*Official* Alienware M18xR1/R2 CPU Overclocking Thread - Learn How and Share Tips Here

If anyone's curious what the stock TIM application looks like on a factory-overclocked 2920xm, I posted an image here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...g-thoughts-etc-share-away-49.html#post7529527

 

Thanks for the image.

 

Sent mine in for a new one, it seems they rushed it out without testing. I can also confirm that on mine I paid for OC but didn't get it, not to mention that some software is missing on the system. Webcam is unsupported and will not get recognized, according to my system there is no webcam onboard. Sent it back today getting another one and hoping they get it right this time.

 

My Computer properties is not a reliable source of information about your actual CPU speed.

If you want to see exactly how much turbo boost your CPU is using then run ThrottleStop in monitoring mode and download a simple benchmark program like Super PI mod and run a quick 1M or 2M test.

Download Super PI Mod v1.5 | techPowerUp

ThrottleStop will show you what average multiplier your CPU is using on each thread as this benchmark is running.

The default multiplier is 25 for a Core i7-2920XM so any multiplier higher than that shows you that Turbo Boost is being used.

 

Pretty sure mine did not get the OC I paid for either.... Shows 2.5 in Bios.

 

2.50 GHz is the default speed for a 2920XM. The overclock is controlled by the amount of turbo boost the CPU uses and you can only accurately check that when you are in Windows. See the above post.

 

unclewebb, thanks for your feedback. Any opinions on why it would've originally displayed the 4.0 GHz in the properties and BIOS then suddenly changed to 2.5 GHz?

 

All I know is that the Windows System Properties is not an accurate or consistent way to determine CPU speed. The amount of turbo boost can be rapidly changing in these CPUs hundreds of times a second so depending on when and how that info is read from the CPU, it might be completely inaccurate.

Run the test I posted and it will accurately tell you how much turbo boost you are really getting. It will be even easier to see if you use the Task Manager - Set Affinity... function and lock Super PI Mod to a single thread of your CPU so it can't move around during the test.

 

I wish Dell did the overclocking option in the UK, if they did i'd buy the 2920xm at this time there is no point, i may as well just get the 2820qm.

 

AFAIK, the only difference is that Dell "set" the overclock for you and charge you for the priveledge of doing so....the non oc'd xm should be as readily overclockable as the factory oc'd version....just cheaper!

 

Ah ok, thanks for clearing that up, i think i might be getting myself a 2920xm then

 

Just got my m18X as a warranty replacement yesterday. Had some issues with customer service, and ultimately got a manager who took care of me. The specs are in my sig, but I've put the 4GHz o/c settings in the BIOS, and so far haven't seen any issues.

Not real familiar with overclocking the i7. If my processor can't handle the speed, will I see typical overclocking issues, or will the processor automatically downshift? I've used CPU-Z to see my speed, and while I've seen a 3800-ish clock speed, I've never actually seen 4GHz yet.

Thoughts?

 

the settings shown in the first post are the same for mine on level 3, as stock. If you scroll down further in the bios, more options become available. that is where i think the options to tweak are?

Otherwise, i can set mine at level 1 and the cpu goes up to 3.9 on its own. level 3 at the moment makes no difference. i will play around with the settings and see what i get

 

Don't bother paying the extra $$ for the factory OC. It's stupid easy to do yourself.

 

On Dell UK they do not give you that option anyways, you just get the option of an 2920xm so i don't need to pay for the extra ££ and i will do it myself, when i can afford one of these beasts. ITs just ashame 2720qm don't overclock or i'd be getting that and saving myself £600.

 

Yep. Correct. In the UK, if you want an extreme cpu, you gotta go for the OC'd "flavour" now as the non OC'd xm is no longer an option.....Thats Dell robbing the money right out of our pockets if you ask me LOL - but come to think of it, actually, when I config'd mine, the non OC'd was the same price as the now OC'd version so maybe not so bad afterall.....

 

When you taking the plunge Stevie? I'm torn whether or not to purchase it now or wait a few more weeks just to see the graphic card options and see if there will be any price drops especially on the 2920xm cpu, damn pricey.

Have you seen any good discount codes for the alienware products stevie? The only thing i've seen is the 10% quidco cashback, couldn't find codes.

 

I already plunged! lol.....although mine is going back due to a few things. i doubt the xm will drop in price and ive heard that the only new gpu options *may* be the gtx 560m sli.....

PM sent btw, if your looking to buy....gimme a shout.

 

Stevie, why are you returning?

 

Have people had success changing the turbo multipliers in windows using ThrottleStop?

I have only done a brief test so far but it seemed like only the Bios settings were taking effect and not the TS ones. ThrottleStop is still an outstanding monitoring tool though

 

bahh that disappointing. im not buying an ES until TS works or we get full access to mutlipliers.

 

You have great access in the bios....I think there is a relatively low upper limit though (lower than the 57x on desktops)

 

whats the highest itll get to run on 4 cores?

ok so I'm gonna take the plunge and see what an unlocked 2820QM can do. I just ordered. #1 benchmark spots will be mine next week again. muwahahahahhahahahaha.

 

That will depend on your particular CPU and cooling. I think someone said that the max multi is 48 maybe?

I have not looked much into overclocking at all yet

 

any tips on opening up the system? yourself, brian and someone else are saying its a nightmare to open and youll never do it again, lol.

 

It is a nightmare and if I can avoid I will never do it again! lol

I honestly made it up as I went......I have a fair bit of laptop assembly experience at this point so felt comfortable doing that

Read the service manual. Notice that the screws holes are all labeled. I believe the groups were I, P, K - each group of screws is for a step (all screws of the same label will need to be taken out at the same time for whatever piece you are working on). I believe the P group was the worst, it is for the palmrest/top of laptop and has screws on the bottom (open and hidden under HDDs) as well as on top of the base of the laptop. The top really did not want to come off at first when I was taking apart - the back center clip was a fighter

Pretty much had just a few steps
-Take out battery
-Take off bottom
-Take off keyboard perimeter
-Take off keyboard and Macro keys
-Take off screen/lid (after unplugging all associated cables)
-Take off palm rest/entire dam top cover!

Enjoy

haha

 

that doesn't seem so bad. it's only the macro keyboard and screen that I have to take off vs. taking apart a 17x R1/R2.

this is my face right now:

this will be my face while taking apart the 18x:

 

This was MUCH worse than the R1/R2.....for R1/R2 GPU access was a walk in the park (not M17x R3/M15x easy but still)

Also updated my post some, you may want to update your quote haha

Every motherboard wire or ribbon connector was also a huge pain to get loose. Only the keyboard and underside of the control panel above the keyboard have a paddle type lock, the rest are the vertical slider type that are much more trouble to work with (especially with very little side clearance as is the case on the M18x)

 

*cancels cpu order*

this is gonna suck

 

Do not be discouraged haha, just know what to expect

 

thanks, ill let everyone know how it goes. my plan is to pass 8K in 3dmark 11. hopefully I'll have similar access in the BIOS to the 2920xm. Since mine's a D0 stepping I'm not sure if it will be better or worse than D2. I know that D1 sandy bridge were the best.

 

hey, can you please post a place where you ordered an unlocked 2820qm? does it have a special sticker saying "unlocked" or whatever. I just couldn't find any on ebay

 

So far with the lappy sitting right on my desk, i'm able to be stable with 6970ms @ 800/1000 and CPU @ 35 * 105bclk ~ 3.6ghz for a short period of time under CPU-only prime95 load but the desk heats up and thermal protection kicks in after an extended period of time. I've re-pasted with AS5 and can definitely feel the heat being pumped out the back, just an airflow issue at that pt.

With furmark + prime95 it's not stable at all at this speed, too much heat. GPUs get up to about 93/89 then CPU hits 100c and thermal prot kicks in. Definitely need to at least elevate the laptop at this speed and/or use a cooling pad.

Going to keep working to find a 100% stable 4-core prime + fur speed without elevation, as that's how I plan to use my lappy 90% of the time, although a cooling pad is not looking like a bad investment

I've got a TRUE 120 on my desktop Q6600 running @ 3.6ghz stable since the CPU came out, so i'm no stranger to overclocking, just a newbie to the i series, I have an ASUS EP121 tablet that throttlestop works wonders on

 

Those GPU temps are the highest I've seen. Mine haven't even seen 80c yet. That's WITH an overclock. Cooling pad does help too.

 

Try running furmark multi-gpu without the cooling pad or elevation (just put the system on a table). I have seen 80C+ on the memory/shader sensors during Furmark. Still, after repasting the temps are more than adequate and there's still some room for improvement.

 

A picture is worth 1000 words, right?

Here's a snapshot @ stock GPU clocks + stable OC direct on desktop.


what temp do the fans kick above 30% on auto? noticed they never rose above that @ stock settings.

 

I'd repaste the GPU's and CPU, those temps can be improved by a serious margin.

Also, wow, your SSD is about to melt down

 

Why does the GPU hit 100C+ on shaders on stock paste on brand new systems for SO MANY people? 80's or mid 90's is maybe acceptable but 100+ shaders out the box with no OC to GPU seems to be some problem.

 

Hi guys, I'm interested on how high you can get the bclk up too with the XM chip in the bios, I cannot go above 10053 without freezing and bsods, I've seen others with none XM get as high as 106##, is it possible that something apart from cpu is causing this like ram or GPU voltages ??

 

Yes Im also curious as to the fan speeds. It seems to stay fairly low even under load. I don't notice them kick on like I do the cpu fan. I also don't feel anywhere near the amount of air being moved as with the cpu fan under load.

I see people getting aroun 105BCLK as well but anytime I try to go over 100 my system freaks out. Is there another setting or 3 Im missing?

 

your pci-xpress slots are being overclocked too. thats why sandy bridge blows for overclocking unless one has an extreme edition.

 

No wonder, thermal pads + GDDR5 = hot That's why I dislike Nvidia cards, they only show the core sensors keeping the customers oblivious to what's going on with the memory/IO/etc.

 

Can someone do me a favor and set up a test case something like this:

76f ambient temp
M18x directly on a wooden desktop (no elevation, cooling pad, etc.) with appx 1 ft clearance in back
No elevation, cooling pad, or other external assistance
With this setup, the GPU idle but o/c to 760/1000, BCLK @ 103.5, 4 core load multiplier @ 34, flex vid @ 0, long duration power limit 68, short duration power limit 85, 16gb hyperx @ 1600 (825 or so w/blck boost)

I'm able to hold 3.5ghz (using throttlestop to monitor) for a good 30 sec @ 82 W TDP, then it drops down to 30.37 multiplier x 103.3bclk ~ roughly 3.15ghz @ 69 W TDP. Throttlestop shows between 89 and 94c on the DTS monitors.

The heat exhaust @ rear of laptop feels warm, but not hot, so makes me think the re-pasting job I just did wasn't up to snuff. When the GPUs hit similar temperatures the exhaust feels like a hair dryer, so thermal transfer is definitely working OK there. Can someone set up a similar test and check the feel of the heat exhaust vs. the core temp readings? I had the GPUs idle with a blend test running on prime95.

Seems like the heat exhaust should feel hotter for those kind of DTS readings, but i'm loathe to open it up again as i've already broken off a plastic snap on the keyboard bezel and several other ones are stressed out and near breaking, i hate plastic snaps!

[Edit: Also, the BIOS seems set to shut the system down right around 100C as if I ever see that reading in Throttlestop I can expect the system to shut off within 5 sec]

[Edit2: at these settings I am also seeing clock modulation hit 87.5 for a few seconds in throttlestop just after it drops down to the lower multiplier - it jumps back up to 100 after a short period of time]

[Edit3: removed the bottom cover and propped the system up on it's side so i could visibly watch/feel things. the cpu fan kicks on extremely low speed during bios bring-up, then stops until a load is applied. with the unrestricted airflow offered in this setup my temps are a full 15C lower than directly on the desk. Also the RAM chips are pretty warm to the touch, almost to the point you can't maintain contact with them, I imagine having 4 SODIMMs vs. 2 SODIMMs makes a good difference in the overall heat output of the system, and there is no indirect or direct airflow here so they are radiating heat to the rest of the system.]

[Edit4: wanted to check out the airflow, so I removed the CPU fan/blower. Interestingly, all the blowers have a metal plate on the bottom (shouldn't this be plastic? isn't this retaining heat for no good reason?) - more importantly, the motherboard has a black plastic sheet between the metal plate on the blower and the motherboard, presumably to insulate it electrically from being grounded out by the metal plate. However, the black plastic sheet was improperly applied on my motherboard and is visibly creating a blockage on the heatsink as seen in the photo below, which doesn't look like it's causing a major problem, but certainly not helping! It's also torn in several places, probably as a result of the improper application.]

 

increase your long power duration to 80W

 

@Zero989:

Err? Increasing the long power duration to 80W would result in much higher heat output than 68 and cause the BIOS to shut the system down. (I know because I lowered to this TDP in steps testing for stability each time)

Tore down the DOA system which I plan to ship back tomorrow, to get a comparison. The black plastic there is properly applied and not blocking the heatsink partially. Grrr.

 

thats odd, i guess theres some bugs currently or yours got too hot. you should be able to sustain a 3.8ghz overclock at least on all 4 cores.

 

@Zero989:

You might want to go back and read my post, I clearly stated that getting too hot is the problem, i'm well aware of that. What i'm trying to figure out is if that's just my limits given my setup/ambient temp (direct on a desktop, etc.) so i'm trying to see if someone else can test in a similar situation for a baseline comparison

 

all 2920xm users should be using a cooling pad anyway when doing heavy oc'ing. everyone else i know that reported overclocking either used a cooling pad or outside temps @ nighttime.

so....

do this, take off the back panel exposing the fans, ram, hdd etc... lay the m18x on its side and place a fan blowing into the comp. overclock while doing that and tell me how it goes.


brb im gonna go does this myself >: )

 

Maybe I'm missing something... your signature shows a "Cryo LX Black 3x120MM"... It doesn't help? why you would need an external fan?

 

it helps but its not like its pushing 200CFM. My other fan pushes a lot more air .