1070 gtx in an m17x r4

I guess Black Ops III has been optimized for newer gen core processors and your 3rd gen cpu bottlenecks it.
That is the only explanation i can find to this.

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Yeah, that's what I thought first. But then I saw two laptops with the same hardware, same 7700HQ and GTX 1060, one running around 100fps (like my Alienware...), and the other one around 140fps...
Both with a clean Windows 10 install, same recent Nvidia drivers, same game folder, same settings. That's why I don't get it. Something is wrong somewhere, but I have no idea what it is.

Anyway, back to the topic. I shoud receive the full copper heatsinks next monday. I'll see what needs to be done to make them fit my laptop properly, and then I'll make a comparison between the stock heatsinks, and these.

Next step, buy the M18x 330W PSU.

 

why only swap the m14x fan blade and not the whole fan?

 

isn't NV_Dispi the old file we used to mod like 2 years ago, now do we not mod the NVCVI.inf instead ?

Just make sure you get this part of the clearance done :


without clearing room for those tiny coils and junk, the heatsink will not make perfect fitting.

 

really great score there graphics wise !

 

because it would look like the ones in this post:
https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/2699-m17x-cpu-fan-upgrademod-2cfm-104cfm/

The complete fan of the M14x R2 is too small and i would have to mod it the "ugly" way.

So i did this:

 

Btw, I also ordered this fan a week ago or so. Waiting for it. I saw your post, and I was thinking about doing the same thing, it's way cleaner that way. Did it change a lot?

 

It keeps the temps of my overclocked 3920xm in check, which was way more difficult when i had the stock fan. So, i would say yes. All at the cost of a bit more noise.

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Allright. That's amazing the number of upgrades that can be done to this laptop... Even small upgrades like that, that can still be really helpful.

Next thing I'm going to do, that has nothing to do with processing power, is upgrade to WiFi AC. I already bought the Intel 7260AC card.
The stock antennas are designed for the 2.4GHz band as far as I know, so I dismantled the Asus antenna from my desktop computer, I don't use it. It's made for WiFi AC, so it should be fine.
I'll keep the built in coax cables, desolder the stock antennas and replace them with the ones from the Asus thingy.

 

I certainly understand aethstetics but, are you implying combining the 2 flows more air or is quieter?

 

The design of the blade gives the m14xR2 Fan a CFM Rating of 10.4, which is way more than the stock Fan of the M17xR4.
The M14xR2 Fan has to cool both GPU and CPU, thats why it moves more air and achieves better cooling at the cost of a bit more noise.

So i am using a fan that was designed to cool 2 components to cool just one component (M17xR4 CPU). It improves cooling.

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that's all understood but, the body of the 2 fans are different sizes or your wording made sound as such to my interpretation. having different sized fan body with change the fluid dynamics of the ofthe air flow and circulation... ....or maybe it won't and the only different is that it's better looking and plug and play.

 

I guess all he is wondering is if swapping the entire M14x fan would work better than just swapping the blades, or maybe the opposite.

 

nice work !

 

Hi, guys. I'm half way through the mod and have noticed something... odd. The card has two large black blocks (possibly vrms) that prevent it from lying entirely flat. Because of these protrusions, the card rests about 2mm above the posts you'd use to secure it... Is this expected? I mean... the screws can still meet the posts, but it's definitely not a flush mount.

Picture attached, card shown lifted up so that it's easier to see the blocks.

This is potentially a question for @woodzstack , @A-Gits , or @etienne51

Thanks in advance!

 

Yes, but it should not be a problem. I only used the right screw, since using both would stress the board too much. Also i used some termal pad strips to cover the chips on the back part of the card. That way those chips wont make contact with the motherboard.
Do it carefully.

 

That's a relief. I was worried that something was seriously amiss! Thanks for the quick reply. Time to rebuild!

 

yeah you can remove those, it's because the test system we use is the one these were originally intended for, the MS16L13, sometimes I remove them sometimes I don't.
they come right off, just stickers really.

 

They're rubber feet for mounting in another system. Thats the system we test them in, basically. Nothing to worry about, just rip them off, thats all.

 

Oh, i just saw that big fat block there . Do as Woodz suggested!

 

Hah! Amazing. Good timing again, too; I just got the laptop built back up minus CPU and GPU!

@woodzstack I never would have guessed! They totally looked like part of the card under the work light.

 

yeah, well for your replacement card I just packaged it and sent it asap, had you waiting long enough to make myself uncomfortable, even if you were silent about it.

well alls good now right ?

 

All is good; Thanks for asking! I'll post some pics and details during the week.

Short summary is:
1. Card working great (no weird drops during benchmarking, main display works correctly, VR headsets work correctly) -- Good to go for work Monday!
2. VGA port is dead! I should have expected this as Pascal cards don't support analog signal.
3. 5-pipe sink keeps the temperatures in line with a 980m on a 3-pipe sink on cursory tests.
4. The Chinese 5-pipe sink (copper, black top) requires a cut near the heat pipes and one of the flanges near the VRMs removed (left side).
5. The Chinese 5-pipe sink requires that you... grind the flanges off the bottom cover of the laptop! It's too tall otherwise. That was a weird discovery.
6. It has offset sizing all around so I had to use a lot of 0.5mm padding. Memory was as usual but coils were 0.5mm and VRMs were 2.5mm.
7. Cutting the tabs off the MXM slot to get proper clearance and alignment, especially on the CPU side, was very... very... time consuming.
8. The CPU bay / GPU bay cut was easy (thanks for the pics @etienne51 -- your cuts look much nicer than mine).

Thanks again for the quick replies @woodzstack and @A-Gits -- literally enabled me to finish this project tonight rather than lord knows when.

 

wait what!? no RAMDAC? I run my main display off VGA as it's analog. Sounds like 1070 would be a no go then?
I wonder if the 5 pipe would drop temps on the 980M at all?
Any more testing on the CPU 3 pipe?

 

You could still use a mini-dp to Vga or Hdmi to VGA Adapter. Card runs great on this machine.

As for the 5 Pipe HS, it would decrease temps on a 980m. A lot!

My 3 Pipe CPU HS works great and i dont want tp miss it. My 3920xm performs much better that way and is able to holds higher clocks for much more time than the stock sink.

 

Seconded on the 3-pipe cpu sink recommendation. I switched to one last night also and saw a dramatic drop in cpu temperatures (and the same behaviour as @A-Gits where the clock held more reliably on thready loads).
I don't have good numbers yet, but the one test I had time for (tsbench) ran about 7 degrees cooler than normal. My data is bad though: I switched thermal paste at the same time (kryonaut instead of diamond)... So... take that with a grain of salt.

 

Actually... Most of my temp data is going to be poisoned by that...

 

I assume you have a CRT as a main display? Which one? As a FW900 owner, I litterally spent years looking for a solution for that very issue, newer cards dropping analog support.

If you have a "regular" analog display, with no more than 225MHz bandwidth needed (something around that number), you'll be just fine with many of the HDMI to VGA adapters out there.
Otherwise, if you're like me, and use a high end analog display in need of bandwidths ranging between 300-400MHz, there is only one solution available right now. The Delock 62967, DisplayPort 1.2 to VGA adapter.

http://www.delock.com/produkte/G_62967/merkmale.html

But be aware! There are quality control issues with the DisplayPort connector on this device! I wrote about this here.

https://hardforum.com/threads/24-wi...ived-comments.952788/page-380#post-1043216344

I had to completely remove the stock cable and replace it by a new one. It was a nightmare, but it works wonderfully now for me.
At least, it handles 337MHz bandwidth without any issue, 2304x1440 @ 71Hz, 72Hz can be reached by tweaking some VGA timings, and I can run 1920x1200 @ 96Hz perfectly. All that, from my desktop 1080, via DisplayPort.

The other option is to wait for the HDFury5 to be released. It shoud handle 400MHz I suppose. For now it kinda looks like it's never going to be released, but we still have hope. I recently heard that it was still on the table, and just a matter of time. Wait and see I guess...

 

SGI FW9011 aka SONY FW900 2304x1440 @ 75hz.

whats the HDFury5? What i really wanted to get was some box folks were taking about the in FW900 thread on [H]ardforums, i guess some did a kick starter and made proper adapter with true low latency and EDID emulation and the works!
I am also kind of hoping the longer i wait the lower the 1070N prices get or a 1080 or 1080 Ti or at least 1070 Ti N cards come out that would work.


My GTX 980 never seems to go over 66C ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The CPU load temps are Hades Celsius. 3 pipe cooler for sure.

 

Well, put simply, no one did such a thing. But people tried many adapters out there, trying to find one that would be low latency and that would handle the high resolution of our monitor. There was no such thing on the market. At least none that we know of.

After months maybe years of digging, we finally found one chip that could be the one, from Analogix. And someone got in touch with a few different companies and asked them if they could manufacture an adapter using that chip.
Fortunately for us the company Delock did just that, but their 62967 adapter ended up with a faulty DisplayPort connector which cripples the bandwidth... It's just the connectors fault, the adapter itself handles everything just fine. That's what I confirmed when I fixed my Delock adapter myself.
I don't know if that's been fixed from the factory yet, I lost track of that for a while. I'll try to catch up soon.

Now, the company HDFury is the one that has been manufacturing all kinds of video adapters for analog and then digital since years. But they had a huge setback with their analog products beacause of a lawsuit from well placed people complaining about their adapters facilitating the removal of HDCP and the copying of protected contents...
That was not their fault, but noone would hear anything, so they had to remove some of their products, and their next HDFury analog device, the HDFury5, was delayed.
This device is the one that should end up being the reference for high resolution, high refresh rate analog monitors and projectors like our FW900. It should technically replace the integrated RAMDAC of the GPUs, and handle the full 400MHz the internal RAMDAC could, with very low latency, great colors, EDID management, and probably a lot more features.
So, for people still using those analog behemoths, the HDFury5 should be the holy grail, enabling us to simply plug in our analog monitors to DisplayPort and enjoy their full performance as if it was meant to be used with DisplayPort from the start. But that adapter will cost a fortune I guess.

 

so i wonder if i can't do 2304x1440p @ 80 hz cause the GTX 980 M does not have 400mhz ramdac?

 

The 980M has the 400MHz RAMDAC no? I used to have a M17x R4 with a Eurocom 980M I installed a few years ago.
I seem to remember it worked just fine on my CRT all the way up to 2304x1440@80Hz... Maybe I remember incorrectly?

What is the maximum you can get?

 

Nice work everyone! I had a M15x with a 680m but it was stolen =( .
After that i managed to buy a M17X R4 for a good price and now I am thinking to try this upgrade since the R4 has a 675m (poor performance).
I already ordered the 330w Dell psu because mine sometimes doesn't work .
@woodzstack can you provide me with the price for the cards and the modded heatsink?

 

yes, of course I can.

 

Ok guys, last week I received the copper heatsinks. I didn't have enough time to try them right away. I managed to install the CPU heatsink already, nothing particular to do, just remove the old one and install this one.



One thing though, the surface is not quite perfectly smooth. There are very light "steps" from the machining process. But that's barely noticeable, so I decided to go ahead and test the heatsink anyway, thinking the thermal paste will take care of that easily.
I also had to remove two adhesive bumpers on each side of the radiator, I don't know why they added that, it's something that was not there on the stock heatsinks and it just couldn't fit with these. Weird.



So, how well does it work? I'd say pretty good! I guess I should do a comparison and mount the old heatsink again, apply the same thermal paste, and run the same test.
But what I can say so far is, I ran OCCT Linpack for 30-40min with the new heatsink, and it held just fine, spiking at 93° on Core #2 (the one that gets hotter), and around 91° most of the time.



I seem to remember I couldn't run OCCT Linpack without hitting almost 100° and stopping the test. I'll try again with the stock heatsink today.

Oh and something else, I tried applying the thermal paste two ways, just being curious.



I've always done it the first way, at least on laptops. On desktop computers with a large heat spreader I do a cross instead of just one line.



Doing it that second way did not change one single degree, maybe half... Same results on OCCT Linpack, and same delta between the cores. Some get hotter than others. It does not change a thing. So I guess I'll go the easy way with the line.
Btw, I always clean the CPU and heatsink surface with Akasa TIM Clean first.

 

Now I'm taking care of the GPU heatsink. This one comes with thermal pads. Just like the CPU heatsink, actually, it also came with preapplied thermal paste in a square shape. I removed that right away on both heatsinks, so I can apply my own Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut.
Again, like the CPU heatsink, the surface finish is not quite there. It's actually way worse here. But I'm not exactly sure whether or not this affects cooling when using thermal paste. But I guess I'll try to sand that down with some fine sandpaper, try to make the surface as smooth as possible.



With the stock heatsink, I did not cut the aluminum near those two coils on the side of the card. Why? It did barely touch them, and since I was going to replace the heatsink anyway, I waited.
Now with the copper heatsink, the surface clearly presses down on those two coils. The stock heatsink was aluminum, and the small copper area for the GPU itself was slightly protruding from the aluminum surroundings. Which gave barely just enough clearance for the coils.
On the copper heatsink, the entire surface is flat, there is no protrusion anymore, so I'll have to cut a notch for these coils. @woodzstack warned me about that actually.



On the left, there is a diode that clears the heatsink by maybe half a millimeter. That's way enough, but I haven't tried fastening the screws all the way yet, because of the issue with the two coils I described above.
So I don't know if, with the added pressure, it won't touch. I'll see that soon. If it does, I guess I'll have some more cutting to do.



Finally, the stock thermal pads seems to fit perfectly almost everywhere! I really appreciate that. There is just one spot where it's not good at all. The pad for the VRMs covers only a third of the ICs, I'll have to put a thicker pad next to that to cover the rest.



Now I was saying those stock pads seems to fit really well, but I have no idea what it's worth, quality wise. There might be better pads out there.
If anyone knows where I could get really good thermal pads, of various thickness, so I can keep a bunch aside for later projects as well, it would be great.

 

you have to cut away some of the heatsink as you can clearly see, but I also recommend polishing the copper surface that you paste as well, so it has less porous and less grainy of a surface,

 

Also, triple check your copper CPU heatsink makes great contact. Sometimes they do not.

 

Looking foward to the finished version of your copper heatsink. I got mine as well but i did not touch it so far.

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Yep, already done, cutting, polishing, benchmarking... I took care of the GPU heatsink only though. I did not touch the CPU heatsink since my post.

Give me a moment, I'll write about all that.

 

So as I said, here it is. This was done quickly with the Dremel and a cutting disk, and then a file to clean things a bit by hand.



The heatsink now clears the two coils just fine. As we can see on the photo below, that cut was definately needed... The heatsink seats quite below the surface of these two coils.



I could then tighten all the 4 bolts to make sure nothing else touches. I was thinking maybe the diode I mentionned earlier could. But fortunately, there is like half a millimeter of clearance here, so no need to modify the heatsink any further.

Good, time for a fitment test, see how things get together inside the laptop.



Well, it was not as easy to plug the card as it was with the stock heatsink. The heat pipes were touching the chassis a bit. Nothing too bad, just slightly.
And the fan was really hard to put back in place. One of the corners of the fan also touches the heatpipes (see where the arrow points, on the photo below).

So I thought maybe I could just bend the pipes slightly. Maybe I actually bent these myself when machining the heatsink before. So I tried that, and fortunately, that was it.
Now it fits just fine, just like the stock heatsink. And there is enough room for the fan, I can mount it as easily as before.



Now, I remembered someone said the heatsink touches the bottom of the laptop. I had no issues so far, but indeed, the two extra heatpipes sits quite high, and maybe this could be a problem for the bottom cover. That was it.



I'm talking about these rectangles we can see in the center of the photo above. These slight protrusions touches the heatpipes. But fortunately it's only plastic. So I took my flat cutting pliers and removed the two rectangles on the left.



Now the cover fits perfectly again.

Ok, now that everything looks good, there was one last thing to do. As I said before, the finish of the GPU heatsink surface is not as good as the one of the CPU heatsink. So I should definately do something about that. And better do it now before applying thermal paste, I didn't want to take everything apart again.

So what I did was, I took 800 fine sand paper, cut 5 small squares (3x3cm), and I sanded the surface in contact with the GPU core. Why 5 small squares? Because when sanding, it becomes ineffective quickly, so I take another sandpaper to continue.

Then, I used my Dremel with a felt polishing wheel and polishing compound to finish the job. Here is the result.



The darker areas are just reflections btw. Just saying.

Then I tried to do the best I could with the thermal pads I had at hand. I really need to buy proper pads, and redo that next time. I also applied the thermal paste, Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut as usual.



And finally, the card assembled! I won't touch it until I get better thermal pads and replace all those.



Now just a comment about these rubber bumpers underneath the card @Schurke mentionned a few days ago. I also had these, I forgot to mention that. No, there are not such thing as rubber electronic components hahaha. But indeed, these things prevents the card from seating properly on the M17x R4.



What I did was, I removed both, trimmed one of them a bit, so I could keep one. Then I put this one back in place, but I moved it a bit on the board where there was no component below on the motherboard.



We can see it between the diodes on the top left corner.

Job done! I refitted the card, put the fan back in place, the hard drive cage behind the graphics card, and then put the cover back on. Everything fits perfectly.



Time for some stress tests, see how well the components are cooled now.

(Btw, these photos are taken by a phone... the Google Pixel 2 XL. This thing takes really wonderful shots, I almost can't believe it sometimes! Before I used a real camera, now I just don't bother anymore for things like that. Haha.)

 

Super mega job! Now we can compare your full copper against my copper/alu hs.
If full copper does better, ill have to follow your guide, which btw is very well explained! And the pictures are awesome!

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So I can definately say these heatsinks improved the temperatures.

Before doing all that, I ran AIDA64 GPU test, and the 1070 hit 90°C rather quickly, and started throttling. It did not go any higher, but it was not at maximum power either.

Now, with this heatsink, it reached 89°C after 38min of the same stress test. No throttling during the entire duration of the test, the card stayed between 105W and around 114W all the time.



Now for a 40min CPU stress test under Prime95. Maximum temperature of 93°C for the CPU Package, 92°C for one of the cores. Again, no throttling at all. Seems a bit high to me, though...



Back to the GPU test, I ran Furmark a few times, 40min each. I remembered I did not apply the overclock, I had to try again.


(Click on this photo to get the high resolution version, it will be easier to read things.)

Again, 89°C reached after maybe 15 or 20m, but then perfectly stable, between 88-89°C all the way through, during the entire 40min of the test. And no throttling, as we can see on the GPU power consumption graph below.



Well, that's it for now! I was hoping to get temperatures a bit below for the CPU, it would give me some room for a proper overclocking. I was actually also hoping slightly lower temperatures on the GPU, maybe 85° or something?
I guess that's the best that can be done here, especially considering how hard these stress tests are on both of these components. I hope it will stay slightly cooler when actually gaming.

But anyway, I guess there is still room at least for the CPU, since I'm waiting for the replacement fan from the M14x. That should help a bit more, maybe I could be able to stay below 90°C in the current configuration.

Oh, and just one precision. I was using no laptop cooler or anything of that sort. The laptop was sitting flat on my desk, and there is a wall 25cm behind the laptop.

 

How does your card manage to get those temps? My rig turns off the moment i hit 84-85 degrees on the 1070... a temp that i have not reached anymore since the HS upgrade.

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Something else. On 3DMark when I apply the GPU overclock, it bumps my graphics score from 17078 way up to 18386, the physics score stays solid at about 9200, but the combined score drops from 4183 to 4096.

That's not much of a difference, but could it be a power supply limit? Any thoughts?

I already bought the 330W PSU, I was thinking about that for a moment now. I should get it by the end of the week.

 

Wow, really? But you tried a stress test? These things really bumps the temperature all the way... It's nothing like a game.

 

Ill do it now. Aida64 GPU Stress Test it was? 40 minutes?

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Hello after all the modifications and results, if you could go back you still choose the 1070 or change for the 1060?

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Go for Furmark, 1920x1080, with MSAA x8 and fullscreen.
It was 40min yes, but the maximum temp was reached in about 20min for me, it then stayed stable, dropping to 88°C a few times.

 

Oh for me, 1070 all the way. The difference in performance is huge, but indeed, this particular 1070 requires quite some mods to be done to perform at it's full potential. But it still works really well and far better than the 1060 on the stock modded heatsink. The price is higher too, though.

But I have to say I really like modding these laptops.

Now I can also say, the 1060 is easier to install, it just requires the heatsink mod, not the laptop chassis, not the motherboard, and the stock heatsink does a good job I guess, no need to upgrade it.

So it all depends on what you want to do.