Groove's 2nd m15x skullcap!

Well mine never had the noise I so I couldn't answer that. but the m15x has 2 bolts that hold the lcd one on the right and one on the left that extend into the "black piece" around the LCD. My theory on the noise is the only thing that I could think of cause if you look back a long time ago no one complained about noise they complained about the wobble and I think that was AW response was to tighten the nuts but... I would not be surprised if here in a few weeks we have someone brake a hinge. @ groove here is the pic that I was able to get sorry about the quality had to take real fast with a phone.

 

when i go into work tomm ill take some pics of what needs to be done to the kensington lock for those that want to "mod it" lol

 

wow i can see why people are complaining about squeaky hinges. i was trying the same way to wobble my screen and my hinges are actually quite silent. i only get a creak when im lifting up the screen but that does not seem to be coming from the hinges. the the way im hearing the creak is from the top part when i am lifting up the screen. i think its the 2 pieces of plastic on the screen coming together since there is a space for the light pipe.

 

@milcs - haha, I might have gotten a bit carried away with the wobbling demonstrations... I might put together another vid and do something a bit more thorough.

@taco - cool, thx for the pic; I see what you're referring to. Hopefully nobody has a hinge failure anytime soon.

 

... And I'll just get on the phone to the Notebook Cruelty Association...

 

Yes, that does in fact fall on the cruelty treatment class. I am still laughing just thinking of your frenetic shacking! Ahahaha... that was pure genious!

 

wow does that squeak though

 

Hi Zfactor,
Let me know when you post the pics on how to mod the lock. If I ever need to get one, I'll be interested to see how to make it work.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

will do tomm at work

 

@ taco - Thanx for the clarification

@ zfactor - Yea, some pics and directions in a new thread would be nice. Easier to link to

 

Hey groove could you maybe do some stress tests and see how high your temps get. Like Prime95 two thread cpu test for cpu temps and then something like ATITool and check for artifacts for 10 minutes and see how high your GPU temps get?

 

You bet. Here's the post I put over in the GPU thermal testing thread..




I'll run atitool and post results in a few.

 

Here's GPU stress: 104C and toasty Ambient temp was around 83F as you can see in my weather gadget on the sidebar. I don't have AC so windows are open and it's pretty warm and humid today.



Followed by GPU idle today:



Actually, it just dropped to 77C

I will say this much... I've owned, overclocked and modded many laptops over the years and I think that's the highest GPU temp I've ever seen. I'm not sure what the safe operating range is for this GPU and I hope 104 is still under the max rated temp for the GPU core, but that's definitely the highest I've tested. I had an older Dell 9300 with a modded 7800GTX ripped from an XPS2 and bios hack and that card got into upper 90s (after i stripped one of the 4 nuts that held the heatsink to the core) but I don't think I ever broke 100C. Hot card! I'm not going to worry about it but I would be curious as to what the max rated temp is for this card. 104C is hotter than a honeymoon hotel as we say in the South. Hotter than a whore in church. Hotter than 2 rats in a wool sock. Hotter than a pair of jumper cables at a redneck picnic. Hotter than butter on a biscuit. Hotter than... Ok, enough southern craziness. You get the picture.

 

I think 105 is thermal cap at least for my card it is, hmm that is pretty toasty. ATI tool stresses your GPU to the MAX, i guess alot more than crysis does. What does your CPU idle at.

 

My GPU reached 102ºC while playing Crysis and Stalker. I've sent my laptop back and they told me there was a thermal profile failure with my GPU.

Put those 102ºC together with the 3 cases of right hinges breaking. Can you find a correlation?
ANyway... I would contact CS and tell them about that. I wouldn't just live with that... But that's me, of course.

 

Well ATITool stresses out your system far more than any game out right now would, it literally stresses it out 100% which is not something a game would do. Even on my laptop while playing Crysis for about 3 hours with my OC'ed setting in my sig my highest temps have been 76. Then I ran ATITool to check out different bios and stuff and my temps went all the way up 98 in 10 minutes.

 

Yea, I played a couple of short sessions of Oblivion and Crysis and rivatuner only read mid 80s for the GPU from what I remember, so ATI Tool is definitely stressing it way beyond that. However, I don't have a lot of time to game extensively until I get something behind me next Monday that I'm studying for so I'll test more with games, etc.. at that point. I'd like to have at least a good one hour Crysis session to see what happens.

 

I would contact CS in any case (just to let them know of the temp your GPU goes up to).
For instance, in my hands, ATItools or Furmaker never stressed my GPU as much as Crysis or Stalker. The reason for this is that during gameplay, as the GPU is not 100% at all time, fans are on and off and, sometimes, the temps go way above what I normally see with the "synthethic tests".

 

Finally got around to watching your video man (24 hours later than I said I would but it was a busy day !! Hehe)
First off.. Dang !! Over a minute of it was just shaking, whether it was the m15x or the XPS.. Quite a thorough test IMO I'd also like to add that another reason the wobble may seem a lot (even though it's actually less than the XPS) is cause of the lightpipe around the screen edge - that attracts way more attention to its movements than the flat panels on the XPS screen edges.. Thoughts ?
2ndly - The creaking is quite a bit.. Not a deal-breaker for me though, I hear dorm rooms tend to get noisy I agree that it could be the choice of plastics not suiting, hence the friction between the two causes 'squeaking'
Don't have an m15x so not making any calls on this ^ one
c) Great to see that the keyboard flex is near gone.. I know a few gamers who use them to play CS & what not (don't ask me how they do it) so this is good news for those people..

Sorry for the overdue + rep and the long post..
L8rs

EDIT: Sigh.. I forgot to say 'THANX for the video '

 

LOL, glad you enjoyed it. I went back and watched it and realized just how much time I spent shaking the damn thing. I think I kind of tranced out on the whole wobble/squeak aspect and couldn't break free... Maybe I should rename it to the m15x wobble/squeak video and how not to shake your m15x...

 

okay i have the lock here. i ended up not going to the office today so the wife brought it hom for me. ill take a short video and some pics here in a little while for you guys. i double checked with the guy i know that owns the m15x and he said 150% it works perfect with some of the rubber trimmed off..

 

My friend's m15x only hit 77 with the AtiTool stress test. Maybe its because he didn't run it as long as you

 

Damn, really? That can't be right... 77C is what most of us are getting on idle! lol...

 

Sure did enjoy it.. 'tranced out' ? Yeaaaaa.. Thought you were trying to hynoptise us
I'm sure if you drummed on the lid, made the squeaking sound and added sound effects for the wobble it would make for a funny video

A small thought - Any chance we could see some webcam pics ?
*We already know what you look like from your avatar so don't be shy*
Hehe

Edit:
@ zfactor - Awaiting your post/thread before I head to bed

Edit2:
Yay, Four00 posts

 

Ok, here's the webcam snapshot in a relatively dimly lit room with my other monitor giving off a light source. Meh, it's ok quality I guess. The image quality is better in the daytime but it gets more blurry at night. Hell, maybe it's just blurry all the time. I don't really have much experience with these things... No smart ass comments!



And here's one from the daytime... I think the quality is a little better when it's not trying to do all the auto light enhancement in dim environments...

 

You can see more of a grainy quality in the dim snapshots from the webcam (first one)... Anyway, I don't think the webcams have changed at all from the Ripley... In fact, I have a hard time believing this is 2 megapixel...

 

we just got back home. as soon as we put our daughter to bed ill do the think with the lock.. sorry for the delay

 

working on it now..

 

where can i upload this to.. youtube is not agreeing with me right now for some reason.. its been uploading for like 2 hours..?????????????????

 

e.g. metacafe or directly on a 1-click-hoster like rapidshare.com

 

Thanks groove.. The grainy one definitely is quite off with all the auto light enhancements.. Guess I'll just have to have more early morning skyping sessions than late night ones with the family back home

@ zfactor - Don't worry, I went to sleep about a ½ hour later How long is the clip btw ?

Edit: 'You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to groove75 again.' Hehe.. Sorry

 

Those are some really poor quality photos... (not you Groove, of course... You make it look alright! )
Comparing them with the webcam on my previous XPS M1530 is just shocking.

Look at the photos... it doesn't seem to focus. That's exactly the problem I had. It has a fixed focus point and does not adapt focus.

Oh well... Just as long as it games, games, games, games, games...

 

Hey milcs - I asked earlier but I think you were busy or something, when's your m15x coming back from repairs ?

 

Hi again Wraiths, sorry I've missed it.

Honestly, I don't know. For the past two weeks I've been feed the same. "As you can imagine, testing your laptop throughly takes a long time. We can't estimate a shipping date."

So basically, I think they are just stalling and not giving me any solid information. So I don't really know. But as you can see, I sent it back on the 3rd of June. Now we are on the 2nd of July.

So... do you guys think I have reasons to be happy? Or am I just being to harsh for being completely pissed off with the fact that I've been without my laptop for over one month now?

 

Sorry to hear about the state you're in
Hope things start looking up soon..

Ps. It's Wraithers (I have a friend who uses Wraiths to piss me off 'cause he is really bad at gaming & is near computer illiterate ) You didn't know so no worries

 

not that long.. ill try to re-up it as soon as i get home. i tried like 4 times last night and it just kept sitting there. ill try to use one of the others suggested as soon as i get home

 

zfactor, try filefront or filefactory

 

haha.. Hey, would you happen to have any comparison shots from the 1530? I'd be very curious to see a comparison as I can't really judge anything from my own snapshots since I've never really been a big webcam person. I've done some good video conferencing with friends back home over last few days and it worked pretty well with no complaints on the other end but I can't help feeling like there should be additional clarity with a 2megapixel camera... Oh well, I'm satisfied enough with it but I understand if people expected a higher quality cam on such an expensive computer.

Update: Just did a google search and I'm actually finding quite a few people that were less than satisfied with the 1530 webcam quality... http://www.notebookforums.com/thread217837.html

 

Update: Actually I'm going to wait to do the battery tests next week. I need the brightness turned up and a few externals to be plugged in today...

 

ill be home in a few hours its all ready for you i just need to upload it. ill try one of the ones you suggested

 

I'll try to ask my housemate to allow me to take some photos with her M1530.
I'll see what I can do...

 

U GOT IT IN LATE JUNE AND STILL HAVE LIGHTPIPE ON SIDE?
i thot they discontinued that...

 

It thought that was one it the m15x lighting defaults...

They have taken it off from the m17x, giess the screen is bigger so needs more support lol

OB

 

Sorry, I'm reposting this here from another thread because I'm starting to have a hard time keeping track of my data that I leave in other threads...

After more thorough testing, I'll more than likely start a brand new thread on this approach to lowering the gpu temps if people are interested in trying it. Be warned though that I'm sure this voids some part of your warranty if AW were to find out you reflashed your vbios and know that you can permanently damage your card by doing this...

Ok, I think I may be onto something fellas. I've reflashed the vbios twice on my 8800mGTX. Yes, I know it is risky to do this but I'm very familiar with the process. Ok, down to business. From 85E1V, I've started testing at 80E1V and 80E.95V. I just finished testing 80E.95V and 20 more mins of Crysis at 77F which is 2 degress higher ambient temp from last night. My new Max in Crysis is 96C and it appears to be fully stable. I really don't have time to do as much testing or instructions as I'd like but I will be sure to do this next week after Monday which is a big day for me. Here's a screenshot: That's 96C which is down from 101C. Definitely a step in the right direction and what I feel might be a completely adequate solution for some of us to drop our temps a few degrees. I'll keep you updated on my progress...



Compare this with previous...





Identical save game with identical map and identical play.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

ATITool max temp lowered from 104+C to 98-99C. Notice that the first time I did the 104C stress, I only ran ATITool for 9 mins so I might have gotten it higher. I ran the new stress test for 15 mins. That's a 5-6C decrease in temperatures with a very mild lowering of gpu voltage on the reflashed bios. I am VERY pleased with the results so far. NO ERRORS.

New max:



Old max: