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

i have decided gonna stick with the 3820QM , and maybe put money to better use like 2 screens tactx keyboard mouse etc !

400mhz which is nearly 3.9ghz which is more than enough for gaming and HD movies

anyone ?

i have the 3820QM in my m18x and a friend of mine has the 3610QM and has now bought a 3820QM from ebay is the heatsink he got already be fine for this upgrade ? or shall i give him my old one as i have just ordered the 3 pipe cooler

Thanks

 

the single pipe heatsink should be good to handle a 3820qm but temps might be high if he overclock it to 41/40/39/39 (kinda like my 3720qm at 40/39/38/38 that sometimes goes over 90C)

 

You need a dual piped HS for that for sure. I'd even try getting a 3-piped one.

 

is yours a single pipe then ? that must mean if yours is a single pipe the one i have in mine is too ? cause at the moment i have the 3820QM

 

yeah mine is the single pipe but I think I read somewhere on this forum that the 3820 comes with the 2 pipes. Cant find that post atm though ...

 

shouldnt be a 2 pipe , there is only 2 part numbers for R2 and one is for the XM processor which is the triple pipe . i will confirm in a few days when i receive mine from AW and strip it down

 

do they have them in stock now? i mean 3piped heatsinks?

 

We need people with non-xm's to post up what heatsink they have. I was under the impression the non-xm's all came with dual piped heatsinks but obviously could be wrong. If anyone with ANY non-xm cpu wants to post up what they have, that would be much appreciated.

 

Mine came with a single-piped HS because it was ordered from dell with 3610QM, then i did aftermarket upgrade to 3820QM and overclocked it and seems like it cannot handle 400Mhz OC with 1piped heatsink (up to 90c in dirt showdown and 3dmark11)

 

OK. Thats one down, two to go....people with 3720 and 3820, we need your info LOL...

 

well they did when i asked which was yesterday , my advice to you would be tell them you have done a upgrade and request the part number i gave you earlier , you may only have to pay for the part and they will send a tech out for you as your under warranty ..

just tell them your running a 3820QM and your temps are topping 100c and they should give you option of the upgrade , you can only try right ? or pay silly money on ebay for one ?

 

I am from kazakhstan, so they won't send a dell tech to me
Strange - yesterday i asked them and got answer: no, we don't have them in stock...

Xmadror: have you got your 2 piped heatsink? If yes - how's the temps vs 1 piped?

 

he has a 1 pipe config , i was told today buy AW support all QM's use the 1 pipe config and the XM uses 3 pipe

 

Will i feel difference between 1 piped and 2 piped heatsink?

 

5-8 degrees i reckon and with some good thermal compand could be more , but maybe some else could input on this ?

 

Are you using 2 piped or 3 piped yourself? What's ur temps during 3Dmark11 and games?

 

havent had it apart as yet , awaiting for this cooler to come . i will try and run some tests later and find out my temps for you but i havent Oc'd it , its running stock

 

I have not received it yet, according to the tracking info I should get it today (16 july) but probably wont have time to install before Tuesday or Wednesday. I'll provide some feedback when I see the result.

single pipe is what came with my 3720qm

or maybe I just read about someone who did the upgrade from 1 pipe to 2 pipe on their 3820qm

 

for people wanting to order this part link Upgrade Options - The UK's leading provider of IT infrastructure and equipment . you have to give them a call they are UK based mind.

 

Questions, can we put a 2960XM in a M18X R2 ? they can work with Sandy Bridge CPU ?

 

sockets the same i believe but i dont think it would work , as currently the IB dont work in the R1 due to the bios

just curious why you would want to do that though ? when the 3920xm is about

 

I think you can put a Sandy in an Ivy but not vice versa....I guess the main reason for doing so would be to order with a base Ivy cpu and upgrade to the Sandy XM cpu, which is pretty much comparable, performance wise, to the Ivy XM bar a small clock change....don't know wether the unlocked Sandy bios' would work though - that might be risky if you wanted to flash a Sandy bios to an Ivy platform.....I wouldnt have the cajones to do it LOL.....

 

Yes, you can definitely install a 2920XM or 2960XM CPU in an M18x R2 and it works fine. At least one member of our community has done so and it worked perfectly. The Ivy Bridge chipset is backward compatible with 2nd generation i7 processors, but Sandy Bridge is not forward compatible with 3rd generation i7 processors.

 

not on your own there lol !! would wanna risk it , but its certainly interesting that the SB works in the R1

 

I received and installed my 2 pipe heatsink with Arctic Cooling MX-2 as thermal paste on my 3720qm with a room temp of ~25.5C.
Here are the results :


Max temp of 76/82/82/81C on core 0/1/2/3 respectively so far after 15 min run of prime95 (pic was taken after ~10min) running at 3.8ghz on all core

After 20 min temps started to rise again (just as I was typing this)
and now the new max are 80/86/87/85C while staying at under 84-85C most of the time.
After another ~5 min the fan (which is on auto) went faster and brought the temps back under 77-78C and then it starts to rise again up to ~84-85C and that cycle seems to repeat itself endlessly (the fan never went at 100%, I know because its quite noisy when at 100% and I didnt hear it)

At 3.4ghz on all core I was at ~72-75C max after a run of ~10min (did not test any further).

With the 1 pipe heatsink I was going over 90-92C at 3.4 in under 5 min.
I ran 3.8 with the 1 pipe for a 'lil while but that was before the heatwave we are having atm so I had to back down while waiting on the 2 pipe heatsink.

Core 0 is always around 5C less then the other 3 core so maybe my paste job wasnt so good. I'll let it run like this for a few days to see if temps are gonna get better while the paste settle down. If not I'll probably eventually repaste it .
The teardown to get to the heatsink is a PITA and I'd like to avoid redoing as much as possible. Took me ~1 hour but I'm sure the 2nd time would be faster and much easier (before this, I had only went as far as installing ram under the keyboard)

Here is what the graph looked like at the 40min mark (right before I stopped prime95):


Idle temp went down by maybe ~5C staying at ~40C

Overall I'm quite happy with the 2 pipe, it gave me the edge I needed to keep my cpu at 40/39/38/38 with average temps of ~81±3C.
Would the 3 pipe be better ? Most likely, but for a QM with a max of 400mhz OC the 2 pipe seems to be plenty.
Also the 2 pipe has copper fins while the 1 pipe only has aluminum fins.

 

Not bad, why you went for 2piped instead of 3piped?

 

Decided to give a shot at re-pasting the cpu.
So far core 0 is still cooler then the other but now I seem to max at 82C .
edit: 84C now

 

82C during prime95 is good, i am getting 95C now in prime95 with 400mhz OC with 3820QM.

Why didn't you waited for 3piped?

 

I bought from a forum member on ebay since Dell didnt answered my email and when I called the rep I talked to told me they were out of stock.
I tough that if the 2 pipe was good enough for the 2920/2960XM it should be good enough for my 3720QM and didn't felt like waiting on Dell.

 

how much you paid for that heatsink?

 

$45 with shipping

some are really overpriced on ebay!!

Dell part# hd9nj

 

that's almost for free lol. I saw only 70$+ prices + shipping to KZ, will be almost 170$...

 

Thx for the information, I think you can write that in ''sticky'' thread, this can help many people .

 

Through bios: 3720QM or 3820QM overclock | Понятные вещи - для понятливых людей!

here's the translation:


1. Flex support disabled
2. Extreme edition Enabled
3. Level 1-3 overclocking - level 1
4. Override turbo settings enabled
5. Increasing core ratio limits to 41, 40, 39, 39 (if 3720QM, make it less by 1 in all 4 cases)
6. Flex VID override - 0
7. F10 - yes

PS Post your temps after successfull run of 3Dmark11 and prime95. Thanks

 

Guys what Flex settings are you guys using for 400mhz OC on the 3720qm? Mine is unstable with +400mhz on all without a slight bump it seems.

 

You will need to bump up flex (voltage) a bit to overclock just about any i7 CPU... that's pretty much normal. It needs the extra juice to handle the increased core speeds. It can vary by CPU, so just keep increasing it a little at a time and leave it at the point where it runs most stable. Keeping it as low as you can helps manage the temps, but other than temps setting it higher than it needs to be does not hurt anything, as the CPU will only use what it needs.

 

Mine is at 0 and stable.
Just go in multiple of ~5 until its stable you probably wont need much.

 

Mine is at 0 too. Did you found a way to lower that extra .07v?

 

nope, I've found that it increases the most as you bump up the turbo multi for 4 core.
So when I was waiting for my heatsink (and a few days before) I ran it at 40/39/36/34 and that way I didnt had any extra voltage with 4 core at 100% utilization. The voltage would still go up a 'lil on 1, 2 or 3 core but it was not nearly as much as the 0.065V extra I get when on 4 core at 38x.

So maybe you could run something like 41/40/37/35 while waiting on your 2pipe heatink.

I'm hoping an eventual unlocked bios would give us more control on that ...

35 min run of prime 95, ~36 hours after heatsink install
max temp of 82C while staying at 79-80 most of the time

 

Information was posted earlier in this thread, but for those that have not found the post, or those that are new to overclocking, here is a video demonstrating how to run 4.4GHz rock solid with controlled temps. When the M18x R2 has an unlocked BIOS, I anticipate menus and navigation will be very similar, if not identical. These settings should also work on other laptops besides the M18x if they have an unlocked InsydeH20 BIOS, as long as the cooling system performs as well as the M18x. These are my normal everyday CPU settings... not quite as aggressive as what I use for benchmarking.

Feel free to crank up the resolution to 1080p, crank the speaker volume and go full screen.

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Why are you enabling Non-turbo flex support and setting it to 25, should that be disabled?

 

It has no effect. It is cancelled out by other settings. You can disable it if you want to, but I find it makes no difference in how my system performs.

 

Here is the thread for your discussion on CPU overclocking, and I think you will find additional useful information here.

Until the M18x R2 BIOS is unlocked, you will have some limitations. Lancorp reports being able to use the new version (3.0?) of the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility with the Ivy Bridge Extreme CPU. Conceptually, what works with the 2920XM/2960XM will apply to the 3920XM CPU.

 

Well i have set it overclocking level 3 , 42,42,42,42 and flex 10 and i have a stable 4.2GHz underload hitting 70-75 degress after about a 2 hours of BF3

My Gpu's . GPU 1 65 Degress and GPU 2 68 Degrees

Overall extremely happy !!

Sorry for posting in the wrong place Mr Fox ....

 

No problem... looks like your system is running very strong.

 

i gotta say i am really impressed i think i am one of the lucky ones with a good system ..

 

I think most of the systems are very good, in general terms. It's hit or miss with 7970M CrossFire right now, but that can and will be fixed in time.

 

well i hope so , its not good seeing alot of people with all these problems ! , i do think though there is alot more power in these cards if we get some better drivers ..

 

Try Flex at 0, same multipliers, it runs about 5 C cooler overall. I have been at these settings for a few days now without problems or BSOD and with some very demanding games at that (Crysis 2 8xAA, High Res Textures 1920x1080 and Skryim with an ENB, 16xAF, 1920x1080).

 

Hi

Thanks for the pointer Vulcan , kinda new to OCing on a laptop ..