M17X R4 GTX675m to 7970m / CPU upgradeability / RAM Questions

Hi all, getting new M17X R4 in a few days, it comes with base line cpu i7-3610, comes with 675m gtx gpu, and 8gb 1333mhz ram.
Im aiming to do 12-16GB ram upgrade
i7 3820qm / i7 3920xm cpu upgrade
7970m GPU upgrade
there I have two 256gb vertex4 ocz drives to be going in as raid0 already and pile of 1333mz kingston chips all by 4gb CL9.
I wonder what are my best options upgrading RAM? best of the best up to 12-16GB ram (worth it? noticeable performance?)
CPU question, I heard its not adviceable going XM cpu route in M17X but im unsure, anybody here runs R4 with XM cpu or i7 3820qm and whats your temperatures? And anybody had their R4 upgraded to 7970m? Main question is if R2 R3 M17x heatsink is exact same design between generations so it will support R4 m17x too?
Good question is if I will need beefier PSU to support my CPU and GPU mods or should I be within power range for my future components?
Question for dealers on here - ANYBODY SELLS 7970/6990/6970 M17X R4 compatible heatsink?

Cheers

any M17X lovers with following upgrades mentioned at all?

 

Well I have an hd 7970m dell card for sale if u are interested , i had it in my r4, but bought clevo gtx680m , performance on stock is almost same, but I like sick overclocks . Concerning the 3920xm in the r4, mine should be here any time, but the 3820qm should be suffecient unless U want more then the 3820qm 400mhz upgrade(I like the XM cpu for programs I use for school). XM cpus should be cooled good in r4, but teh m18 has better cooling obvious.

R2 heatsink is differnt tehn r3/r4, not sure about r3/r4 difference.

The power range should be good, and concerning your heatsink issue, the R4 heatsinks for ndia/amd are the same , so your 675m heatsink should fit for the hd 7970m

 

did you reused your 7970m heatsink to fit 680m ??? however card components design layout and heights looks all different to me, unsure about that universal fit of the heatsink right now, I do have one 7970m already, but thanks for the offer.
Yea I like the idea of unlocked multiplier alot and that the extra bit of stock performance is always good, but im unsure if i7-3820qm comes with locked multipliers only like all previous gen non-XM cpus... I am seriously interested how 3920xm will perform in R4, would be great to know how does temperatures flow under low use-iddle/mid use/full heavy extensive loads etc, how much fan is being stressed due to XM cpu probably producing more heat and so on and on, every little info would be great help for me to decide which route to go.

Thanks

 

grats on your new R4 on the way!

you have 8gb already. you would actually need to make effort in utilizing anything close to all 8gb. for general usage and even hardcore gaming 6gb is plenty. extra ram does not improve performance and would be just overkill and maybe bragging rights..? lol

 

The AMD heatsink is the same in the R3 and R4, and yes you need it for the 7970M. Coincidentally two people who used Nvidia heatsinks ended up with dead cards, me being one of them.

You can use Thaiphoon burner to flash new RAM profiles, so you can make your RAM run at 1866Mhz easily. Be aware though, once you buy the license it will stick to the exact hardware you have at the time of purchase.

The 240w CPU is boss and can easily cope with anything, so you don't have to worry about that.

As for the XM CPU, it's really only for benchmarks, since the 3720/3820QM can be overclocked by 400Mhz already and going beyond that might cause temperature issues (on full load like rendering or benchmarks, gaming doesn't stress the CPU enough to cause issues). Haven't really seen anyone fully run unlocked multipliers on the Ivy XM so I don't really know much about it.

Oh yeah, I used to have a GX660R

 

when I think of more ram is not because I wanna have the max in there, I want have max that I can utilize, from time to time I run single or multiple VM's and have other heavy RAM dependant apps like CAD and etc, so I am leaning over to option upgrading just uncertain which spec and speed. as for talk that 6 GB is enough for general gaming, I disagree, I seen my ram crank up past 6.5GB when gaming and not having all my processes killed in the background prior launching the game. My OS runtime alone with all utilities in iddle occupies between 2-2.5GB ram already, so 8GB I consider is the bottom border line for me.

alright, well that's what I thought myself about the heatsink too, cheers for confirmation on that.
as for CPU I have also thought if the temps would cause me worry while sporting XM, which is what I dont want it to happen, so probably Im just gona lean over to 3820QM and run it smooth and cool, more sensible option I think too.

I still have my GX660R in my sig, 7970m from it is going in to my new alien and it will probably gonna receive aul 5870m again and will go to ebay or etc. pretty sweet rig it was tho

 

ok this is old story thread needs closure

long story short:
havent got the m17 r4 at the end due to some third partz issues, sold my GX660R and heavily regret it till now, got several M18X R2's which were returned for refund in both cases, and now picked up again MSi GT683R to keep me going till M18X R3 is out or something hotter. so... thats it