M17x-R2 with 740 and GTX 285m ?

Lol yeah i had 2 in a row sent to me and both had a stuck pixel so i gave up ...

Sold the parts i had for it and ordered the M17x..

 

Quad is not a changer, he's a Notebook Breather:
Inhale - a new system arrives,
Exhale - it's sold

 

Yeah i have become the running joke amongst family and friends... I now get asked when im going to sell the machine before it even arrives

There are not many choices out there sadly and all of them have some serious issues or lack in certain areas.

 

lol yeah I think he's got sleey0 (haven't seen that guy around in forever) beat and that's tough to do! Well quad since you're temporarily an M17x owner again, come visit our Wiki (and related forum). Aikimox, I sent you a PM about it last night. Agreed about the lack of choices and/or shortcomings, it seems no company can get it quite right. If dell had given us an unlocked vbios (and no system bios tweaks) with the M17x with thicker heatsinks, I think it would have come quite close to perfect.

 

I follow your posts more then anyone elses even when not having the machine because its always interesting what new things you have discovered or been disappointed with ...

After reading so many posts about how bad Xfire is in this machine i just said no thanks ill suffer with 1 card lol...

The M17x has always been my Fav but the darn noise always pushes me away but im left with no other choice now so im gonna smother the bottom with a pillow if i have to just to enjoy it ...

 

lol I've tried to tone down my dissatisfaction posts lately.

 

Do ashterfere's mod, it should come close to eliminating the fan noise for the GPU since the card will run much cooler under load. I'm going to be working out a CPU mod using some copper tape and duct so we'll see how that goes. If you get a 720 or lesser processor, the CPU fan hardly revs up and you would end up with a very quiet machine.

P.S. you could always get a pair of noise cancellation headphones lol.

 

Alas, true. At least, Dell, HP and other big companies, offer a decent warranty and tend to address the issues albeit with a delay. I am too spoiled with Dell's free replacements and free upgrades to abandon the ship. Also spoiled by HP, their travel NBD warranty and IPS screens BTW, I don't even know for sure who gave me more free upgrades up-to-date, hehe.

 

Tough love is a good thing sometimes ... This machine needs some serious help with crossfire thats for sure...

Also with the Dell rep being so active got my interest back up for the machine... Its nice to see when the people that can get stuff done are here on a daily basis and are not run off like in the past ...

 

Yeah i have been following his thread closely and i mentioned awhile back i was going to use paste on the GPU memory of the M15x but i think a few people thought i was nuts ... The Desktop guys use paste all the time on GPU memory so i was shocked most people thought this was a bad thing but oh well i guess someone proved them wrong ....

CPU i got is the i7 820 so it might be on the noisy side but no where near the 920/940...


Aikimox's machine came with paste on the memory stock lol and his temps are very good , even more so for a single fan machine...

 

Yeah if you put paste on the CPU die and it doesnt run everywhere... why the hell would the ram do it?

I think people just being paranoid TBH.

I have been using paste on my mem chips on my graphics cards (desktop) since my first 9800SE.

And back then, all custom graphics card coolers only came with paste for the ram. No thermal pads back then.

-Ash

 

Yeah pads are just the fast and easy way on the assembly line to get it done... I can understand why they do it though since the cards for the most part are still running within the temps they were designed for ...

 

ATI has my vote at the moment because when the R1 was out they couldnt even perform a simple thing like cloning my desktop to my LCD screen. I havent had a single problem with my 4870s.

 

the concern is that the space between a gpu die and hsf are a lot smaller (10-30X differences sometimes) than that of a ram chip and HSF. Second, the paste still does slide away from GPU cores, AS5 needs to be re applied every 6-9months or so, although it's alot more tension keeping the paste put. When it *does* run, it's going to run into all the exposed solder points instead of on the harmess gpu core area. I've been around computers for a very long time, and I've never seen ram being cooled by paste before, but the last time I messed with desktop parts was quite a while ago, so I'll take your word for it. If the area between the ram and HSF are very small (say less than .2-.3mm) then it will probally be fine, it's when it's more like .4-1.0mm that it's a problem, espically since there's very little tension in these HSF"s to keep it there. The difference between some high quality pads of the correct thickness and ASC probally isn't as big as thought to be, if I can ever get my laptop working again I'll be testing that theory.

 

It is interesting to see that they will be offering the GTX 285m finally - albeit late to the party of course. One user purchased a pair of GTX 285m from DELL and installed them successfully in his R1 so we know that they have the cards already.

That being said, I do not see any reason to get excited for anything over my 4870s yet

The 5870m's got me beat in benches but that is about it as game performance (non DX11 obviously) is about the same if not worse due to various bugs

 

My G92 8800GTS has had pasted ram for 2 years now, it runs like a champ (AS5 for what it is worth)

 

yeah, I'm sure if you're using ASC or something as non conductive as possible it's not as a big concern, I'm just talking from past expereince and old references, so I'll trust you kiddies if you say it works long term.

 

I actually have a geforce 3 ti 500 I got for free from work about... 5 years ago?

First thing I did was replace the cooler on it with a full coverage thermaltake one, and used the included silicon based thermal paste on all the chips (ram chips included).

I then sold the thing inside a HTPC/emulator box to a mate a while back.

Its still running, temps are the same as they have always been.

I dont think ceramic paste will be all that different.

-Ash

 

ASC is inexpensive and far better performing that you need. I wouldn't take any chances on exposed eletrically condutive material.

 

The degree or two of diff from ASC to AS5 isn't worth bothering with. ASC is cheap and safe and better than stock. All good things.