Just bought an Alienware M15x and need some suggestions...

SO I recently purchased an M15x off of ebay which had the following specs:

Processor: Core i5 M430 @ 2.26 GHz
Memory: 8gb RAM
Graphics card: Nvidia geforce GT 240m w 1gb of dedicated graphics
DVD/CDRW: Slim 24x DVD±RW Slot loading
HDD: 250GB hardrive
Screen: 15.6 inch HD+ (1600 x 900)
Wireless:• WLAN Mini-Card (Half Mini-Card slot)• WPAN,
Bluetooth® card (Full Mini-Card slot)

I wanted to upgrade some of the components and the laptop was somewhat scratched up, so I purchased the following items for an upgrade:

CPU: i7 920XM
GPU:460M 1.5
SSD (Main Drive): 120GB Samsung 840
2nd HDD (Replacing DVD drive): HGST 1TB 7200RPM (9mm)
RAM: 16GB DDR3 Corsair ValueRam 1333

These parts were severely scratched up, so i purchased:
Screen: 1600x900 WUXGA OEM screen (Didn't go for the 1080p to help with the frame rates)
Back lid: NEW OEM

Now my question is that I can still return the 460m, and upgrade to a better GPU (definitely would need some assistance though). What is your suggestion that is the best card I could upgrade to without having to either undervolt or physically modify?

Note: I would prefer to use an nvidia GPU mainly due to their driver support being superior.

 

I've just recently upgraded my GTX 460m to a AMD 6990m and the step up in performance was significant!

Many nVidia cards are plug and play with slight driver ini. file modifications. Someone recently upgraded to a gtx 660m and has that working well with very little effort required (see here). Other options include a 560m, 570m, 670m and again I think you just need a little ini file mod to make all these cards work.

Personally (and if you have the cash) I'd get a DELL OEM AMD 7970m as this is currently the most powerful card that is plug and play. It may throttle slightly if you plan to overclock your cpu but that can be stopped (see here). From benchmarking the 6990m is twice as powerful as the gtx 460m and the 7970m is twice as powerful as the 6990m. You get the idea, that is one hell of a powerful card.

 

Ok so I will get the 7970m any way to get it for under $500 and is there a difference between a blue and green PCB?

 

Blue pcb is dell model and green is clevo (or some other manufacturer). The blue one is plug and play but the green one will require some BIOS modding and nasty things like no native fan control.
Get a BLUE ONE!

This card is expensive! Thats why the 6990m is a fantastic value option! Half the power but a third of the cost.

 

So what about this one?
http://bit.ly/YuFlA1
Will it need a mounting bracket or anything extra?

 

HD7970m Purchased! I got it for $550. The 6990 was only $100 less so I went for the bigger one.

Thanks for all of the help!

BTW do you think it was a mistake not getting the 1080p screen?

 

Probably but at least running at those resolutions you shouldn't have heat issues or power issues.

 

So for the 7970m will I need to do any "grinding" I keep reading about with other cards or is it just plug and play? Will I need a custom vbios if its a Dell OEM card? Thanks so much for all of your help. I really appreciate it.

 

Yes you will need the grind the x-bracket of the 7970M to that of the height of the GTX460M to avoid shut down issues! Make sure to have the appropriate screws as well. To add on, you will not need a custom vbios. Just different vbios of voltage settings easily obtainable in the internet.

 

Better off going with the 1080p screen. Remember you can turn the res down to 1600x900 for games, but you have no way of going up to 1080p from your current screen! Considering you are going for a 920xm and 7970m, there is no reason you would have issues gaming on 1080p. I game with my specs (in sig) on 1080p on high settings as a reference.

 

You will also need to run the fans manually with HWinfo.

 

You made a mistake going for the 900p screen. The M15x has in its fully specced out mode more than enough cpu and gpu horsepower to run very high framerates at 1080p even at high or max settings on any game.

 

I thought I would not have to since it is a dell OEM card (Blue card)?

I would have went with the 1080p screen if I could find a new one that was not all scratched up, but everything on ebay was damaged in some way for around $130+ while they had a 900p one that was brand new from factory.

Also what voltages/clocks are you running your 920XM at with your 7970M without throttling? And what driver # are you using? Just wanted a heads up for the install. Thanks!

 

I have fixed throttling issues, see here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m15x/700476-m15x-7970m-throttle-fix.html. I run 23/23/25/27 with tdp at 82W. Don't need more for it to run even 100% load under prime 95 at those settings. I will crank it up to 25/25/25/25 when I need the horsepower at 87W tdp. No game really requires it presently though.

I bought mine scratched up I care more for the internals haha

Yes Mr Porras is wrong. If it is a dell card OEM,QS or ES no matter the fans wil run natively. My card is QS for reference. However it is still good to have the program installed as it really helps gaming if you ramp the fans up to max speed before you game. Your card will hit a lower max temp and naturally a much lower average temp.

 

Thank you for all of the information. I will be sure to post the updates as I receive the parts. You know if everything for the install goes smooth I could always upgrade the screen and resell the one I bought.

Also where did you get the Vbios for 950/1450 (1.05V) I was looking all over for the .rom file and can not seem to find it anywhere. Thanks so much for all of your help.

 

*Update: Some good news. I found a vendor that has a brand new m15x 1080p screen in the UK and he was willing to ship to the US. Looks like 1080p for me!

Picked up a 9 cell battery and a m15x 240w power adapter as well!

 

Good job! Also you won't regret the 9 cell. It does wonders for cooling and gives the M15x some extra battery life. The 240W adapter will also come handy once you equip to the high end in both cpu and gpu departments.

Welcome to the high end M15x owners club mate Amazing that a 3.5 year old laptop is still attracting people to it

 

So I need to use some thermal paste and I have some IC Diamond 7 and Arctic Silver 5. Which would be better for processor and/or GPU? Thanks.

Also I have thermal pads that came with the graphics card, but have 0.5mm pads as well. Should I use the ones that came with the kit or use the 0.5mm ones? The ones that came with the kit seem to be different sizes.

The kit is the same one that appears i this video fro the 7970m


This is the thermal pad that I have:
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/1...onductivity_110_WmK.html?tl=g8c487s1288#blank

 

If your current ones are clean you can reuse them, i've reused mine several times with no issues. I believe there are 2 different sizes need .5mm/1mm. As for the paste i'd go with ic diamond.

 

Ok so here is where I am....

I finally received all of the parts and completely disassembled the laptop according to the online tutorial (youtube alienware disassembly).

I installed a new Palmrest MTouchpad panel (I think that is what its called), Power switch cover, HDD (Dvd slot), SSD, 16GB of memory and 920xm processor. I had to hold off on the graphics card as the screws were missing for the bracket on the 7970m.

I put back in the graphics card back in that was originally there (re applied new tim on the graphics and processor IC7 specifically), but forgot to put on the thermal pads!

The computer would not turn back on after the install. Could it be the missing thermal pads or something else? I plan to put the pads back on after work today when I get home. I hope i did not screw anything up.

 

No a gfx card can run without thermal pads but it would just get too hot. I imagine you need to disassemble again and recheck all connections on motherboard including the board that covers the optical drive.



Sent from my cm_tenderloin using Tapatalk HD

 

Without thermal pads there is effectively no substance that can convery heat from the memory modules to the heatplate. Without this contact the memory will overheat very quickly indeed. I can imagine the card has built in safety features that essentially notice a massive climb in temperature over a short time thus shutting off the machine before any damage can occur.

Open her up and put those pads in asap.

 

Just trying to think of possible solutions as well...maybe I need to reseat the cpu? Usually it would start and then shut off if that was the case though...

Last night it just was not even powering on, even with the power adapter plugged into it.

...sorry just freaking out a little bit and at work so theres nothing i can do ATM

 

Work a little boring then ?

 

lol on prep and lunch and praying that I did not do anything to kill this laptop. I've built plenty of desktops, but this was my first venture into doing anything with a laptop.

 

When you break something in a desktop, you work a few extra hours and replace the part. When you break a laptop part, you sell an organ to pay it off. Welcome to the laptop world

 

so here it is i re seated the cpu, put on the thermals and still nothing. The good thing is that when looking at the card there was no damage to the circuitry, so there was no power being sent to it. The bad news is that its not either of them. Hmm could it possibly be the new processor or should i put my money on an unplugged cable that i missed somewhere (or is not in all the way)

Edit: Oops before installing I followed the youtube guide for dissassembly. It didn't say anything about a power drain...crap is this the issue? If so, what do i do?

 

Update: so I dissembled and re assembled the laptop with all of the new parts (except for the new GPU...still waiting on the bracket to come in the mail) and re-applied new thermal paste to the CPU and GPU. The laptop is turning on and I can get into the bios and windows! I am having two problems still hopefully someone can help.

1) The Power Switch cover does not light up and none of the side panel buttons work, but the power button works

2) The computer keeps randomly lagging and the screen goes off for a minute or two and comes back on...eventually the computer locks up and completley freezes with the screen off

After further inspection, it seems there is a lot of heat coming from the CPU side. I don't know if that means there is a problem with the cpu or something else...any ideas?

P.S. I did not make any changes in the bios after putting in the new processor and 16GB memory. If I was supposed to please let me know. Thanks again everyone for all of your help. I really do appreciate everything. You guys are the only ones keeping me sane throughout this process.

 

Your BIOS should be A09.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk 2

 

Went onto dells website and all drivers are updated fully in the correct order and current bios is A09. The problem still exists...ugh

 

I'm not familiar with the M15x, so I apologize ahead of the time if I'm not at all helpful

Are the parts you purchased new? The power button strip could be faulty, or it may not be connected properly. Sometimes issues like this could be motherboard or software/BIOS related as well.

Are you monitoring temps? What are idle and peak temps no the processor? CPU failures are extremely rare, but I suppose there is a greater than normal risk of a lemon when buying used.

After rebooting the computer from a freeze, have you checked the event viewer for error codes?

 

Try to reseat the power button ribbon cable. Mine was loose for the longest time and it caused; keyboard lag, non functionional caps,num, in fact all lights on the strip. I took time to reseat it properly which was actually quite hard and the problems were gone!

 

So here is an update I reinstalled windows 7 and now all of the lag/processor issues are gone. I keep getting bsod 40 for driver issues, but I have of the latest drivers from dells website and they were all installed in the correct order. The issue I am also having is using the hdd in the cd bay as the computer either lags out or bsod when I have any activity on it. I am trying to run a chkdsk but it keeps freezing. I ram alien autopsy and it said the hdd has bad sectors... Any ideas guys? P.S. the power strip still doesn't light up and buttons don't work I think I need a replacement ribbon cable for that. If anyone knows where I can get one that would be great.

 

Have you tried what I suggested?

 

Reseat the powerstrip cable as King has suggested. You could check the smart data on the ODD HDD but likely the Alien Autopsy maybe right. How about throwing another drive in the ODD or swapping drives around just to ensure its the drive causing those lockups on access? (I know swapping bay vs. ODD is a chore!)

 

In the M15x certainly is!

 

Ok so here it is I re-installed windows 7 again and installed all of the windows updates (over 170 updates as well as service pack #1) and tried manually updating all of the drivers. The processor, HDD and SSD all seem to be stable now.

No BSOD's in a while. I tried running crysis 2 darksiders and assassin creed 3 and there were no crashes but definitely lag with the 1080p scree (mostly due to the gt240 graphics). The screws for the 7970m are coming tomorrow.

I tried reseating the ribbon several times but it is still a no go. I can use it to power on but the other buttons on it just wont light up or work. Anyone have an idea on where to purchase a replacement ribbon cable it would be extremely helpful.

Alienautopsy confirms no more errors on HDD and SSD (on hdd ran chkdsk /b as well as a disk defragmenter and updated drivers for it as well)

The screws for the 7970m come tomorrow from fedex and I will begin installing that bad buy tomorrow. Everything is looking a lot better right now!

 

you can contact one of the alienware reps on here and they can source the part for you.

 

ugh and.....just hit another wall. I was just playing assassin's creed 3 and after I got off I decided to check my system specs. It said my ram was runnign below 1333, so I went into the bios and tried to manually set the ram to run at 1333, after reboot, now there is no display as the screen won't turn on.

The computer works through the VGA port fine and I tried to reset the CMOS and replace the memory with the stock one but to no avail it will not turn on. This is a brand new screen. I mean it literally had the plastic on it. Any idea of what might have happened?

 

*Update: I found a replacement cable for the m15x hinge cover to the motherboard:

The part name from the laptop is: HAMBURG-W E235863 AWM 20798 80c 60v VW-1 16 pin 0.8cm

This seems to fit the specifications, but is much longer (shortest one you can find unfortunately. I've been looking for hours): AWM 20798 Ribbon Cable 0 50mm Pitch 16 Pin 150 mm 16pin 15cm | eBay

This will at least solve one issue, now the issue with the new screen...any ideas?

I tested the old 900p screen and there is still no picture...its not the screen and the memory and GPU is fine....what is the issue here?

 

Just switched out the graphics card...and that's what the problem was....

I purchased the card through Ebay
HD7970M Alienware M17x M18x VGA Upgrade Kit Dell HD7970M 2GB DDR5 CF Ready | eBay

Hopefully I will be able to get a replacement, or ill have a $600 paperweight.

 

That is a disgusting price! A year ago I paid much less for mine! Look around for a cheaper one. There must be some!

 

I bought two 680m from these guys. They sent me a 675mx by mistake and two faulty cards. Sending the second one back for a refund. King of Interns where did you purchase your card from?

 

I bought mine from a fellow user on NBR. He also happened to sell me the M15x beforehand too!

So yeah it was second hand and it is QS. Runs wonderfully.

I am surprised at all these faultly cards both 680M and 7970M. These seem to be mainly brand new OEM's. The question is, is there no fault with the user during installation? For example I read advice to grind down the x plate and this is something I have never ever done nor would recommend. Simply use the backplate that comes with the card or buy a compatible one off ebay. Short cuts end up shorting your $500 card.

 

I did the same thing once. Get to the CMOS battery, unplug it from the motherboard for about a minute, power drain, and then plug it back in (you may need to use some tweezers for this). Turn it back on and you should be fine

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

EDIT: lol looks like I missed this page Oh well, disregard!

 

Hello again so I found out some more information about my problem that could use some clarification.

Here's what happened again:

I was using my 7970m graphics card and all was going well, until I basically reset my computer and the screen went black. It will not show the BIOS, Safe Mode or even Windows 7 through the internal display. However, the card does appear in windows and I can see everything through the VGA output. I can even play Crysis 3 at max settings through the VGA (and there is no way the internal Intel card is running Crysis 3 at max settings).

So, I got to reading online and doing searches through notebookreview and techinferno and some other people were getting black displays with the 7970m (internal monitor was not working) and they suggested flashing the Vbios as that fixed the issue.

Is this reliable and would it mess up the card? I don't want to give Eurocom any excuses to not issue an RMA, but I would like to exhaust all options before RMA'ing the card.

If this is the way to go, does anyone have a suggestion for what Vbios to use and is there a way to back up the current one if I ever want to flash back to the original?

 

Hi, I don't know if this is an appropriate answer but I had that black screen issue too back in my 5850m. Symptoms leading to it started from screen flickers, random screen blackouts that would power up if I close/open the display lid and eventually just blacking out. External display worked on both vga/dp. I had not considered flashing bios for it as I believed the card itself had problems granted it worked normally when displaying anywhere but the internal display.

I had mine replaced entirely and got a 460m at the time.

For bios back up: look for GPU Z. it's a gpu stat/monitoring tool that can back up your gpu's current bios. Flashing your bios may work but I would not risk it on what already seems like a faulty card. I speak from little experience and that I recently had a failed bios flash on my 6990m. it gave me a black screen and I had to blind flash its old bios back.

 

Update*

So I did not update the Vbios and just sent in the card as suggested to Eurocom. I have to say that they were very responsive and were great to deal with. Kevin in their tech support really made sure to help me through each step and emailed me with an up to date status on everything that was going on. He received the card and it was indeed faulty. He shipped me a new 7970m that was tested on a m18x to confirm it worked and even sent some extra IC diamond 7 for the card.

So far the card seems to work great and BTW the cable for the media bar I ordered from Ebay/Thailand works perfect. If you need a cheap cable for your m15x definitely buy that one.

Now onto overclocking!