[NW] Upgrade the C90S to a 9600M GT 512MB DDR3 [FIXED!]

all done with creating the heat speader. I installed it to the 9600m GT. Now i just have to intstall it into the laptop. For the plate that rests on the new heat speader that goes to be cooled by the fans. Should i put artic silver 5 only on the copper part of that plate, or on the entire plate that is in contact with the new heat spreader?

 

Got the copper for mine this week. I'm gonna take it down to a machine shop to slice it. Depending on how much it costs, I may make them cut two extras.

It is such a pain finding a card that has SOME kind of DOA insurance... I am going with ZeptoUSA, but they won't get any more til next week... It's killing me being without my C90....

danjohnson- what did you come up with to bridge the gap between the memory chips and the copper?

 

I am cutting up about 9 of these heatsinks, if anyone is interested, give me a PM.

 

I need help! I installed the 9600m GT, everything works fine; except I can't install any video drivers. Win Vista only detects the 9600m GT as a generic video card and won't let me install any drivers from laptopvideo2go.com. Does anyone know why this is happening?

and silentheero - i got some 3mm thermal pads from china, from ebay. Seems to do a good job cooling the card.

edit:
problem solved. That is sooo wierd, i had to use drivers 185.20 with the moddified INF file otherwise my card was not detected. Even the newer drivers that support a 9600m GT didn't detect the card >.<.

edit edit:
just some info if anyone is wondering about the temps of my card now. According to SpeedFan, my idle temp is around 65-71C and when in a heavy course of gaming (i.e. CS:S, Killing Floor, Guildwars, Aion, etc...) its goes to 74-76C. Either SpeedFan isn't working correctly or this new copper heat spreader is a god-send and does a amazing job at cooling........and i doubt SpeedFan isn't working =P.

 

Delete Speedfan asap it doesn't work well with laptops. Use HWmonitor instead. Also try the official notebook drivers from nvidia's website if you have problems with them again, I believe the latest is 186.06. Good job on the upgrade

 

Hi,

I received a video card 9600M-GT. I am disappointed because this card is used, so I asked about to the seller. This one is surprised, he was unaware of having it in stock, he said send me another card tomorrow. Wait to see if he is in good faith.

Does someone knows where I could buy a brand new 9600M or 9650M card ?

@+

 

mmh maybe zepto?
here's the message i recieved when i asked about them 2 month ago

"I can sell you the cards. They cost:

9600M GT: €153

9650M GT: €217

Prices are incl. VAT but excl. shipping

Shipping cost about €20"

(btw shipping was meant to germany)

 

i got my card from ebay for $230 shipped. It looked used, but works fine. I just need it to last me 2 more years, until i am done with my schooling and can finally enjoy a desktop again.

Thank you. Also HWmonitor does seems to do a better job. Also, Because the heat temps aren't low enough for me, i'm going to cut a 4-6 inch hole in the bottom of my laptop and mount a very thin fan to act as a venting fan.

 

That should work nicely. Asus really improved the cooling with the C90P. My 8600M GT DDR3 card OCed at 565/1400/900 is 100% stable and only reaches 70C max even in Crysis!! If only the card went further on stock volts...

 

After the C90S...this will hopefully be my last gaming laptop. It has really crushed my trust in the company Asus, not only was it sort of a flop, the worst part was that they abandoned it....I used to love Asus when it was a smaller company, around 8+ years ago. If I didn't have so many issues with the C90S I would of happily upgraded to a C90P as well.

 

He just send me a tracking #.
Seems to be on a good way.
So still waiting ...

 

hehe I kind of did a swap to get mine. Sold my C90S for £600 and bought a C90P with all components for similiar amount. So a free upgrade in a way. Would never have spent extra to get it though lol

 

Could someone explain what are those "very small computer screws" ?
I wonder where to get some .

 

Arg....I should have done that as-well. Would of been cheaper for me than getting the 9600m GT upgrade, >.< But all in due time, i will wait until the next thing after core i7 to get a comp =P.

The screws needed are around 1 to 2 thread sizes smaller than what was on the 8600m GT. You can get them at any hardware store. The best example is if you have a dremel tool, the bit for using the cutting blades, the tiny screw on that is the size you need.

 

Thanks.
Finaly I found them in this store, in France.

Still waiting the new VGA card the seller send. Hope to get it today, tomorrow ... ?

I'm going forward, but with very short steps.

I still wonder why and where using Thermal pads ? Some Artic_Silver paste shouldn't fit ?

 

Welp, my 8600m just gave out and Im thinking of doing the upgrade for a 9600m. Im not very confident I'll be a able to make the heat sink though.

If anyone has spares they are willing to sell me, do tell me. I'll be ordering the gfx card soon.

 

Got my card installed over the weekend, but I am still tweaking it. I have not had good luck with the firmware uploaded. The card I have does not have the same subsystem as Nightwalkers and when I loaded it, it worked but almost immediately there was artifacts and issues. The card is identical physically and spec-wise except for the subsystem. I reflashed the original bios and will try the manual way he lists to see if that fixes it.

 

I manually edited a copy of the original BIOS on my card and that worked. The card is switching fine when it needs it. The problem I am having now is heat. It runs about 68-70* idling but after a few minutes of Left4Dead jumps to 105*. I believe my problem is my own fault. I made .05" copper spacers for the memory chips so they would touch the large copper heatsink. I think that raised the heatsink a mm or two away from the gpu chip. I will buy few cooling pads to put on the chips, getting rid of the spacers I made.

I am still trying to find a 120w power supply! Every company I checked with is out of stock and the ETA keeps getting pushed further and further back... It is frustrating. Any suggestions on where one might be found?

Running with the 90w power supply, I have not had any problems so far, except when playing L4D, the game freezes for a few seconds every minute or so. Pretty sure this has to do with the power supply not getting enough juice to the GPU. Not something I will try again until I get the bigger supply.

 

ok its been 2 months and i got my c90s back from indiana. Now after having to demand my power supply back, im actually able to boot my laptop up. BUT of course theres a damn catch, the new video card they put in isnt being detected, there are no installed drivers. So I assume they put in an 8600m GT, and go to the Asus website, DL it, Extract and install, but apparantly my hardware is incompatible. I search the whole damn internet go to Laptopvideo2go.com and get a modded .inf file to help my driver install along.

Apparantly, according to the only drivers that can be installed, they put a 9650m GT in my lappy. the drivers install without a hitch and dxdiag tells me i have a brand new 9650, but again there is a catch. When im not playing a game there are periodic visual artifacts, and occasional flickering of the lower panels of my LCD. Other than tht its all functional... did Asus do to my laptop, and can it be fixed, should I be worried? Should I ignore all the small little dots and occasional flicker?

 

This is interesting. If asus are now replacing the dead 8600M GT's with 9650MGT's then you now have the very best card for your C90. Is the card equipped with 1GB DDR2 or 512mb DDR3?

To get things straight you have flickering only when "not" playing games or all the time? Maybe your card powers down its voltage but not its clocks resulting in instability. Try to disable powermizer and force the card to run at full speed and therefore full volts all the time. Maybe then your flickering will end. Mind you your battery time will be reduced slightly but that is a small price to pay.

 

Right, when i play games there ARE NO PROBLEMS! But for some reason when on the desktop there are visual artifacts and occasional flickering, mostly the lower display panels. Im pretty sure this is a software issue as before the OS loads there are no artifacts or flickering.

Well Asus did some weird stuff with my laptop, they mailed me back a different AC adaptor (maybe cause 9650 needs more power?) and they gave it back with no drivers installed for the video card. I have yet to open her up to see exactly what they did, but after installing those modded drivers dxdiag says i have a 1GB integrated RAMDAC 9650m GT card. L4D defaulted to significantly higher specs, and ran quite smoothly at nearly max graphics.

 

Now that is cool, same question; is it the 512MB version or 1GB?

 

Have you tried mobile drivers from NV's website?

EDIT: double post.

 

That is the DDR2 version then. Not quite as powerful as the DDR3 card but still a pretty decent upgrade from the 8600M GT. Did you try to disable powermiser?

 

I disabled powermiser and no flickering or artifacts since! (crosses fingers) Ok so now to test this baby once i get a new cooling plate from BB. Anyone know how much of an upgrade this is over the 8600? The 8600 fried itself and my MB after almost 2 years of Warcraft/ FO3

 

I was trying to figure than out myself. Over the DDR2 8600M GT a very good upgrade over the DDR3 8600M GT I am not so sure as the memory can be overclocked to 900mhz and beyond on it giving higher performance than DDR2 can deliver. So it will perform better than a 8600M GT DDR3 stock but both overclocked it might be close but in favour of the DDR3 card. I am glad disabling powermiser worked for you. I hope asus give me one too as my 8600 MGT fried too

 

Just got a brand new antec cooling plate, which i recommend, its liek putting an A/C under your laptop. But anyways, played some L4D, Dystopia and HL2 last night, the card is working wonderfully, but there was a weird issue. every once in a while my game would lag as if it was in slow motion for about a minute then be fine for 3 then do it again... So i restarted my laptop, and after 2 hours of gaming it didnt happen again. Heat issue?

Another quick question, what programs do you guys use to overclock your cards if any? Turbogear?

 

Download HWmonitor to monitor your temps. Then download and install ATI tool. Run the artifact test on ati tool with hwmonitor running in the backround and after 30 minutes you will see what maximum temperature your card will reach. If it is not stable it will artifact resetting the timer on the artifact test and or display yellow lines showing the artifacts.

To overclock I recommend using rivatuner. Overclock only in very small increments and test using ati tools for stability while watching the temps.

 

c90sbrokenheart was your C90 under warranty?
Either way, how much did it cost to have that fixed?

Right now i am sitting with a C90s with a burnt out 8600M GT 512MB. This just happened too:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/11/sony-finally-admits-nvidia-chips-are-borking-its-laptops-offers/
If it costs too much or ASUS is remains obstinate I may just try the old OVEN BAKED GFX Card solution.

I stole the E6600 from my C90S and built a P45 Desktop from it, but with P55 and LGA 1156 coming out soon, I am considering reviving the C90 and building a LGA 1156 system if it makes sense.

I loved the C90s, but I did not love the 8600M GT, and that is why I got an ATI HD4870 in my desktop =P.

 

If it is still within warranty they should replace it. Don't count on the baking your GPU working I tried it and it didn't work lol. Still give it a try though.

 

My 8600M GT died back in March/April 2009, and it was 1.5 years after purchase so I was half a year past my warranty. I asked Gentech and they kindly verified the expired warranty.

I guess I could contact ASUS about it. I bought it back in late August 2007 so I am still less than 2 years out. The only problem is that the laptop won't have a processor in it if I send it for repairs.

 

they charged me nothing and IT WASNT under warranty. It took them a solid 2 months to get my pc back to me though

 

...I'm really feeling glad that my video card died the first week I had my C90s when they were first released. Admittedly though, I had plenty of other problems that forced me to send it into them for replacement parts.

 

Hi,

That's done, a 9600 is running in my C90S.
It seems to be exactly the same as NightWalker one, reading the bios show exactly as it, and I had to mod the perf entries as NightWalker explain.

I got 5348 to 3DMark06 with [email protected] and 9600@600/1500/850.
I'll try soon to go higher with the 9600.
Using TurboGear I hit 3603 with the oldies 6600 and 8600, never higher.

My C90S is fully stock about cooling, I think to try some mod like that.
Anyway this 9600 is average -20°C less than my previous 8600.

Thanks alot to NightWalker who show the way.

So long,

 

I got 4863 with my 9600 running at 500/800/1250 but that is with improper cooling and a 90w power supply. Getting some great thermal material this week to fix the heat issue.

As for the power supply, I don't know what to do... Everyone is out of stock and even Asus has no clue when they will have more. I cannot find a universal adapter at that wattage that seems remotely reliable or even safe.

Besides that, just running normal office and internet functions, it is running at 68-70, and that will probably drop a bit when I get the right cooling material.

 

5348 seems a bit low for your setup. I managed 5717 with just a 8600M GT DDR3 clocked 565/1400/900 and 3.15ghz E6600. Maybe your drivers are out of date.
My C90S managed just under 4500 with DDR2 8600M GT 505/1350/488 and E7500 at 3.25ghz. So 6000 ought to be the very least that is achievable with the 9600M GT DDR3 and E7500...

 

Yes, I know, and 6000 was my aim .

Too much heat for the GPU is the problem : max read was 104 °C and critical temperature is 105 °C. I think the card will slow its frequencies when touching this upper t°C, or so. That could explain this poor score.
Next step for me will be to improve the cooling : first drilling holes in the ace door, then I'll see ... notebook cooler perhaps.

Drivers are 185.66 from LaptopVideo2Go, date 2009-04-02, so not very old, I think.

@+

 

This morning at breakfast, I was thinking about SPEEDFAN.
Does someone try it on ASUS C90S ?
That should be nice to lock GPUs thermal-sensor to the fan.
When I've the time I try it.

edit : unfortunately speedfan shows no fan bad idea

@+

 

Nah. Speedfan does not work. Best way to lower temps dramatically is to drill holes throughout the raised area in the ace door. Then get yourself a Cryo NXZT cooler. Together you will see temps drop a good 20C at least under load. Too bad the C90S isn't as good as the C90P with cooling. With the 8600M GT insanely OC at 565/1400/900 it won't get higher than 70C in gaming or 75 under stress test.

 

Hey havent checked for life in the c90s threads for awhile, glad to see there is still work going on. I looked awhile back and couldnt find any, anyone know where to buy a 9600M gt these days? thanks!

 

Zepto sell them. The version you need is the 9600M GT 512mb DDR3 card that uses SAMUNG not quimodo memory modules. Zepto's are the correct ones. If you shop on ebay check that the memory modules are samsung before you buy.

You must ring zepto to buy the cards as you will not find them offering them for sale online

 

Awsome! That was my problem, I didnt see them so I assumed they were not being sold anymore, I will give them a buzz. Thanks! Is anyone still selling pre-fab'd heatsinks still or have an extra one I can buy? If so e-mail me [email protected] Thanks!

 

I think Mightylobo was offering to sell a few extra ones he had made about a month back. Post around a little more then you will be able to PM him. At 10 posts you may not be able to PM yet.

 

There is also a great upgrade opportunity to the E7500 CPU. See thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=351612

E7500+9600M GT you have yourself one quick C90S!

 

That is the plan hopefully it goes smoothly otherwise I might be posting some more. I just want to be able to play Company of Heroes smoothly so we will see. Thanks King!

 

It's good to see that I am not the only one with high temperatures. I was beginning to get worried. I got the thermal material and applied it this afternoon. I am getting even better cooling at near idle (65* C) but am still topping at 104* under a load like Left4Dead. It would seem that this is normal for the modded setup?

I am designing a external cooling system like King of Interns suggested to help dissipate the heat quickly.

 

Cryo NXZT cooler, yes.
And what about Zalman NC2000, or other coolers ?
NXZT is the best (efficient) for C90S ?

 

My vote is with the Cryo. Especially as you can get a 12v adaptor for it to feed it the full 12V rather than the piddly 5V it sucks from the USB port. I have yet to get that adaptor lol, instead I modded mine by putting it upside down and taping up all the vents apart from the original underside of the fans now underneath the laptop. Seems to increase the power of the airflow directly into the laptop.

 

Hello,

I have 8 currently, 2 are already on Hold for two people and should be shipped by the end of the week.

I am selling just the plate, All cut up and holes ready.

All you have to do is get adhesive tape and the screws. The plate will also be raw, so you might want to do a bit of polishing.

PM me if you have any questions.

Thank you.


PS, If anyone know where to get the screws for the 9600m, do tell...

 

This is great news thanks for chipping in. I am still deciding whether or not to get one from you for a pesky future upgrade at some point. Still waiting on my laptop to return to me with a new GPU so it might come already upgraded .

@C90S Rookie get ordering before the mightylobo is outta stock