Alienware 17R1 GTX 1080!

Hey guys just want to start this thread. I purchased a 1080 mxm card for the F5 Tornado and I have successfully installed it into the 17R1. It posts with no issues and boots into windows. I have modified INF drivers installed but the issue is that I currently cannot test or run the card fully because the card itself is structurally different from the other mxm cards for the R1. The original heatsink will not work because the die is in a different position. I am currently in the process of making a custom heatsink but sourcing heatpipes and getting the right compound in order to weld the plate and radiator are taking time. As of now I can not say definitively that the 1080 is a viable upgrade as it may very well be beyond the power limitations of the alienware's motherboard. But I am very excited to be the first to try this and if I can get the heat sink situation solved and it passes testing then this old machine has done it again. I'll post a few pictures of the card in the laptop but I did not snap any of the device manager or gpuz screens.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4dlk0fipiEhcjVqcDV2Y0VEQ00?usp=sharing

 

Good job my brother, don't forget to cool down the bottom too

 

Does it just fit right in or you had to do some cutting?

 

Quite a bit of cutting had to be done. It does not fit right in. As of now i am trying to make a plate and seeing about making or ordering custom heat pipes.

 

lots of cutting.

Anyways @EepoSaurus forgot you were on these forums, you could have/should have reminded me haha.

 

Ive mentioned it quite a few times.

 

I didn't associate the name , I was thinking ebay the whole time... but now I remember more, and it makes more sense.
hey it takes a long time for me to remember a client sometimes, I get like 10 strangers a day talk all day to me, and then never hear from them again, lol.

I haven;t gotten pricing on the heatsink yet, but will you provide pictures of it and some of my suggestions if I get you a deal on it ?

Also was thinking you might need a whole set of varying thermal pads, like 0.5mm, 1.0mm 1.5mm and 3mm sets to apply uniform contact.

 

Saw your pics just now, yeah I will send you some thermal pad sets to help you make perfect - if you share total thickness and insight with us etc.. with the heatsink if you accept our offer.

Anyways, you should know, the AW17 has amazing amount of power to the MXM slot. So you might be perfectly fine.

 

Im really hoping so. Im documenting it all and i have a prototype heatsink which i am about to test. We will see how it works. Let me know about the heatsink

 

That's pretty insane, keep us posted! IIRC, alienware 17/18 boards have a hard draw limit of 330W. How the heck are you going to fab a heatsink for that, it looks pretty crazy for a MXM card. the power components and memory components are flipped!

 

Ive got a plan. it's gonna be about a week though.

 

+Rep

 

It's stuff like this that makes me glad I chose Alienware. They let their customers do pretty much whatever they want to their machines, whether it be their prebuilt desktops or their gaming laptops. No BIOS whitelists for MXM cards or Wifi modules means we can upgrade the crap out of the AW 17 Rangers.

 

Well I should have news for the thread as of monday this next week. I have been able to make my own heatpipes and have been succesful in soldering components together. I am making a bit of a Frankenstein heatsink but it should be able to adequately cool the 1080 and allow for proper testing.

 

maybe source a tornado f5 1080 heatsink and work from there?

 

I have but i still dont have it. Ive got one other iron in the fire as i am waiting to recieve the heatsink

 

Well I have received the parts I need but I am having a really hard time bending the heat pipes to the right shape. I am using a pipe bender but heat pipes bend badly and tend to kink more readily due to the vacuum inside. I have made my own but my process is very unrefined and they are crude. I am going to order more heat pipes and maybe pay to have them bent and flattened to the right shape. The hurdles to make this card work are extensive.

 

It will definitely be worth it in the end if you have a 17 with 1080 fully working.

 

Man you're a legend.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

 

Hey EepoSaurus! Any update on the 1080? Did you get it working properly? If so, that's freaking awesome!

 

Hi guys, my gpu fan has **** itself im in aus. Where the hell can i get a new one?

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

 

The card works and runs just like normal as long as it is in uefi mode and you have the 120hz screen but the 1080 die is in a different position and it is difficult to get a heatsink made for it. It requires extensive modification to the chasis to get it to fit and even further modifying to get a heatsink to work. Im working on it but its been put on the back burner a bit.

 

Hi! do you have news for this gpu upgrade?

 

i wonder how much different the die location and heat sink mounting holes are from the 980M

 

Very different. It requires a custom heatsink

 

Hi! could you test your upgraded system with 3dmark firestrike, 3dmark timespy, unigine valley, unigine heaven, unigine superposition?

 

How are you doing with this upgrade?

 

Its been sidelined. The 1080 i had suffered a mishap. I have been working on something else though. Ill update this thread when i get it in.

 

subbed

 

Ok so here is how things stand. I purchased the 1080 mxm card and got it to fit in my chassis through some extreme modification. I was able to get post and i was able to get the card installed with custom drivers. The problem is twofold. I can not properly secure the card to the board and i cannot test the card in 3d applications because of the location of the die. It does not allow for a standard heatsink and although i have had success fabricating some alternatives i think this card is too far from standard to be viable.

So i have gone to phase 2. I am going to purchase a zotac en1080k and a asrock deskmini 1080. Both of which have 1080s in them and i will be gutting them to see if the form factor is right. I fully expect them to be either longer or to have an external power jumper or both. My working theory is that i will flash the 1080 bios that i have that i know works on to these cards and get them installed in my r1. With some luck ill strike gold. The en1080k arrives next week. Wish me luck.

 

Wow!!!

 

Are you using the all copper heatsink you bought for the Ranger or the stock one?

Unless of course its not all copper and assumed the seller sold them both that way.

Good luck on your experiment!

 

I use the all copper one for the cpu.

 

Godspeed mate !!

Kudos for the step. Also may we know which 1080 MXM you purchased ? Was it the MSI variant(s) (One with extra power & without both are frankenzombie cards with massive core position changed ) or Clevo ? IIRC for installing those you need to dremel off the HDD bay chassis and a bit of the chassis where the lid rests to the corner, towards the vent's ending on the GPU side & perhaps event the CPU/GPU separator part of the chassis.

 

My first post has pictures

 

If the zotac or asrock 1080 mxm modules have the extra power connector, how do you plan on taking care of that? I once saw in a german forum someone got a GTX 980 installed in their R1/R5, and they did something to feed the extra power connector on that card, but I'm not sure what.

 

Got a link? Im not for false hopes but it may be an interesting read

 

I plan to flash it with a 1080 bios from the msi card i have. If it requires the extra power to start then im screwed. But if it is only there for supplementary power then it may work fine.

 

http://alienware-forum.de/index.php/Thread/8042-AW17-R1-120Hz-3D-VR-Ready-GTX-980-N16E-GXX/

Have fun

 

Ah I remember that guy!

He did some good work making some heatsink improvements IIRC

Thanks for sharing

I wonder if I can do something similar with my own heatsink. Since its all copper I wonder if I can remove the heatpipes from my original heatsink and configure them for the new one. Might be worth looking into and I hate to waste good components.

 

When I first got my 1060, before I ordered a custom 5 heatpipe 150W GPU heatsink for my Alien, I made a really ghetto heatsink solution to cool my 1060 while overclocking it. What I did was rip a heatpipe off the heatsink on my Lenovo Y510P's dead ultrabay GT 755M with my bare hands. I then proceeded to beat it into the shape I needed with a heavy duty hammer, and attached the heatpipe to my 2 heatpipe GPU heatsink using electrical tape. I didn't have a welding torch, so that was the best I could do.

Surprisingly enough, it significantly lowered temps. Now with my 5 pipe heatsink, my 1060 runs even cooler . I ordered it off ebay from someone going by the alias Chichen or something like that. He also sells custom CPU heatsinks for Alienwares as well.

 

Yep! I have one as well for my unit.

We should be able to add 1-2 more though but will have to mod the frame of the laptop to allow for clearance. At that point will need to force the fan speed to its maximum potential otherwise the radiator wont be able to displace the heat dump fast enough. At least that is my working theory.

I bought my GPU and CPU heatsink from him and am currently running them now.

 

The asrock deskmini gtx 1080 has been purchased after much research. $1534 down the drain! It will be delivered on tuesday. I am going to be putting up for sale a 2017 razer blade 14 7700hq gtx 1060 512gb sssd 1080p for sale as well as a tornado f5 120hz 1080p gtx 1080 delidded 6700k 512gb ssd 16gb ddr4 2400 for sale in order to help offset this crazy investment. Wish me luck

 

I think our 16l1 has better temps than this one, check on official forum on sff
https://smallformfactor.net/forum/t...stx-system-with-mxm-tb3-ces-2017.1296/page-17
seems also throttling and not pushing 1080 full clocks as in our laptop, but I really like the idea and Asrock realization

 

I probably wont use the platform at all. I am going to take the 1080 out and put it into the 17r1.

 

Excited to see where you go with this and see that mxm card in full view.Sightly worried when I read it can handle mxm A/B and whatever “b+” means.

 

im pretty sure i'll have to modify the case. I believe the card is longer than 105mm.

 

What is you cpu is not bottleneck?

 

For a single GPU 1080p display, CPU should be fine.

 

So guys it's done. I got the desk mini gtx 1080. I removed it and it just has the supplementary connector unplugged so it is not needed to run. I modded a heatsink and the chassis to accommodate the slightly longer card and I modded an xbracket as it did not come with one. I tried several different vbios and the only one that posts and goes into windows is the stock clevo 1080 vbios. The issue is that I can not get the nvidia drivers to install. I get a black screen everytime and I have tried 6 different drivers with modded inf. This is where i need help guys. I can not mod my own infs cause i'm a dumb dumb. Is there any chance I can get some help from one of you?