Alienware M18x R1 Upgrade... again

Hello everyone. I was recently gifted a lightly used M18x R1 with these specs:
CPU: 2829QM
GPU: 6990 X-fire (initial testing has one failed)
HD: None (500GB Samsung 850 EVO going in)

I know a few of these questions have been asked in other threads but most I read were over a year old and things change. A year in tech terms is a long time. I've already been busy on eBay looking into upgrades and had a few questions.
I am planning on getting the 2960XM and a GPU upgrade (probably GTX780) to pump this rig up a little.

Do I need the R2 triple pipe heat sink for the 2960XM if I am not planning on overclocking?

Will the factory heat sinks on my 6990's work on the 780(if I go this route)?

Is there a better GPU out there then the GTX780 for the R1?

Will the factory AMD crossfire tape work on Nvidia SLI cards in case I buy another 780 drunk one night?


Thank you for taking the time to look at this. Any info would be greatly appreciated regarding any other upgrades or performance gains.

 

1. If you are not overclocking, no, you will not need to upgrade your heatsink. However, for a 2920XM/2960XM to make sense, definitely upgrade the heatsink.......because the point of the XM chip is to overclock. The amount of overclock is insane that these chips can do. I have a good, strong 2920XM for sale if you're interested, can do 4.3Ghz 4 cores with no extra voltage.
2. Factory AMD heatsinks will work. You need to remove the black tape from where the heatsink makes contact with the die if you plan on getting 780Ms

3. Not really. You could spring for the 880M and downclock to 780M speeds if you need extra VRAM, but it's not worth the cost IMO.

4. not sure what you mean by crossfire tape....if you mean the cable, you need a completely different cable for SLI vs crossfire. I have spare SLI cables for sale if you need one.

 

Yes I meant the crossfire cable. In laptops it always seems to look like a ribbon or tape and less like a rounded cable to me. Thank you very much for the info.
I already have the 2960XM for it. Along with an Intel 7260ac to throw into it. Just looking for the 780 but I may PM you for that SLI cable.

 

Don't bother with the price premium of the 2960xm over the 2920xm, just get the 2920xm. You absolutely want to overclock the CPU. Intel sold these CPUs are far lower clocks than they were capable of so they could release higher clocked parts later and say they made something new. You're throwing away a free 1GHz+ if you don't. The 2920xm and 2960xm will clock higher than anything until 6xxx series CPUs.

Try going for a 980m or 1060 if you can. Unfortunately I think there are compatibility quirks with the 980m, but it can be made to work. I don't know specifics about the 1060.

 

Is there any truth in that^? can a 970m/980m be made to work in a M18x R1? All the research I did b4 this thread said differently.

 

I may be thinking of the M18x R2. I don't know if there are GPU compatibility differences between the R1 and R2.

 

Check my signature for detailed guide. I went through the same process

Maxwell cards won't work in M18xR1

 

I've seen 3rd and 4th gen mobile i7 at 5GHz and 5.1GHz, your saying 2nd gen can go higher than that? 3rd and 4th gen are very similar performance wise. 2nd gen to 3rd gen is a massive performance difference a stock 2960XM is almost beaten by a stock 3610QM

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Is there any way you can show a guide for the thermal pad thickness on the slave drive GPU? I'm struggling with it a bit.

Edited a word.

 

Slave drive? As in a HDD or SSD? or slave gpu and in graphics card

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Oh, my bad. I meant the slave GPU.

I’ve seen the guide from Mr. Fox on the main GPU, but I still had to make several adjustments to it. I was hoping the slave GPU would be easier. Currently, my main GPU idles at 45°C while the slave GPU is at 60°C[!!!].

 

For a 780M?

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Yes. I’ve updated my post above as well.

 

I have seen users using 880M SLI in an R1 so that is an option, but I think after 780M SLI the CPU will bottleneck the GPUs, you could ways replace the R1 motherboard with an R2 board (cpu would work since same socket (but I highly recommend 3rd gen as massive improvements were made over 2nd gen 2920XM stock almost loses to a stock 3610QM) then you could get 980M SLI. I do notice you 1070 System in your sig though so IDK how much money you would really want to drop in the Alienware

 

I’ve capped out my M18x R1 I believe (well, at least on the CPU... I wasn’t spending more than 780M SLI). If anything, I’m only looking at better memory. I’m not sure if a 2133 MHz stick would work.

It’s just bothering me that I can’t see if the thermal pads are making good contact in the slave GPU.

 

2133MHz is the max it should take

 

as for the other gpu why not match the same thermal padding as the main (like same position on the gpu since IK the heatsinks ar somewhat different

 

The heatsinks are different. I’m mostly concerned on the contact between the heatsink and the VRM/MOSFET. The slave GPU didn’t need thicker pads, but I can’t see on any angle if it’s making proper contact. I suspected it isn’t because the idle temperature is higher than the primary GPU.

 

The temp is only recorded of the die itself.... As memory Overclocks to not effect heat unless heating the pcb so much it heats the die more... On my 980M I get 30-35C Idle and 60C Load so you should be around those Temps unless the 780M is a complete heat monster

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I see. I wonder why it's idling at such temperature then. I've only installed the part last night.

 

Second fan has different temperature table. It starts spinning on 62C or something like that. Unless your GPUs exceeds 85C it's fine.

For pad thickness and tutorial check my signature. I did it before.

 

Ah ok I run my fans max all the time with a program called HWInfo64 (Disable EC Support) as I have always preferred performance over a little bit of sound, I use my PC with headphones on so u never hear it anyway

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That clears things up. I thought it was some weird temp. issue. What's the reason behind it?

 

I don't know. Maybe they wanted to prevent turning on 2nd fan randomly while in Windows.