G50VT-X1 Maxed

Before anybody even pitches me crap for maxing out a 3 year old lappy, let me say that I've spent a total of $800 even with shipping and a tube of Arctic Silver 5. That's not even taking into account all the money I'll get back selling the old parts high. I'm poor and I've never been able to buy a gaming laptop in my life, so spending 3x that on a new one was never an option. It took me a lot of research to pull this off and I bought everything on eBay and craigslist over 3 weeks time. No BS on these costs, seriously.

Asus G50VT-X1 - Stock with p8400, 4gb pc2-6400, yadda yadda
Came with: Razer Naga MMOG mouse, Rocketfish steel textured mouse surface, Creative 7.1 headset, targus large bag and matching fan stand, wired Xbox 360 controller (black), an extra wireless mini mouse, 8gb USB drive and even a 150watt power inverter for car use. All for $400 on craigslist.

Upgrades purchased since 6/24
Intel x9100 CPU $50 shipped from eBay (and a hard fought 3am victory it was)
GeForce 260m GTX from G60 $107 shipped from eBay (was poorly labeled by it's serial number rather than model)
Crucial 64GB SSD for the second SATA + 8GB PC2-6400 RAM $160 shipped, Newegg (bought as a set with coupon)
7800mah 9-cell battery $48 shipped, eBay
Targus 180watt universal laptop power supply $43 shipped, Amazon

So yeah, I know I could buy a Blueray drive, but screw disc media. It's still not a new laptop, buy I doubt there's any lappy at that price that can even touch the performance. I'm just waiting for the last couple of parts to arrive before I run my final analysis and find the most comfortable clock speeds. I also have a t9550 in inventory, so if the x9100 is too hot with the 260m, I could just OC the 9550 more, the caches are the same and the board caps at 3.6 anyway I believe.

 

I bought my G73JH for around 800 ..why does that not count?

I do own a g50vt-x5 as well though.

 

The lappy by itself sure for that price. However, it's the extras that aren't really worth it. This laptop you would probably be better off and save the bit for something else.

Lastly, I can only say that it's a nice mod swapping out those old parts in a laptop. The G50 series are the best designed IMO. Few people here have done similar mods. However, some of those parts like the AC adapter or SSD can be used later so factoring them out of the equation its about 600 its decent.

 

That's a really good buy on the G73, but I didn't find one at that price when I was looking. Also, bear in mind that I'm not paying $800 for the final product, I've spent that much so far including an upgraded battery and power supply. I'll be able to resell my old CPU and GPU for more than the upgrades cost, so my final cost will be lower. I'm hoping to get between $250-300 back from the old parts that were replaced. The 9800m in particular still goes for top dollar for some reason.

That i5 system on newegg won't have the SSD or the other nice features I'll have at less total cost. Also, the 540m is less powerful than a 260m GTX (less cores, lower in it's respective series) and does not support DX11 fully (it's based on a modified Fermi DX10 core) even though it's a 500 series card, so a lesser card in every way. Considering it's a gaming laptop I'm after, I'm pretty happy with what I have.

Hate to go against the grain, but new does not always equal better. Computing comes down to throughput and in this case, the x9100 is a better gaming CPU than that particular i5 with double the cache size and the 260m especially when overclocked will make benchmarks the 540m won't touch.

 

Aww crap, I'm seeing reports that the G53 screen can be swapped into the G50. If I sell my parts high, I could make this thing full hd on the same budget. Ridiculous? Not as much as people who tune new Beetles.

 

you can get full hd while doing normal stuff but not with games, you will kill the GTX260M on 1080P (main reason I bought a G53SW, 260M have showed its age)

 

damn that was a good deal

 

Well, older/lower end games too. I play some WoW and some LoL between shooting people in the face, so really I could 1080p a large percentage of my total use.

 

Touche, it is all about finding them.

However, that goes without saying you would have to "find" stuff for the G50 as well. Hey, if you can get your money back on most of the stuff then that is great and I would probably do the same in that case. Either way, good luck and as long as you're happy to hell with everything else lol.

 

The real bummer about these G-series lappys is that Asus doesn't seem to ever make a model that is "perfect" unless you order every single option. After reading your post nadcicle, I was looking at the newer models and just like the last two series, you have to option in stuff like SSDs and even a decent size battery.
I know that stuff like batteries, storage and anything else that isn't CPU, RAM or GPU are all secondary stuff, but I would sure give up an LED or two to just have it perfect in every model.

So I guess the short answer is I am pretty happy that I bought low and upgraded. When I'm ready for an new system, I can just take my new battery and my SSD from this one.

 

If I recall correctly the cpu on this laptop model never had temp issues and since its a extreme cpu you can use throttlestop to overclock changing the multiplier instead of the fsb like you would have to do for the t9550.

Personally I would have shopped around a little longer, the temps for the g5x series graphics card always kept me away from picking one up myself.

 

I was looking over at the GPU swap post and looks like the people who properly installed theirs were actually getting pretty good temperatures with the better thermal paste. I mean, 78C isn't exactly cold, but it's nowhere near the burn point either. I guess we'll see once I get it installed and the clocks and voltage where I want them.

 

Good looks on the 260m, I've been trying to find one that cheap but kept finding one that's $500

 

Hmm you sure that isn't in the mod thread done by Forge? I don't recall anything near those temps without a vent mod.

Course since your laptop has no warranty thats a decent thing to look into, forges vent mod looked like how the laptop should have shipped stock.

 

Well, I was actually planning on doing Forge's vent mod, but the post I was referring to was actually in the 260m swap topic. A couple of people seemed to get pretty low temps just by using Arctic Silver 5 and making a good connection with the heat sink. All of the people getting temps over 100C seem to also have had trouble with their install.

I'm actually pretty handy at case mods for cooling, as I've been the dude who shows up to a LAN party with a crap laptop with fan duct-taped to the side for many years. That's a joke btw, there's actually never any tape involved, but you get the idea.

 

I just read a bunch of the topics on case mods, I have to say: Dremel Tool. Seriously. All of the guys who used everything from hacksaws to soldering irons, that is epic as hell, but seriously, buy a cheap Dremel set. That is just plain nuts attacking your gaming lappy with such industrial strength tools.

I'm using a lapdesk with elevated fan I picked up at BigLots (ghetto fabulous).

Hopefully that will solve the cooling issue with some added flow through the fake woofer port and additional vents added over the CPU, GPU and HDD.

 

I wouldn't even worry about adding other vents. The cpu and gpu use the same heatsink and fan and lowering the temps of those two things decreases temps across the board for the laptop.

 

Sorry for being a n00b, but I could use a little help if anyone is reading this who's done the upgrade already.
I have everything I need, (260m, Arctic MX-4, Dremel tool, circuit probe & pick set, bootable USB drive) but I'm having trouble finding the definitive answer on drivers and flashing procedure.

I've read damn near 100 pages on this between the swap procedure topic and other similar ones, so I'm only asking to be sure. Problem is the topics are old and recommend old drivers. What I need is this:

1. What driver is currently best for the 260m?
2. Do I still need to modify the .INF even though nVidia now releases mobile compatible drivers?
3. Assuming my 260m is perfectly manufactured and has no heat issues, what are the best voltages/clock settings I should aim for?

I know this is a dead horse and most users have already replaced their G50s. I'll make a new thread if I have to, just don't want to be the latest in a long line of people over the last 3 years who have posted "New here, how do I swap in a 260m?" If there were any recent info on the above questions, I wouldn't be asking.