SMGJohn

The biggest annoyances with the Alienware M17x R4 and an upgraded GPU such as GTX 1060 or GTX 1070 is the lack of automatic fan speed, with the MSI 1070 the fan speed works automatically but only when the GPU goes over 60 degrees, so before that it sits there at 0 RPM, that cannot possibly be good for the GPU... HWiNFO and SpeedFan are only two alternatives I know of that lets you control the speed, however if you want anything more than 3 speed options such as 0% - 50% or 100% fan speed, you have to use HWiNFO and enable EC compatibility in the settings for Dell, the only problem with this, doing so allows you more finer gradual control but at the same time, HWiNFO has a tendency to freeze and lock itself so your fan speed locks themselves to whatever fanspeed which it was last under forcing you to restart the laptop to fix this. Another annoyance with HWiNFO is the fact it has to be started manually, even if you auto start it, it wont initiate the fan controls which is even more annoying. There has to be a better way to do this, SpeedFan only allows you to do 0% - 50% and 70%~ fanspeed, it wont let you do 100% and there is no gradual control, just either off, on at 50% and 70ish% speed. I have heard of Dell Fan Management but no idea if this actually works with Alienware laptops though. I have A11 Unlocked BIOS, no idea if the internal BIOS can be edited to adjust the fan curves at all, never seemed to apply when I have tried.

Your Ranger still working fine after all these years or did you replace it? My i7-3940XM is an ES sample so it might be why its dying and the fact the head on the CPU is flacking away, not sure if you experienced any similar issues with the 4xxx series. Thanks mate, thats actually a very interesting concept, I remember portable desktop PC's were all the rage in 2010 but no one really did anything with it. Only downside is the lack of a built in battery but I noticed PSU with like 30 minute power outage protection are a thing now although only 400W is max, it could be the thing I am looking for if they release it. DVD drive is simply to replace it with a hard drive bay, external USB have chance to disconnect, bad stuff for a mediaserver

Hello, I am looking for some advice regarding more modern laptops I am talking post 2014 here and newer. That contains 2 x 2.5" hard drive slots and a DVD drive bay with either mSATA or M.2 slot as well. I currently own a Dell Alienware M17x R4 seeing how its manufactured in late 2011, and my i7-3940XM is dying of old age, the replacement parts are getting more and more expensive. The reason I want a machine with these specs is because I have 3 x 2.5" SSD's with 8TB each to allow me replace my NAS which is bulky, heavy, I need to be able to pick up my entire machine with all my storage on it in case something happens I can pack it down relatively easily, NAS systems are too massive for this. My budget is whatever fits the bill, the laptop has to be relatively comparable or superior to the M17x R4 Size does not matter too much, it could be as large as a 20 inch gaming laptop such as MSI Titan. And yes I know its not any easy task, I been trying to look myself for many months without luck, perhaps someone owns such a machine or knows of something similar could give advice, currently price of M.2 drives larger than 2TB is criminally high price.