maybe you should pick the sellers with a lot of crown status (blue or gold), although I haven't had issues with diamond sellers also.

Pm putochip123 and e_mc_square. These two are experts here.

no problem. all the best for the upgrades

fly off? do you come back? although it has international warranty, it's subject to the quality of service at the new place that you're staying. locally, their service is top notch. to date i think only dell can deliver a decent after-sale service, on-site.

that's what i thought yeah you should ask around and see how it goes over there.

usually it's better to deal with warranty locally.

the only upgrade that you can feel the difference is using ssd as boot, software, and game drives.

for sata ssd, currently samsung 850 pro should be one of the best. get 512gb or larger for single drives, or make a raid0 with 2x or more smaller drives (like much cheaper liteon s900 256gb). sandisk extreme pro should be ok also.

cl9, cl10, cl11 are memory timings. 1600mhz is memory clock speed. you can go for smaller timing, higher clocks if you want to, but i don't think you can feel the differences between normal and performance ram. you can check out brands like g.skill and crucial also.

as for the ram size, if possible go for full 32gb, then use the excess for system optimizations (ram-based caching for ssd/hdd, ramdisk, etc.). try it out then compare it to the same system without such optimizations. the pagefile can be set to small ones (like 200mb min to 1gb max) to save space. (it's likely that this system file will never be used but just make sure it's there. until now i still have some systems running 0 pagefile without issues)

because there is nothing in the new ssd, of course you need to do something to make it bootable. the easiest way is to do a clean os install. to do that you need windows install media and grab drivers from dell support site. alternatively you can clone or create a system image based on your current system and perform system restore in the new ssd.

always keep the stock hdd intact before you confirmed everything is working.

yes you can. i never used that before.

No problemo

haha there will always be better stuff coming later on (like sata ssd. there will be less changes in ddr3l ram except for price). just have fun with your current setup first

tbh, there are plenty of things that you can do with excess of ram.

not so sure why 880m can be that hot. it can be the fan, or the heat sink, but iinm 780m is fine with it.

my 880m in m17x r4 is running at below 80c under loads. btw i am using desktop driver mod by mr. fox for this card. it's relatively much better. it still have serious drop in fps for a few seconds when gaming, but it's much lesser now.

yeah that space limit. however i think it should be ok if you use the 2.5" 1tb 7200rpm hdd from hgst. imo it's really better to go minimal, e.g. 1x ssd (os, software, games) + 1x hdd (downloads and storage). for long term storage it's better to use external storage or nas. in the case of disasters, you get lesser damage because of the limited space in the computer (less data affected hehe)

oh i see. it's better to just use system image created with windows built-in recovery tools.

i am going all minimalist for my machines also. tbh it's relatively faster now because less of hardware (especially hdd hehe). now i have more space i am putting in one more water cooling aio for gpu lol

it's still good for some years, but it is showing its age (technologically).

uh? m17x r4 was released in 2012.

my m17x r4 has 2x sata3 (hdd bays); 1x sata2 msata slot; and 1x sata2 odd port. for now it's full (2x sata ssd, 1x msata ssd, and 1x hdd in hdd caddy)

to me the optimum is still 3-disk setup. 1x ssd for os, 1x ssd for apps/games, 1x hdd for downloads and data storage.

my 18 is 3-ssd setup hehe (still have 1x msata slot unoccupied). my aurora r4 is 3-disk also.

once my custom nas is complete, i will take out more disks from most of my machines.

sweet

which temperature are you referring to? for cpu, normally it should be mid or high 50c if it's idle, depending on what cpu that the machine has (mainstream or highend). for gpu it's usually below 50c. in general 65c is safe, but it's high at idle.

haha that's funny. aw doesn't make a sound when it's idle

yeah to me it's young too, but technologically, not so.

to name a few, it's missing full sata3 support; usb 3.1 type a and c; pcie 3.0 m.2 slots; and a touch screen (so that when i play fps games, i can poke at it repeatedly to the target until he dies )

generally yes to both questions. i'm curious, do you have fps dropping issues with 880m? what games do you play?

alright you are running optimus or dedicated gpu mode?

yeah that's what i thought. i have read that there were some guys who compared this before and found out running optimus solved the issues in 980m too

can you recall the stock settings before converting it into peg in the modded bios of m17x r4? i will try to use 880m with optimus also.

actually i don't really like running a dgpu with optimus :/ i just don't want the cpu to take up the role of gpu, making it hotter.