Situation with 330W PSUs

Someone just found out why I ordered an m18x (and caus I just want one)

Though, it's still awesome running a 7970m or gtx 680m, with an xm cpu in a 5 year old notebook.
But decent CF/SLI, with OCing of cpu and gpu is out of the question until someone can confirm the above, I at least am holding off a 2nd GPU till I have found this out.

 

So...update. StamatisX has said he has no shutdown issues with his dual 240W PSU mod setup. Imsolidstate thinks it's because StamatisX reported his system in full benchmark is drawing 16 Amps on the output side of the adapter. That is more than the 330W adapter can deliver so the conflict may be the 330W adapter can't provide enought power for an R2 with the XM overclocked, and dual 7970ms/680ms.


240W PSU ID Chip in 330W PSU - Page 6

 

Thanks, radji for looking into it! It seems like the 2x240W mod is the only current feasible option for getting more power on the R2. I had really wanted to avoid it, and tampering with the motherboard doesn't sound terribly appealing to me either, so I'll probably sell my second 7970M unless someone who knows a lot more about the technical aspects of this suggests something first.

Also, for anyone curious, here are my observations from attempting to run Crysis 2:

• It's impossible to trigger a shut-off with CrossFire disabled and Turbo enabled, regardless of clocks.
• A shutoff will happen inevitably between 2 and 45 seconds if CrossFire is enabled at stock clocks, even with Turbo disabled (with a Multiplier of 16).
• It's possible to run with CrossFire enabled, but only at really low clocks resulting in low FPS (around 300/150MHz). If both cards are running fast enough to render at close to 60 FPS (I think 450/600MHz), it'll still shut-off, which I suppose is to be expected.
• With CrossFire, it runs easily at 60 FPS with all settings on Ultra before it shuts off. With one card, it runs at about 42 FPS on Ultra, or 60 FPS on Extreme. Overclocking doesn't seem to have too much of an effect (like 5 FPS), although I haven't done any standardized testing.

The takeaway is that, for me at least, it's not possible to run 7970Ms with an XM i7 with both running at stock speeds and without Turbo. If I had a Kill-a-Watt, I'd test the draw on the adapter when it cuts off, but I don't think I have one handy.

 

And if you undervolt the cards.
Under volting them should have little to no effect on their performance.

That's what the undervolt mod is for.

 

I tried with a vBIOS modded to run at 0.975 volts (from TechInferno) and it still shut down unexpectedly.

Did I not do it correctly? Should I be using Afterburner or some other tool instead?

 

Well i cant really tell if you did anything wrong because i didn't see you do it .
I am not sure that afterburner is the correct tool for AMD gpu's.

Have you tried to use a different oc tool like trixx? (Although Trixx doesnt not show all the volts to adjust?

Are you sure the cards are running undervolted?
I suggest contacting someone over @techinferno to help out with the undervolt mod and to be sure it is correctly done

 

Did you also undervolt BOTH cards (same vbios)?

I have found that CCC is the best tool for the 7970m, but I don't think you can undervolt with any tool instead of doing it in vbios.

What I would try is to underclock both GPU's to about half of the stock core and memory clock, without using the undervolted vbios and run a benchmark.
If you already have problems then, I doubt the PSU is your problem.

If it does work then i'd slightly increase the core and memory clocks a bit at a time and benchmark everytime, to see where the problems start. If you pinpoint this, then you could try the vbios undervolting, and see what happens if you increase the core and memory clock higher, and again look where the problems start.

I think this is the only way to decently find out what the problem is, and at what clocks/performance the problems start.

 

I've always kept both cards running the same vBIOS, but I can re-flash them and use checksums to verify that it flashed correctly, going with jiggy's methodology.

Should I use Dell7970m-uv-0950v.ROM from TechInferno, or something else?

 

De nada all. I know it sounds cumbersome to hot wire two PSUs together, but I don't think it will be anymore difficult that modding the 330W PSU. Here's the guide for the dual PSU mod. Credit goes to StamatisX for his hard work in giving us a solid workaround.

Alienware M17x R2 - Dual PSU [2 x 240W] for AMD 7970M CFX - Tech|Inferno

 

I think this mod would only be interesting for people that would never move their notebook.....i have the notebook so i CAN move it :thumbsup:
I also have a massive WC'ed dekstop with only the best hardware in it....now that's the machine i defintly do not want to move

 

I had seen the 2x240W mod before ever attempting the 330W mod, but I had really wanted to avoid it since it's bulkier, requires fiddling every time you use it, and looks like as much of a hack-job as it is. Granted, it works and the 330W one, not so much.

At this point, I'm really not sure what to do. With the exception of the trip I'm on right now, I hardly ever take the laptop off of my desk. I could sell the laptop with its stock parts and my upgraded components and build a new desktop for a few hundred dollars. The PSU mod is another option, but I doubt I could use the ID Chip-less 240W one with the 330W one I have.

 

Has anyone talked to TheWiz over at bios-mods.com about changing the BIOS to accommodate the 330W? I recall him stating that if the feature was never intended and "hidden" in the A10 BIOS that such updates would not be possible... It's worth a shot though.

 

There's no point. The 330W PSU has been shown to not deliver enough power to handle an R2 with an OC XM CPU and dual 7970ms/680ms.

 

What Radji said + there seems to be some limit motherboard wise preventing enough power to reach the system (it's somewhere in some post in some thread on this forum, which of course I can't seem able to find now that I want to link it), which is only partially confirmed, people are still struggling with this.

Though technically 330Watt should be more then enough for an m17x-r2 even with OCing 2 cards and an extreme Processor
The 330watt PSU also powers m18x-r2 with SLI setups and xfire setups and even more powerfull XM CPU's. In the worst case the m18x will demand same power as an upgraded m17x-R2, in the best case it will use more. But not less.

So obviously something else is going on, the wattage can not be the problem imho.

 

I know, right? You'd think that if the 330W PSU can power the M18x with it's XM CPU and Crossfire/SLI setup, then it should be able to do the same for the M17x R2. As far as a motherboard power limiter, I thought the same thing, but the guys at T|I said:

So the main power for the cards isn't controlled by the motherboard. Only the power for the CPU, and that alone shouldn't be high enough to cause any problems.

 

Power consumption just an estimate.
If you read here AMD 7970M Xfire vs. NVIDIA GTX 680M SLI Review - Tech|Inferno
you can see that X-fire. No o.c. can run at as much as 240 alone.
With a 920M or even 940 its almost 60 more without o.c.
Throw in 3 fans at about 10W. Thats when we pass 310W.

Then we have discs( 2W per SSD and 6 W per HDD) and motherboard including 2* RAM=5W ( memory - Does installing larger RAM means consuming more energy? - Super User), backlit keyboard, external units (mouse etc), network cards, card readers,
Here is another hint about more consumption, at least i guess you can use it as indicators for motherboard etc.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/power-saving-guide,1611-4.html

Even PSU uses of its own power. (heat = powerloss)

Guess also the screen needs power of a sort.

 

The screen can be quite power hungry, add to the the fan and optical drive.

However the PSU usage should be built into the power output, so a 90W adpater will deliver 90W and draw about 100W from the wall as a rated maximum.

 

Simply incompatibility of motherboard m17xr2 and 330watt psu! It isn't a lack of power!
I specially experimented with 1 240watt psu with 2x7970m xfire and 940 overclocking through bios of 5% with 75w.
I played Far Cry3 and Crysis 3 about 30 minutes, and the laptop wasn't switched off never, as in a case with 330watt psu.
I also had throttling because of shortage of power, but the laptop wasn't switched off!So.... not destiny

 

Ehh, fans have gotten better in recent years with regards to power efficiency. The notebook screens still draw their fair share of power, but the RGB LED screens take far less than the CCFL screens used to. The bigger power eaters in the systems are still the optical and hard drives. Those little motors they power are notorious power wasters.

 

The fans (3 off for xfire) is 0.5 amps 5 volt= 2.5 W each. = 7.5W. That is the fans is in use in an alienware when running full speed. Benchmarking= full speed.

HDD is 6 W. SSD is 2W. Most has at least one HDD + the optical and perhaps a SSD = 8 W and up to over 20 when using optical for burning.
One optical mouse= apx 0.5W, not much but all adds up. (audio of some kind and small amount in wifi and ethernetcard.)


See that neklec has used crossfire on the 240W. It that due to the 240 goes way higher than 240?
As techinferno claims, full speed the GPU cards run at almost 240 alone.
Throtling is probably how the 330 should react?

We are not far off 330 W with all running full as for a benchmark.

 

Thanks all for the replies! I'm still slightly perplexed since I can't tell definitively whether the modded PSU is actually functioning at the higher wattage or not.

To add to the general knowledge repository of the forum, I decided to swap my original 720QM back into my laptop in place of the 940XM, keeping the dual 7970Ms in for benchmarks.

Here are the results using Crysis 2 at Ultra Presets at 1920x1200 with 4x AA, Edge AA, High-Res Textures, on the Downtown Map with 1 Run each with the 7970Ms running default Clevo firmware at stock frequencies:

• 940XM @ 12.0x w/ 1x 7970M: 41.8 FPS (Min 9.3 FPS)
• 940XM @ 26.0x w/ 1x 7970M: 42.1 FPS (Min 11.0 FPS)
• 940XM @ 12.0x w/ 2x 7970M: N/A (Unexpected Shutdown)
• 940XM @ 26.0x w/ 2x 7970M: N/A (Unexpected Shutdown)
• 720QM @ 12.0x w/ 1x 7970M: 40.9 FPS (Min 7.7 FPS)
• 720QM @ 18.0x w/ 1x 7970M: 41.6 FPS (Min 8.1 FPS)
• 720QM @ 12.0x w/ 2x 7970M: 55.9 FPS (Min 8.8 FPS)
• 720QM @ 18.0x w/ 2x 7970M: N/A (Unexpected Shutdown)

Even though the benchmark succeeded with the 720QM @ 12.0x w/ 2x 7970M, in my own testing, however, unexpected shutdowns are still possible. Stepping the 720QM down to 7.0x seems to make everything run with greater stability (no recorded shutdowns), but at that point, framerates are reduced to the point that you still haven't gotten anywhere (mid-30s to mid-40s FPS on average, dipping to 12 FPS and peaking at 55 FPS).

Without an actual working power supply modification (or with one, for all I know), it seems that regardless of an M17x R2's configuration, if you can achieve a higher higher framerate with a second 7970M, you can be subject to an unexpected shutdown from overdrawing power.

 

Awesome work man! Thanks for taking the time to complete this and post the results. Seems like the only way two run these cards at their full potential is is the cumbersome dual 240W mod then. Very interesting results comparing the 940XM to the 720QM though. The 720QM doesn't seem to make any worthwhile difference in this game compared to the 940XM from your tests. There's less than 1fps difference which is negligible.

The only way to find out if the 330W is infact drawing more power than the 240W adapter is by using a Killawatt or simular power draw measuring device. I have a feeling that it isn't, as there was another user on the T|I forums who measured the draw from the 330W adapter mod and it tripped around the 220-240W mark. His normal 240W adapter was able to deliver up to 280W without tripping. He thinks it maybe a faulty 330W but I'm starting to think there's something else with the 330W mod that may be missing. We can say with reasonable certainty that any "safety" power draw mechanisms on our motherboard is ruled out by the fact that the dual 240W mod works flawlessy and draws up to +- 375W from the wall according to StamatisX's testing.

 

Isnt there an even biger power brick from Dell? Like a 400 or smthng.
Also has anyone thought about the possibility that the 330w brick is manutactured with a lower max power limit. So it may have a shut down system that turns it of when going over or near 330w . While the 240w as an older design may not have this system thus its known to reach 280+ w without shuting down

 

Unfortunately there isn't a 400W adapter. I doubt that would help M17x R2 owners in running these cards in xfire though, since the 330W is proven to draw over the 220W-240W when used with the M18X.

That said, there may be hope for a larger PSU. The M18x 330W adapter is also used in Alienwares' X51 desktop PC. And even with the new GTX 670 refresh they are still using the 330W adapter. But once they refresh the line up with the nVIDIA 700 series I'm hoping a larger PSU will accompany it to accommodate the potentially larger power requirement.

 

i believe the most of our problems lies in the motherboard. they probably have voltage regulators directly soldered on the board.

 

ok , i just perceived it! the solution is simple. Now that 3d printers are easy to buy (from kickstarter companies ) at 300$ we will soon be able to construct a plastic shell to house the 2 240W psus required in the mod. so we will have a 480W psu closed in its plastic 3d printer constructed shell. ok it will be heavier and biger than the 330w but a future 400+w will surely be big too..

 

So would my M17 r2 be able to support two 7970m in crossfireX configuration with a M18 330W power supplie?

 

No it doesn't seem like, not with the current M18x PSU mod.

 

But you can do it just fine with the stock 240W haha.