to day use such as Downloading movies and music as well as extensive playback,Email Web browsing..ect, As of now I do Minimal gaming (I'm interested in PC gaming and want to play more than minecraft in the future), And basic High Res video and photo editing.

I plan on keeping the AW18 more than 6 years and not picking up any other machine.

 

 

Processor

Intel® Core i7-4700MQ Quad Core Processor @ 2.4GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache, 8 Threads)

Operating System

 Windows 8, 64 bit, US English

Memory

16GB, DDR3, 1600MHz

Hard Drive

750GB 7200RPM

Graphics Card

Dual 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M , SLI

Display

18.4" FHD(1920x1080p) Display

Primary DVD/CD drive

8X DVD RW

 

 

Networking

Broadcom 4352 802.11 ac 2x2 and Bluetooth 4.0

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

I was thinking of getting 4 SSD's and setting them up in RAID,

My first questions are

-What am I looking at when selecting SSD's?

-What brands of SSD are good?

-What RAID do you recommend me setting up? ( I have no issue backing up my computer monthly)

 

Sorry for the long write and thank you in advance for the help.

 

Samsung, Intel and Kingston make decent SSDs.

Stay away from Corsair and OCZ though.

 

If you're backing up the PC regularly, go for RAID 0.

[SAV1OUR]

must you get a laptop? alien wear are like the apples of pcs pay allot just to get looks and very little performance 

[Jvagle875]

 

Can it support 4 ssds?

[FlamingDefibs]

must you get a laptop? alien wear are like the apples of pcs pay allot just to get looks and very little performance 

 

They already bought it.

[thcatbob]

must you get a laptop? alien wear are like the apples of pcs pay allot just to get looks and very little performance 

Before I bought the AW, I toyed with the idea of getting a slim tower and just bringing that with me where i needed to go, but the thought of having to bring a moniter with me and all the extra cords didnt sit well me with me and un less i wanted to steal my friends TV every where I went that was what i was looking at doing, Plus With my job I move around alot to diffrent parts of the world and cant always say ill have a TV to hook up to aswell.. so simply put Yes a laptop is what I need for now.

[SAV1OUR]

They already bought it.

sorry scanned over it im tried need to stop doing this 

[thcatbob]

Can it support 4 ssds?

It Can support 4 HDD's so id imagine it can support 4 SSD's? or am I missing somthing?

[SAV1OUR]

Before I bought the AW, I toyed with the idea of getting a slim tower and just bringing that with me where i needed to go, but the thought of having to bring a moniter with me and all the extra cords didnt sit well me with me and un less i wanted to steal my friends TV every where I went that was what i was looking at doing, Plus With my job I move around alot to diffrent parts of the world and cant always say ill have a TV to hook up to aswell.. so simply put Yes a laptop is what I need for now.

yea like i said i need to stop scanning over it bad habit 

[thcatbob]

And Besides what I asked before, Is there anything else i should look in to doing with this system or should I leave it alone for the time being?

[Osmium]

Well for SSDs in general just know the good brands. Samsung, Intel, Kingston are the best but Crucial and OCZ are okay. Personally I would buy two Intel 730 SSDs when they come out and set them up in RAID 0.

[Maverik5124]

And Besides what I asked before, Is there anything else i should look in to doing with this system or should I leave it alone for the time being?

I don't think there is much more you can do besides adding SSD(s)...

 

And depending on your usage I would suggest either the Samsung 840 Evo or the Samsung 840 Pro. You should read up on the differences and decide if you need the durability of the pros or if you can save some money with the evos.

 

As to raid: If you do daily backups or something along those lines then go with raid 0. Otherwise definalty go with a raid mode with redundancy

[NickTheMajin]

must you get a laptop? alien wear are like the apples of pcs pay allot just to get looks and very little performance

What do you mean by "very little performance"? Alienware offers the best mobile graphics cards available at any given time. And if you have enough money they offer them in SLI.

While Alienware does tend to be more expensive, (Usually by $100-200) than competitors I gladly pay the extra after using my friends Sager which feels nowhere near as sturdy as my m17x. You also get in home tech support if you need to do anything within warranty. Dell sends techs out to wherever you live, either next day or within two days.

[thcatbob]

So I have been looking in to SSD and HDD for my laptop, Would I be able to run (4) 840 EVO 250GB's in RAID 0, And dedicate 4-8 GB of system ram for them to cache? or would that be over kill and un needed?