M18X R2 Graphic upgrades?

I've been reading around a bit and I've seen some issues with people upgrading their cards? I've got two 680m's in sli right now but have been eyeballing the 970's or 980's, would my current heatsinks for my 680's work for those? And should I wait for a while before I upgrade? I don't want to brick my display if I can help it.

 

- The 980M requires the 3-pipe heatsink, since you have the 680M I'd say you already have it.
- You need a Pure UEFI environment (fast boot, secure boot, legacy-rom -> disabled) , Windows 8 or 10 on a GPT formatted SSD/HDD.
- I'm using modded driver (352.84) and vbios (either Prema or SVL7 it's up to you), no throttling at all except when heavily overclocking.
- Bricking the display mostly was traced back to EVGA precision X, I 'm not sure about any updates regarding this matter. You can still use Win 8 and keep away from Precision X.

 

Thank you for the information I will get my system pre setup for it.

 

Yes, you can still use the same 100w heatsinks used on the 680Ms for your new 970Ms/980Ms.

 

can you run a valley benchmark test for me on default and tell me what is your score? last time i have tried putting 980m into m18x r2, the trottling was terrible with 356+ drivers. with unlocked Prema vbios ofcourse.

never had problems runing 970m in m18x r2 though, even with stock Clevo vbios

 

Did you try different drivers? if you're on Windows 8 try 353.06 or 352.84 with Windows 10.
I'll upload the score when I get back to my computer.

 

yes. some dirvers work perfectly, some not. not sure about the latest one, don't have that machine with 980m sli anymore

 

The heatsinks you have are 100NV heatsinks, they will need modification to work (because they do not fit the 900M series properly.) you can get someone like me to modify them for you, or buy new heatsinks (I source these too, just expensive).

Here's what one modified might look like(though this was an MSI heatsink):

heres more pics if you like
If you look there are placed that had to be smoothed down because they were in the way:

 

These look different than the ones I have, I actually picked up a AMD 100w heatsink for the M18xr2, I compared it with my one from my 680 and they both look exactly the same, the only difference I can see is one is labeled AMD and on is labeled nvidia. This is the ones I have.

 

I have my 980m installed now, what does everyones temps run at with this? Idle I'm sitting at 45c, and when I benched it it hit 85c? Is that normal temps or am I running hot?

 

85C is too hot, but it could be perfectly fine in a 1v overclocked SLV7 vbios as an example. Need to know more. Is this stock ? Is this after 4 hours of benchmarking at 99% load.... is the house hot and humid beyond normal i.e above say 27C normally...

normal for 980M if bought from me, should be 70-75C

 

We've been pm'ing each other about it. Yea its one I've bought from you. I took it back apart and redid the pads again and made sure it was real level etc and from what I could tell pads was making contact. I ran the bench again after all that and I think I hit 80-81 then I stopped it, it was staying steady at 78ish for a bit then started to climb. When I get home I'll clean it up again and try reapplying the thermal paste to see if that helps.

 

Mine run around the same temperature, no idea why so hot. My 780Ms or 8970Ms never got that hot.

 

What does the thermal paste look like when you separate the card from the heatsink?

 

Mine average mid 70s under heavy load so if your up in the 80s your rather high. Use hwinfo64 and override the fan control setting them at max power under load just incase your fans arent getting up high enough. Also premas clevo mod for the 980Ms seems to work best for the m18xr2 the fans on both of my gpus work perfectly fine with the mod under system control.

 

actually you dont need to modify any of the heatsink from m18x r2 to fit 9xxm, except for taking off the tape and cleaining off the glue from the heatsink for Kepler and AMD sinks, the tape that surround the contact area. for 675m heatsink you dont even need to to a tiny bit, just lay the thermal pads according to the 9xx elements.

never got over 75C in 980m in stock and 65-68 for 970m in m18x r2(no mod) or A18(with modded heatsinks)

 

All 4 sets are not the same. I think 2 sets will fit 970M and one set will fit 980M on the m18X-R2. Unless there is something I'm missing here(which, could be true, if so show me, let me know. Best being in the KNOW), but from what I'm looking at, theres parts of the heatsink in the way.

 

This seems to have helped, temps are now 65-70ish under load. I guess I'm gonna have to look for the unlocked bios and readjust the fans if I can. Thanks for the help!

 

done that many times, m18x r2 amd, fermi, kepler all fit 9xxm series perfectly, only a18 sinks need modding.

 

a18 ? You mean AW18 ?

 

Here is the stock 680m heatsink that came in my M18xR2 and the Amd version as well, this picture shows the bottom of both. Top is the stock heatsink, bottom is the amd heatsink. (Ignore the pads, not all of them are in place in the picture).

 

Do you need to run HWinfo64 with premas clevo mod? I've got a 980 from woodstock, do I have to flash the vbios in order to use prema's clevo mod? Whats your thoughts on this Woodstock? And I also loaded the A10 unlocked bios on my laptop last night, I can't see any thermal controls for the gpu? HWinfo did well at keeping the temps in check last night when I was playing and I did keep an eye on the temps, the system locked up 3 times during the day that made me have to hard reboot the system, any ideas what would cause it? Temps looked good each time the locks hit,74ish under load with hwinfo keeping the fans in check. I have some new pads and some new paste I'm going to try on the card today and hopefully get the temps down even more. Trying out these :

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MQ65K0G?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00 - Thermal Pads
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MQ6AJU2?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00 - Thermal Pads
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002P5W4RU?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00 - Thermal Paste

 

yes, alienware 18

 

Hmm weird, they appear the same but I've seen it where they're different. Anyways, the plastic part on the copper is silly.... remove that crap. If the metal in the center makes contact in a way it shouldn't then you;d need to grind it down, but overall that is not a bad heatsink for upgrading. some heatsinks have things all over that need to be removed.

 

Getting nvidia driver crashes? Could it be the card is getting hot? GPU is showing good temps?

 

The driver might need a re-install/ DDU then install or the GPU/memory might be getting hot. When I had an undervolted vbios the driver would crash very often.

 

make sure you go through the A10 BIOS and double check all the settings

also hwinfo fan control can cause lockups i know it has for me in the past, i use hwinfo 24/7 but i don't use the fan control on it

im 99% sure i use the stock dell VBIOS on mine and have had no issues - im using Win 8.1 Pro

are you using the PEG mod drivers with clock matching? im using the 353.06 J95 drivers for several months with updated profiles have had zero issues - liquid ultra with Fujipoly 11w/mk Thermal Pads

update your sig and i think with all the issues people had with windows10 display deaths i hope that's not what you are running....

as far as the heatsinks there are 2 different versions of the 100w for the m18x but both should be compatible...the aw18 ones are different from what i remember

 

Display device : GeForce GTX 980M on GM204-A GPU
Display driver : 347.25
BIOS : 84.04.22.00.12

I am running Windows 10 but I'm being careful about it, I've got Fujipoly 16w/mk thermal pads on everything but the memory, I've just got the thermal pads from my old 680's memory chips in place right now, I'll probably order some more Fujipoly pads to replace those as well. Highest temp I seen under load was 76-77 as of recently but I've still had random lock ups playing GTA V, Frames look great, temps are never to crazy and sometimes I can play 3-4 hours+ with no problems then I get a solid lock, can't ctrl alt del nothing, system seems to be responding people can hear me in my teamspeak but the display is locked solid, only way I can recover is to hard power down the system and reboot. I did change the bios back to A11 in hopes it would help the fan problem? I didn't see any fan options in the A10 unlocked bios for the graphics cards, I only seen thermal options for the cpu. Whats your voltage run at on your card under load? I can use MSI afterburner and GPU-Z, but I'm not able to control the voltage, I'm just letting the system do it as of right now.

 

i don't run any overclock on mine i just have the clocks P1/P2 matched, I really would suggest running PEG MOD 353 J95 drivers as one of the first diagnostic steps....they are the only ones that fixed the throttling for me