AW 17 r3 arrived

my replacement for my R1 arrived today and I'm surprised by how thin it feels compared to the r1. I have a couple questions I'm hoping to get some help on. When it arrived I heard something like a screw loose, I opened it and repasted but couldn't find the screw or whatever is making the noise. So far it's working and after the repast with grizzly kryonaut my temps are 75 C max on the CPU and 65-66 C on the GPU. A lot cooler than the R1 by a long shot. The machine came with bios 1.2.3 and I'm unsure if I should update it. My million dollar question is my r1 has a Samsung 840 256gb ssd and a 1 tb hdd, the new machine came with an m2 ssd 256gb and 1 TB HDD. How should I configure my new Alienware with my previous ssd and hdd? I'm thinking of adding the 840 ssd for 2x 256GB ssd but I'd be missing out on the 1 TB hdd. I'm in love with the 4K screen, the colors are amazing. Any other recommendations for the new system?

 

I have exactly the same problem as you, refurb 17 R3 as well. The first time I held it I noticed there's a tiny bit running loose inside the casing, so I shake it and sure enough there's something tumbling around inside. It doesn't seem to affect the laptop in any way so I'm not particularly concerned with it, but still curious.

 

Yup that's it. I doesn't seem to hinder anything so far. I'm still unsure about how to configure the storage options. any advice? Also does your keyboard get warm even while idle or unplugged just browsing on chrome? I never noticed the R1 get warm around the keyboard but I feel it more with the R3.

 

Flash 1.2.2. For whatever reason Dell pulled 1.2.3 from their site.
People are having issues flashing from 1.2.3 to newer 1.2.12 and higher.
People thought it killed boards but its starting to look like a CMOS clear can fix this "Dead board".
Either way 1.2.3 is "No Bueno".

 

In the support page it doesn't show bios 1.2.2 available, any other i should try? I haven't really noticed anything weird yet with the current bios.

 

Go here

http://downloads.dell.com/published/pages/alienware-17-r3.html

 

Oppsie...
Duplicate post.

 

Sometimes it does gets warm. What I do is open task manager to check which process is hogging the processor. Most of the time it's Windows Update Service and Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework driver. I disabled Windows Update and it's fine so far.

 

The hottest area is the area around the power button, other than that the keyboard stays at a comfortable temperature (Like temperature of someone's lap)