New 17 R1 project Cpu/Gpu upgrade

So after the misadventure of upgrading a friends M17X R4 from a GTX 675M to a 980M I decided i wanted to try my hand at something for me to play around with and ended up with something at a very reasonable price. Locally i found a 2015 Alienware 17 R1 with a I7 4710MQ ,GTX 860M 2gb, 8GB Ram, 80GB Msata ,1TB Hdd. 1080P 60hz screen.

Ive already taken the slow HDD out and replaced with with a Crucial MX500 1TB SSD and added another 8GB of ram i had from my laptop i had laying around, so now I'm up to 16gb which i feel is plenty. The specs of this laptop are pretty much the same as the Lenovo Y50-70 i purchased in 2013 on a work trip with a I7 4700HQ, 8Gb of ram and a 2gb GTX 860M. Which i now plan to sell once i get this thing off the ground a little more.

I already have a good desktop setup for 1440P but i wanted a portable option for 1080P and the 2gb of vram on the 860M is severly lacking nowadays and holds this laptop back on everything ive tried so far. So my 1st plan was to just to jump straight to a GTX 1070 MXM but after doing a little more reading, browsing on ebay, looking at benchmarks i feel like the 1060 is more around the ballpark i want. Change my mind on this? a GTX 1060 is around $300 USD on ebay and a 1070 is around $430 USD. Is there that big of a performance gain more for $130? Just for fun i already planned on trying to find a 2nd hand i7 4930MX just for that little bit of gain.

Right now both the Gpu and Cpu have 2 heat pipe coolers, Is there another option out of maybe another model that has better cooling with more heat pipes? I've already replaced the thermal paste with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, but with the upgraded parts will be more heat.

 

I feel it was worth the upgrade personally. I went from the 780m>m6100>1060>1070

There was a couple of games that would cause the 1060 to throttle but I could never figure out why so I gave the 1070 a shot and was quite happy with the lack of issues and also the performance boost.

 

At a minimum you'll want the OEM 3-pipe GPU heatsink but you can try the custom 4 or 5-pipe heatsinks from Cicichen. I have never actually seen tests showing the temp differences between each one.

If you don't plan on major overclocking then the 4900/4910MQ is a good option. I believe they can be overclocked to a point in the BIOS. They will be cheaper than the MX versions but if money isn't an issue then you may as well max it out. You will definitely need a 3-pipe for any 49xx CPU but I believe he does a 4-pipe for the CPU.

 

Thanks for the insight, I dont really have much plans for a lot of overclocking right now as i only have the 180W power supply and would much rather have the small bump in base frequencies. But i would like some lower thermals and being able to set a lower fan curve to curb some of the audible fan noise. I just looked at the ebay store for those heatsinks, they do look nice, It's just confusing for me trying to differentiate all the parts the way there are listed, I wasn't sure which one would actually work.

I know i've seen people mention the Cicichen heat sinks before but i as well have never come accross anything where they have been tested to see how they perform against the Alienware oem ones. Depending on the price difference of the oem ones and those i may give them a try but right now it wasnt really in my budget for where i wanted to take this project. The CPU was going to be the 1st thing i ordered because i knew it was going to be easier without fiddling with all the Nvidia driver stuff and what not.

So from what ive read the 1060/1070 will work fine with the 60hz panel? i know with the 980M i put in my friends 17MXR4 he already had the 120hz panel so nothing was needed there. I dont feel like i would take advantage of a 120Hz panel with a i7 49xx series cpu and Gtx 1070, so thats why i was shying away from maxing it out.

 

I would say 1070 for $130 more is definitely worth it. It will also be more future proof for games that are more demanding. 1060 is a great card but when I had it, I felt I needed some more kick still.

 

Wait a sec, did you say 2015 model with an i7 4710HQ? That's the first model alienware produced with their defection to BGA trash. This one can't be upgraded.

On the other hand, if you have the 2013/2014 model with the i7 4710MQ, that one can be upgraded.

I'm just a little confused. The 2013/2014 model is the upgradable one, not the 2015 model.

 

If it has the 860M it's the 2014 model.

If you decide on a 4900MQ then I have one for sale

 

It says on the bottom Deployed Jan 6th 2015, it has a 860 MXM card in it. I've already taken it apart and repasted the gpu and cpu so no BGA here. Max i'll PM you if i can i might be interested for the right price!

 

Well that's the first R1 that I've seen deployed in 2015! Very interesting indeed.

I've listed it on eBay here in Australia but if you're in the US then we can work something out.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Intel-i7-4900MQ-QUAD-CORE-MOBILE-CPU/303615788962

 

Here is one in the US for a better price than mine.

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Intel-C...m5da43dc215:g:c-gAAOSwPp9efgt8&frcectupt=true

 

Yeah i am in the US. Thanks for the offer though! Yeah i was confused also when i was researching before i purchased it

 

Well I bit the bullet and ordered a 4930mx this morning and then ordered both the CPU and GPU heatsinks from eBay mentioned earlier in the thread. Gpu heatsink probably won't go in until I get some funds for the GTX 1070 though.

I plan to continue to use the thermal grizzly cryonaut that I have on had, but I also have some conductonaut left over from my 4770k delid. I've heard of a lot of people using this on mobile CPUs and gpus but I'm still leery about it because it's not a paste with a lot of solid properties. So I'm worried about small bits potentially making their way from moving the laptop, stuff it in a carrying bag etc.

Does anyone have an experience with, I don't think I'm gonna stay away with the conuctonaut and full copper heat sinks at this point because of what I've also read about how the two react.

 

Well i received my 4930MX today and installed it, So far no issues. Just removed the old one and dropped the new one in with some new thermal paste, booted right up! Ran 3DMark Sky Diver just to see and i pretty much got the same results as my 4710MQ. Actually a little worse, which i was expecting much improvement with the poor 860M in there and its 2gb of Vram. I was only running the stock 2 pipe heat sink so i didn't mess with any overclock as it was pretty warm and hit 86C during the benchmark and I'm still running the 180W power supply.

 

Well I received my glossy 120hz 1080P panel today and got a Samsung LTN173HT02-P01, i guess i was hoping for a D01 rev because that is what i see everyone else is using without much issue. But install went fine all together, took me a bit to disassemble and installed the N392W EDP connector i ordered also. Got it all back together and I'm 100% happier now! This panel is so much better in overall color and contrast then the 60Hz matte panel I had in before. Also received my 330W power brick, so everything is ready and patiently waiting for my 1070 to arrive.

I should have my cicichen ebay all copper heatsinks any day now as they have landed in the states now so I'm hoping it wont be long so i can start playing with some mild overclocks and experimenting with thermals for some before and after comparison!

 

The glossy screens are so much better than those washed out matte screens.

 

Well everything i needed arrived today! I installed the new CPU heatsink, GTX 1070 and GPU heatsink and im pretty happy with the results! I am a little worried about the CPU temp right now as when i was benchmarking with 3D Mark i was hitting 90C with the new heatsink and thermal grizzly Kryonaut. So i might have to do some more testing, I still have not messed with any of the overclocking or tried undervolting the CPU yet but it was turboing to 3.7GHZ auto and it dipped to 3.5GHZ when it was getting hot.

This time around the driver install for the 1070 was easier than my 1st attempt with the M17XR4 i did for a friend previously, Probably because i had someone else double check my work for me!

Anyone curious i was able to get the following Benchmarks with 3D Mark;

SKY DIVER: 25300
FIRE STRIKE: 11993


The only real question i had was what is a "Safe" wattage for the 1070 to pull from the slot? i used GPU-Z in the benchmarks and i played some Doom 2016 on ultra settings and the max Board Power Draw it shows is 103.7W. If i have time i will try to resize and upload some pictures of my results.

 

I was only able to pull 118w from the card in my tests but certain members claim to have pulled more with their 980m's

 

Well I've been able to do quite a bit of testing and improve my scores a little without really doing much, i did slip in a +50mhz on the core and +100mhz on the GPU just because its been only hovering around 68C. I have been getting really bad temps with the aftermarket heat sink on the CPU though and ive been in contact with Cicihen on Ebay about a possible replacement. The mounting surface is very uneven and i am not getting good even mounting pressure on the CPU. I've been hitting thermal limits and when i get small spikes with the cpu fan is spun down it will just turn off. Putting the stock 2 pipe heat sink back on fixed the issue for now and I'm sitting at 3.7ghz stable with OK temperatures.