Let's share upcoming upgrade plans for the M15x beast :)

I was thinking more along these lines.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181036

All we need is a mouting bracket on the cooler that is small enough to screw onto the 920xm in the M15x....

Most if not all are a little too big. Pretty cool though.

Shouldn't be impossible to rewire the plugs into a single 12V 1A power source to power the whole lot....

 

Or we can simply drill into the heatspreader to the same dimensions of one of these coolers...a bit like what mike did with his mod to attach his tiny waterblocks.

 

Yeh I liked Mike's approach. Things would start to get messy though if you have an old psu connected to the pump and fans. If only there was a a-i-o cooler that could run off USB power lol

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I think that there's a way to add more cooling surface, but you'll have to ditch the ODD. The routing would be a small insanity, but who cares if it works? Also does it mean that the new fan doesn't help at all?

 

Unfortunately the M15x uses slot loading drive so ditching the ODD wouldnt help. Would have to significantly cut the chassis which is quite strong metal. Actually the heatpipes for cpu and gpu pass next to the side of the chassis. Particularly on the cpu side there are no ports to remove.

With proper tools one could modify the cpu fan base to have similar double heatsink as zbook(side heatsink). Considering the cpu fan chassis is part of an entire metal construction and considering the chassis is also metal it would require real professional metal cutting tools and precision as well as the mounting of a secondary heatsink on the heatpipes leading up to th3 primary heatsink...damn difficult.

Oh and the kingston impact ram works. CL 8 out of the box.

I may try my hand at flashing my old modules and then try the new ones...to get CL7 or even CL6!



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Heatsinks upgraded to copper ones! Obviously used most of them on GPU side so only 2 for CPU but I might buy another pack. Very nicely made all copper vram heatsinks!

 

Been considering doing this myself.

My idea was to make both heat sinks flush by removing the small little tits that are spaced so widely apart and installing as many copper heatsinks to cover the entire surface as much as possible.

Have you seen any gains in cooling?

I normally run my laptop with the bottom cover removed and a cooling pad underneath it. I see 5-10 degrees of difference this way. I can imagine your direct fan approach would be even more effective.

 

There is a decent difference yes. BUT you will not be able to close the backpanel without cutting it.

Effective but messy. Another idea is to buy one of those all in one water coolers.

Slap that on the cpu in particular and see those temps drop!

GPU is a difficult one. There is a hard limit with how much power the M15x is happy to deliver to the GPU. This means an improvement to cooling doesnt necessarily being better OCing results.

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You are quite right. The Witcher 3 does is playable on the lowest settings. Then expect it to float around 30 fps. The 970M still beats the pants off of my 880M in every way imaginable. Even with the "old" 920XM in it.

 

I'm playing witcher 3 on a mixture of medium and high, basically slightly above what people would call "console settings" and I'm getting a smooth 60fps. Very playable and looks great

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Well, I have some other things out of the way and I turn my gaze to my M15x with the 900p screen. It currently has 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, GT240 and the palmrest is broken where some previous owner got hamfisted with a screwdriver.

Since I upgraded my daughter's M15x Xmas gift (she was thrilled!) to a 500GB SSD, I have a 256GB SSD available for this one. It's a little small, but I can make due.
I just ordered 16GB (2x 8GB) RAM from Newegg.
Ebay yielded a NEW palmrest. w00t!
Now I just need to decide on a graphics card. A GTX 970M would be very nice, but pricey. This is especially true for 900p, correct?

What do you guys think?

 

I've just sidegraded from my 7970M, that broke, to a GTX 680M and have to say its a much better card in every way! If you can find one for less than €250 or $250 then you've got yourself a good deal. 970M is just a tiny bit too expensive for the additional performance you gain.

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I had thought about that. My original plan was to take the two 680Ms out of the M18x R2 and put them on the pair of M15x machines when I bought 980Ms for the R2. Buuuuut... I never bought the 980Ms for the R2.

I don't *need* this M15x for gaming. I just *like* it. It's a toy to me as I have other machines to game on.

I am finding 680Ms on ebay for $300+ range. Or I can go with the 970M. I know what that looks like in the M15x and it's pretty sweet.

Money isn't that much of an issue... I am going to have to ponder this a bit.

 

If you're not in any rush, wait till pascal and polaris architecture cards are released later this year which should lower price of 970M and 980M.

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Eh, this one is going to be gifted to my daughter-in-law, so I need to make a decision sooner rather than later.

 

680M or 970M (for the right price) are fine choices but she'll need to learn how to mod the inf file when updating graphics drivers. AMD cards don't have this problem but in my experience 680M just runs smoother than 7970M and overclocks much higher. 7970M is definitely more plug-n-play though.

 

Just bought a GTX 970M, should be here next week.

My son or I can handle the inf mod, no problem so she is covered.

 

Great stuff. I suggest you flash svl7's vbios immediately upon arrival.

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970M plenty for 900p. Down the line most cards can OC up to 30% too.

1080p I would say 980M

What power supply and cpu?

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May as well announce this. 980M coming soon. Awaiting new mobo and then in goes the 980M.

Also I am going to use liquid ultra not thermal paste.

Interesting times lie ahead. Time to break some records once more

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CoolLaboratory Liquid Ultra will react with M15x radiators (it reacts with aluminium and cooper). Already tryed it, and came back to standard thermal interfaces. After 8-12 mounth u will need to polish radiators after using it. =/
Better choice will be Gelid Extreme or IC Diamond (if u don't aware of micro scratches). Actually i'm using ArcticCooling MX-4, not best thermal interface in the world, but it works pretty well.

 

I used to use ICD but now use mx4 as it ran out. Mx4 no where near as good.

Liquid ultra only reacts with aluminium. The contact plates over the die for both gpu and cpu are copper.

So long as not too much is used (keeping to the copper area) there shouldnt be any decay of the heatsinks.

Stihial can you go into deeper detail as to what happened to your heatsinks? Did the stuff bleed out onto the aluminium?
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I can show you results after using Liquid ultra if you don't trust.

 

Please no really this is very interesting and informative for all the community

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How is the ssd ticking?

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OK, i'll make photos and will post it here in 15-30 minutes.

SSD working great, installed windows and made some tweaks to make write operation as little as possible. For now just 24GB are used. In future will install some software and few games.
Thank you.

 

Excellent thank you! Will be interesting to see. All over the web it says copper doesnt get eaten by it but that the stuff can weld onto it and be difficult to remove.

Good to hear about the ssd. Dont forgot to allocate space to the controller. Remember free space doesnt equate to the same thing.

I never ran the drive morw than 50% full should still have plenty of life yet

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CL Liquid Ultra welded into copper heatsink, same story with cpu heatsink. After 9-10 month i've admit that CPU (or that moment i already had 920xm with OC) that CPU temperatures started to rise. AMD 5850m was not one of too hot cards, but temperatures on it was slightly bigger than usual. I thought the problem was just with radiators full of dust.

Was too lasy to repast cpu, sorry.
Here just GPU heatsink:


But in total, in that time where Liquid Ultra was working on 100%, i had the lowest temperatures. And mx-4 far behind this thermal interface in terms of performance.

After Liquid Ultra already welded into heatsink, only polishing can take it off.

 

Hmm sorry to hear that. For me though I would to try it for a second time.

Maybe I will have better results. Your heatsinks dont look too damaged. I will risk it.

Thanks for taking the pictures!

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You are running gt240m? What are your gpu upgrade plans?

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Yes, CPU and GPU heatsink not damaged. Just need to apply a little bit more thermal past to make proper contact.

 

Quick question did you use liquid pro or ultra? Apparently pro is horrible to remove!

Anyways goodnight from me!

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And yes, i'm running 240m. The only thing i know, that i don't wanna to buy AMD cards. m6000 looks good as a replacement for 6990m, but many people on this forum had problems with it.
For now i have not enough money to buy something from nVidia cards like 675mx, 680m or 970m. Maybe i'll wait when i'll be able to spend more money for an upgrade. 780m is a great card too but looks to hot for M15x.
As the reserve plan, i still can get m6000 =/ Still better than gt 240m anyway.

 

I've been using liquid ultra. I think it welded into heatsink because of Dell. There r no any protective layer on M15x heastinks, like many desktop heatsinks have. And close placement of aluminum on heatsinks may affect on liquid ultra.

Have a good night too.

 

Hopefully the board arrives this week! The wait is killing me

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On did that on the previous 970M and it worked well.

Sent from my overpriced Galaxy S6 Edge +

 

920XM and 210w power supply, although I found that the 150w worked for daily use.

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Palmrest came yesterday. RAM will be here probably Monday. I have Win 8.1 64 bit on it's way. 970M is delayed until after next week. This is going to be a birthday present for my awesome daughter-in-law. Then I will have to find another one for me to play with. It's addicting. I know I can buy a newer model than this for the same money, but I just like them.

 

You can buy a new one sure but not as simultaneously modular, well built, solid, gpu compatible as the M15x.

I spent 800 pounds on new gpu, ssd, ram, mobo and parts. For me this brings the M15x back up to current gen.

800 pounds coulds never buy you a machine that has 16gb ram, 980M 8gb and 500gb evo ssd. Never. You will get new sata speed, m.2 ssd slots etc but that doesnt improve frames over the old beast not to mention build quality of newer machines at that price is plasticky crap

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how are you guys getting 970m s and radeon 7970s to run in the M15x? I'm asking because I scored mine for 60 bucks last week and only thing i needed to do was re assemble it but i want to upgrade from an 5730 if you get my drift. hard to run games even on low with this card

 

Its easy enough, plenty of upgrade stories on this forum. Need to find a 970M, 680M, 7970M or lower M6000 firepro card first. There is a really great teardown video on youtube of how to disassemble this laptop and I've watched it many times. Buy the graphics card you want, disassemble, put new card in, apply thermal paste and.....probably mod inf file and flash a new vbios

 

The 970M is pretty much a drop in replacement. A modded VBIOS by Prema or SVL7 helps a lot to keep it from throttling. You will need to mod the inf file for the nVidia driver to get it to install. Beyond that, it work perfectly. Don't even need a bigger power supply if you aren't going to overclock. I do recommend Throttle Stop for the CPU to help it from starving the graphics card.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.

 

980M works too for those with a slightly deeper pocket or good eye for deals

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Awesome. I'm looking for 970m would a 765m work in this as well? I'm asking cause I can get one right now for less than 200 shipped to me

 

I also have another question. would a 880m work in this because if that is the case i'd upgrade my alienware 17 to the 980 m and put the 880m in the m15x. sounds insane but would fly still i think

 

Yes, the GTX 765M does work. However the performance is not that great.
Read here, disregard the title.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-m15x-with-nvidia-765m-does-not-work.758056/

The GTX 765M has it's lunch money taken by the GTX 860M. However, I don't think the 860M works in the M15x. Well, it seems like the 860M *might* work in the M15x. Looks like this guy had some trouble with it.
https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/7039-dell-gtx-860m-vbios/

Yes, it will work, but it will run very hot and suck a lot of power. My off the cuff though (without looking) is a 240w power supply will be needed. Most likely you will have to down clock it to 780M clocks or below to keep the heat under control. I have the 880M in my Sager and even after extensive cooling mods (heat sink lapping, cutting the bottom cover, block off air leaks past the radiators), it still runs toasty. I cannot recommend the 880M to anyone. Of course you already have it. You could give it a shot without buying anything! Just swap it into your M15x and see what you think. What CPU do you have in the M15x?

Let me know how it goes! I am really curious.

 

I'm running a i5 540m and 4 soon to be 8 gigs of ram. in the M15x.
I'm hoping I can save up for a 980m to buy off eurocoms vga showroom in the near future. I'm itching to drop that in my 17 or you think i should wait til new gen cards come out.

 

There is a lot of speculation as to when the new cards are coming out. Here is a huge thread on that. Lots of noise, some information. Might be good to skip all but the last couple of pages. Plus, we don't know that Pascal will work in the M15x.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...00m-series-gpus.763032/page-113#post-10185496

 

Here is another link to the GTX 765M working in both Win 7 and Win 8.1

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-m15x-and-gtx-765m.766520/

 

860m was only released in kepler form for mxm. Maxwell version was soldered. Naturally the kepler version of the 860M was inferior.

IHO 765m at 200 is expensive and slow. 880m also beaten by 780m and as stated runs uber hot.

No the 970m and 980m are your best here.

No laptop more compatible than M15x. If 980m doesnt work in the 17 then stick it in the 15x.

As for your budget of 200 dollars you should be able to get a 680M(870M equivalent) for that money. Much more powerful than the 765M.

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