Tell jcap to post his desk, and post yours too! [JCAP POST YOUR DESK]

So when you choose a color on their website it's just the color it ships with? Then you can change it all yourself if you so desire?

Awesome.

Desktop upgrades can wait, this thing has pretty colors, need it now!

How does:

2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo (Are there OCing tools with these so I can OC to 2.5Ghz and save $100?)
4GB Memory
512MB 9800M GT
500GB HDD

Sound?

E: How is the support for drivers and software and such? I always format laptops and reinstall my own OS so I know it's clean, are the tools/drivers required for AlienFX and all the other peripherals (sound drivers, webcam, etc) downloadable so I can format to Windows 7 64-bit RTM?

EE: Am happy, looks like it works as you described on the m15x as well!

Alienware's driver download page is here - check under "mobile systems". Doesn't look like they have Win7 drivers for anything yet but they hopefully will around the time it hits retail. Mine also came with a resource DVD which probably has some driver/software stuff on it and a few other DVDs (windows disk I think, AlienRespawn, etc.).

I think that you can now in theory use Nvidia's standard driver for mobile chipsets, although I tried to install it and it bitched about not being able to install some of the things that I think are more chipset specific (hybrid SLI, etc.). Mine uses a 730i chipset and I haven't bothered with reinstalling any of the drivers or anything - I'll look that up in a bit I guess.

Oh, and yeah, at least on mine they give you access to the bios so you can do basic things like changing front-side bus or clock speed multiplier if you have an extreme edition CPU. I think you can change ram timings as well. Can't mess with anything voltage wise (probably for good reason :P).

The only thing I'd change on mine is that I'd get a bigger HDD - already running out of space on the 250GB that shipped with the lappy. I think when I actually have money/an on campus job I'll go ahead and throw two decent sized drives in - you can RAID 0 or 1 them up. Not sure if that applies to the M15x.

Fuck rent, job money goes to this now. As for drivers, I've had no problems using Windows Vista 64-Bit drivers on Windows 7 64-Bit if I can't find Windows 7 specific drivers, so that's no problem really!

I hate you Alienware, oh so much.

Speaking of job money, I need a job really bad now. Since there's oh... $5,000 of things I actually NEED qued up behind this now...

For a note, since my mobo and GFX card burned out on me, I've been serviving off a PNY Geforce FX 5500 PCI card (SLO-HO-HO-W) till I could replace my 4770 and I got a new mobo. See specs for more.

Lots of empty space. I guess its good for airflow, but I look at my case like a UV unwrap: pack it as much as possible.

Yeah, I like my stuff as clean and wireyless as possible, I feel bad that I couldn't get that with the fan control cables though. It'll be a lot more packed when I get that Coolmaster V8 in there, Lol.

Be a man and go with the V10! You need to work on your cable management for more than a few minutes though, it's not bad but it's not good either!

Cable management? Yeah, I definitely don't have much skill with that.


I bought a modular PSU, but the bloody cables on it are so stiff that I have trouble hiding them. Even with this horrific wiring job, though, the innards stay relatively cool.

Other reason why it's so jumbled is 'cause Acer built a really short case. The top of the PCI and PCIe slots stick out the back of the computer instead of being recessed, and the hard drives are mounted sideways compared to my M1201's case. I didn't realize the new PSU would be that much longer; there's barely enough room to spare for the wiring that runs the USB ports on top of the case and the SATA power for the optical drive.

Stock cpu fan :(

Maybe it's because it's three cores running at 2.2GHz (that's not exactly blistering), but even when bogging down in Crysis, the hottest of the cores runs up to 44 celsius. I'm not exactly unhappy with those numbers.

And also, when I bought my Athlon X2 5600 Brisbane (two cores at 2.9GHz each), I installed the AMD heatsink that came with the new processor, and it would only run 800RPM (the current AVC runs 1800). I had to re-do the thermal paste and reinstall the AVC 'cause with the AMD heatsink, the CPU was, at idle, running around 45 celsius. Reinstalled the AVC that came with that computer and it dropped to 30 celsius.

EDIT: By "the current AVC" I mean the AVC in my last computer, though this one runs about the same.