MXM Xperiment

So, Ice-Tea (owner of www.mxm-upgrade.com) was kind enough to send me a 7900GS Arima Special MXM video card, to experiment with the C90S.

Turns out that the only VGAs you will be able to use are proprietary C90 cards, since the heat spreader on the card is not transferable to another card (since you can't remove it from the card that it is on.)
Therefore the fate of the upgradibility of this notebook is based entirely on Asus making C90 cards, since any card from anywhere just won't do.
My problems may have been due to the fact that the 7900GS is an arima special card, so encourage people to still try different MXM-II cards as well, to be sure, but don't expect to use any old card you want in this computer, it is up to Asus to make the new cards.

 

Why exactly do you have to use the Asus heat spreader?

 

To be fair, MXM ain't made so the consumers can upgrade easily, it's for the manufacturers. And also, the Arima Special card is just that, special. A regular MXM II might, MIGHT, work better. Fujitsu-Siemens notebooks tend to use mxm, so if you have one of those or have a friend who does, try it out.

I have a question though: Is there room for a full MXM III card there, or just the Arima special?


Oh, and where have you hid Ted the Penguin?

 

Well I still like the C90 but....

You can upgrade the memory!! (as long as you use these unknown memory modules)

You can upgrade the processor!! (as long as you use the conroe processor)

You can upgrade the video card!! (as long as you use ours and only ours)

[Homer's voice] Mmmmm.... Corporate Manipulation [/Homer's voice]

 

i was never gonna upgrade the video card anyway, but nice job for testing it.

looks like this laptop may not be different than any other laptop but then again, personally i dnt care, cuz its much faster than any other mobile laptop and will be for a while

 

That's the problem with most manufacturers. They sell kinda-MXM-but-not-quite cards all the time. But if the heatspreader doesn't fit I would try to modify it to make it work. Only if it's a really nice card, though

 

It isn't that it doesn't fit, it is that it can't be removed from the card that comes with the C90. Basically, Asus produces the cards with a built-in heat spreader, not one that is part of the C90 or separate altogether. The Arima special fits perfectly, such that anything bigger won't fit, so no MXM-III. You have to use the heat spreader because that is how the heat sink is connected. (The heat spreader attached to the MXM screw holes and the heat sink attaches to the the heat spreader screw holes, both of which are completely different.)

 

different heat spreader should be all you need

what cant be removed from the card btw?? I had mine taken apart completly and took pictures of the gpu in my review.

 

Are you saying this doesnt come off???

??


thats mine,... off

and here is the bare gpu



So you have me confused on what cant be done.

For a different card you will proably need a different heat spreader, but all the other stuff should be fine and fit.

 

I don't see how you did that, since I took a screwdriver to mine and practically tried to pry it off...the card looked like it was ready to crack so I stopped. mine wasn't about to budge.

 

Still you should have known from my review anyways. I have had those pictures and info posted forever now.

Bad Alex spreading misinformation. (sarcasm intended)

 

test it test it

 

Most of the thermal adhesives are much easier to remove when hot. People use things like hair dryers to heat them up the heatsink (and thus, the thermal paste) in order to pry the heatsink off.
I can confirm that the hair dryer heatsink removal method works, as I did it to replace the GPU heatsink on my ATI 9700 Pro AIW card.

edit: I'd really appreciate if you tested this, I don't really think Asus will be too keen on making lots of readily-available-to-consumers C90S upgrades...

 

I don't have any thermal paste though, so removing mine in that manner is sort of not an option...since I won't have anything to replace it with. However, I think there is probably still a way to test it.

Also, practically speaking, I am in the situation of the average consumer of the C90. Perfectly capable of doing it, but lacking the materials to make this operation simple at all. Essentially, to the common consumer the heat spreader isn't easily removable. I'll do my best to try it though.

 

Your a reviewer saying you can't test a product because you don't have thermal paste.

I'll withhold my disgust and just try to help.

Fry's electronics, tigerdirect, best buy, circuit city, even radio shack.

If you've got one of these in the neighborhood then you can get thermal paste.

 

Just fire up Real Time HDR Demo + 2xPrime95 for half an hour, then try to take the heat spreader off.

Replace with some AS5 afterwards....

 

I know where to get it, but what I am saying is, the average user is not going to want to go out of their way for something like that (which they may not even know how to use if they have never built a desktop or modded a laptop). Also there is a limit to the amount of time that I am able to have this part. Keep in mind that reviewers are still just regular forum users. Not that I'm not knowledgeable about these things, but you can't automatically assume all of us have things like that lying around.

 

I would like to have confirmation that it works as proof of concept. Then we can go into who can/should try it.

No one else owns a MXM card besides the 8600 that they could try in their C90?

 

I was just messing with you. But your right the average user wouldn't have any interest in this. Most will just go with whatever graphics card comes with their notebook.

In the future though, when your trying to remove a heatsink and it won't budge.

Heat is what you need. Whether its running the notebook till its fairly hot then immediately removing the part or heat applied with a hair dryer.

 

Heh, gave me a heart attack there

Anyways, it should come off and the heat sink should be pretty universal.

Compare the screw hole positions in this GO 6800 to the screw holes of the 8600 in question.

 

Oh, it will fit if I can get it off, I just need to get new thermal paste to apply, then do that whole thing, then I can test again.

 

It's not thermal paste that they used. It's a thermal PAD. It's the same sort of thing you find on desktop CPU heatsinks now since the manufacturers got smart and stopped giving free syringes of heatsink paste that you'd use only a dab of and end up stockpiling.

It is generally a BAD idea to use thermal PASTE on a laptop since the clearance between some of these heatsinks and the actual thermal surface is sometimes a bit more than what you would find in a traditional PCs. Also, heatsink paste is sometimes runny whereas a pad is not.

The pad adheres to the silicon a fair bit more strongly than paste. *That* is why you had trouble taking it off, but at the same time it goes to show how much the heatsink now conforms to the surface. On a desktop, sometimes it's easier to slide the heatsink off rather than pry it off.

The "easiest" way to take it off is to let the system run and take it off while it is still warm and loose (or use a hair-dryer as someone previously mentioned). I use the word "easiest" loosely since while it is easy to take off, the danger is that if you damage the thermal pad, you will need to replace it with the same type to ensure you don't run into problems.

 

If it isn't thermal paste then what is the silver residue in Vicious' pictures?

 

Alex, the heatsink for your gpu either has a thermal pad or arctic silver. If you paid for arctic silver ask if they put it on the gpu as well, if not then yours has the stock thermal pad and can be reused. It will also have them on the ram chips under the gpu heatspreader.

 

The pictures was mine in its stock condition. I has paste for the gpu core, but pads for the ram.. The reason for this is obviously (in my opinion anyways) that the gpu core is flush against the heat spreader as the highest point on the gpu, while the ram is shorter, so the pads are used to close the gap, also you just dont put thermal past on ram , but I didnt mod it, thats how it came.

 

If it is a thermal pad on yours, Alex, you're in a bit of trouble. They can be removed by the heat method, but it's difficult, and, at least when I take them off, they often shred partially and leave little bits of gunk and residue behind, forcing you to clean off the surface extremely well before using it again, which is time consuming and aggravating.

edit:

Seems to work well enough on this laptop, as a lot of people have it this way already.