hey thanks a lot for clearing things up.

that's one way. however i still think it's better to get an msata ssd to replace the stock one as OS drive, then put the hdd in the odd.

additionally, you can create a ramdisk with a fraction of your 32gb of ram (8 to 16gb) and points all temp folders to it. this helps in reducing reads/writes to your ssd's, while having a speed that is a few times faster than a raid0.

for aw 17 that has a haswell chipset (hm87, up to 4 sata3), and from the possibility for it to do a raid0 with all 4 ssd's, i suspect they are all sata3. we can use hwinfo64 to view the actual one in the system under (bus > pci bus > sata ahci controller)

m17xr4's odd is of sata2.

for aw17, correct.

actually this depends on your usage. to me 256gb is my optimum (after i have done some over-provisioning, with minimal page files, hibernate turned on).

lol!

hi guys, my humble aw is an m17x r4. i so need it to ease my itches (yeah the poison was strong :/).

did a very minor ssd/ram upgrade with my stocks and a clean w8 pro install last night. seamless

yeah now i just have a pair of 4gb hynix lying around, and 2x256gb 840 pro. when the new 4x8gb ram arrived i will do a full ram swap, and replace the odd with a hdd caddy. hope to make the machine as quiet as possible haha!

right, shortage is everywhere now :/ i am still waiting for 17 with cpu and gpu upgrade options.

try turn the legacy rom on in the bios. it's better to run w8 in uefi mode. just make sure your installer is uefi-capable. w8 in legacy mode is much slower imo.

are you installing w8 pro?

hey balat, do it. (you should do it last year haha!)

there will be a thing or two to get used to. we are used to asus g-series. the immediate difference that you will notice is that the laptop will be warmer than asus g-series. however, its not the palmrest area (it gets warmer; still tolerable), but the area above keyboard, where power button is located (much hotter). i was kind of worried until i checked my gpu temperature with furmark 15-min burn-in. it stayed at 74c at room temperature.

to me, thats impressive. my g55 gpu is 660m and it peaked at 74c after i did a thermal paste replacement and cleaning up fans; while this m17 has a 680m, and i havent done anything to it yet.

i know it is not a fair comparison as g55 is a 15", but this brings me to another point: for gaming, get 17" or above, with compatible cooling parts.

We all know asus g-series run cooler for a number of reasons. The same reasons make the laptops to have very limited lifespan for gaming, and you can't do anything about it, except for getting a new one. i have upgraded my g55 cpu to 3820qm, and sadly the cooling is insufficient when i played games (peaked at 103c lol! luckily i don't have time to game as much these days).

if youre looking for the next upgrade, aw 17 is for you.

edit:

about the fan noise, yeah it's loud during heavy gaming (along with heat, this is inherited when you want more power). for common usage it's relatively quiet.

about maintainability, finally i have the chance to do the cleanups more easily for cpu/gpu. the design of aw is somewhat the reverse of asus g-series. it needs some work to get to certain parts (e.g. hidden rams, msata slot, and odd for swapping with hdd caddy). just plan the purchases and do it in one go.


This post has been edited by horns: Aug 23 2013, 09:57 AM

SRT is for smart caching, so you dont need it.

Is your machines hd graphic enabled? Check your bios. I think for higher end gpu's this is disabled.

congratulations, joshuachew

a sweet rig there

looks like 17 has morphed and it is easier to tear down than r4 to access those hidden stuff. the keyboard and palm rest is also one-piece. nice!

note: there is a problem with the latest 320.xx drivers with m17x r4 and 120Hz refresh rate (booted up fine but with a black blank screen). the current solution is to use 314.22 or lower drivers.

if you encountered this, don't panic. just put it to sleep and then wake it up. everything is fine again. a weird bug from GeForce drivers lol!

Are you running the 120Hz refresh rate, too? Many are getting this.

you're right what's your bios version? i'm still a09.

Alright Maybe after this i patch it to a11. Now i am looking for ways to revert to stock bios if sh!t happens.

yeah but I just prefer to have backup plan haha.. now running a12.

looked stable to me. i'm not sure yet. just installed haha.. downloaded the latest beta from GeForce. will give it a try later.

edit: 326.84 was not working for me lol!

This post has been edited by horns: Aug 25 2013, 05:47 PM

well.. there is

lol k

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imo that's the most common way to do stress testing (for in-game artifacts).

Put the @nick in []