Just got an m17 and I have a couple questions

As the title says I just got a m17-r1 (specs in my sig). I was wondering where I could buy 4850's for it and how hard would it be to install. I was also wondering where I could buy a qx9300 to install as well. And what temps should I be getting some of these temps seem pretty high to me. Right now I'm just downloading a game on steam and have this browser open and my cpu is at 57C and my gpu is at 54C. Is that normal?

 

those temps are pretty high for the gpu. the x9100 runs very hot, but 57 is a little high. i would re-apply thermal paste to the cpu & both gpus. it very easy toget to in that thing. as for getting 4850s are near impossible now, and would cost you as much as i paid for my R2... i would just stick with the 3870s unless you come across a pair for cheap, which will prob never happen again. i might have a qx9300 for sale here in a few days, but your probably better off with the x9100, since the quad has stutter issues at times.

 

Ok thanks for the advice I'll go reapply the thermal paste right away

 

I reapplyed thermal paste and it lowered my temps by 10C though while I'm watching an hd video on youtube the cpu temp reaches 78C. Very weird is that too high??

 

No those temps are fine for the m17 as long as they stay below 90C your fine and well within the acceptable temperature range.

 

watching a video gets it to 78?? Try a stress test and see how high it goes.

 

^^^ this 100% for something so trivial, the temps should be in the high 60's low 70s at the MOST. use orthos & see what temps u get.

 

We'll I reapplyed thermal paste again and now when it starts up it idels at 45C and when i open a program it shoots up to 95C i have no idea is going on :'(

 

95 is a bit too high! Did you use thermal paste that has a setting time and are the air vents clear from dust?

Some of the others here with the m17x really need to stop saying over 70 is too hot. The m17x has a vastly superior cooling system to the old models folks! The old ones run hotter period.

 

there are popular mods that decrease the temps significantly.

 

i have a m17 here right now and after running vantage & 3d06 back to back with no cooler, the cpu temp right after is 84 im running a Qx9300. i would use some canned air and blow out all the vents. if that doesn't help, invest in a cooler & game withe the back cover off. or you can do some of the mods shown in the projekt freeze thread, i did them & made my own custom back plate for the m17 there are pics floating around here somewhere

 

Thanks for the advice, I just ordered AS5 thermal paste kit from amazon and will apply that as soon as I get it. Also planning to cut the bottom cover and mod it for better air flow. The computer was new in box when I got it off of craigslist. Still had the plastic on it lol, so it's clean from dust.I really want to put a qx9300 in here but I want to see how much these cooling mods help.

 

Can I ask how much u paid for it?

 

Well i had put my area 51 m15x on craigslist to try and sell. And the person i got this from wanted to trade me his m17 still in plastic and pretty much unused for my m15x and 250$. I figured it was a hard deal to come by so i decided to do the trade. When i got the m17 the plastic on the screen was still on as well being in the original packaging. Definatly a good purchase :-D just having some heat problems is all.

 

crazy that it was still new in the box i wonder what he was doing with it for the last 2 years...

 

Yeah I found it weird myself and thought it was an error on the post, but when I went to check it out everything was untouched. Very good deal, just wish I could fix the overheating issues. My AS5 is shipping Monday so I hope it gets here ASAP lol

 

I am afraid as5 alone will not cut it. You'll need to add heatsinks to the videocards and possibly copper mod the north bridge ( which shares the cooler with the slave video card )

 

if the gpu fan is not defective then the as5 will be good enough unless you plan on overclicking and benchmarking then some cooling mods might be required
i personaly have the 4850's and the producce more heat then the 3870 but they cooling keep them undercontrol

and no the North bridge dooes not share the fan with the slave

both GPU use the same fan
and the north bridge and cpu share the same fan

copper moding the NB is only if you experience stutering on an uncontrolable lvl

 

Well the fan isn't defective definatly pushing out a good amount of air. The thermal paste on there now is from best buy, their dynex brand which was a last minute resort, it lowered temps but now their going back up. I was looking into the project freeze thread and saw the heatsink mods but where do I buy the heatsinks and will the cover close when I install them.

 

yep, was wrong, north bridge and cpu share cooling system.
thanks for correcting me. With the unit i was playing with - the northbridge temps climbed to 100 degrees under benchmarks. stuttering or not this is not a healthy situation.

 

ishh then devinitly not mine never got past 92 and even then it was because i was benching while something got in the way of the airflow

and i'm using stock thermal paste how ever i will likely be changing some parts with the one my GF will be ordering so i'll take the time to change te thermal paste to the best availible on both

 

I had an X9100 in my M17 and yes it got toasty. If you're going up to 95 degrees with basic load, then your CPU and the heatsink isn't seated properly.
They could be very tempermental to get on just right so you may find yourself reseating that heatsink array a few times.

First off, get some better paste, it wont make a huge difference, but Tuniq TX-2/3 or MX3 are easier to deal with and don't require curing time to get the best out of them, beyond the additional few degrees you might get out of them. Also make sure that the northbridge thermal pad isn't destroyed. If it is, replace it with another (not thermal paste), although it IS normal for this to get hotter than the CPU (fresh thermal pads are available on ebay and the likes).

When you put the thermal paste on, make sure the cpu surface has been completely cleaned (thermal paste removal kits are good for this), as has the contact side of the heatsink array to ensure no old paste will interfere with your application, or contained trapped air bubbles and the likes.

Only use a little bit of paste, just enough to fill the gaps, you dont need a massive bit. I used an old debit card to spread a really thin layer across the die.

Then when you put the heatsink back on, place it directly down on top of the chip, ignore the northbridge section of the heatsink for now, focus on the section above the CPU, and wiggle the heatsink around, holding it directly onto the cpu til it feels like it is sitting directly flat on top of the die.
Watch the screws, they should click and settle into place when the positioning is about right, then wiggle it slightly just to ensure the heatsink feels like it is directly covering the cpu rather than being at a slight angle (the x9100 surface die is a bit larger usually than the lower dual cores in the series which is what causes some of the issues).

Once you're happy with where the heatsink is positioned, hold the heatsink completely still and secure with your secondary hand, pushing down directly on the heatsink above the cpu with the fingers of your alternate hand to ensure absolutely no loss of contact whilst screwing the heatsink down, and tighten the screws in order (remember to screw down opposite screws, not one side first).
Once these all feel secure, screw the northbridge screws in.

That should get you a fairly decent contact.

You might need to do this a few times to get the absolute best contact and temps, depends on how fussy you are, but I took mine apart quite a bit for various reasons, and this generally became my prefered method of reaffixing the heatsink.
With decent paste and good mounted contact between the CPU and heatsink, it did knock a considerable amount off my temps, without care though it was quite easy to get bad contact, and temperatures similar to the ones you were seeing.

By the time I was happy with it (before the whole GPU debacle), I was idling around 35-low 40s, and loading into the 70s and early-mid 80s even under full stress linpack 64, and this was with a mild overclock on top. The Northbridge did got hotter though because of the shared heatsink.


Still miss my M17 really. If I hadn't had an issue with one of the 4850s and then Alienware messing me around, I'd still be using it, I never had any audio issues or other major problems with it (beyond the one which got it refunded), and the 17" 1920x1200 screen was very sharp, even if the colours werent amazingly accurate. Performance wise it wasn't far off what I moved up to at all afterwards, and even compared to the I7 machine I have now with 285s, it wasn't that far behind. (although in CPU limited tasks, the I7 920XM tends to kick the X9100 to touch a bit)
Real shame
Cooling is definately better in the Clevo machines I play with now though, I suppose the larger size, HDD layout and weight are the payoff for that!

 

Thanks Alexrose for the tips. Once my AS5 gets in I'll readjust the heatsink and reapply thermal paste all around. I just finished cutting the bottom cover and doing the cooling mod down there which helped improve temps but definatly need to get this thermal paste lol.

 

what's the max temp for northbrige u guys get? and how much higher is the temp for northbridge than the cpu? my NB always get like 2-3c higher...... please help, thanks !

 

My friends m17 that I have recently "serviced" was reaaaly hot.
After cleaning it up from dust I benchmarked the CPU using prime and the temps were still high:
CPU was around 95-96 (x9100)
NB was getting to 100 (!!!)
this lappy has a very poor cooling system. I was going to drill some holes in the back cover field him but he didn't let me

 

its gonna fry soon if he doesnt do something he better get a cooler under that thing at the very least

 

I told him that. He worries that he would not be able to sell it modded.
I sent him a link to an eBay auction of a new backpanel do he can replace it when he sells. I also bought thermal paste and pads for him. I hope he agrees to let me do the mods for him . It's painful to see a lappy that hot.

 

he wont be able to sell a fried laptop either. hopefully he doesn't have to learn this lesson the hard way. actually the mods i did got great interest when i sold mine.

 

Hehehe, I am going to use that argument

 

Yeah I need to pick up a new bottom cover cause I messed mine up pretty good doing the bottom cover mod. It does provide more air flow but I wish I did a cleaner job doing it lol. Ah well it 15$ on ebay anyway. but those temps are what I was getting when I first got my m17. I bought AS5 and reapplied and now my temps are ridiculously lower than before. my temps on idle for my cpu is now 40C and on load it doesn't get passed 64C.

 

From experience that will be because of the heatsink being poorly seated on the CPU die and not making proper full contact. Temperature differences of about 20-30 degrees or so are quite possible from my previous experiences with the machine. (I saw them as well several times when I reseated badly)

Glad to hear the thermal paste and reseating helped. A lot of that big temperature will be down to reseating, and better airflow, its amazing the difference proper core contact or not can make!

My temperatures were actually slightly higher than that, but then I was using a normal bottom cover with just the fan filter fabric removed, and I had a 24/7 overclock.

 

i'll check it out next time i am there.. thanks!

 

Sorry if I come off aggressive on this, it's just I know from first hand experience how much of a difference proper heatsink/CPU contact could make with the X9100 and this machine. Its not so much the cooling is appalling (although it certainly could have been better, it could also have been far worse), but it wasn't designed that well in terms of making sure CPUs with larger die sizes always got full core contact, which is what causes the massive temperature spikes.

If the seating wasn't just right, I could easily see CPU temps into the 90s, however once I spent a few times working out how to get contact just right, even loaded with linpack 100% my temperatures were 20+ degrees lower, it really does make that much difference.

 

so how did you make it align right ?

 

See post #22 on the last page for my 'guide'
Sorry for the late response, was at work, and it got busy!

Reseating and new thermal paste seems to have helped the OP considerably as well

 

Absolutely agree with Alexrose, my heat sink was not positioned correctly when I initially redid the thermal paste. I was also using really bad thermal paste. My temps for my cpu were hitting 101C! after redoing it again with AS5 thermal paste and as alexrose said, a little persistence, I got the heat sink on and temps dropped all the way to 60C on load.

 

Cheers,will do!