Compiled List of compatible M15x upgrades

I don't remember if this has been done before but I thought it would be helpful to people if we had a compiled list of compatible M15x parts/upgrades. And then we could provide side by side benchmarks against all the different parts along with up to date pricings. In addition, we could provide links to more specific installation guides and more thorough and informative pages. Just think it would help lower the number of those "What GPU should I buy" threads.


CPU:

• i5-540qm
• i7-720qm
• i7-740qm
• i7-840QM
• i7-920xm
• i7-940xm

GPU:

• Ati HD5730m (Has Official Dell Drivers)
• Ati HD5850m (Has Official Dell Drivers)
• Ati HD5870m
• Ati HD6970m
• Ati HD6990m
• Ati HD7970m
• Nvidia GT 240m (Has Official Dell Drivers)
• Nvidia GTX 260m (Has Official Dell Drivers)
• Nvidia GTX 280m
• Nvidia GTX 285m
• Nvidia GTX 460m (Has Official Dell Drivers)
• Nvidia GTX 560m
• Nvidia GTX 570m

Ram:

• 16GB RAM @ 1333Mhz
• 8GB RAM @ 1333Mhz

Screen:

Wifi card:

• Intel Ultimate 6300 WiFi
• Killer Wireless 1102
• Bigfoot 1103

Optical Drive:

• 2nd HDD Caddy
• Dvd RW
• Blueray

AC Adapter:

• Dell 150w slim
• Dell 150w fat
• Dell 240w

 

The 840QM, 940XM CPU's, 240W PSU, 16GB RAM @ 1333Mhz are compatible as well.

Moving on, the Intel Ultimate 6300 WiFi card is also compatible.

The AMD Radeon HD6970M, HD6990M and HD 7970M are compatible too.

Not too sure about the GTX580M but nevertheless I have seen from somewhere that the GTX 570M works on the M15x.

 

the 580m works (i tried it myself) but not fully as the m15x cant access the 3d clocks (p0 state)

 

The Killer 1103 also works as well as a usb 3 express card slot, I believe you can also swap your display (why is it blank in the post) like a few of the more adventurous guys did, and how about the 2nd HDD caddy

 

I left it blank because I don't know what the different screen models are called.

I'll add an Optical Drive section for the 2nd HDD caddy

 

Here's the thread link for the screen upgrade by villosa, BTW its AU Optronics B156HW01 v7 (glossy) or v4 (matte)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ck-m15x-900p-1080p-lcd-b-rgled-1080p-lcd.html

 

I intend to try out HyperX 1600mhz 2x8GB ram in the M15x once it is affordable. It's superior timings CAS 9-9-9 at 1600mhz ought to make it the best upgrade for the M15x as at 1333mhz it should run even tighter!

 

Do 4GB 1600 MHz run on m15x?

 

No they are automatically downclocked to 1333mhz, so no real gain there

 

That wasn't his question. The answer is yes they do. Also if someone is upgrading to 16GB of ram from 8GB or less or perhaps better yet from mere 1066mhz mem than getting the best is a big gain!

The specific advice you should give is don't get 1600mhz mem unless the timings are 9-9-9 at that speed meaning 8-8-8 at 1333mhz. As far as I know only hyperX ram does a kit with such tight timings. Most 16GB 1600mhz kits run with looser timings so pointless to upgrade to as at 1333mhz you would end of with the same run of mill 9-9-9 1333mhz timings you usually get.

 

Are there any replacement heatsinks/fans or even speakers for the M15x? I could of sworn I saw a replacement fan a few years back. Also whats special about these killer and bigfoot wifi cards?

What are the rules for processors? is it only these first gen qm/xms? is there anything above the i7-920xm?

Also, I'm thinking about upgrading to the GTX 460m because I want to use a card with a supported driver however, I've noticed that the 560m is roughly the same price.

How about the ATI cards? Are any of them supported, do I have to use these modified drivers like I did for my GTX 285m

 

no heatsinks, fans or speakers. never owned a killer card i could give an honest opinion. as for cpu it supports all first gen icore chips up to 17 940xm, also i believe that only the i7 support 1333 ram the i3 and i5 only up to 1066, but i could be wrong. you will need modded drivers for the 560m, also slv has tried the 660m and apparently it works too, there is probably more info on this at tech inferno. if you get a dell 460m it should work plug and play with the dell drivers. all amd cards have worked well for me with the amd drivers

 

So I I've noticed some throttling in sc2 when I'm playing on high-ultra. The fps are 60(high) and (35)ultra but will have serious lag spikes. I'm thinking about upgrading to the Nvidia 460m or one of the newer AMD cards (whatever I can get the best buck for 200-250). However, I might be better off buying a new processor instead/in addition to.

I'm still rocking the old i5-540qm which actually hasn't been too bad to be honest. But now that these old processors are cheaper, its time to upgrade. So what i7 will give me the most bag for my buck. Also, I know that in the old days GTX260m and i7-920xm were having throttling issues due to lack of power. Is this still true? if so, when I upgrade my process I'll have to buy a 240w PS. So keep that in mind for your suggestion.

• i7-720qm : Link:$60
• i7-740qm : Link:$94
• i7-820qm : Link:$125
• i7-840qm : LIink:$160
• i7-920xm : Link:$365

also why is my i5-540m selling for more than some of these "higher" end processors? link:$100-$150

 

Anybody tried the 660M, 670M, 675M?

 

The 660M and 670M has been tried before and yes it works. However, I am not too sure about the 675m

EDIT: The GTX675M works but with severe throttling issues

 

The processors are cheaper since most of the processors sold currently are QS chips. No worries though; the QS chips do not differ significantly from those OEM chips.

Moreover, the throttling issue caused by the GTX260M was solved through the A09 bios update and has no whatsoever relationship with the power supply.

I once had the GTX460M and 940XM used together with the processor overclocked and there wasn't any sign of throttling even when I was using the 150W PSU.

However, if you plan to buy those 100W TDP graphics card like the 6970m, 6990m (more than 100W) or even the 7970M, it is best to buy the 240W supply since the combination of both the 920XM and the graphics card may push the PSU to its limits when overclocked.

The 920XM should give you the most bang for buck since it is easily overclockable using throttlestop and its overclocked performance may be able to match some of the higher tier 2nd generation sandy bridge processors or even the 3610qm ivy bridge processor.

However, if you do not plan to overclock it any time soon, its best to go for the 840qm

Moving on, I once used the killer n1103 and I constantly get disconnected. I have changed and installed several different drivers but to no avail. Hence, I replaced it with an Ultimate N6300 and I never got disconnected again. Ever.

 

Below is a link where you can compare 3dmark 11 Physics scores for various CPU's :

Best Processors August - 2012

I once remembered slv7 scored above 7k Physics score for his 920XM when overclocked. Well, nevertheless mine was around 6.2k after ovcerclocking it (I'm not as good as him). The stock score for the i7-3920XM is 6810, which shows that an overclocked XM chip are able to match those new generation processors

 

Here Here onego! I also am unimpressed with the 1103. Perhaps I will follow in your foot steps. I am using atheros drivers now which are much better but have yet to see peformance improvement over the 5300. My advice also would be to stick with Intel. Like their processors their wireless cards are no nonsense and top performing.

 

Same here. I've been using the atheros drivers and I still get random disconnects and frequently lag while playing online. Ever since I swapped the 6300 in the problems ceased to exist. So far so good

 

are you sure 670m will work??i really want to upgrade my gtx460m..badly,
do you think this card will work?
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M MXM 3.0 DDR5 1.5GB video VGA Card GTX 260M 460M upgrade | eBay
can you please help me with any link or tutorial?
thx a bunch

 

The 660m is a better upgrade than the 670m, being that the 660m is a true Kepler port, thus lower heat being produced. The 670m is based off the old 570m, with minor clock tweaking. The 660m is the highest based mobile gpu you can buy currently with Kepler.

 

I found 2 cards on ebay, which one should i buy? there is blue one and green one,
(blue):
NVIDIA GTX 660M (Kepler); 1.0GB DDR5; MXM 3.0b Module - Upgrade Kit | eBay
(green):
MSI GT660 M455-16008 nVidia GeForce GTX 285M Graphics Card MS-1V0W 67MBV711C0 | eBay

please give enlightenment to this grasshopper, master

 

The blue one. And yes the gtx670m works with modified drivers. The post was here a while ago in the forums.

 

Definately the blue one. The green one is actually a GTX 285m, which was state of the art about 3-4 years ago. The 660 should give you good grin factor

 

660M will be a worthwile upgrade, also recommend the 460M as there are DELL drivers which makes everything a bit easier. I recently sold my completely upgraded M15x but I would advise anyone looking to upgrade their computers to be careful about thermal throttling. You can refer to my sig for the specs I had in mine, but I had many issues with my 6970M and 940xm especially temp wise, where I was getting up to 95C in BF3 and CPU throttling in SC2 as well. Make sure you have a good cooling pad, clean out comp regularly, and monitor temps.

 

Wouldn't undervolting on the CPU help with throttling issues? I would think on the Extreme processors that there would be some wiggle room to move the volting down some..

 

The CPU should never get to 95C in the M15x unless you are running a very high OC. I only hit 95C continuously when I OC the CPU to 25x(3.3ghz) across all 8 threads and do video encoding. Otherwise the temps are always very well managed by the M15x.

Now the GPU is a different story. Pre 7970M and 680M gen cards it isn't advised to run high end cards in the M15x. Only the 7970M runs cool enough to be happy inside this beast at the high end. Even the 6990M runs a good 10C hotter.

 

I wasn't talking about the CPU hitting 95C, I was trying to emphasize how the combination resulted in the laptop hitting extremely high temperatures while under full 100% load. However, this was only the case for some games, for example in Skyrim with my old setup, I was nearly maxing the game out at 1080P and temps never exceeded 78C which was pretty good for GPUs back then. As to undervolting the CPU, I never tried because I had no idea what the hell I was doing, and frankly, my high temps could of definitely been impart due to a poor paste job on both the processor and GPU on my part. I know with my old setup, I had lots of problems especially because it was my first laptop, and I had never really "opened up" a computer let alone a laptop before and upgraded stock parts with ones I ordered online.

 

I ordered a 670m recently on eBay. Will see how it goes. To me, I looked at some benchmarks on notebookcheck.com, and since they were selling at similar prices (at least in my currency and location), I opted for the 670M. Performance-wise, 670M is ahead in numbers. Power consumption is rumored to be 75 TDP. Heat dissipation - unknown but 40nm should be higher than 28nm. Sale price - around the same.

EDIT: 660M performs 85% of the 670M. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

Do we have any side by side comparisons of the different GPU's? For example, Ive notice people saying that the GTX 460m is the best "dell" card available then there are other who argue the Ati 5850 is faster than the 460m.

So if you guys have any data comparing the different cards or be willing to do benchmarks that would be great

 

​

go to notebookcheck.net for benchmarks.

 

Here is Tom's Hardware hierarchy for GPU's. I like how they also show desktop in comparison as well:

Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart : Best Graphics Cards For The Money: August 2012

 

the 460m stock should score higher the the 5850m but the 5850m has insane overclock ability, but the way good luck getting anything nvidia X70m or higher working in an m15x. the 660m might work better....

 

Looks like Tom's thinks the 5850m does better than the 460m, as the 5850m is side by side with the 560m.

 

Post some benchmarks in the thread, would like to see how well it fares in a m15x!

 

Hey guys, so I'm just doing tests up the processors.

so I'm starting at the i5-540m and I just installed the i7-740qm and I gotta say...the i5-540 is way faster ha

does anyone have any other processors they would be willing to sell me or wouldn't mind doing some bench marks as well.

Also, is this a normal score for the i7-740qm. I wasn't too surprised when it went down but by that much? WOW I'm flabbergasted.

here are my results so far.

i5-540m Tests

 

i7-740qm results:
View attachment 82076

(NOTE: My Nvidia GTX 460m is coming in on friday)
now my look at these results...why isn't mine near this?
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-740QM Processor,ASUSTeK Computer Inc. G73Jw score: 3760 PCMarks

Here is supposed to be a side by side comparison of the cpus http://www.laptopmonkey.co.uk/la/cat/55/840_test.jpg

 

That seems odd. THe 740qm ought to be faster than than any i5 due to having twice the cores and threads....

 

No it makes sense because, as per Intel's data sheet the clock speed of the i7 is 1.73GHz vs 2.53GHz (i5) and during turbo is is 2.93GHz vs 3.06GHz. It's good for extensive multitasking but during regular usage it comparatively slower. I'm not sure whether the turbo is factored during the benchmark but I think this explains the score.

I take back my previous comment as my 720 qm has wei of 7 which dosen't explain the score of 4.1 for the 740qm

 

Well, originally I did the first test without applying new thermal paste. This is just proof how important your thermal paste can be. The problem was that the turbo was regulating it self but since the cpu wasn't getting cooled properly it would throttle it self down. First I turned off Turbo and then applyed Artic Silver 5 paste and then reenabled turbo. The scores came out like this:

without paste and with turbo
View attachment 82188
wihtout paste and without turbo it was at 5.4

with paste and without turbo

with paste and turbo


So as it turns out the i7-740qm is a better cpu after all ^_^
okay now I got the i7-740qm. Anyone have a i7-840qm or 920xm they would like to sell me?

 

Ebay would be your best bet if you want a 920xm/940xm, no need to go from a 740qm to a 840qm, but even with the 740qm you are good to go unless you want to overclock. I would just stick with the 740qm.

 

oh I'm just trying to do benchmarks on all of the CPUs for my guide. thats why I'm interested in the 840qm. I plan on end up on the i7-920xm by the end

 

is it possible to add the express card lists into this list? For example the USB 3.0 expansion card?

 

sure I'll add it, do you know of any other decent expansion cards?

 

hi, is it possible to add 580m to m15x?

 

gtx570m (from laptops MSI) will work on the m15x?!?
And if it is to flash the BIOS from gtx670m?!? It is in this form will work? (On m15x))))
P.S. "sorry for my English"

 

hey all,

shouldnt the 820QM be on the list as well?