Best place in the U.K to buy a GTX680M?

Although my machine is still new, and I'm happy with the performance of the 660M so far, I am starting to want more already

Been doing some cursory googling and it seems most available out there are mainly in the U.S - especially on eBay. I'm not really interested in buying a card from the U.S though in case there are any problems. More so if I went the second hand route.

But I can't find anywhere out there in the U.K. And I certainly can't seem to find any GPU's sold separately on the Dell/Alienware website, which seems odd as surely they sell these things for people wanting to upgrade?

Not desperate at the minute, but figured with the new cards coming out, it would be a good time to look at the 680M soon? Thanks.

 

It's going to be hard to find them in the UK, I don't know of any in the UK, your best bet is ebay, its unlikely you will get one from Dell/Alienware (they are very expensive, but at the same time you get dell warranty with it).

Best value for money would be the HD7970m if you were going to upgrade.

(Upgrade monkey is your best bet anyways).

 

I can't explain why, but I'm slightly loathe to go AMD. Disappointed I may need to go second hand via eBay though. I think it is a bit too much of an expensive/delicate piece of kit to trust it to be packaged well and then survive its trip over here.

The cynic in me thinks it would be too easy for someone to send a faulty one and claim it was working fine when they packaged it up. Can you tell I've been burnt several times on eBay

 

Ahh, what happened to all of the buyer protection ebay is supposed to offer.

Quickly looking its either £300 for the 7970m or 500 :O for the 680m.

At least they are UK based, so you can send a card back.

 

Hmmm...that is a much bigger price difference than I imagined to be honest

Long story with all the old eBay stuff. But has made me wary of ever using them for anything expensive these days sadly.

I guess if performance is similar then I could be tempted by the AMD. I assume swapping one for the other doesn't cause issues other than swapping out drivers? Decisions decisions....P.C's are great and stressful in equal measure

 

You will need the GPU and xbracket (and to check if the dell vBIOS is pre flashed on it). Otherwise software just uninstall drivers.

You should be able to get enduro to work as well.

 

Dell will do the whole upgrade including the heatsink as a single upgrade. They charge a LOT for it though. It may have come down some but a few months ago I was quoted £1090 installed! Just call them to get a quote, let us know what price if you do

 

I'm tempted to do that just for the giggles and shock value to be honest

I had previously phoned them asking about warranty extensions - as someone on here I believe, suggested giving them a call, refusing whatever they offer, and that they then call back.

No such luck with that yet though They wanted crazy money for the warranty though. I'm utterly bemused as to why they don't just offer the cards on the website though, seeing as most everything useful is customer replaceable.

 

Check out this thread re the waranty and 680m upgrade. Contact the OP and see what his guy can do for you : http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...sories-please-contribute-136.html#post9236610

In the UK they told me (in writing) that the video card is NOT a user replaceable part to maintain warranty, I know this goes against a lot of what you might read but dell vary the warranty quite a bit depending on country and local laws.

They want to keep control of upgrades and if, for example, you call for a 680 heatsink and you give them an R3 tag they refuse to supply it - 680m not approved in R3...

 

I know my rep (thanks for the redirect, Micky ) would more than likely arrange for the parts, regardless of your service tag. Dell price, as mentioned, is likely to be high though. As long as you keep the original gpu, you can replace what you want. Of course, if YOU damage stuff in the process, that's not covered under warranty. If you source the part numbers for the gpu/heatsink, he can give you a price. He'll try to do it as cheap as possible, but make sure you are sat down if/when you enquire.

 

You're very welcome steviej, I'm sure I will be in touch when I decide which way to spend my dosh!

I know that the reps *can* get any part listed but the usual problem is the quality of the phone jockey. They ask for a tag then will only offer what comes up as an upgrade part. Tell them you want a part from an R4 and they ask for an R4 tag, can't be bothered to look it up it seems.

You've found a guy prepared to do the extra clicks +rep

 

I'm still on the lookout for one of these, so if anyone U.K based has a recommendation from a seller on eBay etc that they know is reputable (still wary of buying from a U.S unknown seller) then please give me a heads up here? Thanks.

 

Is it that bad to vouch for myself? I have got 2 for sales on the Marketplace and I'm based in Bristol. I also have quite a few feedbacks! Shoot me a PM if you're interested!

 

I just bought a 4GB GTX680M from Upgradeyourlaptop on eBay in Canada. They were very helpful with questions I had before and after receiving the card. I won it on a Thursday evening, and received it here in the UK at lunchtime the following Monday, so a very quick service. The card came with the required X-bracked, IC Diamond 7 paste, heatsink screws, and thermal pads. Also had the correct vBIOS for my m17x r3. I would definitely recommend them.

Only snag, though, and this is no fault of the eBay seller, UK customs intercepted my parcel and charged me £107 VAT and import duty!

-EDIT- Forgot to say, the card was listed at $745 and I offered $675 and they accepted! Worth haggling. Postage was $79, so the total converted to pounds sterling was £496.

 

I second this got mine from same place with no issues.

when i tried dell i almost puked.

 

Thanks for the replies. But after doing some reading here, and having some pointers from a member, it seems for a newbie like me, it isn't a straight forward swap like I thought it might be. So I'm slightly put off now :/

I really did think I could take the 660 out and plonk the 680 in. This was based on an old desktop I had where I had an ATI card, and when I upgraded the card, the drivers covered the whole range of cards and so nothing else needed to be done other than let windows recognise the card and away I went

 

Yeah, I've been building desktop rigs for years with NV cards and this was my first high-end upgradable laptop. Luckily I did quite a bit of work with watercooling GPU's so pasting and pads was not new for me.

It can be a lot easier though. If you but a new heatsink from dell (last I saw around 24 USD/GBP) it comes with all the pads and paste pre-applied and it's just a case of cleaning the card and putting it together. Using an old HS is often OK but care needs to be taken, and you MUST get the correct x-bracket for the card either way (not sure if dell include that in their kit).

HTH

 

Hi Retro, I upgraded the card in mine about 2 weeks ago. As you can see I went with the 670MX, and it's compatible with the GTX 560M heatsink, so don't know if it would be with yours, but often it's just about moving the thermal pads around, and as MickyD said using the correct X-bracket. I'd go ahead and recommend the GTX 670MX as a value upgrade. It cost me £220 (New) from Laptop Monkey on Ebay. With a modded vBIOS from svl7 in Tech Inferno Forums, I can overclock by 50% on stock voltage. This makes it nearly as fast as a stock GTX 680M, shy by 10%. Temperatures don't go over 63 degC, with the fans stabalising at 60%, and occasionally flicking up to 75%. So, it doesn't suck much power, 20W less than my 20% overclocked 560M I used to have in there. Your mileage may vary for the overclock though. Awesome value though.

I used this guide to use as a base for the installation:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-mobility-7970-m17x-r3-illustrated-guide.html

Even though that's for the 7970M, a lot of the same principles apply. (You might not need to disable iGPU seeing as the 680M was offered as an option for the R4, but you might want to look into that, especially if you're not getting a Dell card - not too sure about this).

 

Just a warning about Upgradeyourlaptop or Eurocom, as they are otherwise known: they're great when you're buying the card but not so interested when it fails within the warranty period.


Ask them about warranty before you buy.

 

So out of curiosity I phoned Dell UK this morning to see how much they charge for the GTX680M, only to be told all graphics cards are OEM and Nvidia don't supply them to be sold as upgrades????

The guy said that basically you can't get them. I said I would look on eBay and he said you can't buy them on there either? This is really odd and he must have misunderstood what I was asking? Or plain didn't know?

This clearly makes no sense, as the machines are obviously sold to be upgradable - but then Dell tell customers you can't upgrade? This makes no sense to me. I mean you only need to look on eBay etc to see how many cards are for sale out there. Plus, people here have said they have contacted Dell and been quoted outrageous prices. So what is going on?

 

What model do you have? I got a quote earlier in the year (UK) for a 680m. Had to be installed by then for an extra £95.00 and the total was over £1K but it was available. Dell will only upgrade things that were offered for the original model. R3 owners cannot get a 680m as it was never sold with one

If you have an R4 then you got a bad (confused) rep IMO, unless dell have changed their policy on upgrades.

Quote from dell email:"If you want to proceed with the upgrade, you will have to pay the full price for the card. and the full price is 1,010.99 GBP. With the graphics card you will have to pay also for the heatsink, with the price of 9.43 £, and the price of the technician 94.00 £. After that you will also keep the original graphics card. There is no option for partial discount/refund from your current graphics card.

If you want to proceed with the upgrade, please call us so we can proceed with the upgrade."

 

Yep, you pretty much want to go the DIY route (ebay & installing it yourself) to be able to do this for any kind of sensible money! It's always an adventure doing this, and I was nervous to say the least when I pushed the power button on my laptop for the first time after installing it! I was then even more nervous when I got the dreaded 5 beeps - Video Card Hardware Error! I took some deep breaths, and reseated the video card in the slot, and then it worked! For a moment there, I had thought that my DIY luck had finally run out!!

So, if you want to do it, research it a lot, maybe have instructions printed out, give it a shot & then try & stay calm if it doesn't work the first time!

 

Yeah I have an R4 (only a couple of months old), so I would have thought it would have been fine.

What makes me nervous is if I hit unknown problems. I have been told that I will/won't lose optimus depending on who I ask. But as a newbie, I don't even know what that means in real terms and if it causes issues elsewhere. And if it did, how much time and effort would it take to fix, and would I be capable?

I've been told by Dell to get drivers from Nvidia if I installed a 680M. But then Dell have made it clear in past comments to me, to ALWAYS use drivers from their website as they are tailored for the machines properly?

It may seem like these are trivial matters, but I don't have any clue myself, and so am being put off doing it as I don't want my laptop sat here not working properly.

I think it was in the thread that I mentioned the only time I ever upgraded a GPU before, it was an ATI card and as the upgraded card was from the same "family" - it was a question of plugging it in. Nice and easy

 

If you get someone experienced enough to assist you, the upgrade is pretty itself - just be careful while you install the components, and software wise, that person will help you out =)

 

Doing the actual installing of the card is easy for me. Not worried about that at all. But as you say, could I get someone to help me with the software side if things go wrong. Sadly I don't know anyone.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a complete idiot. I used to install and repair car hi-fi and sat nav systems for a living. I have installed chips in the Wii for friends, and installed custom firmware for them - plus done Xbox's for them etc etc.

BUT.....I've had all the time in the world to read up on things, and not been in any hurry should I get stuck. The difference is, that I don't want to be without my laptop for any length of time and of course. it is under warranty - making me extra nervous.

If it wasn't for that, I'd have snatched your hand off with one of the cards you are selling. But I honestly messaged you about it in good faith, as I really didn't think this would potentially be as complicated as it might be :/

I want that card in and GTA IV running at max settings