M15x General Questions and Current Viability

Came across a M15x on the local Craigslist for what I seem to think is a pretty swell price. $550 for the following (before any haggling).

920qm
260M
4GB
320GB HDD
1600x900
Original packaging, bag, etc.

Honestly, this would mostly be used for home office, Excel, some database, and internet browsing. Rare occasions of loading up some games with old friends.

I see no reason the processor would not last me for a year or more. Have a few questions on the other parts though.

• In general....$550 a reasonable deal for this?
• 260M; it is MXM3.0B as far as I know, any reason it can't take even a 680M provided the power adapter is beefy enough?
• They made full HD screens for this, right? I've swapped screens before, just want to make sure they're avaialble on the market.- Believe this full HD screen can be purchased in glossy or matte version here.
• HDD - these only have one 2.5" bay, and it is SATA II, right? - Believe I have this answered as yes...one SATA II bay

 

ok lets start, yes price is good but always better to get it slightly better
the Nvidia GTX260m is MXM3.0B and lots of people have AMD 7970m card in them as for the Nvidia GTX680m I only know of 1 person and its a power hungry thing and will nodoubt cause issues in my own personal opinion ! the AMD 7970m, 6990m or the 6970m will be a nice fit, if you want Nvidia I would go GTX660m or even the 670m but wait till others try it out first is my opinion on that. personally I have a Nvidia GTX660m and runs without issue.
doesn't matter on how large you go with reference to the power brick, laptop will only draw so much, I think the alienware is either 150w or 180w, a lot of people are using the 240w from the m17xr2 model but it doesn't give them any advantage other than the brick will run slightly cooler.
yes they have made full HD screens for theses and they are many forsale on ebay if you lived in the uk you are looking at £80 to £100 for a new one or near new without any marks.
yes has only 1 internal 2.5" sata2 bay and yes its sata2, but you can buy a internal rom bay and remove the rom device and house another 2.5" hdd in there as lots have.
hope this helps, theres a great deal of info on the forums about upgrading the alienware m15x

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...5x-owners-lounge-part-5-see-post-1-links.html

 

Glad I finally straightened things out with the person on the erroneous service tag they gave me. Finally received a photo of it, and turns out it is not a lovely 920XM, but rather a 720QM.

Can only imagine I ought not be interested now.

 

That is a shame. I agree with the above except on the power supply. Yes the gpu can only consume so much. The voltage circuits prevent too much. FOr example you cannot really overvolt on the 7970M without the machine shutting off.

However somenone hardvolt modded the 920xm in the M15x and had it run over 4ghz. The machine pulled over 200W from the brick. He needed the 240W to run this OC. So the alienware can consume more than the original brick provides. A combined OC on the gpu at stock voltage and a big OC on the cpu (lets say 3-3.3ghz) across all 4 cores and the original brick is insufficient. The 240W allows the user to run right up to the motherboard limits without damaging the adapter. This limit seems to be somewhere between 210-220W.

 

If you can drop it to $450-$500 that would still be a good deal. It is not that hard to swap the processor on that machine

 

I agree Luis; not afraid to open up a system. I can pull the processor and GPU from my Precision M4600, and replace it all in under an hour. Concern is that it just is not a good deal. I agree $450 or $500 would be a fair price, but I wasn't looking for a fair price. I was looking for a basement bin bargain that I could at least resell in two years without losing out big.

I figured with the 920xm, I could at least part that for $200+ in a few years. Heck the QX9650 still sells for absurd amounts to the right buyer. Just going to wait it out until I can get a M6600 or M6700, or an Alienware M17x or M18x with my M4600 as a partial trade.