wired is much more reliable. even if it's slow, it should be more than sufficient (unless, well, you really need more than that to live lol!)

which aw desktop are you using? a more straight forward way is to contact dell for maintenance service. (if it's still under warranty)

wait i think cpu will not make noise so i assume you're talking about the wc fan noise. have you tried clean up the rad? you can take it off easily and do the maintenance yourself.

if the wc unit is confirmed spoiled and not under warranty anymore, you can also replace the stock unit with third party units like corsair h55. (in terms of aurora)

oh ok. the wc unit could be a problem (either water or something building up inside) if after cleaning maintenance was done and it still have loud noise. then you should replace it with a new one.

you can google a bit to find out which wc unit is compatible for your system.

.. or you can send a pm to putochip123.

mansooriqbal, i have tested this: for aw, you literally do not need thermal paste for cpu and the cooling is as effective.

oh ok to me i don't see significant differences (it might have dropped for a few c hehe). of course it's better to apply paste haha! i haven't replaced the thermal paste on gpu. (still stock paste/pad from dell until now) it's always below 73c (bf4; 4+ hrs non-stop)

This post has been edited by horns: Mar 7 2014, 05:34 PM

how's your .ac setup? please do share ya!

China is the source where aw parts were born.

sorry i am not sure about this. you can check the seller's reputation (diamond, crown) crown is superior than diamond; the more diamonds or crowns the more reliable the seller is. i was lucky when i got my stuff there. they were genuine. (from diamond and crown sellers)

no problemo

aurora alx is much spacious imo. i have aurora standard. to me it's sufficient for now; and the size is not that bad. still in the process of adding stuff.

desktops should have plenty of space to house stuff. that's why it's bulky. don't even think about carrying it around. it's heavy

uh? how come? there is a new firmware released just a few days ago. try that and see. i do check and update the firmware of my ac66u regularly.

.. and geforce.com released the latest gpu drivers (335.23) for your pleasure

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/...tanfall-drivers

download: http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/73784

you see, 5 years is what dell can offer. after that it's a bonus, but you're on your own. >3yrs is <5yrs so they should have parts in their warehouse.

if a system is beyond 5 years, most probably it's beyond economical repairs (meaning if you wanna repair it you need to pay a huge sum to do that. with that sum of money you might as well get a new one)

as for the actual lifetime of aw system, no one can be sure about that because it depends on individual usage. if handled properly, it might last for more than 5 years. if you tell me you abuse the system like nobody's business, then is lifespan is much shorter. shorter by how much? don't know.

oh that. i'm not familiar with ddwrt. however i think issues can happen between the two (i.e. wifi router and/or wifi card).

the simplest route: call dell to report the issues; go through the trouble shooting process with tech support via phone calls; if it's confirmed that it's hardware related, and parts are available, dell will send technical personnel to attend to your case.

of course you can try to solve it yourself with members' feedback here but at least give us more clues, such as what happened before your screen is flickering (e.g. driver updates? the laptop hit something?); how does it flicker? is gpu overheating, causing artifacts?

screen shots might also help.

edit: oh I just saw the shot after posting this.

This post has been edited by horns: Mar 11 2014, 06:30 PM

did you touch any settings in the bios before? if you don't, try load bios defaults, press f10 to save changes then reboot.

many google results said 9.5mm sata-to-sata hdd caddy will work.

it's the typical cycle. maybe they need more user testing about the new chip before releasing stable high-end models, so they sell the cheaper models first to collect feedback hehe

you can use that msata slot, or you can take out the optical drive and replace it with a hdd caddy. (aw 14 can have up to 3x sata3 drives)

welcome

er.. if that's the case your only choice is the msata slot. you can get some ideas of your hardware by reading the manuals.

from the dell drivers page, it's likely from liteon (various variants; model names were published at the page). mine is from Samsung.