M18x R1 Tear Down Video: Ivy Bridge CPU Heatsink and 7970M CrossFire Upgrade

TactX keys missing ? which ?

 

Wow, that Ebay listing looks very dodgy....personally, wouldnt touch it with a bargepole. The main listing pic is of an M17x R2, its listed as M18x R3 (obviously incorrect as the spec is for an R1 revision)...the guy has 1 feedback...(for a sub £10 item)......

Not a sound investment....what actually put me off more than anything was the "nest of worms" of all those plugs that were plugged into mutliple extension leads....that and the fact that I would never buy anything from a guy called Amit who lives in Essex - probably fallen off the back of a very dodgy truck

 

Sorry for the confusion - these (see attached) are the ones I'm talking about. I think they're kind of annoying - I never use them. They'd be sweet for strategy games, I'm sure. The 17-incher's don't have these keys. If you google'd alienware M17x, you'd see images with no TactX keys on the left.

Agreed...definitely sketchy sounding. I'd rather buy a lower quality laptop from a reputable place for the same price than risk buying this one. Also, the m18x without SLI (and without 580m) would be disappointing, I think. I bought my m18x with 675m SLI (basically the same as 580m) to replace a single 560m laptop (albeit with a 128-bit memory bus) and the difference is HUGE.

Edit: please forgive my ignorance on foreign currency - I'm not sure what 1,000 pounds would get you, but I wouldn't risk it here.

 

Yeah but I would pick it up and properly checked before purchase ..
It's very nice and price good..

Here is another one bit more expensive and contains 2 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M Video cards eBay - The UK's Online Marketplace
That first one has 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M

Yeah but I want to buy 18'' alien as cheap as possible and I would plan to buy 2x 7970 later on ..
I would sell RAM and CPU and HDD from there that would give me quite good money and buy best mobile cpu along with best 2x gpu .. 4x m4 SSDs ..

1000 GBP = 1553.5187 USD
1000 USD = 643.7000 GBP

 

Well, its a case of Caveat Emptor with anything on Ebay - buyer beware.

 

I forget what the performance improvement was between 460m and 560m (I think 560m is just an overclocked 460m), but I think the 460m in SLI would most likely give you better performance than a single 560m. I think you could just overclock the 460m's to 560m speeds and get the same performance, except you'd have two of them

Edit: The second seller looks much more reputable, as well. Not that I would buy from eBay, just sayin'

 

Performance in Diablo III is very similar to GTX 580M SLI. Here's a very quick clip for those than have sent me messages asking about it.

Remember than the FPS you see when capturing your screen video are significantly less than the FPS without recording overhead. Even with the overhead, it play great.

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Edit: Updated first page with a TessMark video.

 

So I am about to install the CPU, I already installed the GPU's. When opening the boxes I noticed I have two heat sinks. Why would they send two ? Should I use the larger one ?

 

Yes, the other one is not correct for the XM CPU. Your XM CPU will overheat like a big dog with that one-pipe heat sink. It looks like your rep did not do what you asked as far as sending the three-pipe unit. The two-pipe you received is the proper original XM CPU heat sink for the M18x R1.

Can you tell me the part number for the back plate for the CPU? That, or upload a legible photo showing it? Please?

 

Sorry about the photo. I still use a flip phone, after breaking 2 windows 7 phone screens I found flip phones to work best for me.

The cpu has these numbers on it:

J131B633

and

2L123373A
1959

EDIT: the part number on the Packing Slip says: 64F0G

Thanks for the help Mr Fox.

 

Ah, thank you. I appreciate it.

 

I finished upgrading the CPU and GPU, not a clean OS install but seems to be running well. This is my system difference.

3dMark11

NOW BEFORE
X2185, 621

G 1989, 547
P 7999, 6313
C 2333, 758

After calculating the difference I have a 252% increase.

I had fun watching the video : ) Thanks. Liked and Shared on Youtube channel. Awesome stuff. I tore down my system all grown up like the second time lol. You rock Mr fox.

 

Thanks buddy. Kudos on the outstanding results. You have every reason to be proud of that M18x. Awesome stuff, bro.

 

Where is the link of video?

 

Mr. Fox put the teardown video in his first post on this thread....awesome guide!

 

Huh man .. I didn't ask Fox .. I have seen fox's video loong time ago
I asked TheMatrixHacker

 

Yes. I know. As Brother Matrix pointed out in his last post above that you quoted, he enjoyed "Mr. Fox's video" and "thanked him" for posting it....that is the video he is talking about and that's the reason I told you to view it from the first page. - think you may be getting confused with thinking he was talking about some other video....

 

aaahh i thought he made video too with his 2x HD 6990 .. shame :-/
Sorry my bad

 

No worries, mate. Essentially, it would be exactly the same procedure as Fox's video....still, always nice to see another person shoot a teardown...might do one myself at some point in the not too distant future.....if I upgrade to 7970m's or 680m's....

 

But what mr fox could do is after put laptop bak to one piece he should power up alien and show status in BIOS and status in win 7 show game for example Metro 2033 cos THIS only game is very laggy on mine system..
I cannot turn off AAA or something else is there my laptop gets very hot and turn itself off .. Very unstable game ..
It is very easy to make nice and beutiful graphic but it is very hard to make it run stable on PCs ..

 

Are you talking about the system in your sig? - the Acer?.....Metro is an extremely demanding game..maybe even moreso than Crysis and a few others and is the title that I think sets the standard. Even systems such as mine stuggle with max settings without OC.

 

Yes yes my signature is my laptop ..
Graphic is mid range but games run very well at 720p ..
but this game is though even on 1024x768 .. dear me ..
What I think is that there is no way to turn off antialiasing
that's why is tearing ..
Really want to see metro in full detail specs on Mr Fox's stunning machine ..

 

I have never found Metro 2033 to be unstable on the M18x with 6990M CF, 580M SLI, and it's fine with the 7970M CF. But, as Steve pointed out, it is a very demanding game. I am not even a little surprised that your Acer struggles with it.

Here are some Metro 2033 results for you, with "Very High" settings...

 

Thnx mr fox
Yeah I have set video settings to low 720p resol. and it is playable now on my laptop .. and game still looks nice

 

Awesome work, Mr. fox, thanks for including the triple pipe CPU heat sink, what's the word here on temps?

+rep for a great guide from a great mod

 

Thanks, Zolutar. I appreciate the compliments. The temps are superior. Have a closer look at the screen shots with HWiNFO64 Sensors and you will see how good they are. Also have a shot in my signature (benchmarks link) showing temps. That 3-pipe heat sink is something that should be standard equipment for every M18x.

 

Mr Fox, I noticed u mention u left the OEM thermal paste because they last longer. Have u tried the Artic Cooling mx-4??? they claim 8 years of high performance durability, not sure how much of that its true but it says on the package.
I am waiting for my new R2 and i was thinking on applying some of mx-4 thermal paste.

 

Yes, I have. I have used a number of brands of paste, including MX-4 and none of them are as durable as the factory thermal interface material (TIM). When the aftermarket pastes are not fatigued they do a little better job of cooling. In normal use conditions they are fine, but they deteriorate much faster and have to be re-pasted after extended periods of hard overclocking. The Dell stuff lasts a very long time without breaking down. As soon as the aftermarket pastes begin to deteriorate, they become less effective than the original equipment TIM.

The (TIM) product has been hand-selected by Louis Bruno (Alienware Gaming Graphics Lead Engineer) because of its superior qualities. Of course, if it is not correctly applied by the assembly line workers in China, all bets on effectiveness are off and you may have to resort to pasting and replacing any missing thermal pads, etc. That's unfortunate, but reality until that QC thing gets fixed by Compal. But, hey, for us geeks that enjoy tinkering, it make ownership all the more interesting. I don't mind fixing a few things on the best gaming laptops in the universe. I think I might be bored if no TLC was required.

Opening post has been updated with the following:

 

Oh okay well that may make me change my mind. I did notice the ICdimond did lose performance so i was gonna try a different one (mx-4)this time.
I wanna avoid opening my machine as much as possible hopefully only once I am going to install the ram in it anyways.

I think i may leave the stock TIM on then, if that was the case. I always thought the Aftermarket was better, But i did notice the ICdimond lost performance over time.

 

About arctic cooling compounds ..
When u see higher number on product it does not always mean is the best I had mx2 and it was very good compound .. Actually there is notice about
ARCTIC MX-2 does not show decreasing performance over time. It does not need to be re-applied and has a durability of at least eight years.

 

That might be true under normal operating conditions. It didn't last very long for me. It took about a month of hard overclocking and benching before it needed to be replaced, which is about half as much time as IC Diamond normally lasts me.

 

I agree with Brother Stevie, Ive put in a 4-5 hours on Metro for the last couple days and have noticed on everything maxed out ultra-settings with no OC my lappy is pushing itself.

Frames: 2051 - Time: 34008ms - Avg: 60.309 - Min: 41 - Max: 86

I'm starting to understand why this game is considered a "Benchmark" Game.

 

As advertised: Official AMD Radeon™ HD 7970M Series GPU Feature Summary

Current Status: Spoke to AMD Support today. They were not helpful. They basically said:

• Current Catalyst Drivers Do Not Properly Support 7970M
• No ETA on Reference Driver for Dell and Other OEMs
• No Beta Available for Testing by End Users
• Have to Wait for AMD to Give Drivers to Dell/Alienware
• Have to Wait for Dell to Test and Release "Recommended Driver"

​

So, now we wait.

 

Well it looks like the nvidia cards are going to be 300 more EACH compared to the 7970's. If the GTX680m's dont overclock very high I will most likely stick with 7970m's but I will get the 680's if the performance gap is large enough. If still no good drivers come out by then for the 7970m then may have to go gtx680m don't want to deal with crap drivers.

 

I just upgraded from Nvidia 460M to 6990's. I almost wish I would have bought the 7970's after seeing so many R1 owners doing so or planning to! Im still a newb at arguing with Dell Techs and Sales reps. They had me scared that I would violate my warranty. Its only been 7 days, wonder if I could send them back lol!

Personaly I think Nvidia seems to always have better performance and driver updates. In my humble limited experience. But with a $6-800 price difference what do you do ? I bought myself an Extreme proc for what I saved. To bad they cost SO much. Ive never owned a AMD or ATI card in my life until now. Seems Nvidia should try to keep this in mind when pricing. I can see another $200 or so.

 

The 7970M CrossFire setup is very powerful, it's just the drivers are not. As an example, I can capture video and audio full frame and get a frame rate as good or better than I was getting with GTX 580M SLI. Below is a 3DMark11 32-bit run demonstrating that as an example. Feel free to change the playback to 1080p and go full screen if your internet connection has the bandwidth.

Spoiler

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most likely will be going crossfire 7970m and saving that 600 dollars that it would cost me extra for 2 680m's toward the new asus zen prime 13" 1080 ips screen ultrabook to replace my envy 14 as my new portable.

 

Nice Video. I'm Jealous! You really do get your CPU GHz up there! Then to record your screen on top of it [slow whistle] but you were almost 90c there in the end ; )

 

My Alienware is my PORTABLE.. muhahaha! Anyhow I think your making the right decision. That's a hefty upgrade in itself. I'm sure we will have some comparisons soon hopefully. With some of these secret lotto winners around here, always on the cutting edge.

 

very impressive, I am really looking forward to what these cards will be able to achieve with better driver support...

 

Can you explaine or put picture for we can see ?

 

Pictures are in the opening post of this thread.

 

Those are the dell part numbers correct?

What were the prices of each part?

How much does the new cpu heatsink improve over the old?

How much does the 7970 heatsink improve over the 6990 heatsink?

 

It shouldn't be that much of a difference as they are almost the same size. I am just not sure about the older heatsink making proper contact with the 7970m

 

So,

my 7970m got some artifacts today while gaming. So i checked my temp and it was at about 76 degrees (on diode, dont know others since it wont display VRAM temps etc).

Turns out the fans wont kick in sometimes, and sometimes they do and temps are good.

So what i had to do now was to use HWiNFO to control fans with custom AUTO. BUT those fan RPM settings are shared with the cpu fan so when GPU gets to 60+ degrees the cpu fans also kick in at high rpm and makes double the noise.

Anybody know of any fix for this?

 

I hope that isnt an indication of the overheating issues that we saw with the 6990m's........

 

are you overclocking the cards?
also is the laptop connected to an external monitor?

 

I didnt notice overheats the day before. All i have done since is to update my drivers to 8,98 - 120604a

Could drivers mess up the fan controls for GPU?

No overclock, and not connected to an external monitor. When i return gpu fan to normal automatic it just stops. And temps start rising.

I will try other drivers if those are affecting.

 

try this driver, which seems to be the best one available:
AMD Catalyst 8.97 18 April – 7900 MOD – BenchmarK3D

 

This was just released, I think today. I have not tried it yet.

AMD Catalyst 12.x (9.00 June 12) Unofficial BETA

I believe it can. Unless the driver above is better, Catalyst Mobility 12.5 beta has been the best one thus far.