About to buy an M14x, any suggestions?

Hey guys, long time Alienware user, first time with a real portable requirement, so I decided to sell my M17x and get an M14x.

Looking at the 2860 CPU and looking to also do a couple of aftermarket upgrades (Memory/SSD)

Any gotchas/suggestions/experience you can share? Do you guys recommend the M14x? (I won't be doing any hardcore gaming but definitely some gaming, it will be more of a multipurpose Laptop)

Thx for the help.

 

So far so good with mine, I have had it three weeks with very little issues:

1. Heat/Noise: it can and will get hot and loud, normal every day use it stays nice and cool and quiet, gaming is when it gets cooking. I found disabling the turbo boost cuts cpu temp down by 20c and I cant tell the difference.
2. After market upgrades? Be careful, there seems to be a lot of discussion around SSD's and problems with the M14x.
3. If you don't get the wireless HDMI it doesn't appear that they include the extra wires for the antenna, so post upgrading doesn't appear to be an option.
4. There has been some talk about not getting the 3GB nvidia as it a waste. I have it and I have never seen the memory usage on it over 700-800mb but that might change if you do video editing or have some apps that can fully utilize that memory.

Hope that helps!

 

I would think that the 2860QM would be an overkill, unless you'll be doing some intense video editing a lot. Check my sig for a review

 

I would recommend not buying online from Dell.
If you do some research, you will easily find many horror stories in this department.
I was lucky, I only had to wait a bit longer than expected, but most of the CSRs were either unreachable or very rude, like your call was a burden for them. Most of them are also difficult to understand as they are in India, and they have no knowledge of the products they sell, safe for the list of features and components that is on your order.

I bought mostly stock components with the 6Gb RAM upgrade (at 1666 Mhz instead of 1333 Mhz) and added Bluetooth so that I could transfer pics from my cell to the laptop.

I'm a little bit worried for system requirements of upcoming games for next 2-3 years, especially for RAM and CPU.

I bought an M14x for SW:TOR, Diablo 3 and Skyrim and based on recent forums, blogs, previews, etc I'm not sure it will be able to handle all of these at 30-50 FPS on high GFX settings.
These three games will be released in the coming months and their requirements are high, so what will happen with the next hot games?

Will my M14x be able to handle everything for the next 2-3 years?
So yeah, maybe all the upgrade options are worth it in the long run.
Whatever you can afford.

 

Odd I have 5 dell machines and have never had any issues ordering online... every one was shipped well before the expected date and with almost no issues.

As for the Nvidia 555 not handling the games... its around the top of the list for 14" laptops... will it run next years games at 60fps at the highest settings? No, I don't think any laptop that doesn't have SLI will be able to accomplish this. Honestly I don't expect my 1500 dollar laptop to perform like a 5000 dollar custom build PC.

 

Thanks for the info, and I completely agree with you. I will be gaming mostly on my M18x, however it isn't exactly a system I want to be moving around so the M14x is perfect for what I need on the go. I ended up going with the 2630 and save a few bucks.
+ rep for you and everyone else that replied for the good info.

 

Yep that is defiantly a rocking M18x