M17XR3 - £880

bandit · 13 Feb 2012 at 16:22

Alienware M17xR3 : Stealth Black Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 1 £ 717.48
Alienware M17xR3 : Stealth Black
Optical Drive : 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
Wireless: Dell 375 Bluetooth Card
Graphics: 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
English Genuine Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64Bit OS)
Display: 17.3 inch WideHD+ (1600 x 900) WLED LCD
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
Battery : Primary 9-cell 90W/HR LI-ION
AntiVirus: McAfee SecurityCenter 30 Day trial version
4 GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz (2 DIMMs)
Processor: Intel Core i7-2670QM (2.20 GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3.10 GHz)
Back Up Media Not Included
Misc
Wireless : Dell Wireless 1501 wireless-N
Certified Refurbished

Worth it?

sja360 · 13 Feb 2012 at 18:20

only thing that isnt great is the resolution. i think i could live with that but i think some other's would be put off because of it.
i think you could do better. but it really depends on what your wanting it to do.

Meaker · 14 Feb 2012 at 00:25

If you don't mind doing it yourself you can grab your own LCD and put it in yourself.

bandit · 14 Feb 2012 at 13:03

thanks guys.

for now i think it will do me

i'll bump up the RAM as soon as i get it, and in a while upgrade the screen, but i think its an ok price

Meaker · 14 Feb 2012 at 13:52

In the future you can also upgrade the graphics card too.

bandit · 14 Feb 2012 at 17:04

Meaker said:
In the future you can also upgrade the graphics card too.

absolutley,. i wanted the best baseline i could get to build on.

Gazb · 14 Feb 2012 at 22:37

1600*900 is a nice everyday resolution, but I guess it's more of an ideal 15.6" resolution than 17".
Seems a pretty nice spec and as you say baseline.

Meaker · 14 Feb 2012 at 22:38

bandit said:
absolutley,. i wanted the best baseline i could get to build on.

For the price yes.

Technically the ultimate machine is the R2 because of the 1920x1200 screen and two graphics cards but I don't think you will be disappointed.

valkynaz · 15 Feb 2012 at 06:56

Meaker said:
In the future you can also upgrade the graphics card too.

I don't think that's possible. AFAIK the GPU is part of the motherboard, meaning a GPU upgrade, means a new motherboard as well, which won't be cheap.

My uncle had an alienware laptop and one of the component that was a part of the motherboard broke (I think it was welded to it). So in the future you'd be in the same sort of position. To fix the problem (i.e upgrade GPU), you'd also have to replace the motherboard. He got told it would be cheaper for him to throw it in the bin and get a new computer/laptop that it would to fix it.

FredFlint · 15 Feb 2012 at 23:30

valkynaz said:
I don't think that's possible. AFAIK the GPU is part of the motherboard, meaning a GPU upgrade, means a new motherboard as well, which won't be cheap.

My uncle had an alienware laptop and one of the component that was a part of the motherboard broke (I think it was welded to it). So in the future you'd be in the same sort of position. To fix the problem (i.e upgrade GPU), you'd also have to replace the motherboard. He got told it would be cheaper for him to throw it in the bin and get a new computer/laptop that it would to fix it.

Thats not correct. The graphics cards can be upgraded. Have a look on youtube at a m17/m18 teardown video.

bandit · 16 Feb 2012 at 00:30

Technically your both right

there us a separate.foi. As well add an on board component

RobK · 16 Feb 2012 at 00:45

I think you'd be better off spending a bit more now rather than having to upgrade everything later. For £990 I got a refurb M17x R3 with a i7-2760QM, Radeon 6990M, 2x320GB drives and the 1080p screen.

bandit · 16 Feb 2012 at 10:50

None on offer like that at the moment, and all I have at the moment is an atom NetBook!

Meaker · 16 Feb 2012 at 11:03

valkynaz said:
I don't think that's possible. AFAIK the GPU is part of the motherboard, meaning a GPU upgrade, means a new motherboard as well, which won't be cheap.

My uncle had an alienware laptop and one of the component that was a part of the motherboard broke (I think it was welded to it). So in the future you'd be in the same sort of position. To fix the problem (i.e upgrade GPU), you'd also have to replace the motherboard. He got told it would be cheaper for him to throw it in the bin and get a new computer/laptop that it would to fix it.

All Dell alienware machines of sizes M15X and above use MXM

It would cost too much to design the PCB for different high end chips. That's if the PCB has enough layers to accommodate it.

bandit · 16 Feb 2012 at 16:27

Meaker said:
All Dell alienware machines of sizes M15X and above use MXM

It would cost too much to design the PCB for different high end chips. That's if the PCB has enough layers to accommodate it.

whats MXM mate?

AFAIK the following are upgradable reasonably easily on an M17

Memory
CPU
GPU
primary HDD
secondary HDD
screen (maybe easy dont know!)

RobK · 19 Feb 2012 at 00:40

bandit said:
whats MXM mate?

It's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module

scrlk · 19 Feb 2012 at 16:49

What happened to the Dell Outlet thread? :confused:

sehcure · 19 Feb 2012 at 16:50

bandit said:
thanks guys.

for now i think it will do me

i'll bump up the RAM as soon as i get it, and in a while upgrade the screen, but i think its an ok price

RAM is the one thing I'd look at upgrading asap.

Knightinator · 19 Feb 2012 at 19:14

Vinni3 @H|H said:
What happened to the Dell Outlet thread?

It got deleted when the announcement at the top about competitors was put up, so I guess the outlet is considered a competitor now.