Purchasing a Alienware M14x

Hey everyone,

I am new to the forums! I was looking to get some help on purchasing a Alienware. I have been looking into purchasing the Alienware M14x off Powernotebooks.com and the Representative said it is a great laptop. I usually play MMO/MMORPGS. I mostly play League of Legends, which is not too graphic intensive. I just had a few questions for the owners of M14x's.

1. What is your experiance with your M14x?
2. What are Pros and Cons of the M14x?
3. Is the 1.5 gigs of 550M good for most games?
4. Is the Bigfoot Network Wireless cards worth it?

If you guys can supply me with enough information on the M14x I would appreciate it a lot. Thank you, and God Bless!

 

1. I personally like mine a lot, it's suitable for my needs which is a portable laptop and I can still play games on reasonable setting when I like too. I have had no issues except with my SSD and very minor boot issues.

2. Pros: Portable, powerful, very nice build quality
Cons: SSD incompatibility, high cost

3. It's a GT555M that comes with the m14x, there's plenty of talk on here whether there is a performance difference between the 1.5G and 3.0G card, there appears to be none. If you're asking if the GT555M is a good card for most games, it's a mid range card therefore don't except to play all the newest games on the highest settings. That being said it seems to overclock nicely, but this doesn't improve performance too largely.

4. I have had zero experience with it.. Really doesn't seem like it would I went with an Intel 6230 I installed myself and for 23 dollars I got bluetooth, WiDi and a better network card.

 

Hey thank you DC87 for the quick response. The information was helpful. I just wanted something that can play games at a descent frame rate. I don't play Skyrim or COD on a laptop, that is for my xbox. I just play League of Legends on pc mostly. I did here from a buddy there really is no different in the 1.5G and 3.0G, that the benchmarks were slightly different. Like the different with the i5 and i7 for the AW. Just a 5% to 10% processor speed. Do you get good connection with the Intel 6230?

 

I do, but honestly the stock Intel WiFi 1000 or whatever it was called worked perfectly fine too and the only reason I upgraded was for bluetooth and WiDi to be honest. Although, of course having an ethernet cable plugged into you're machine is always best.

I play Dota 2 which is newer then LoL and not even optimized yet. With completely maxed settings I get 35-55 Fps depending on which graphics are on the screen.

 

it looks beastly. if you move around a lot then the power/portability is excellent.
if your an avid gamer and want high settings the card is okish.
1.5gb is more than enough so save your money
i did have the stock wireless card that suited me fine. it was ok for me when playing counter strike source.

 

1. What is your experiance with your M14x?
I bought my m14x in the middle of December. One week in I had the keyboard fail. One month in I had my first motherboard failure, part was backordered and came 10 days later. 8 days after that I had my second motherboard failure. Yesterday, while replacing the second motherboard, the tech left two cables disconnected, including the power supply for the fan. I nearly overheated and melted the computer down into a pool of plastic. After reconnecting everything myself, the machine failed yet again. Be very, -very- careful when buying an Alienware right now or have some sort of backup plan. I simply cannot rely on mine, and I'm pissed that it lasted just long enough to ensure I couldn't return it for a full refund. I love my m14x, but I love it FUNCTIONING. I don't have a single other complaint about the machine. Everything else is awesome. But if it can't power up, none of that matters.

2. What are Pros and Cons of the M14x?
Pros: When it's been working and not a $1300 paperweight, it's been awesome. Handles gaming and audio production very well. It's big enough to not feel like a tiny little netbook even though it's only a 14" laptop, but not so big and heavy that it doesn't feel portable. It's the perfect sized laptop for me.

Cons: The video card. Soldered to the motherboard and has a high failure rate. This appears to be the main culprit in many motherboard failures. Support has been good so far, but with such a high failure rate of these motherboards and no solutions or acknowledgement of the problems and absolutely no chance of a recall or warranty extension for these problems, I would never, ever buy another m14x.

3. Is the 1.5 gigs of 550M good for most games?
If you search around the forums a bit you'll see a lot of threads on this. So far the consensus seems to be that the 3gb is a waste of money. It's not DDR5 RAM in it, and the performance differences aren't worth the price difference. If the price were the same, by all means go for 3gb. But I personally wouldn't have spent more than $10 on the upgrade. If a game comes out that requires more 3gb of vram, I'm sure the rest of the card wouldn't be up to spec.

4. Is the Bigfoot Network Wireless cards worth it?
I personally don't think so, but then I would never game via wireless. It doesn't make any sense to me to spend money on a computer that can handle games really well, then trust their internet connection to wireless. Why even have that variable involved? Plus, I've seen -tons- of problems with the Killer cards and haven't seen any problems with the default Dell wireless card. To me it's a waste of money for more problems. But, your mileage may vary.

 

1. My experience with the Laptop has been very good, except for some few minor problems but it get fixed after the replacement of parts, the customer experience with Dell also good, in fact better than what other has said.

2.
Pro:
- Best 14" gaming laptop you can find, and can even compete with the other larger size laptop, the thing is, size is not matter, the specification is what make this laptop so good.
- Quite portable
- Build quality and feature (Illuminated Keyboard for e.g)

Con:
- Expensive compare to other laptop in the same size category
- No upgradable GPU, because of the GT555M is build on the motherboard you wont be able to upgrade the card.
- Heat issue (can be reduce if you turn the Turbo Boost off and have a cooler or something to elevate the laptop for better air ventilation)

3. 1.5GB is more than enough, unless you do a dual or tri monitor and play game at the same time, else I doubt any game would use more than 1GB of memory. As for the card itself, it is average, you will be able to play most game at medium to high, and some game like BF3 at medium because that game is a really graphic demanding, however you can tweak it.

4. Sorry no idea for this one, but as far as I can see, it look pretty good.