AW18 Bad Things Are Happening

Hello,

AW18 was running perfectly, passed extended BIOS test. I installed a heatsink for GPU and forgot to reconnect the LCD. Got beep when restarting. Went back and connected it. The trackpad and power button light were flickering on start up and screen is black, however, I can tell the machine is booting. Unplug the A/C and the screen turns on but is flickering with the trackpad and power button light. But I can see it has gone through the whole boot process. I pulled it apart to double check the AC connection on the motherboard and check the LCD connections. Reassemble, now it will not power on. When I connect the A/C adapter the power button begins to flicker on its own, without even being pressed.

Is there any hope?

 

It is possible that the ribbon cables could me messed up, or something could be pinched. Sweep through everything again and make sure the contact points on the ribbon cables are good and that everything is plugged in well.

 

On it. Thank you very much.

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Went through everything. Removed all RAM. Tried Mr. Fox's reset (below). Problem is, the machine never stops 7-beeps or shutsdown. I pulled the A/C and reconnected some RAM. Restarted and getting 7-beeps. Lights come on, no more flickering of any sort but just 7-beeps, no matter what is connected.

1. Unplug laptop and battery
2. Power drain for 30 seconds
3. Remove all RAM modules (if you have 16GB you need to access underneath the keyboard as well
4. Connect AC adapter, turn on laptop without RAM modules in
5. When the laptop beeps (4 beeps) it will eventually turn off
6. The moment it turns off, insert 1 RAM module
7. The laptop will beep 5 times, then you can turn it off
8. Insert RAM modules and turning it on should bring you back to normal

 

Try removing your GPU (or GPU's) and rebooting. This will force iGFX and you may get the display working again. A 7 beep code code can also mean there's a fault with the GPU so you may have damaged it when installing the heatsink. You can also try reseating the GPU and cleaning the pins and MXM port.

 

I have never been able to recover a machine that 7 beeps. Might be time for looking at a new machine or a new motherboard

 

7 beeps was always the death of the motherboard on my Ranger. CPU 99.95% of the time is fine its the motherboard that usually needs to be replaced.

 

I don't know why I said the 7 beep code was GPU, I had a brain fade. Yeah the 7 beep is bad news as it is very rarely the CPU that's failed and usually means the board has a failure relating to the CPU. Only once have I come across a 4910MQ in a Ranger that was faulty and causing the 7 beep error.

 

Thank you, everyone. I truly appreciate it. I have a M18x r2 which I am going to switch to. My understanding is mosfets and motherboard in that model is stronger than the AW18 was. My plan is to sell the AW18 in parts.

Question: I am going to upgrade the CPU. What is the best CPU for the M18x r2 socket. I found a 3-pipe heatsink on ebay that says r3 compatible. Will it also work in r2? I'm not finding much info on the difference between r3 and r2.

EDIT: I was looking for motherboards for AW18 and am wondering: is that the r3? If someone can confirm that would be helpful. Is the AW18 r1 AND M18xr3 one and the same?

Thanks again everyone.

 

Maxware could help you out a bit more in depth, but the best CPU that the R2 takes is a 3940XM, (at stock clocks perfroms like a 4930MX.) I think most people use a 3920XM as I think those were better binned, but if you can find a heatsink, you can probably overclock a 3940XM or 3920XM to match or exceed the perfromance of your 4940MX.

 

Some people incorrectly call the 18 the M18x R3 and some other people call the 18 with the Nvidia 700 series the 18 R1, the 800 series the R2 and the 900 series the R3. If you found an R3 heatsink then my guess is it's for the 18 and will not fit your M18x R2. My vote is for the 3920XM but the 3940XM will be very similar so go for whatever is cheaper.

 

Well, that is making me feel a lot better. Thank you, kindly.

 

Ta, mate!

 

Very knowledgable, thank you! Would you mind confirming this heatsink should work in r2? https://tinyurl.com/53s37wec

 

This is one of the best heatsinks that the M18X R2 supports, its a bit pricey, but will cool the CPU if overclocked well.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-N...579546&hash=item3db60ec414:g:MUsAAOSwB-1Y6gDf

 

That CPU will work in the R2, but its a GPU heatsink.

 

Oh, thank you. That was close. Would you be able to point me to a good tutorial for proper overclocking? Thanks in advance. This is like therapy or something...gradually feeling better : )

 

Will order. Thanks again.

 

Don't order the heatsink until you you manage to get a 3920/40MX, its way overkill for a 45 watt chip.

As for overclocking guides, I don't really know any as I havent tried overclocking yet. You can find a few threads here I think, but you will defintley need throttlestop and intel XTU.

 

That is the primary GPU heatsink for AMD cards.
The one that Tenoroon linked is the way to go! You will need the 3-pipe heatsink for the XM processors

 

Man, I can't believe they don't mention that in the listing. Thanks. Do you overclock the 3920 XM, @Maxware79? If so any advice as to overclocking would be welcome. Can it be done in stock BIOS or do I need modded BIOS? Is any other software required? Thanks much.

 

Throttlestop and Intel XTU are the software you need to overclock. You can overclock in the BIOS, but its very different and you risk bricking the machine, and the only way to reset everything is a long process of resetting the NVRAM, so it doesn't matter which BIOS you have.

 

Actually resetting the CMOS on the M18x is very simple compared to the 17 and 18. You just need to remove the power and then remove the CMOS battery and bridge the CMOS connector pins for a few seconds.

I've never messed with voltages. I only adjusted the multipliers in XTU to 41 or 42 before it started crashing. It can go a lot higher with more meddling. Stock BIOS is fine.

 

Excellent.

Sweet. I'll start there. You guys are life savers! Thank you!!

 

Does this look acceptable? I noticed it has "*KM" after the title. Not sure what that means. https://tinyurl.com/vd6ktpcv

 

Looks right to me


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@Maxware79 and @Tenoroon I've ordered the correct 3-pipe CPU heatsink and am just waiting on the slow boat from China to deliver.

In the meantime, could you give me an honest opinion on why the 3920MX is sometimes preferred to the 3940MX? Still not sure which chip I should go with at this point. Never quite understood why the 3920MX might be better than the 3940MX. Something about "binning?"

Oh! Also, any advice on "refurbished" versus "pre-owned," "open box" or "new" would be greatly appreciated at this time.

Thanks again for your expertise!

 

Well, at stock clock speeds, the 3940XM will trump the 3920XM. However, the 3940XM is pushed even harder when coming out of the factory, this means that its better when at stock speeds, but probably doesn't have too much headroom for overclocking as it has already been pushed quite hard when coming out of the factory. Many people have noted that the 3920XM can clock higher compared to the 3940XM because of this reason. If you plan to overclock, the 3920XM is your best bet, but if you plan to keep everything at stock speeds or overclock just a tiny bit, the 3940XM would be better in that scenario.

Binning is quite complex, this video may help explain it. If you are still confused, some other guys can probably come in and help explain it as I'm usually not very good at explain things to people.

 

No, you've helped me a lot and that was a super explanation! I'm totally new to overclocking, but my understanding is the M18x r2 handles overclocking and upgrading very well due to quality mosfets and motherboard. Thank you!

 

Yeah, the M18X R2 was a strange laptop. People have managed to get two 980M's to use around 200 watts each, and have pushed the 3rd gen CPU's very hard with the R2. If you plan on using the 980M from your AW 18, you could always mod the card to use a lot more power so that it can stretch its legs a bit more, though, it's a difficult process to do as you need to hook up a BIOS programmer to the card and flash the special 200 watt vBIOS onto the card.

 

How do you run two cards at 200W each with only a 330W PSU?

 

People used two 330W PSU's and made an adapter that turned two of the barrels into one for the laptop to use IIRC.

 

Interesting. I'm surprised the system can handle that much extra power.

 

Yeah, as I said earlier, the R2 was a strange laptop. The power deliver can somehow deal with two GPU's using around 200 watts AND a CPU that is chugging 80-100 watts.

In the future when prices get better, I'd like to try running two of these MSI 980DT cards (they perform a lot better than the regular 980M) in SLI to see if they would work because if so, they might be able to outperform a 1070 and even two 980M's at 200 watts.

The 980M has a die name of N16E-GX-A1 while the 980DT (DT for desktop as they were similar to the desktop variant,) has a die name of N16E-GXX-A1.

 

Man thanks for that info. That's a project down the road. Let me ask you this, if you had the M18X r2, which chip would you personal buy? 3920 or 3940? Thanks in advance.

 

I would just get the 3920XM and overclock the **** out of it. The 3920XM's do tend to be quite a bit cheaper too.