M18x R2 - Successful NVMe adapter upgrade

I managed to get my hands on an MXM to NVMe adapter for my empty secondary MXM slot and have successfully installed a Samsung 970 EVO as the boot drive with close to full NVMe speeds, as per Samsung's claims for this drive.
Excuse my bare feet in the second photo
Special thanks to @UltraGSM @Baddemichl @MrMogwai

 

How much was the adaptor ?

 

Hard to say really, due to the process I took to get my hands on one. You probably won't get much change from $150 if you can find one. There are some on Taobao but the speeds aren't quite as good from the photos they post.

 

Nice! GTX 1070 and NVMe in a laptop from 2012. The M18xR2 will haunt Alienware longer than they might have ever imagined. What a shame that it was the last of its kind.

 

This is fantastic. Well done, Maxware

 

Just trying to keep the dream alive. Fingers crossed for a 2080 in the new year......

 

Very nice, would love to have one of those in my m18x R1 even if it would only act as a storage drive and not a boot drive

 

I was checking out those adapters a short while back - Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

 

Where did you get that please?

 

Hi, I got it through one of the guys on this forum. I'm not sure if they are still available but you can give him a try @Baddemichl

 

Just a quick update on this upgrade. The only issue we have found is that the adapter seems to draw power constantly, even with the laptop completely shut down. You have to unplug the power and remove the battery to stop this. Not ideal and no sign of a simple fix at this stage.

 

That's pretty odd... i think you should to mess up a bit with pcie settings perhaps

 

You beat me to it! Writing a thread on this!
I tested 2 adapters and both seem to work!

 

am wondering about egpu using name pcie adapter

 

What settings should I be changing?

The adapter works fine but it draws power constantly. It's been tested on a bunch of M18x's by @UltraGSM with the same result. If you run CrystalDiskInfo then you may see that the SSD run hours just climb and climb. If you have a fix for this then I'd be forever grateful.

 

Damn, haven't had chance to see this in real time....

 

Let me know if you get a chance to test it

 

i can only guess at this point but likely the adapter draws power from the 19v system power bus which stays on all the time instead of the 3.3v 5v or 12v mxm rails. usually your gpu wouldn't initialize and draw power until the bios sends it initialize commands to load the vbios. in this case the mxm adapter just has a voltage regulator hooked to the always on 19v rail and the ssd is receiving power. it assumes that if there is power that it should be on so it turns itself on. in theory it shouldn't put any additional strain on the nand chips but will power the controller chip which could, again in theory, wear out the transistors over time. never heard of this happening with a decent ssd but its always possible.

 

I think the biggest issue for us is the battery draining. You need to remove the battery everytime you wanna store the laptop when not in use.

 

Hey, can you please provide information, from where we can buy this adapter? I have searched everywhere...

 

I'm not really sure where to get one these days sorry. I think Aliexpress could sell a version of it. @ssj92 may have a source for one that is similar.

 

They are not for sale anywhere besides taobao. You need a taobao agent.

You can try asking @UltraGSM if he has any for sale left but at this point we only bought one for ourselves.

 

Hello guys, I have nvme adapters and can provide bios for m18x r2. Add me on snapchat (maxiyoch)

 

@Maxware79 I'm a new member of the forum but have red many threads about Rog and Alienware laptops. I'm very impressed by your work (Painting Alienware laptops) . Recently I started building an Alienware m18x r2 from nothing. I bought all panels new, motherboard, new i7 3940XM, Heatsinks, 330W ac. Now the plan may be crazy but I will atempt to put inside the monster an rtx 3070 mxm from clevo. Before buying the card I made my research on how to make it work, the only problem I have is the shape of the card. If you are unaware of the shape please Search : rtx 2070 mxm and you will see what I am talking about. The card won't fit in the master slot (left) for sure. However the right one it would. Here comes the question. Have you tried putting the nvme adapter in the master slot and your gtx 1070m in the slave one, DOES THE GPU WORK? If not could you please try it with your current configuration? Because if it works the rtx 3070 will fit perfectly in the right slot (subwoofer will be in the way, but that's an easy fix). I looked into the bottleneck using optimus and the cpu, but honestly 15% isn't that bad. Also can you tell me about battery life on your machine with the gtx 1070 using optimus? Any help would be appreciated! Cheers

 

@ssj92 You made a great video for on the m18x r2 where you upgrade to quadro rtx 3000. I also wanted to ask you if you could test this out and try the gpu in slave slot and nvme in master. Does it work?

 

Welcome! I actually sold my 1070 a little while ago as I'm not really using the laptop much these days. I'm only currently using a 970M in my main R2. From memory you have to use the GPU in the Master slot in the M18x but I haven't tested this in a long time. Maybe this changes if the system is in SG rather than PEG. I heard that people have been able to run a single card in the slave slot in the AW18 so maybe it's possible in the M18x. I don't have a lot of spare time to test right now though.
I'll be very interested to see how you go though.

What NVMe adapters do you have? The issue with the ones that we have is that they draw power constantly, even with the laptop switched off and unplugged, so the battery gets drained and the NVMe drive hours keep adding up. Unless you pull the battery and adapter.

 

My Question is about sg mode since newer GPUs on m18x r2 can only run through the intel graphics because of the screen. I saw the schematics of the m18x r2 and only the master slot is wired to the screen/hdmi and other ports. However through the intel hd graphics the slot should't matter, but still I have to be sure before buying an rtx 3070. Clevo are the only ones that still make latest rtx cards, with their weird shape, but if it works that could also mean future upgrades for next gen nvidia. I wont try rtx 3080 because there is no point in losing performance because of older hardware and ac limit, but the middle like rtx 3070 should do fine in this laptop. The nvme adapters I have are the same as yours, full nvme speed but power draws constantly. The person I bought them from wants to add a manual switch on them but not sure if he will. I wanted to try and fix them myself so I will try it and keep you posted.

 

If I get a chance over the next few days then I'll try a card in the secondary slot. I guess you can check with any GPU.

A few of us would be very interested in a fix for the power draw issue.

Great to have you here and adding to the forum. I'm sure @ssj92 @UltraGSM and @MrMogwai will also be interested

 

Ok when I finish building my laptop I'll try to fix the adapter and tag all the people interested in the fix. If you test in slave slot with an older gpu like gtx 970m make sure to use sg mode. Thanks!

 

If I remember correctly GPU won't work in slave slot unless there's something in master slot.

Maybe you can do 970m in primary and RTX 2070 in slave slot then use windows to choose which GPU to use for games.

 

Amazing, it lives on even further.

 

Haha, i wonder if they have any idea.