My Alienware Super M17X R4 Custom Build Log(x-post)

[FranBunnyFFXII]

Note: This Build log is just a repost from another Overclocking forum. The mods said I couldn't link to it in my signature so I'm reposting it with some of the response remarks in the single firstpost.

This isn't like some epic awesome cool desktop build log, its just to show case what you can do with customizing and creating a gaming rig out of a high end gaming notebook. Its not something really special but it is a fairly unique build and I did much of it by myself, with some stuff purchased at XoticPC.

This log is pretty much on hold until I get all 3 of my monitors so I can start it up again and do debezeling and building an eyefinity array for the system to use.

I'll update it when I can get my new monitors and parts.

Feel free to ask questions or leave comments, thanks for taking interest. Audios, ~Franbunny Alice Viera

Stats and Specs

Super M17X R4

CPU: Intel Core i7 3740QM IvyBridge Overclocked @3.77GHz all cores, turbing up to 4.06ghz 2 Cores, according to CPUZ

GPU: Dell/Alienware AMD Radeon HD7970M 2GB GDDR5(Thames/Wimbledon XT)[MXM Slot]

Motherboard: Alienware M17xR4 HM77 Socket fcPGA988(Sandybridge/Ivybridge)

Memory: Kingston HyperX 12GB 1866mhz DDR3 Dual channel, 4 SODIMM units: 2 x 4GB+2x 2GB

Storage Solution: 64GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD[boot drive]

750GB Western Digital Scorpio Black[storage]

60GB Kingston SSDnow! V+ SSD(Caching)

Case/Chassis: Alienware M17X R3/R4 with XoticPC service applied custom artwork created by Me(Franbunny Alice Viera)

Display: 1920x 1080 60HZ Super Clear Super Bright Alienware 17.3inch FHD WLED screen @ 72%NTSC Gamut.

External ASUS VS207-T 2160x1215 Downsampling(1600x900)monitor.

Optical Drive: 8x DVD Buner RW drive slim slot load

Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Recon3Di High-Definition 5.1 Audio with THX TruStudio Pro Software, Audio Powered by Klipsch 2.0 4speaker array.

Overall Cost: $2300 even.

Base system: 1909$

XoticPC upgrades: 198$

Aftermarket upgrades: 193$

Includes all taxes shipping cost

Doesn't include the 30$ extra charge for the artwork update I got, but a friend paid for that for me.

Original (Modified) thread post below! Lots of cool stuff, check it out :thumb:

Alright so I got my M17X R4 today and I'll be starting my build here soon.

I dubbed it a "Super M17X R4" because it has advanced upgrades that you can't get stock from Alienware.com

Its basically a stock HD7970M 1080P M17X R4 Nebula Red with an SSD from XoticPC installed, and my personal graphics artwork applied to the lid(Art by me, Vinyl application done by XoticPC)

Nothing super fancy like some of the guys's nice rigs around here hey its a stretch for a laptop.

Heres my concept art to real world imgur thread with photos from XoticPC: http://imgur.com/a/VcQiR

The "super" upgrade that I'm doing

Base build

i7 3630QM

HD7970M

750GB HDD

1080P 60HZ Screen

XoticPC upgrade

64GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD for OS

Custom artwork Vinyl(120$ had to do a 2nd print)

Total machine price from at unboxing: $2103

My Parts list

12 GB DDR3 Dual Channel Kingston HyperX RAM

(Kingston HyperX 2x4gb 1866mhz Memory Modules

Kingston HyperX 2x2gb 1866mhz Memory Modules, 6GB per channel.)

Kingston SSDnow! V+200 60GB SSD

Intel Centrino 6250 Multiband WifiCard+WiDi compatable+WiMAX technology

Artic MX-2 Thermal Compound

Update: Got a i7 3740QM from Alienware free of charge as an error with XoticPC's problematic customer service, ty Alienware!

Got my first of 3 1600x900 monitors and Soft modded the driver for 2160x1215 downsampling resolution.

"Soft Mods"

Xotic PC did a clean install of Windows 7 HP for me but They were missing some drivers so I'm catching theme as I go along.

Debating whether I should just drop in a clean install myself before doing all the software level mods.

(^Lol did this last night, done)

Login Tweaks wallpaper

Windows Manabí OS-Tan Windows 7 theme modified with my own changes(Done)

Intel SRT Technology(to be used with the 60GB SSD)(Done)

Windows OS Symbolic Links creation for SSD theory operation(see below)(done)

Downsampling custom monitor resolution: 2160 x 1215(+15)(2.62 megapixels)to emulate future eyefinity workload.

Hardware Mods

Chassis and Crucial M4 SSD Install(XoticPC did this)

ArticMX-2 applied.(done)

Full CPU overclock: 4ghz OC 2cores, 3.77ghz OC 4 Cores

HD 7970M Super Clock: Gaming stable clock: 972mhz Core/1225 Memory

Here's what went into the system.

Storage System schematic, part of the "Super" build title meaning

So before anyone asks about my storage solution set up here "Why 2 SSDs?"

One is for OS, the mSATA, its specifically for OS, Drivers, Communicators, and browsers. If something of that sort doesn't fall under that category I simply do not want it to be on that mSATA SSD, I want to keep it clean and as quick booting as possible

This SSD will be separate to operation of user applications and games.

However the 750GB HDD will be paired in raid operation with the 60GB SSD which will cash and pin programs from the 750GB HDD to give me maximum storage and performance ratio.

It's going to be a pain to set up all the symbolic links and moving around system files to keep files off the SSD but keeping everything operating to perfection is an absolute must for me.

I'm stoked to see this M17X R4 finally arrive, because It will handle every game I play without issues and will later on be able to support a 720P eyefinity set up which I plan on saving up money for.

I'll be doing an unboxing and overview video, along with an upgrading video as well.

EDIT, got a semi unlocked CPU for this part, OC'd it to 4Ghz with Bios and Intel XTU settings.

I've never used AMD graphics before, but since GCN Radeon HD 7000 series is better for high resolutions and multi screen performance, as well as my workstation projects and programs I desided to hang up my green and black for a red and black tshirt and wanted to get something that would fit my value and resources..

I'm curious on the difficulty of overclocking and tweaking the mobile GPU to achieve a worth while and stable overclock to support the higher resolutions for downsampling, eyefinity and games in general.

I don't want to push it hard, I just want to see a good 3dMark11 score pop up, and have acceptable frame rates at high to max@720P to 900P eyefinity.

Here's my 3dMark stock with the 13.6beta drivers

After all the hardware is installed and running, and full windows updates.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6688658

This will be my 4th Alienware, and my 3rd Alienware laptop, and I'm stoked to see it come to life.

I hope you guys enjoy my presentation, because I'm absolutely stoked. :thumb:

Hardware upgrades: Done!

File system managed: complete!

Overclocking: Done and Stable 4ghz OC 2cores, 3.77ghz OC 4 Cores

Downsample Resolutions: 2160x1215 External monitor softmod Downsampling

Build progression

Concept

First Mock up

Final mock up

Artwork completed

Final Print

Fun Fact.

This is the 27megapixel image that I created for the Vinyl artwork.

http://franbunnyffxii.deviantart.com/art/m17X-skin-R3-364624834

This took me a little over 41hours to do(not including mock ups or stuff like that), because it was done pixel by pixel...

In MSPaint and then the image was drafted and finalized and rendered in MS Powerpoint2007.

The original image of fran that is in the middle of the artwork is a 45megapixel digital graphic. It wasn't cleaned or optimized for usage

http://franbunnyffxii.deviantart.com/art/Fran-Final-Fantasy-XII-352296560

I cut and cleaned this image out pixel by pixel, by hand in MS paint, for the most humanly accurate possible raw image.

It took me 36hours to do that.

Build photos from XoticPC

Crucial M4 mSATA SSD installed

Unboxed and to the next stage

Teardown and rebuild video

http://www.youtu.be/zvxtMZ3QGQE

Now I can go on to overclocking and stuff.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6693475

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6693520

Highest I can take it without overvolting

WOOT

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6694445

this is where my laptop was failing before, because it was so heavily undervolted. apparently it was a full 0.25 under standard voltage.

Its pretty epic to see this score pop up being on such a low voltage.

I think I got a good card. :thumb:

Anyone think I can break 1ghz?

20minute stress test a 99% gpu load.

didn't even break 67C

Wow...

1ghz HD7970M

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/6695051

Highest OC before I went up to and got the i7 3740QM

Blows me away to see this thing is benching a little more than half the power of a GTX 780/titan...

just amazing for me going from a GTX 570 1280MB-->GT 335M-->GT650M-->HD 7970M

This is great and entertaining

Interested in the ssd and caches and had stuff though along with memory performance such that if clocking ram to higher speed and so forth

I'm not sure if there is any hacked bios out for it will have to wait to get home from work to look

Pretty good scores and temps wow

Nope. Its all native, which is one of the reasons I got the M17X to begin with. If you look deep down at the M17X R4's specs you see crap that alienware put in it that other companies didn't like the native support for up to 2133mhz ram, along with HDMI In, and Sound recon3Di, and klispch audio, ect.

The MSI laptops couldn't support my SSD system, the asus couldn't either, and both MSI and asus will void your warranty if you pull off the heatsinks and repaste if you're not a qualified specialist at a retail vendor. blahlblah.

alienware doesn't care. "mod away! we love to see that stuff" they just don't support whatever 3rd party stuff under their warranty.

But yeah everything you're seeing here is native, nothing tweaked beyond software.

Current Set up.

[FranBunnyFFXII]

 

Game Screenshots(Note: Imgur converted them to JPG from 24bit, bitmaps, now the screenshots look bad, sorry)

And performance

 

 

1080P

Guild Wars 2: highest possible settings in game(except: Shaders on medium, Navitve sampling) no driver level post process. FPS: 60~130

 

Vindictus, highest possible settings in game in DirectX 8.0 mode because I think the D9 mode looks freaking stupid. FPS:60+ Game is frame limited(built on Source Engine)

Note I have tried a different setting as a stress test. Same settings as above but with extremely enhanced driver level post processing: FPS 24~60

 

World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, ultra with forced AA and AS and 8x multisample(Maxed Graphics with driver post processing). FPS: 65~95

 

Final Fantasy XII PCSX2 Emulation at 4x resolution with maximum insoftware post process(6x resolution)

 

Tomb Raider, 28~50FPS average range

 

 

 

2160x1215

[Chatzev]

Nice! I haven't seen this done many times before, and it looks like you did a great job on it.

But were all those Guild Wars 2 pics really necessary? (No harshness intended)

[FranBunnyFFXII]

Nice! I haven't seen this done many times before, and it looks like you did a great job on it.

But were all those Guild Wars 2 pics really necessary? (No harshness intended)

Thank you ^___^!

 

And lol sorry if there was too much picture spam, I just was really impressed with the guild wars 2 performance.

I wont post so many next time but i will be posting some eyefinity screenshots eventually. I just really liked the game.

[threadysparrow]

it took me 10 whole minutes to read through this. I never actually take the time to read through things but I am glad I did.

[alpenwasser]

Gotta say, definitely haven't seen something like this before. I think I once

saw a guy OC his laptop, but all the other kewl stuff is definitely new to me.

Then again, I usually go for smallish business laptops due to build quality and

put the punch into my desktops (mostly for computing, less for gaming, Linux and

such... :rolleyes: ), so I'm a total noob when it comes to gaming laptops anyway.

Nice!

[ALXAndy]

Awesome !

 

I have an M11X that I would like to customise. But I would like to do it something like the original MALX.

[Borky1051]

what keyboard?

[FranBunnyFFXII]

I finally found a 1ghz+ stable OC in benching and gaming.Just under 5K 3dmark firestrike though, but without raising the memory voltage the card just wont let me increase the memory speed beyond this 1225mhz, which is irritating.

At any rate, 4ghz CPU OC 1ghz GPU OC, "Ghz Edition" 7970M laptop achived

what keyboard?

Ducky Shine 2 9008 Cherry MX Blue Purple Backlit

[CynicalRootVegetable]

That's not something you see every day, but I like it!

[StitchMonkey]

Really looking forward to seeing this debezzeling you speak of.  Don't let that project fall by the wayside as it sounds awesome.

You echo my feelings about having only the OS on one SSD.  I really like knowing that if i get pissed enough at my system I can yank that out kill with a sledgehammer and not have lost anything I care about beyond the time to do a new install.  It is symbolic for me, but I just am much a happier having that in one place and nothing else in on it, or at least as little as possible.  You just seem to have more logical, practical reasons for wanting the same thing.

[threadysparrow]

I really like knowing that if i get pissed enough at my system I can yank that out kill with a sledgehammer and not have lost anything I care about beyond the time to do a new install.

 

damn... How about just giving the thing to me instead of smashing it and I promise that I will smash it later when you aren't looking

[pummetje]

dat pink keyboard

[StitchMonkey]

damn... How about just giving the thing to me instead of smashing it and I promise that I will smash it later when you aren't looking

 

 

But then how would I exercise my destructive demons?    If any computer part pisses its user off to the sledgehammer point, it is doubtful it would be in a condition you would want it.  I'm sorta a duct tape it and force things to work longer than they should, so by the time it is in the sledgehammer/shotgun target stage, it is well past its point of usefulness.  I have never done it,  I promise, I just like feeling like I can.  I figure it is better to destroy just the drive than be tempted to toss the entire tower out the window.  For what it is worth I have a 64GB SSD I picked up refurbished for my OS right now, so nothing that would likely make people very jealous, or would be much of a loss.

 

 

And smashing is my thing. . . . if I pass it along with a promise of destruction, I would expect you to kill it with fire, or acid or something,  put some creative effort into it at least!

[Raboo]

Looks nice.

[threadysparrow]

But then how would I exercise my destructive demons?    If any computer part pisses its user off to the sledgehammer point, it is doubtful it would be in a condition you would want it.  I'm sorta a duct tape it and force things to work longer than they should, so by the time it is in the sledgehammer/shotgun target stage, it is well past its point of usefulness.  I have never done it,  I promise, I just like feeling like I can.  I figure it is better to destroy just the drive than be tempted to toss the entire tower out the window.  For what it is worth I have a 64GB SSD I picked up refurbished for my OS right now, so nothing that would likely make people very jealous, or would be much of a loss.

 

 

And smashing is my thing. . . . if I pass it along with a promise of destruction, I would expect you to kill it with fire, or acid or something,  put some creative effort into it at least!

Ok fine then I will put it in my computer and abuse it by using it for 7-8 years and killing it that way. You know, because SSDs don't last forever. So I think the best thing to do would be to use it as much as possible and then let it die. THAT'LL SHOW IT WHO'S BOSS!

[FranBunnyFFXII]

Really looking forward to seeing this debezzeling you speak of.  Don't let that project fall by the wayside as it sounds awesome.

You echo my feelings about having only the OS on one SSD.  I really like knowing that if i get pissed enough at my system I can yank that out kill with a sledgehammer and not have lost anything I care about beyond the time to do a new install.  It is symbolic for me, but I just am much a happier having that in one place and nothing else in on it, or at least as little as possible.  You just seem to have more logical, practical reasons for wanting the same thing.

I fully intend on the Eyefinity array project being completed but it will take some time because I don't have many resources anymore. I lost my job right after I order the parts and base system to start this project and ended up dumping cash into things to get the stuff I needed and now I don't really have enough money to get stuff in a timely matter, and I don't have tools to work with so its going to be a bit of a struggle to get everything done.

I have my first of 3 monitors but its going take till December to build up enough funds to get the other 2, and then i'll have to tear the monitors down(all but one) and use them to mock up a stand for them and where im going to place them on my desk, ect.

The most difficult part of this build is definitely going to be my Eyefinity array so that'll be documented.

[Eddprzz]

I sometimes wish I bought an alienware they look so badass like a sports car but yea nice job

[dylandylandylan]

Looks good, and very in-depth, thank you for sharing! 

[P e r s e p h o n e]

What a beautiful system, I hope you get the eyefinity thing running. I believe in this build, now if only that didn't sound cheesy.