Not quite an owner yet but hoping to be over the next week or so. I've had a bit of a journey buying my first PROPER performance laptop so I'm hoping to have a happy ending.
A few weeks ago I started browsing around for a 980 GPU 6820HK CPU laptop. Initially I was budgeting around £1500 for a 970m/6700hq and that quickly rose as I realised that for a couple of £100 I could have the top end.
I ended up, wrongly, settling for an Alienware 17 R3..... what a mistake that was. I didn't even have it 10 days before the thing failed on me. It was advertised as overclocked to 4.1....... it was received with no such spec. I contacted the seller and found that I had to go into the BIOS and access overclocking options. I set it at level 3 and it BSOD on me. I set it at level 2 and it seemed OK.
Everything was great for a while until I decided to stress test it. Temps under prime 95 were absolutely sky high after 15 minutes (90+C). Decided to turn off the OC and try again.... same thing. I lost a lot of faith in the cooling at that point so I decided to bench it. The laptop performed swimmingly but the temps were ridiculous when under pressure. I decided to leave it on OC level 1.
Now, ashamedly, I'm not a gamer. I know I'm in the wrong company here but I just like top end toys. My gaming drug of the moment is Microsoft FSX. This particular game barely stresses the GPU but puts the CPU through some serious paces. I had a short flight on MAX settings using ORBX with maximum updates and pushed the laptop to the limit as best I could. Everything was stunning as would be expected until 48 hours later when I went to turn the laptop on and got 7 beeps (CPU fail).
A few emails to the seller followed and they weren't very helpful. I was told to contact Dell as it was under warranty etc but I was well within the 14 day cooling off period so enough was enough. I just spent 3x what I normally do on a laptop and have less confidence than I do with my Frankenstein 5755G (upgraded CPU, SSD, RAM, etc). Thankfully, after a LOT of googling and panicking, I managed to get it up and running again (drained the battery then charged it). Contacted the seller and told them they're having it back.
That's where I'm at now. The seller should receive the laptop on Monday and I'm expecting a refund soon after. As soon as the refund is in...... I'm hitting the button on this....
PC Specialist Octane II X17-980 [Sold from a different retailer so the link has been removed - said site had very little info on the actual spec - Rakk]
Screen size - 17.3in
Intel Core i7 6700K
8GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 980
16 GB RAM
Hard Drive - 256 GB SSD [It may also have a 1Tb HDD, difficult to tell - Rakk]
Operating System - Windows 10
Which to the best of my knowledge is an Octane II Pro for a good price.
I really regret not going down this road in the first place. A modular build is RIGHT up my street (see Frankenstein comment above). I'm a fettler and an upgrades, I want to be able to swap components.
Anyway, that's my story long as it is. If you've made it this far I hope to be a PCS owner soon and can't wait to put the new toy through its paces.
If you have stumbled across this page wondering what laptop to buy..... just make sure it's not BGA!!!
A few weeks ago I started browsing around for a 980 GPU 6820HK CPU laptop. Initially I was budgeting around £1500 for a 970m/6700hq and that quickly rose as I realised that for a couple of £100 I could have the top end.
I ended up, wrongly, settling for an Alienware 17 R3..... what a mistake that was. I didn't even have it 10 days before the thing failed on me. It was advertised as overclocked to 4.1....... it was received with no such spec. I contacted the seller and found that I had to go into the BIOS and access overclocking options. I set it at level 3 and it BSOD on me. I set it at level 2 and it seemed OK.
Everything was great for a while until I decided to stress test it. Temps under prime 95 were absolutely sky high after 15 minutes (90+C). Decided to turn off the OC and try again.... same thing. I lost a lot of faith in the cooling at that point so I decided to bench it. The laptop performed swimmingly but the temps were ridiculous when under pressure. I decided to leave it on OC level 1.
Now, ashamedly, I'm not a gamer. I know I'm in the wrong company here but I just like top end toys. My gaming drug of the moment is Microsoft FSX. This particular game barely stresses the GPU but puts the CPU through some serious paces. I had a short flight on MAX settings using ORBX with maximum updates and pushed the laptop to the limit as best I could. Everything was stunning as would be expected until 48 hours later when I went to turn the laptop on and got 7 beeps (CPU fail).
A few emails to the seller followed and they weren't very helpful. I was told to contact Dell as it was under warranty etc but I was well within the 14 day cooling off period so enough was enough. I just spent 3x what I normally do on a laptop and have less confidence than I do with my Frankenstein 5755G (upgraded CPU, SSD, RAM, etc). Thankfully, after a LOT of googling and panicking, I managed to get it up and running again (drained the battery then charged it). Contacted the seller and told them they're having it back.
That's where I'm at now. The seller should receive the laptop on Monday and I'm expecting a refund soon after. As soon as the refund is in...... I'm hitting the button on this....
PC Specialist Octane II X17-980 [Sold from a different retailer so the link has been removed - said site had very little info on the actual spec - Rakk]
Screen size - 17.3in
Intel Core i7 6700K
8GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 980
16 GB RAM
Hard Drive - 256 GB SSD [It may also have a 1Tb HDD, difficult to tell - Rakk]
Operating System - Windows 10
Which to the best of my knowledge is an Octane II Pro for a good price.
I really regret not going down this road in the first place. A modular build is RIGHT up my street (see Frankenstein comment above). I'm a fettler and an upgrades, I want to be able to swap components.
Anyway, that's my story long as it is. If you've made it this far I hope to be a PCS owner soon and can't wait to put the new toy through its paces.
If you have stumbled across this page wondering what laptop to buy..... just make sure it's not BGA!!!