is it because of the incompatible vbios? you might need helps from svl7 of ti :/

Oh sorry svl7 is the bios modder for hire; he can be found at techinferno.com forum (ti)

Yeah we're spoilt :/ thats the first thing i did too (swapped the stock hdd to ssd) hdd is still good as storage, but its really a pain to run the os, apps and games on it.

Its should be about 550. However its really an old ssd now. If you have the choice, you should go for newer releases.

for common usage, samsung 840, samsung evo, plextor m5s, m500.

For performance drives i suggest samsung 840 pro and plextor m5pro xtreme. Well these are just my preferences haha!

yes, i suspect so. 180W is not for a 770m, plus the ram upgrade. 240W is more like it. 330W is much better. I think for aw, high wattage (important: must be same voltage!) should be fine; especially if you intended to fill up whatever port/slot in it with new hardware upgrades.

ivy-bridge based asus g-series, from what I have learned, has no problem using higher-power adapters. i'm not sure about the latest haswell models.

yeah.. r4 has a 240W adapter.

hm.. that will stress and kill the adapter fast :/

using the underpowered adapter for power-hungry gpu is really not a good idea.

Lyp has a shop which sell dell ac adapter (its hidden inside lyp, need to dig deep). I think digital mall also has a similar shop but im not sure if they sell it or not.

your voltage(V) x amp(A) = round(result)W

yeah that's they are 240W.

damn it.. the 18's 330w ac adapter cannot be used in 17 :/ (need modifications; something to do with the id chip in the power brick)

unfortunately, not yet

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-...ower-input.html

doing research before purchase is so damn important these days :/

sure

i think windows search takes up a lot of boot time. after disabling it, the boot time improves.

ah.. yeah the guy at the shop also told me that there were no more stock for aw 240W ac adapter :/ (i forgot to ask him when he will restock)

http://www.thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/opt...dows-8-edition/

normally i apply only a fraction of it that i think important.

yeah that's a similar one; but normally i just disabled the service and then leave it alone.

yeah last weekend i did a fresh install and put the tips in one by one. when i turned the windows search off the booting becomes much faster.

i hope this weekend i have some time to put the msata in (along with another 1tb hdd for storage)

maybe i just use recimg to do the job this time. it's really time consuming to rebuild everything hehe

my iso's and vm's need space :/

er.. not sure how much. all i know is that before i did the trick, there were 2 and a half cycles before the dots disappeared during boot; after the trick, i do not see the dots anymore

from the reference manual you have 1 msata slot, 1 hdd bay, and 1 odd bay; so you can have up to 3 drives (a new msata ssd; your odd bay can be converted to house another ssd/hdd).

cannot wait till weekend; just installed the msata ssd that I got last week lol! (first time I assemble a laptop with no 'extra' screws left behind)

there is only one wire that is hard to be put back. the rest is easy. r4 has 2 display panel ports. one is for 3d, and one is for non-3d.

This post has been edited by horns: Sep 3 2013, 11:42 PM

yes all screws are labeled nicely. you will never missed.

oh there is one thing: some of the mobo's do not have msata port. so take a careful look when the dell tech comes to install the 'new' mobo for you.

true, it should be shown in the bios. mine was labeled 'not detected' previously.

maybe i just use dism to capture the current c: and dump it into msata.

i just installed it physically; haven't done anything to it yet.

nice

er i have no idea how to replace the msata in your aw 14. as for a clean install, i did that to the r4 already (in one of the plextor m5p currently). no issue.

my process is simple:

1. back up the tokens using advanced tokens manager; this is to be used to restore activations after a clean install;
2. grab the drivers from dell;
3. set up the bios properly (i have w8 pro; so i need to disable secureboot and enable csm boot);
4. created a uefi-aware usb install media (just extract the contents of the w8 iso into fat32-formatted usb stick);
5. perform install; defaults are fine;
6. install drivers;
7. restore activation tokens.

note that it's a clean install, so you don't have any oem branding.

if you are not comfortable with this i think you can still use alienrespawn instead?