MSI GTX 1070 MXM successfully working on Alienware M17X R4 (another socket victory against BGA crap)

Hello all here at NBR, I already posted this on another forum but since there are so much M17X R4 enthusiasts here, I felt like it was a good idea to share that with such a great community.

OK so it's a long story, I'll try to make it short but I want to give as much informations as possible so it can help anyone interested about such project.

The story is how to go from this (stock 675m):



To this (MSI GTX 1070 MXM):



I used to be a gamer when I was younger, then I worked a lot and had no time to play. I came back to gaming last year, and noticed my 2012 M17X R4 was not really up to date for gaming, so it needed to be upgraded. Before you try to do the same, you must be sure you have pretty good knowledge of computer hardware and software, because you may brick your laptop or your GPU in this process, be careful!

In order to get a MSI GTX 1070 MXM fully working on a Alienware M17X R4, you need:

- unlocked BIOS

- the 120 Hz screen

- UEFI boot with GPT partition

- find a MSI GTX 1070 MXM

- dremel the chassis

- mod the heatsink so it can fit the GPU

- make good BIOS settings so you can boot with the new GPU

- install driver with modded .inf

- fix GPU throttling issue

OK, let's go for the big upgrade, step by step.

Unlocked BIOS

Eveything you need to know is here: https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/1516-m17x-r4-unlocked-bios-versions/ Thanks to svl7 for this great share!

120 Hz screen

You can find it on Ebay, for example here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/162380820165?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

It's required because pascal GPUs need EDP mode to run. The nice thing is there is one LVDS connector in M17X R4 motherboard, even if you have a 60 Hz screen, so you can make the upgrade.

It's pretty easy to install, but you may have no boot issue with it, like I had. This is when I had to install unlocked BIOS so I can set graphic settings which let laptop boot with the 120 Hz screen. From what I remember, required setting was "Primary display" to PEG, see here:



GPT partition and UEFI BOOT

I had MBR partition, and since I'm using my laptop for working I didn't want to reinstall everything. I used a very nice tool to convert my system SSD parition from MBR to GPT called EASEUS Partition Master (they also provide partition and data recovery tools for years, maybe you already know this company): http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/convert-mbr-to-gpt.html

They offered a discount so is cost me around 30$ to convert without having to reinstall, which is cheap for the time and all datas it saved me.

Then, you just need to make sure your boot options are set to pure UEFI, which means Load Legacy option ROM is disabled, here in the BIOS:



I noticed it can't be disabled if you're running a GPU which vbios doesn't have UEFI compliant driver. If this is the case, you'll get the "can't detect MXM card GOP driver" error like this:



Once again, thanks to svl7 you can fix this using vbios with UEFI driver for your GPU: https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...uefi-fast-boot-secure-boot-gpu-issues-solved/ This is not what I did, I just enabled integrated graphics again (it's UEFI compliant), so I can disable Load legacy option. Then I could put the 1070 in, and boot successfully. With this option enabled, I had 8 beeps "GPU not recognized" error at boot, stuck with no POST like a loser.

GO BUY A GTX 1070 MXM

Here too, you can get headaches. It's expensive, and hard to find. I searched a lot, and I can give you a few advices. For me, you have mainly 3 choices:

- contact woodzstack, who is member of this forum and very serious seller: http://forum.notebookreview.com/members/woodzstack.522318/
You can also check his website: https://store.alezka.com/en/ and his Ebay store: http://stores.ebay.com/woodzstack666?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

I must say I contacted him, and at one point I had no answer, so I contacted another seller. But he explained me later it was because for some reason he didn't received notification from the forum so he didn't knew my message, and missed the sale. But even he was not the seller, he gave me some advices which were really helpful when I was stuck with 8 beeps no boot problem because of the Legacy mode a few days ago. Thanks a lot man, maybe you missed this sale but I'm sure you'll get lot of others since you're so helpful, thanks again!

- go buy directly from China, where you can find it much cheaper. You have one chinese marketplace to rule them all: it's called taobao: https://world.taobao.com/

Problem is if you don't speak chinese, you may have trouble just to get their chat software working, it's same kind as alibaba trade manager for those who knows. So buying from taobao is like entering an unknown area, sellers there mostly only speak chinese, some don't want to sell out of China, so it's really weird to buy from there. But prices are really interesting, for example around 3000 Yuans (410$) for a GTX 1060 MXM, and around 4900 yuans (665$) for a GTX 1070 MXM. If you're looking for a cheap pascal MXM GPU, this may feel like heaven:



-instead of trying to learn chinese, find a way to make dropship. There are lot of companies for taobao drophip, like Yoybuy for example.

I found a russian MSI forum member whose nickname is Onside182, his name is Andrew and I made the deal with him. He knows Taobao sellers, so he dealt with that for me. He was serious and helpful too, and you can chose to contact him on russian forum: https://forum-ru.msi.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1111063 (you must be registered there to see his profile), or just contact me so I give you his email address, he'll deal for your taobao order and you can pay him with paypal.It seems he's also member here on NBR but didn't connected for a long time: http://forum.notebookreview.com/members/onside182.657228/

Let's make some room inside

Yeah I know it's bad, but honestly I don't care about chassis integrity when it's time to get overkill Firestrike score. So yes, you have to dremel the chassis to make some room so the MSI GTX 1070 will fit in. First, you need to disassemble the whole laptop, so you can get the motherboard out:



You need to remove little sides on the MXM connector, so the card can fit in. Before



After:



You must get a modified MXM connector like that:



Then you also need to cut part of the chassis, here is the result:





Now, you can install the card:



MOD the GPU heatsink to improve cooling

Here you have 2 ways: keep stock heatsink, and mod it so it can fit as explained here: https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/10982-m17x-r4-gtx-1060-upgrade/#comment-155003

Or build a custom made heatsink. This is what I did, I ordered this heatsink with the GPU: https://world.taobao.com/item/540331819333.htm?spm=a312a.7700714.0.0.ZzDuN1#detail 1 sortie sur le coté ok et 4ème stripe pour cpu ok

It was designed for a MSI computer, but it can be modified for the M17X R4 since copper stripes are soldered horizontally. You need to unsolder it, and solder the copper stripes and radiator from stock heatsink instead. You also need to cut off the part which must cover the CPU heatsink, which is not useful. This way, you have a more efficient heatsink, because it was designed for pascal GPU:



Soldering heatsinks is crap, when you heat one side, you can easily unsolder the other side by mistake because all heat will be transmitted everywhere very quicly. The trick is to put side you don't want to unsolder in water, and heat the other side where you want to unsolder with a torch. But I warn you: soldering this stuff is a real nightmare.

With my modded heatsink (which is so ugly and crappy I can't even make picture of it for now), I reached 72°C max while benchmarking, which seems to be pretty good temp.

Spend some time finding the good BIOS settings

You'll have to try out some settings, and you may have no boot issues, black screens, and many errors. You'll feel very lonely at this time, I know. But searching forums saved me most of the time! If you're in trouble, just search and ask

You can boot? Well you still have to wait a little until it works, here comes the modded inf!

Once we're here, we can boot with the GTX 1070 inside the laptop, and it appears as something like Microsoft basic display in Windows device manager. So we need to download official driver from Nvidia, extract it and mod the .inf file. I used this howto: http://null-bin.blogspot.fr/2015/08/how-to-modify-nvidia-notebook-driver.html

There are many others, it's well documented on the web.

Lines I added are those ones:

%NVIDIA_DEV.1BE1.057B.1028% = Section408, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1BE1&SUBSYS_057B1028

and

NVIDIA_DEV.1BE1.057B.1028 = "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070"

Then it just installed fine after disabling Windows driver signature enforcement of course. I could even install whole Nvidia Geforce experience stuff.

The GPU POWER LIMIT throttling issue

OK so you think it's installed, now it's over, after all those countless hours searching, testing and tweaking our good old M17X R4? Of course you launch a benchmark, and now you notice another problem. GPU core frequency is good, then it goes low, then it goes high again, then low again... GPU is throttling. I went into HWinfo, and noticed GPU power consumption was going higher than 110W, then I had GPU throttle, it went down around 50W, then it went up again, and so on... I searched and found nothing. I thought it was because I only have 240W PSU and I must change for a 330W one. Then and angel appeared and said to me "Hey, man, this must be a BIOS setting related issue, just fix it". So I went in the BIOS again, and I noticed this setting called "adapter warning". I just disabled it, and now it's running fine. When checking, I can see I still have POWER LIMIT message, but it doesn't slow down GPU frequency, no throttling anymore.

This is the funny part where the 2012 laptop kicks ass to BGA craps

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh!!! We can say we made it, the MSI GTX 1070 is working in the Alienware M17X R4:



Now, please have a look at this latest Alienware 17 R3 (BGA crap) Firestrike result: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/8941795 Yeah I know, this is serious expensive hardware we have here: a 6820HK CPU and a GTX 1070, such Alienware laptop must cost around 2500$, no? Of course, my poor old laptop cannot beat this beast, this would be crazy what do you think?



Here is benchmak I made yesterday, with a few OC settings on CPU and GPU: http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/19225824

Ladies and gentlemen, on the left we have my 2012 M17X R4, and on the right a brand new 17 R3: http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/12301720/fs/8941795

I can't go higher on bench since it seems I'm bottlenecked by the 3840QM CPU and the 240W PSU.

The MSI GTX 1070 I'm using here is latest hardware version, VER:1.2



It has MSI vbios, same as the 1070 in MSI GT73VR 6RE Titan here: https://www.msi.com/Laptop/support/GT73VR-6RE-Titan.html#down-firmware

When benchmarking or playing, temps are around 69°c up to 72°c, which seems pretty good (51°c right now writing the thread).

I have a 3940XM coming on the way, and I'll work on a dual PSU mod because I noticed I still can't reach out max GPU core frequency when benchmarking, it won't go above 1700 MHz because of power limit altough it reaches up to 2000 MHz when playing (because it has lower GPU load when playing than benchmarking I think). Target is to reach FS 14k score, do you bet a M17XR4 can do that?

To finish, before I can go enjoy playing GTA 5 at maxxed out settings, here are some links which were very useful, and can help if you want to make such mods.

MSI 1070 in Alienware ranger by loafer987: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/msi-1070-in-alienware-17-r1-ranger-success.797893/

German Alienware forum with huge CPU and GPU heatsink mods: http://alienware-forum.de/index.php/Thread/7254-AW-17-R1-CPU-Heatsink-Pipe-Mod/
http://alienware-forum.de/index.php/Thread/7254-AW17-R1-CPU-GPU-Heatsink-Pipe-Mod/?pageNo=2
http://alienware-forum.de/index.php...20Hz-GTX-980-N16E-GXX/?postID=69530#post69530

Zotac BOX GTX 1070 MXM in Alienware 17 by Striker1234: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-17-r5-gtx-1070-mxm-3-1b.800137/

I hope sharing all those informations helped M17X R4 owners to keep faith in this good old laptop. I'm pretty sure it can also handle a GTX 1080 by the way, if someone is willing to try (I can't be the guinea pig for the next step altough I'd like to but all my hardware budget has already been spent in that project) it would be nice.

Socket POWA!

 

+ rep. Socket hardware all the way BGA must die!!

 

hey did you have any trouble with driver stability, cause i've install over 3 drivers for laptop 1070 from nvidia and getting [VIDEO_tdr] and [video_memory] blue screen reboot, and on top of that it's isnt going through internal lcd (AU Optronics B173ZAN01.0, 40pin edp 4k, 60hz) also dell precision m7710

 

Hello,

No I didn't have stability problems. Did you use DDU?

About the screen I was using a 120 Hz one, it was working fine. Also you need a 330W PSU to get full performance of the GPU.

 

Now what do you mean about ddu

 

DDU Uninstaller

 

oh wait you talking about complete display driver uninstalled, yea i've done that about 2 times

 

heck i'll even try it again with the other driver versions i installed

 

yea i just used ddu again apparently you have to delete intel drivers too and its completely stable now but i do need a 330w psu cause its not going over 83% gpu load and thanks for recommending ddu

 

Hello,

OK glad it helped. Yes you're hitting GPU power limit because of PSU bottleneck. You can see GPU load is 63% max, while GPU power is at 43W max altough it should reach above 110W for the MSI GTX 1070.

 

yea highest it will pull is 119w at 70% load and nvidia driver does't want to work with the intel drivers installed.

 

I am currently looking into upgrading my m17x r4 as well as I find it a waste to not use it anymore, giving the old fella some new life. Seeing that is would be possible to upgrade to a 1060 or a 1070, would you recommend upgrading for a 1070 over a 1060? Also I can see most of the links but getting all these items a few months or so later seems a bit harder, would be awesome if you still have some info I could use.

 

If you are ready for serious heatsink modding go for the 1070. 1060 if you want minimal heatsink modding.

@woodzstack can assist you in the process.

 

Hello,

Yes 1060 is the easy way, almost plug and play while 1070 is the hard way and needs more hardware mods. Also 1070 will need a 330W PSU to release full power.

 

Thank you for the mention !

Yes it is true, I have no qualms over modifying a heat sink for a customer, especially to triple make sure it matches the video card.

 

I personally find the 230W/240W PSU is still a decent option, in most cases the performance is still very good and not too much of a difference, it matters more when your Overclocking and running peripherals from every USB and such mind you.

 

The title of this thread is funny...

Anyways, if anyone needs 3rd party to do the modifications on AW17 or M17X-R4 I am now free, I took on about a dozen projects before the summer and have basically finished them all, and am free for whatever custom work anyone needs now (in case I turned you down earlier, now I am free)

 

We have newer 1070 with a lower wattage of 90W (vbios changes) and no tab or need to modify the chassis, but these so far only work with Optimus and not the eDP panels/120hz panels.
However, someone recently contacted me, who purchased one of these cards from me, and flashed a vbios that would actually boot on the 120hz panel with the new 1070 cards - so time to take things back to the drawing board.

 

Does your cards work with the Alienware 18? if so, does they work on SLI?

 

hello good I'm thinking of buying a 1070 and exchange it for my 980 but I do not know if it's as easy as it was the previous change from 680 to 980 and I think the performance is not worth it for the money to pay


Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk

 

hello good I'm thinking of buying a 1070 and exchange it for my 980 but I do not know if it's as easy as it was the previous change from 680 to 980 and I think the performance is not worth it for the money to pay


Enviado desde mi iPhone utilizando Tapatalk

 

Thanks a lot for sharing!
I upgraded my M17xR4 using the same card.
And this is the result:

 

these images show some mxm cards





here a thread about that upgrade
https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...x-r4-another-socket-victory-against-bga-crap/

 

Hello, I have the same version of the laptop with 3630QM cpu. Do I need to have 120 hz LCD screen to be able to install the GTX 1070m? Do I have to do anything in BIOS?

 

http://www.eurocom.com/ec/alienware()upgrade

 

60Hz will do fine if you buy a card from Eurocom. Their 1070's have the right form factor and i believe they work with optimus.

If you take a MSI 1070, that is another story. You have to hard mod the chassis, the board and you will need a 120Hz Display (PEG).

 

Yep. With a 3 Pipe Heatsink on my 3920XM :

 

I am having a problem with the laptop not using the dedicated gtx 1070. The r4 is pretty much the same as the m18x r2.

I have version 1.0 of the msi GTX 1070. I will try out same bios setup and see if I can get the card to work properly.

 

Afaik the Msi 1070 wont work on your m18xr2 due to the 60hz panel.

Gesendet von meinem SM-G935F mit Tapatalk

 

Has anyone ever tried flashing the msi 1070 with the vbios from the Eurocom to see if it works with optimus?

Javers

 

No, at least nobody i know... Pascal Cards are hard to flash, you need a programming tool (hardware) and enough knowledge to do it yourself. You cannot flash them the conventional way via windows.

 

Anyone that has done this, could you please provide some links to where you can buy said parts?

 

eBay, that's where I bought mine from.... speaking of:

Hi, I purchased an MSI gtx 1070mxm for attempted use on my m17x r4. When I plug the card in and attempt to boot, it's not recognized in bios. It says "not detected." I'm running unlocked a11 bios. Can anybody advise?

 

Take the card out. reboot into bios and change the graphic setting to SG mode , shut down and re-install the card and reboot.

 

Hello guys and good day!! I'm interested in upgrading my Alienware M17x R4 laptop with a GTX1060 OR GTX1070

specs:
Alienware M17x R4
Intel i7 3820QM
GTX 680M 2GB
3D 120hz FHD screen

Options:
GTX 1060
GTX1070 MSI
GTX 1070 EUROCOM 115W

Questions:

1) if I had the gtx680m 100w card can I use its heat sink for the gtx1060?

2) other than the cutting of the chasis for the gtx1070 does it end up working fine or always throttles and heats up because of the 150w?

3) the Eurocom gtx1070 115w does it work with the Alienware m17x r4 with the 3d display? I read somewhere the updated a vbios and its worked on a 3d 17 Ranger. That would be the perfect card because it fits and has a lower tdp

Thanks a bunch in advance!!

 

I've had the bios in SG mode the entire time. My old card is detected no matter what I do, the new one isn't detected no matter what I do

 

That's really odd how it is not detecting it. Have your tried to flash a different bios via an external flasher ? See if other bios work.

 

guys i also have an m17x R4 with the same specs as Hendale30.
i can find the clevo (is this the same as eurocom?) card very cheap.
do you think it will fit and work?



thanks

 

Unfortunately that wont fit the m17x r4

 

so the only solution is the MSI one ? (with black PCB)
why wont it fit? just curious

 

Cause of the extra power connector (and the very odd form factor).

 

i see . interesting. what about this eurocom one?? it has a sticker with 90w on it? thats strange!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Eurocom-NV...=item4b51762cd0:g:mesAAOSwSCZbS-KC:rk:10:pf:0

 

do not, I repeat, do not get a Eurocom card. They have terrible VRM's and that's why they are only rated at 90W, any higher and they blow up. This also limits the actual performance, as clocks cannot get as high with a lower TDP on Pascal.
The best option would be the MSI (with the tab) but that requires a bit of dremel work. Also in consideration are the P5000 (very expensive) and the new "150W" blue PCB (Untested by the forum user's), and the also new, black "Dell" 1070, but even less info exists on that, but it seems to be similar to the Eurocom one in terms of performance.

 

that's not a standard MXM. check my signature for more infos about mxm cards

 

also one more question about the 120hz screen upgrade.
i see on the thread about 120hz screen upgrades that there are 2560x1440 ones and 1920x1080 ones compatible. both work with the R4? and both will work with 1060-1070?

 

Hello guys!!! I’m really need your assistance!!! I have Alienware m17x r4 with gtx660m 2GB, 16GB RAM, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40 GHz, Display 60 GHz, BIOS A14 - UEFI, Windows 10 x 64, and of course I want to install gtx1070 I was read a lot of forums, and I don’t understand about display. Is it possible to install gtx1070 without changing my 60 GHz display? Can I just only modify my heatsink? What about laptop battery? I can keep present? Or also need to by new? I understand I need to by new adapter with 330 DAP power. Present is 180 DPA. I hope on yours cooperation. Sorry for my English

 

Answered in the other thread, but yes