Quick questions for a newbie.

Hello, I recently purchased my first alienware laptop from eBay .

Its a alienware m17x r2 silver with 8gigs, 4870x2 GPUs and a i7 processor. I haven't received it get but I do plan to upgrade the GPU at least.

As I was surfing the web I came across many different terms and stuff.

I saw the word heatsink. My question about this is do they come with the laptops or do I have to buy em separately?

I also saw the term vbios. Is vbios a physical card or is it changable/obtainable through downloads online? Also how to get the dell or clevo vbioses if I decide to get either the clevo or dell 7970s?

Where can I buy x brackets or brackets compatible with clevo or dell 7970s cheap? Cause I can't find any on eBay.

Also I know this is 2015 and most of the threads regarding my specific laptop were in 2012-2013 but which gpus do you recommend I get that are compatible with my laptop? Any cheap decent ones that can run crossfire together or single cards like the 7970 or are there even better cards now?

Please help me, I'm pretty much new to this and I'll make a thread for assistance with upgrading my laptop when I receive it from my seller.

 

Congratz on your purchase

Heatsink comes with the GPU's ... it's the only one used in R1/R2, and it will fit any card you wish to put in your R2...

vBIOS is the BIOS for GPU, it's changeable through flashing. You can find most of the vBIOS-es here on NBR, on Techinferno or on TechpowerUP

I have one 7970M X-bracket for sale, but there are multiple ones on Ebay too.

5870M xF can be overclocked to pretty much 7970M performance, but it's CF, and as always dual cards means problems with some games... I'd reccomend getting a 7970M (single) or a 680M (single)

 

Hi, the best you can do without too much modding is to go for one 7970M. You can find them on ebay, take the dell one if you want to have sound throw the hdmi port.

You should consider to get a i7 920xm r 940xm if you don't have one, it improve a lot the performence when it's overclocked to 3/3.4 Ghz .

If you want to install a crossfire of 7970m yo will need a modded power supply, the 240w one can't handle the task. A bit hard if you are not into electronical modding and things like this.

If you want to stay with one gpu go for the 680m, you will need a modded driver but that's not so hard, j95 have a thread that exlain it. The 680m run a bit cooler and can be overclocked a lot.

With the 7970m you will need some new x bracket, some time they are selled with the card, some time not. My primary card has a 7970m one, my slave card has a 4870m one cutted at each corner. Both work well.

 

Thanks for your help. The GPUs that are coming with my laptop, the 4870x2s will have the heatsinks already there so I don't have to purchase them on eBay right?

Also.

I'll buy the dell 7970 brackets if it comes with screws. I can do PayPal. 20 bucks right?

 

Thanks a lot. My main plan is to use just one dell 7970 card since crossfire is expensive and can cause me to mod stuff on my laptop.

Is there a guide to cut the 4870's brackets to use with the 7970s that don't have brackets?

 

Better use the stock one that maxslo sell, anyway you just have to cut the 4 corner and keep the part with the thread.

 

Once again, thanks a lot. I wish there is a guide on YouTube to teach me to do that. I'll look around. Thanks.

 

Yes, the heatsinks will already be there, and so will the screws, you don't need to purchase screws... the screws are clipped on the heatsink.

It doesn't come with screws, but you don't need them anyway... i think you will have to grind down the height of x-bracket a bit for use with M17x R2, can you confirm this toto29620?
(i got a different lower version of x-bracket that doesn't need any modding on my 7970M, that's why this one is for sale)...
It's around 22,5$ with the current exchange ratio i think.

 

Yea that's right.

Actually your heatsink's screws are fixed on the heatsink with some c clip, this :




The idea is to un-mount those c clip, and after that mount them on the screw, like this :



And after mount back the screw and tighten gently, like this :




You have to do this because of the lenght of the screw and the xbracket, here you can see the difference :



The black one is way shorter. If you don't do this the heatsink will not be pressed on the gpu, you will have a bad thermal contact and the gpu will overheat. When you do this the heatsink is pushed by the c clip and not by the screws's head, so you gain something like 3 or 4 milimiters ( sorry i don't know how many it is in US size ).

 

Wow, thanks for taking your time to post this.
This will help a lot.

I'm glad m17x r2s are still being used today, probably because of all the customizable options.

I can't wait to receive my m17x r2 and start tweaking it right away!

 

No problem, don't hesitate to ask.

 

One more question, is thermal paste/pads mandatory when removing and putting in new GPU? And what if I don't use those?

 

Need paste for sure pads would be nice too, it will overheat your GPU and heat can kill it if you don't be careful. Not worth the risk, even some cheaper paste will be better than nothing.

 

OK bought some 2.5 grams of artic silver and 100mmx100mm of thermal pad. This should prevent my dell card from frying. I also know that dell cards can't operate their fans properly on their own, I need a program to help controlled them. Clevo cards are overpriced to be honest.

 

Not sure about my tranlation of mandatory ( i am french and not so good in english ) but i can say that you must use them.

Here you can see the placement :



Be carefull with the tickness, pads on ram must be 0.5 to 1 milimiters , same for coils but you need to have 4 milimiter one for voltage regulator. You should ba able to use the one that come with your 4870m's, be carefull when you un stick them, with time they can be dry and fall appart.

If your heatsink is a bit damaged you might need 0.5mm on one ram bank and 1mm on the other bank ( mine is like this ) not a big deal but if you buy new pad, take a bit more than needed. The aim is to have a good pressure on gpu, a good thermal contact on both ram and voltage regulator.

the best thermal pad you can get are the fujipoly one, not the cheapest i have to say, you can use cheaper one too. You will see the thermal conductivity, something like 2 W/m²K , the higter the better.

Use thermal paste on gpu, i have try thermal pad and it was a waste of time, overheating all the time. You can use the very classic artic silver 5, ic diamond, noctua nh t1 ... don't use the cheaper one for xbox 360/ ps3 that you can find for almost nothing on ebay.

 

Oh thank you!

I see, so I should cover the processors on the GPU like that.

And where must I apply the artic silver?

Also, I seen the
fujipoly thermal pads that come with thermal paste as well, the thermal pad is 10mm x 17mm x 1mm but you mentioned before that I needed 4mm for voltage parts, do the thermal pads come in strips or?

This is pretty much all I need for physical installation of the GPU.

 

You see the black square in the middle of the gpu ? That's what we call the DIE, all the transistors and stuff are right there, and all the heating come from it.

To make a good thermal paste job on die you have to spread a thin layer on all the surface of the die, you can use grain of rice method, apply a smal grain of riz of thermal paste in the middle of the die and apply the heatsink, you have to put a bit of pressure to spread correctly the paste and that's not very easy with this mounting system so prefer the first method, better result in most case.

 

Don't use arctic silver.. It's obsolete and useless..Return it and get some Gelid GC Extreme or IC Diamond.. Much better.. AS5 will cause overheating problems with 7970M...

 

No overheating problem with cheap or noname paste here, but yeah newer one are better.

 

Its fine, I got some Shin etsu paste that came with the fujipoly pads anyways.

 

Using MX-2, and the max temp it reaches is 67°C while playing games and 73°C when stress testing, so i think AS5 would do just fine ...

 

Will a GTX 770M work in this laptop?

If so, and if you're interested, I will have one for sale very soon.

 

The gtx 770m work as far as i know, i have seen someone on this forum with a 770m in his R2 but i don't know if the audio work too or if you need an external usb audio.

 

The 770M from dell works with everything native, but you have to disable integrated sound in BIOS and use an external sound card... a bit of a problem if you want to use laptop speakers, but if you use headphones or any other external sound system you'll be ok.

 

So I take it Dell hasn't provided an updated BIOS with support for newer cards on the R2 then?

 

No, and that will not happen, they want people to upgrade just as much as the next OEM... You should use the unlocked A10 to be able to disable the integrated audio.