New R4 owner

[Rankorr]

Just closed the deal on R4 and I'm pretty excited since It'll be an upgrade from my M14xR1.

i7 3820 4.2GHz
GTX 690 4GB
1 TB HD
X79

Has anyone with these specs had good overclocking results? From pictures it seems the chassis has a well built cooling system but I'd like to hear what you guys think, thanks.

 

[MattyB]

Welcome and congrats on your new purchase.
The standard cooling will be fine for what you have. I have recently put custom CPU cooling into mine and it reduced the temps significantly. You can't do a lot of CPU overclocking on the 3820 due to the Alienware mobo and BIOS. That's why I took out my 3820 and AW mobo. You may want to look around here and see what some of the guys have done with their GPU cooling. That may give you some room to overclock your 690.

 

[Rankorr]

Yeah I've been looking at some coolers and what to go with so I'll search and see what's been done on here. Thanks for the input!

 

[MattyB]

If you have the time and inclination I would also suggest putting a 256gb (or larger) SSD in there and use the 1TB HDD for storage.

Re-installing Windows and all the drivers can take some time but the results are worth it.

 

[Rankorr]

I was planning on doing that down the line but wasn't sure how easy/hard it would be to re-install the OS from the HD to SSD. Although I agree it is worth it. I hear boot times and general loading speeds are noticeably faster.

 

[jayhernandez7]

Totally agree with @MattyB, I upgraded to a Samsung 840 120GB SSD and the boot times are crazy! The only thing I recommend is go BIGGER in space! Atleast 256GB, but other than that, it's worth the money! Loading games a lot faster is always nice

 

[Ronsan]

If you have the time and inclination I would also suggest putting a 256gb (or larger) SSD in there and use the 1TB HDD for storage.

Re-installing Windows and all the drivers can take some time but the results are worth it.

Very much worth it I would suggest this also.

CG on your upgrade!

 

[shankc]

Its not hard to reinstall operating system onto ssd. When I first got mine I just cloned drives then a few months later I did a fresh install just to see if it made much of a difference. It didn't so if your unsure about a fresh install just clone your HDD its easy. But if you want to do a fresh install their is plenty of good how to threads on here

 

[MattyB]

One of the issues with cloning is that if you have any hidden errors on your previous HDD, it will clone them too.
A clean install is easy but time consuming. I wouldn't go for anything else personally.

 

[shankc]

I must agree with mattyb but when I cloned my Harddrive my system was only three months old but it can be overwhelming doing a fresh install on a Alienware. I had done plenty of fresh installs on other laptops and desktops but it took me a few months to get up the nerve to do it on my R4. But I downloaded all the drivers I needed, put them on a spare drive in the order they had to be installed and it was plain sailing. You can find good installation guides on here.Good luck on whichever way you decide because only you can choose don't be pushed into something you don't feel comfortable doing

 

[Commy1]

I think the first upgrade you may consider is the SSD, it's by far the cheapest and least complex of the ideas put down. Liquid cooling the GPU's will require some pricy parts. Definitely start with a fresh install. What I do is compile all of my drivers and programs with .exe's into one folder, copy to an external and do the clean install. I learned the hard way after I started fresh and found I couldn't even connect to the internet because there were no options.. luckily I had another computer to copy from but still.

I'm not very savy with the options for liquid coolers out there, but is there an all in one/closer loop liquid cooler for dual GPU cards? I would probably be the first to hop on board the wagon for a custom loop but the Aurora is pretty tight, it would likely have to become an external unit.

 

[yikes81]

Welcome and congrats.

Tapatalk'n

 

[jayhernandez7]

I don't like cloning onto new HDDs. You risk dealing with errors. I like a fresh install of Windows 7