New R4 owner

Rankorr

Rankorr

New Member
Jul 2, 2013
4
0
United States
  • #1
    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

    MattyB

    Resource Administrator / Forum Moderator
    Mar 19, 2012
    3,175
    137
    Adelaide, Australia
  • #2
    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.
     
    MattyB

    MattyB

    Resource Administrator / Forum Moderator
    Mar 19, 2012
    3,175
    137
    Adelaide, Australia
  • #4
    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.
     
    shankc

    shankc

    Member
    Dec 26, 2012
    407
    0
    UnitedKingdom
  • #8
    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
     
    shankc

    shankc

    Member
    Dec 26, 2012
    407
    0
    UnitedKingdom
  • #10
    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

    Commy1

    Member
    Feb 25, 2012
    325
    0
    Guelph, ON Canada
  • #11
    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.
     
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