thermal paste or thermal tape ??? also suggestions on cpu upgrade

Hey guys,
Thanks in advance for any questions answered.

On my m17x r2, i am upgrading the xfired 4870's to a single 7970m. I got the card in however i have no tape to make due. Can i use arctic silver for the chips as well as the gpu, or do i need to not be impatient and order the tape? Also,some guy told me to use copper shims and paste it on the chips cause it dissipates heat beter. But i dont trust that. Opinions?

Lastly, i have a little left over cash in hand and was thinking about buying the 920xm for this thing, however, it has a 740qm in it. Am i going to notice a huge diffrence considerung i wont really be o.c. the cpu?

 

Order the thermal tape and cut them out and place over vram modules.
The 4870m thermal cooler will be reused for the 7970m. I recommend icd7 thermal paste.

Beware of the c - clips from the 4870m and transfer across to 7970m.
What 7970m card did you get?

The 740qm to the 920xm maybe a nice little upgrade if you can afford it but gains are more on the gpu upgrade.
Good luck and reply here how you go.

 

So I ordered
Fujipoly Extreme System Builder Thermal Pad - 60 x 50 x 1.0 - Thermal Conductivity 11.0 W/mK - FrozenCPU.com

and

Thermalright Chill Factor 3 Non-Conductive Thermal Paste - 4g - FrozenCPU.com

Im using the paste for the GPU and the pads for the ram chips, hopefully this all works. So any thought on the CPU???

 

The card I got is New Alienware M17x M18x 7970M AMD 2GB GDDR5 XT Laptop Video Card O | eBay

I have it here with me, just waiting on my mother board.

BTW: NEVER....... EVER ... buy from partsguy.net yeah i ordered my motherboard and its been about a week and a half and it still hasn't shipped yet. so yeah, no go there.

I will upload pics, and stuff about my whole process, cause I have to completly rebuild my computer, its sadly laying next to my back up computer torn apart atm.

 

Soooo, I was thinking, would you all like me to make a video of the upgrades? I know you all have much more experience with this, and it may be pointless, however I could make a complete video of the whole process so that someone who doesn't have the knowledge that y'all do may see it???

 

That would be really nice. I trust that many future M17xR2 owners looking to upgrade would appreciate that. Good luck with your rebuild.

If you have the cash for it, that 920XM CPU would offer a nice performance boost potential you don't have with your current CPU. You might not be planning to overclock, but if you should change your mind in the future you will be able to do a lot more with the 920XM.

 

Ok check these threads on Cpu upgrades and why I stayed on 840qm.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...market-upgrades/528763-i7-840qm-vs-920xm.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...0qm-940xm-vs-720qm-820qm-920xm-benchmark.html

That gpu make sure it has correct vbios on it read here Sangamaru 's thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...rex-ultimate-installation-tweaking-guide.html
Thermal pads look good mine from memory are blue with similar thermal conductivity. Place them here
What happened to your motherboard?

 

The Fujipoly stuff is good. I'm using the same on my R2. Using thermal paste on those RAM chips is very ill-advised. You shouldn't use thermal paste as a substitute for thermal pads. The gap is too large for thermal paste to efficiently transfer heat from the chip to the heatsink.

 

Yeah, I read that in many places, sorry I asked the question before actually researching it. Hence the reason I got the pads, thanks for steering me in the correct fashion though.

 

I know that the card will be ok since its dell, however I have though about getting the clevo vbios setup and flashing the card. My motherboard took a dump after a bios flash, the thing locked up, and wouldn't turn on anymore (no lights no beeps no indication of power at all), so it was either place the chip, which I didn't feel comfortable enough doing, or replace the MB. Soooo yeah bad times. thanks for those links, i was looking into just going with the 840, however, I had a smoking offer for 190 bucks for the 920 and was thinking about it.