m17x r3/r4 - Some questions for beginning upgrading

So I ordered a m17x on eBay. The seller had it listed as an r3, but he showed the specs in system info as:

• i7-3610qm
• GTX 660m
• 6gb mem

As much as I keep searching, I can not find anyone with an m17x r3 that got a i7-3610qm to run on it. So I suspect this laptop is actually an r4. If that's the case, I got a steal

Anyways, I have a pretty good general understand of computers, but I know nothing of the specifics of laptop modding. So what I'm hoping is I can get pointed in the right direction on a couple topics:


Screen upgrade:
The laptop I got does not have 3d to my knowledge. How much better is the 120hz 3d screen? Is color quality improved?
Does upgrading require simply buying the screen and installing it? The screens seem to be pretty easy to find on eBay. ( link)
(Btw, I don't care about 3d that much, just improved color quality and extra hz would be nice - especially for $180)

GPU Upgrade:
This one is the most perplexing to me. My understanding is the GPU upgrades most people do seem to be:

• GTX 1060 (requires 3d screen)
• GTX 1070 (requires 3d screen)
• GTX 980m (no changes necessary?)
• GTX 970m (no changes necessary?)
• m290x (no changes necessary?)
• Radeon 7970m/8970m (no changes necessary?)

I wanted to go for the m290x as it seemed to offer good performance on most games I play and does not cost an arm and a leg. On researching the questions I've come up with are:
1. What bracket do I need for installing it? How do I go about getting it without going broke?
2. Will the heatsink for the GTX 660m work fine on the m290x? If not, what should I be looking for?

CPU Upgrade:
It seems to be the case that the i7-3940xm is the best you can get for the m17x r4. I hear some people talk about thermal issues on the upgrade? Is this the case? If so, would I be best off just trying to squeeze whatever extra clocks out of the 3610qm that I can?


Anything else I should think of?

 

Welcome to the annoying ways of dealing with a notebook!
It will likely be stressful, annoying and sometimes the notebook wants to do whatever it wants, but the experience is fun if you're into it.

So the answer your questions:
1.) Screen update quality wise won't be an improvement and the HZ really will depend on what graphciscard you plan on buying. If you're going for pascal you need the 3D Screen, since pascal doesn't support LVDS anymore and only works with eDP signals. The reason why Pascal cards work for older clevo notebooks with LVDS is because Clevo has a chip that translates eDP signals to LVDS, Alienware notebooks do not have that chip hence are not compatible when using optimus. If you're going for the AMD card, then stay with the 60hz screen.

2.)The Pascal cards do need heatsink mods 100%, I don't know if maxwell does need mods, I think they need minor modding but am not 100% sure, the AMD cards are plug and play as far as I can tell. Should work without any issues.
When going for NVIDIA cards you will need to modify drivers as well.

The 3940XM / 3920XM will only cause thermal issues when you overclock it pretty hard. If you're not a person who wants their notebook to be at high thermals go for 3820QM / 3840QM, they have more cache than your current one and are already clocked nicely.

And yes, the Alienware is a R4. If u're not scared of liquid metal, then I suggest buying conduconaut and use it on your GPU.


The performance of the M290x/HD 8970M (it's the same card) is as you already pointed out, pretty dank for the buck.

Oh and if you buy a 290M, ask if they can flash an Alienware vBIOS on the card, just to be safe.

 

Didn't expect to have all my questions answered so quick! Thanks much!

So to quickly recap on what I asked:

Screen: Doesn't matter, quality on upgrade is negligible, 120hz is only important if you can actually push 120hz
CPU: Overclocking is what causes thermal issues. In stock state, it's solid
GPU: 8970/m290 is plug and play, no bracket or heatsink needed.

If that's all correct, then this sounds easier than I was originally expecting. I've done a lot with desktops, so I'm comfortable with liquid metal and inserting plug and play components. It's when things need modded and you need X part from Z laptop and Y part from Q laptop so that your GPU will get proper thermal performance that I get a little more nervous. If I buy a Dell/Alienware m290x. IE: https://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-R9-M29...0847000-For-Dell-Alienware-17-18/183007894527 should I just be good to go? No flashing vbios needed?

 

Push 120FPS, but yes.
Unless you have some weird heatsink issues yes.
Again not 100% sure on this one but to my knowledge and short research it should be plug and play.

That's the thing, it should be easy but then suddenly your notebook acts weird for no apparent reason, that's why it's so much fun. Sometimes your notebook wil beep for no reason,once you reset itll work, or your heatsink doesn't sit as well and suddenly you need to lap and rework a bit unless you want to melt your card at 93c etc. It's also very possible that everything runs smooth as butter and no issues will be coming. Never assume it will be easy on notebooks.

Also I would recommend updating the BIOS to an unlocked version.

 

Haha, I don't know...
But, trust me, this won't be the first time I ran into a few problems to get a computer running...

Spoiler: ...

Is the unlocked BIOS from svl7 what I should be getting?
What features are there that aren't in the stock BIOS?

 

hahahahaha Such a mess. Love it.

Yeah SL7 has the unlocked BIOS posted somewhere. I don't know what exacly, you should probably read up on whereever you found it.

 

Haha, yes it was a mess, but it was a very quick subzero mess. Was trying to have the fastest AMD computer in the world. Didn't succeed

I actually checked on that post before asking; but no real details are included. He just says:

We'll just find out once I get the laptop.

 

Well as long SL says it can improve performance i'd say it's more than worth it. The guy is responsible for the modded Alienware vBIOS you can find on NVIDIA cards.

 

Alright, I'll look into it. This is all pretty interesting. In the past I had always thought laptops were unupgradeable.

Any idea what the memory module layout for 6GB is?
To me knowledge, there's 4 slots on the m17x.
Is it 2GB, 2GB, 1GB, 1GB?

Fortunately, I have a dead MSI GE72 2QE laying around that had 16GB of DDR3 (2x8GB modules) that I'll be able to pop in.

 

more likely 4GB + 2GB

 

Yep, you were correct. Not sure why I thought there were 4 slots in these.
I got the laptop last night. Here's an array of thoughts, opinions and problems:

Wow, the service panel on the bottom is insanely convenient. Two screws and you can get to the RAM, 2.5" bays, GPU, CPU, etc. That's so nice compared to my other (now dead) laptop

I can not find the custom BIOS for the m17x r4. When you google, the only link that comes up is here (*warning* this site mines on your computer) and the links do not work

The laptop would not run at stock clocks. It was locked to like 1100MHz (not sure what pstate that is, probably 6 I'd guess). I went and reset the BIOS to defaults and when I booted up it gave me a warning about the charger being not an authentic Dell charger and the laptops performance would be adjusted accordingly. The battery is dead as well. So my questions about this would be:

• Do you need a functioning battery AND a correct charger? Or should I be able to pull the malfunctioning battery out and run on only the charger with normal operation?
• Any way to override this safety check if I know the charger is rated correctly for the amp draw needed?

In general, I'm very happy with build quality and upgradeability of this thing.

 

We are aware that techinferno is mining of you. There was a thread about it since users from here used to be on techinferno a lot. I'm sure some people here still have the BIOS around.
Well some notebooks use the battery as an extra energy source if you do hard overclock, you should check if your charger has at least 180W. If it's below 180W it's likely that the charger is not giving enough energy to the system. Also unlocked BIOS is important alongside with EC firmware, since otherwise your notebook will limit itself when you attempt to overclock.

 

I'm glad you are aware, I couldn't find a warning anywhere on their site that was alerting users. Because of this, I would not want to link to their site without explicitly warning any random person who might click that link that it's potentially malicious.

I'll try creating a thread about the BIOS and see if anyone can hook me up.
I think my best bet with the charger/battery situation is gonna be bringing home a Dell charger from one of our dead laptops at work to see if that'll get me out of pstate 6.

 

So, I ended up using ThrottleStop and disabling BD PROCHOT which got me up and running. I'll use this while I wait on my new charger.
The GTX 660m reminds me of how much people tend to overestimate the graphics power they need. Most games I play (StarCraft II, Rocket League, some emulators up to PS2) run perfectly fine without any noticeable frame drop at high settings. There's just that one game that's a little slow... so I'll probably end up upgrading. m290x/8970m still seems like the best route.

 

there you go with the unlocked bios of M17x R4 Enjoy !
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EbywJIT2SY454MZWYFbTxPS7BUkhBaEN/view?usp=sharing

 

You're a godsend Thanks a lot!
Looks like all I'm missing now is this "prr tool" for circumventing write protection


EDIT:

Okay, I accrued all the necessary bits and pieces.
FPT, prr2 and the BIOS.

Here's links for the above. If the links die, contact me and I'll upload whatever file you need.

FPT: [Download]

PRR: [Download]

BIOS: [Download]

Using it should be pretty straightforward. Create a DOS flash drive.
Copy DOS version of FPT, PRR2 and the m17xr4.bin files onto the flash drive.
Boot into DOS
Run prr2.exe
Run FPT.exe -f m17xr4.bin -bios
Profit


-----------------------
Installed and functioning well.

 

There are four slots for RAM....

 

Spoiler: Board image

These are the only slots I saw when I pulled the service panel off the back. Are there slots on the other side of the board or something?
Sorry if I'm being dense


Oh also something else I noticed...
My GTX 660m never goes above 724MHz. When running furmark, it's not heating up past 60c, so we have headroom; but it's just not using it. I would expect to see boost up to 950MHz. I'm using the latest WHQL driver from NVidia (390.65).
I'm not sure if it's throttling itself because of the unofficial charger? Also not sure if there's a way to disable that with ThrottleStop. I guess I'll wait until I get the new charger (it's still on the other side of the states from me )

 

There are two more slots under the keyboard. When i had my m17x r3, i had a 4 x 4gb DDR3 config.

Probably throttling because you are not using the official dell charger, which you need to use computer at full power. get the 240W dell PSU. There is a ID chip in the power supply that signals the board for proper power consumption.

 

Ah okay, I'll take a look. What is the memory channel layout in this? I'd assume A1+B1 on the bottom and A2+B2 under the keyboard?

I made the mistake of ordering the 180w charger. I think it should work fine for my configuration, but I'll probably wanna get the 240w for when I get an m290x.

 

So my new charger arrived yesterday. I tested it out and my GTX 660m goes to 950MHz now and my CPU clocks normally.
I went ahead and ordered a m290x.

Can anyone confirm if the X bracket + screws from the 660m will or will not work with an m290x?

 

xbracket and screws should work no problem.

 

Thanks!
Only thing I'm left wondering now is if this 180w charger I just got will be enough or if I should go for the bigger 240w charger.

 

I'm not entirely sure yet, some Alienware notebooks cannot take more than 180W from your charger due to EC limitations, but with your specs you're very safe with 180W, no need to upgrade from that.

 

Is TDP is a safe measurement to judge how much power laptop hardware is going to draw?
It sounds like I might have to worry about this if I decide to upgrade the CPU to a 3940xm

 

Not really, especially when we talk stock. I remember when I saw stuff like "GTX 880M 100W TDP" and I laughed.

 

Is it laughable because the true figure is higher or lower? Sorry, I'm still trying to grasp all the laptop stuff and resources for finding information are much more limited than in the desktop world.

 

the GTX 880M was truly a furnace to behold. Most notebooks have seen the magical 92c and almost all had throttling issues. The card easily surpasses the 100TDP rating.

 

Haha, I heard the m290x was also similar in that it was a hot card?

eBay prices for MXM cards confuses me greatly. The m290x is about equal to the GTX 780m, yet the 780m costs ~$250-300 and the m290x costs $150-$200.
This happens all around. The GTX 680m seems to generally cost MORE than the 780m for some reason and the 680m's competitor, the 7970m can easily be had for half its price.

I gave up trying to understand this.

 

So I got the new GPU. Couple things happened:


I forgot to set the default adapter to PEG. It booted, I installed the drivers and it detected the card without issue. Then I realized it was using the integrated GPU instead of m290x.
So rebooted into BIOS, set the default adapter to PEG and now I get the 8 beeps of death. Does this mean I'm in need of VBIOS?

I just put my old GTX 660m back in for the moment until I can figure this out.