[Guide] Installing AMD Radeon Mobility 6970 / 6990 in your M17x R2 (Single GPU and CrossfireX)

Nice Aarpcard.

Would you mind taking some pictures as to where you put the thermal pads (if it's not to much trouble)

Would be good to see.

 

Did you have any problems with the thermal pads interfering/falling off into the fans? (unless you put a large pad across all 3 or 4 regulators)

 

I put them exactly where the people at MXM upgrade put them.



The two on both sides are fine and won't have any problems with fan clearance. The one in the middle though has to be moved significantly upward to make contact with the fan casing but not the fan blades. There is still enough room to have it cover the chip though.

 

Awesome aarpcard! Thanks for the pics!

 

I wonder why i'm not experiencing any thorttling with the cards... not that i'm complaining of course, just wondering why they don't behave the same way for all of us

 

Are there any sellers for 6970/6990m cf's in Europe currently?

 

Probably because I'm not using Clevo cards. I'm using a Eurocom card (the same kind MXM upgrade sells) and a Dell card. They're a bit different than the Clevo cards.

 

Doh! my bad, i was thinking you had clevo cards...and now that you mention it, sure i remember that you got a dell card too. I'm still a little bit puzzled on why the same card on different manifacturers (given the AMD reference design) are behaving differently. Only thing that comes to my mind is the quality/brands of the components chosen.

 

Well, I've been lurking in the shadows. I don't have a lot to contribute to this thread because I still feel like my cards are all I need right now. I appreciate the hard work and risks you guys are taking to breathe extended life into the R2.

 

Alright guys, ordered myself a pair of clevo 6990s, should be here before the week is over hopefully.

 

Awesome Malignant...looking forward to your results

 

Congrats Malignant, who did you order them from and how much?

 

Thanks guys, I ordered from mythlogic from these forums. It was $920 + $20 ground shipping. It comes with 1 year warranty and crossfire cables (we'll see if the cables are usable) plus the cards of course. I've already ordered some IC diamond and a kill-a-watt meter from amazon. I also ordered a primary graphics card heatsink from pchub but too bad they don't have any secondary cards heatsinks in stock nor any extra m17x crossfire cables. The only thing I think I need right now are some thermal pads and a way to use the 330w psu lol

 

Which thermal pads did you guys go with, for the ram. All I know for certain is that they should be 0.5mm in thickness. Which of these would you suggest?

Thermal Pad - 0.5mm | Page 1 | Sort By: Product Title A-Z - FrozenCPU.com

 

I went with the fujiopoly 1mm thick thermal pads from Frozencpu.com. If you look at the second or third page of posts you'll see where ichime recommends going 1mm instead of the .5mm for better contact.

If you get the heat sinks with the clevo cards you can also use the thermal pads from that.

 

Man, I'm thinking of just selling my R2 and buying a whole new R3 hahaha

 

Ok I guess the 0.5mm one were for the retention mod. Thanks.

Are these the ones? http://www.frozencpu.com/products/1...ermal_Conductivity_60_WmK.html?tl=g8c487s1290

 

I think Im going with .5mm. Worked well with my 6970s and is less material the heat has to transfer through.

 

Well I would have thought about the M18x but the screen has only 72% color gamut and is dimmer than the RGB screen. I hate dim screens with a passion. Even the RGB screen is a little dim for my tastes, the macbook pro 13" has the right amount of brightness imo, about 400 nits but most people I know are fine with low screen brightness.

 

Yep, those are the ones I used. They seem to do a good job, but can't comment on how good they are versus the .5mm as I haven't tried those.

 

But the R3 doesn't have SLI or CFX.

 

or 1920x1200 or RGB

 

You know I just noticed that, why the hell don't they?

 

Because: bye bye M15x, welcome M14x and M17x R3

 

Exactly what he said

 

Guys i may use some advice here

I've just received thermal pads 0.5mm and MX4. I'm planning to repaste.

About the MX4, any sugestion for the application? is the first time i use it, but i heard really good comments about the performances.

 

Great paste also pretty dense.
A small useful tip: while you dismantle your system, keep the thermal paste tube on(or close to) a light bulb like I do, it'll be way easier to apply

Spoiler

 

ahaha great system .

i will just leave the siringe outside my habitation (i'm in the sahara at the moment, worming up the past wont be a problem )

Any sugestion on the application? i mean:

put a layer spreading the paste or a thin line across the cpu/gpu or a drop in the middle and let the heatsink spread the paste etc...

edit: tryied to rep you, but i must spread some love around first xD

 

I saw you did yesterday but by mistake(with my phone) I posted twice the same thing and requested for one of them to be removed, the notification got removed from my CP too but I saw it don't worry since I keep an eye here all the time

I personally put a little on the die and spread it with a thin plastic prying tool, found that it gives better results you can use something else of course.

Good luck where you are. Take care

 

Is arctic silver 5 ok for repasting 6990s or should I use buy something thicker?

 

I've heard that arctic silver is ok, but is slightly capacitive so have to just be very careful with it. I haven't personally used it myself, I've only used Shin-etsu and OCZ Freeze, both of which work fantastic.

 

Ok fine, off to the black market to sell a kidney to get the 6990's. Either wait till the dividends to come in and hopefully the prices will have gone done a little

 

I'd get IC Diamond

 

Read the same in another thread. I don't have the ceramic version so perhaps I shouldn't use AS 5 being a pasting noob. Thanks for the suggestions. I'll see which one is rated best for price and pick some up. Now all I need is the cards!

 

AS5 being capacitive doesn't mean its dangerous to use.

 

I went through soooo much AS5 when benching because it was cheap, good and one of the easiest to apply. Always heard the shenanigans about it being capacitive, but I never saw a problem or had a problem as a result. I must have repasted and swapped CPU's 50+ times easily

 

@ aarpcard, I read your posts a few days ago about this very topic in another thread. Good info.

@ both, I have a limited understanding of electricity but when I hear capacitive I think the ability to store a charge. Maybe that definition is wrong or not properly used here but I'd rather have a compound that cannot store a charge. I've also used AS 5 before and never had any problems with it. But since other pastes have seen to replace it in popularity, I don't have a problem switching. Looking forward to trying it out anyways when I get my 6990s.

 

I have finally gone ahead and followed Aarpcards awesome instructions and put two 240 watt power supplies together!!

The results are interesting...

To start off with, my laptop hasn't blown up so that's a good thing

It is charging, and recognises that there is an adapter connected

What I have found most interesting is when running Furmark and pushing past the 250 watt throttling that I experienced previously.

It seems to maintain a higher total power draw (I only have one watt meter atm) but still throttles slightly, albeit less. However, when power draw starts increasing in to the 260’s/270’s it begins to throttle more, and also more frequently. My Furmark FPS bounces between 34 and 28…

I have hooked up the meter to one adapter and it reads half of the total draw, so I know that the adapters are sharing the load. They barely even get hot now!!

So where does this leave us with the throttling? I am not entirely sure. Perhaps some built in mechanism in the laptop? Or maybe it is just an issue with Furmark, who knows…

So in conclusion, I have found that the two power supplies gave me about an extra 6-10 watts before something started throttling….

In a gaming situation, I think it should be fine as the load goes up and down anyway and generally wont stay consistent like when using Furmark.

EDIT:: I will be adding a fan to the project box as well as ventilation holes. You could definitely use a smaller box and a smaller heat sink, but I had to use what I had available

Here are some pics:

 

A) I've had AS5 on my GPU memory for almost a year now. No issues.
B) The capacitance issue is negligible unless you manage to squeeze the entire tube onto your core and then slap the heat sink down and tighten it. Even then its negligible. Use what you've got, or have access to. You won't see more than a few degrees difference between the best and worst stuff on the market.

 

@Douse. You could get a power strip, plug both PSUs into it, and then plug the strip into the watt meter.

 

I just tested Rift with a Prime95 torture test running in the background. I experienced the same jolting as Furmark, so it isn't Furmark...

@turbod, that's what I have done which is giving me total power draw.

 

After I fixed my throttling issue with the thermal pads, I haven't experienced any throttling. I'm going to run to homedepot tonight and buy a killawatt. When i get home I'm going to run some torture tests and see what's really going on, but as far as I can tell I'm not getting any throttling issues (anymore at least).

 

Hey guys, Is this what you are using to monitor the power draws?

Kill-A-Watt Electricity Monitor-P4400 at The Home Depot

 

yes im using something similar to that

 

Awesome, thanks Kenny!

 

Ok so I got the killawatt. The highest draw I've seen so far with heavy cpu and gpu overclock and cpu and ram overvolt is a decently sustained 313 Watts. That just confirms even more that the dual PSU design works. A single PSU would not have been able to feed that much current and not trip.

Having said that, I did encounter the throttling douse experienced - but only when the power draw went over 280 watts. I had to overclock my cpu as high as possible to draw that much. The reason why Douse was able to see it more clearly was probably because he's using a 920xm which has a higher TDP to begin with.

The highest draw I've seen in games so far is 271 watts in Metro. Anything under 280 watts will not throttle. Sometimes it can go for several minutes over 280watts without throttling, but sometimes its only a few seconds.

Strange. I wonder if its a failsafe Dell worked into the laptop to protect the voltage regulators. That 313 watt figure is pretty close to my estimated limit the laptop can handle . . .

Or I wonder if it's simply a matter of finding the component responsible for the throttling (it's not the PSU's) and add more cooling to it. . . . . hmm so much to think about and try.

 

Thats exactly what I have. Good little device.

I have my R2 plugged into a "Monster Green Power 900G" surge protector. When I hit the power button on my computer, it turns on my computer, printer, and stereo reciever. The computer alone idles at 85-90 watts. With the reciever it's around 140w. When the surger protector is on, between the surge protector light and notebook adaptor blue light at the end of the plug its around 2-3W all the time.

The 900G cuts power to other plugs on the surge protector when the computer is off so they don't continuously draw power. I also have a projector plugged into it. So when the computer is turned on there is power to that, I just need to hit the power button on it to turn it on, but when the computer is off, everything is off. It's pretty sweet. With my computer power button I can turn off or on everything on my computer desk. Stereo reciever, printer, computer, projector. I love it.

Monster GreenPower™ HDP 900G PowerCenter™

Oh and I got it for $45 since I worked at Best Buy

 

I am using Energenie Appliance Power Meter as it was much cheaper.

Aarpcard, Interesting that you too are receiving the same throttling. However mine throttles much earlier, around 260. It would be good to get it stable to 280, as I think this would be more than enough for 6990's and a overclocked CPU.

I can also vouch for that the dual PSU's work like a charm, as I was pushing the limits with the Prime95 and Furmark and the PSU tripped when running on just one, whilst it was fine when both were turned on.

It really does seem to me like it is a component getting too hot, as when I initially start Furmark it seems to throttle less, but then increases with time.

Damn it would be good to get some schematics of the m17xr2 design

Overall I am happy with the dual psu's. While it doesn't perform as well as I hoped, it is definitely an improvement. Thanks for your hard work with this Aarpcard!!!!!

 

1) How did you get to use dual PSU?? Special cable you bought?


2) I remember with the Dell's Studio XPS 1645 throttling and people have been getting 130w PSU instead of the 90w ones. The initial problem was that Dell had to release Bios update so that the machine will draw full 130w. Without the bios initially, even if when the 130w was plugged in, the laptop only drew up to 90w. Maybe this logic could work with R2. like we can plug in 480w psu, but what the Mobo needs is maybe bios that will allow it to suck up up to like maybe 350w or even full 480w.

You see what i mean? assuming that the hardware can support like 350w, maybe the bios needs to allow the mobo to suck that much power.

just my thoughts...

 

That is a thought, I am yet to run the modded A10 BIOS so i might install that and see if it changes anything.

Aarpcard, what BIOS ver are you using?

If you check out page 95 you will see Aarpcards latest design: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...0m-your-m17x-r2-single-gpu-crossfirex-95.html

Have a read back as well, because a lot of questions have already been answered in relation to parts etc.