L502X modded bioses download (GPU voltages and more!)

there are some updates from the v5

as for the chips damage, you will need to take appart the unit, and watch the motherboard, sometimes there is a little spot over the chip with a tiny bubble wich can be removed with the finger.

anyways thats not allways visible,there are no easy fix for that since you would need to find a compatible chip and replace it, also look at the motherboard for small components labeled as f1, f2,....(fuses) and check if they are blown or not with a multimeter,if they are damaged you can replace or just bridge them to restore the machine functionality.

as for GPU clock and shader clock, I think they are linked for both 525m and 540m, so if you move the shader clock slider, it will do the trick.

so try lowering shader clock until it stop crashing, you can also try underclocking memory clock as last resource too.

 

@Kasar
I'm trying to solve the problem with the power supply.
Damaged chip block the multiplier to the value of 8 CPU-Z
I can stop the multiplier in ME 7.x (e.g value of 20) or lock changing the multiplier?
I have unlocked descriptor.

[sorry for my english, I'm learning ]
Cheers.

 

@MariusB

well, if you have unlocked descriptor, you probably already hard modded the machine in some way.

so you are probably ready for more advanced mods

mmm, I didnt saw any options in ME firmware relating to multiplier, but I managed to unlock BCLK OC from there, if you have unlocked descriptor I supose you already have my OC mod wich is only avalible for people with unlocked descriptor.

mmm depends on the lock you may be able to raise the multiplier on windows using throttle stop, thats how I force my i5 to be allways on max turbo multiplier.

It may works for you if it allow goes higher than 8.

if it still doesnt working, an easy fix like this may work.


How to solve the problem “Dell AC power adapter type cannot be determined” | Jack's space

if your ID chip is fried, you may not be able to try this, but well that would ensure the chip is fried or not, the good thing about this small mod is you would be able to use any generic charger after this mod.

 

@Kasar
Temporarily turned off signal "Bi-Directional ProcHOT" in the BIOS and success CPU-Z
But this is not the solution.
I know now that the limitation is in the power settings. I think overwrites registers.

Btw.
SpeedStep works.
Fan is working properly.

 

CapitianKasar

Can you help me with a mod to my battery pcb "EC chip" so it will be accepted on my E6420 Laptop?

 

@bobbyfisherchina

well, I didnt "hacked" any battery yet, all I did relating battery packs were disasembly some of them and reutilize the working cells on another battery packs wich had faulty cells.

I'm also not sure if it would be as easy as modify the chip info to make it work on ahother laptop.

the battery specs need to the the same, at least voltage ones, also the pins need to be the same.

relating what are you trying to do, you can try buy or build a LPT programmer like I did and read one of the chips.

you can try read one of the E6420 battery chips, and simply write the info on the another one, anyway from what I can see, the battery looks different.

E6420


vs
L502X




As you can see the pins location are different, the l502x's one are on the middle of the battery while the E6420's one is on one of the sides

the voltage looks the same for both of them (11 volts)

anyway, not sure what are you trying to do since the battery housing and connector is different, not sure if you are trying to simply swap the internals into the battery case.

in that case, it would be way easier by just replace/switch the cells and keep the original PCB.

 

Good day,

I've been living happily with an undervolted BIOS from you (which I installed 6 months ago). But I'm now back here because I plan to take my L502X apart clean, repaste and if possible, put heatsinks on the VREGS as you've suggested. The reason is the stuttering is back but only when playing Heroes of the Storm. I think if I keep playing without modding my laptop first, my cpu/gpu or mobo will get fried. Sooooo

what do I use to stick the heatsinks on the VREGs? thermal paste? Or is there some type of glue I should use?

Thanks in advance

 

Ok lol I think I know where the problem lies. I checked nvidiainspector and saw that the GPU Voltage when running a game is 0.98v. I tried to reflash your latest 85 85 mod. It didn't work. Is it possible that the latest nvidia drivers are forcing it to that voltage??


If it's so, I wouldn't know what driver to use since I'm not really sure when it started going back to 0.98v. As of now I'm using 347.09

BTW, I'm a GT 525M user.

[QUICK EDIT] I'm gonna go ahead and roll back to 335.23 (coz its the only "old" driver I have a copy of)
Be back in a few minutes for results.
Results: yep that did it. I'll try playing some games.. If it stutters ill be back.

 

@mfox143

you should ask the users wich did the heatsinks mod, I didnt tried it yet.

also. do you get the same voltage readings with HWmonitor while playing?

 

I haven't tried HWMonitor. I'll stick to an old driver for now.. Will test this for a whole day. Then if all goes well, I'll retest the new driver.

I think there's a slight chance that nvidiainspector was giving a false reading. For about 1 minute it was showing 0.98v when i was playing LoL (even on the old driver), but reverted back to 0.85 soon after.

[QuickEdit]
Besides since I i reverted the driver, the temperature reading in HotS went down from 75 to 70

 

now this is weird, I tried updating the driver again, the voltage is now 0.85. ahahahahaha

maybe I was hysterical after all.. anyways, how do I contact the users who did the heatsink mod? or at least, can you give me the forum thread for the specifics of the VREGs heatsinks?

thanks in advance, and btw, happy holidays.

 

Does anyone have the archive.zip that was linked here, cause the link is down

 

Do you mean archive with kexts for OSX on L502x? I can create you one from my own installation (Yosemite, UEFI mode, not BIOS, so Clover instead of Chameleon). Everything working perfectly (not counting Nvidia - and sometimes shutdown doesn't work as expected, I'm investigating if did something wrong in BIOS) especially when changed WiFi to Dell 1550 (AC+BT4 natively).
Oh. And don't expect iMessage and FaceTime working. ATM there's new security test which can't be completed by modern hackintosh

 

Hi, guys I'm using moded bios and it's works fine, except when I change to RAID, NO HDD found in BIOS, please help!!!!

I'm think I tried all options in BIOS to make it work and it's not working, but as soon as I change back to AHCI all HDD found and works fine, ATA also works fine, but not RAID, my goal is to activate intel smart response, replacing dvd bay with small 32GB ssd. One of the requirements to achieve it, is to turn the RAID ON.

BIOS I USE:
Custom voltage moded A12 bios mod for gt540m with advanced menus for L502X DOWNLOAD from mediafire /// MIRROR by ximinez
MD5 checksum: A0DAB7E7FB91BA9E2CD64C3E76D048F3
mod version: version 6
BIOS version used: A12
this bios mod has been tested by guessyet
2D PROFILE: 0.83v
3D PROFILE: 0.85v
notes: Voltage modded A12 BIOS for gt540m with a nice set of extra options,plus native speedstep and updated CPU microcode,intel vbios update to v2137, sleep FIX for OSX,computrace unlock ,serial tag changer and RAID, handle the new options carefully!Recomended for GT540M users!

 

@determo13

I dont have the HW setup to test raid by myself, however I think someone who tested it before said there was aditional steps required to make it work.

here you have more info https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-UEFI-Dell-XPS-15z-L511z-modded-BIOS-and-HOWTO?page=158

and this

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/641688-l702x-modded-gpu-bios-60.html#post9643128

 

Thanks for info will do some research, the problem can be replicated easily with no harm to OS.
Just change mode to RAID, save and exit, instantly go back to bios,see NO HDD found whatsoever.... change back to default, save exit - everything back to normal....
I just doubt that there can be any step than flashing another bios....
Or maybe I'm wrong and to make laptop see HDD in RAID mode need first to mess with UEFI?

 

@determo13

basically you have to play a little with the efi shell from what I saw.

at least you need to enter some commands to add some missing boot devices to the boot list.

then you should be able to use them fine, anyway those changes may be lost if you restore BIOS defaults or flash another BIOS with the /cvar option enabled (/cvar option erase all the user changes made on the setup except some ones like password or computrace)

 

After 3 years of research (not really) and testing (not really)

I think I have deciphered a "temporary solution" to the famous L502X Stutter.

It only seems to happen when your AC adapter is plugged in and the battery is fully charged.

So I'm not sure what to make of this. Hahahaha.

Dell XPS15 L502X i5-2410m
GT525M Undervolted 0.85/0.85 using captain's BIOS mods.

I'm sure that the stutter doesn't happen due to high temps. Because just now, I repasted and cleaned the inside of the laptop resulting in a 10degC temperature drop. Basically, this is my temps for Heroes of the Storm (it's my test game because it's the one I actually play all the time)

Before repaste: 70-75 degC (depending on the room temperature)
After repaste: 63-65 degC

AND ON BOTH CASES, the stutter will and always happen, except for when I actually unplug the AC adapter and let it use my battery.

 

mmm, well, probably the fact that while running on battery power it give some less performance also affects ^^

even forcing the system to high performance, I noticed that as soon as I unplug the power cord it decrease on performance on a game.

it was less noticieable while forcing max performance on battery mode with some apps like throtle stop.

 

Slightly offtopic - I have flashed with the advanced A12 for 540 on my 502x - it seems to work just fine - now my problem is - i don't remember the bios pwd I used 2 years ago..... is there anyway to reset that ?

 

In example - if I going to mess with efi shell and setup RAID array and then probably my OS would stop working. So just to make everything back to normal I would need to go into the BIOS restore defaults and done?
Asking because I really want to setup this thing and play with it, but don't really want to lost my OS.
In the end if it good to go, I would post back full guide on how to make it work so everyone can do it

Basically I really like my l502x but downside is the HDD speed and high costs of SSD, so hybrid(HDD+small SSD in SRT mode) would solve that problem.

 

@540is

well, if you installed the BIOS two years ago, you may notice there are some BIOS updates with more options avalible

anyway, relating password in UEFI bioses, it cant be disabled with easy methods like remove the battery.

the only way I noticed the BIOS password went away were flashing a whole image of the chip without password.

anyway, there could be a way of doing this via software.

but I need to test some stuff first.

and I also need you to test something.

first download this:

L502X_OVERCLOCKING_PATCH_BY_CAPITANKASAR

extract the contents of that folder

then I need you to create two more bat files inside that folder

(a bat file is a regular .txt file renamed to .bat)

the first file will be named

read_bios.bat

with the following content

Code:

@echo off
echo.
echo.
echo Press enter to dump your bios
pause
fptw64.exe -BIOS -D bios_bak.rom
echo.
pause

then create another one named write_bios.bat

with following content

Code:

@echo off
echo.
echo.
echo Press enter to flash your bios dump
pause
fptw64.exe -BIOS -F bios_bak.rom
echo.
pause

after both files are created, run the first one (read_bios.bat)

if the comand is sucessfull, a file named bios_bak.rom should be created


if that works, then procceed to try to run the write_bios.bat

if that works too, we may be able of remove the bios password with some method.

meanwhile you try this, I will procceed of creating dumps of my bios with the password setting enabled and disabled and compare the dumps, if I can locate the bytes responsable of the bios password setting, I may be able of edit your bios dump, disable the password, and then send it back to you for flashing.

there is a small chance of brick with this method, however, this kind of brick can be easly removed with the recovery cdrom avalible at the first post.

so consider also to burn a cdrom with that in case something goes wrong.

let me know your results with the bat files.







@determo13

yes, it should work like that.

and yes I'm sure also other users will apreciate a guide for RAID setup

I can also link or add it to the first post and credit you

 

re: HDD+SSD

why not just clone your HDD into your SSD and then install the SSD on the main SATA port. and the HDD on the caddy.

I'm pretty sure RAIDing them will still bottleneck the SSD to the HDD's speed.

just an imo.

 

captain i have a question,

this "stutter" problem is really annoying me and now I'm desperate to risk the integrity of my laptop.

I'd like to try overclocking it a bit just to see how that holds up.

Any suggestions on the clock speeds? This'll be my first ever OC soo I have no idea what to do. ) Only thing I know is to download MSI Afterburner hahaha

at the moment I'm usually playing HotS at 60-65 degC.

 

what do you mean with stutter?

its just running slow on demanding apps like games?

or in general.

I noticed a bug wich happened after entering into the sensors/temperatures menus causing the system going slower, and that needed bios load setup defaults and reconfigure other settings while staying away from that menu.

relating to OC, well, this is what I do:

set everything on max performance, both BIOS and windows power plan, I also set the GPU to max performance in NVIDIA control panel and also I tweaked the intel control panel properties.

to enable BCLK overclocking you need to get rid of the descriptor, this can be done from just a pinmod documented at the first topic, or also by external reprograming of the bios chip.

you can also use throtlestop app to force the cpu to max performance all the time.

and also obiusly MSI afterburner to tweak the NVIDIA GPU.

other hints is to keep the temps low by having clean heatsinks/fan and installing a optional cooling pad.

and allways use the AC power.

with all previous steps you should be taking the max performance from the laptop

 

Stutter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24N4ipebCAs

this is already a know problem with L502Xs. So far the only workaround is your undervolted BIOS.

back then (about 1 year ago), it would happen on League of Legends. and I found your BIOS mod, installed and the stutter crash was gone.

and now a year later, it's back when I'm playing Heroes of the Storm. (this game is more demanding, but im playing on all low settings), it would happen at random, and only happens if the laptop is plugged in

I dont really plan on overclocking the cpu cause I don't think it's the problem.

Can you give me your exact clock speeds for your GPU OC? I'll make them my maximum values (I'll assume that you have a better cooling system and stuff)

One last thing, up to what operating temperature can I consider "safe" for my GPU and CPU.

 

oh, that crash.

well, that is basically the famous GPU crash.

my settings probably will not help you since not two GPUs are the same.

I am running my gt525m at 630 mhz core (default was 600 for the gt525m so it is a little overclocked) in your case, I think you will need to underclock until the crash is gone.

about the temps, when I initially bought the PC the gpu ran easly on 90º

now after undervolt and cooling tweaks, it ussually never reaches over 76º

I would try to lower at least below 90º or 85º

 

oh ok.. i was actually playing around with afterburner last night.. overclocking just made the gpu crash more. so I don't think it's an option. I'll try underclocking speeds 1 by 1, or at the same time. So far 580/880 clock speeds still crashes.

BTW, is it normal that when i reboot my laptop, the gpu speeds go back to stock? or am i doing something wrong?

[EDIT] And one more thing, is it also normal that MSI Afterburner can't detect the voltage on the GPU?

 

yes, msi dont detect GPU voltage, to check voltage I use HWmonitor

and yes if it crash or you dont save the profile in MSI afterburner, it returns to default.

reducing the speeds 1 by 1 will take so long, I would reduce the speed by 5 or 10 mhz until it stop crashing.

and when you find your stable point you can try play with smaller mhz ammounts to adjust it better.

 

no what i meant was when i reboot the laptop, the clocks go back to stock. and id have to run msi afterburner again to underclock it. is that normal?

[EDIT] WOO! I'm currently stable at 570/870.. yeeay..

 

yes, it is normal, you will have to allways open and set your clocks manually with MSI afterburner unless you hardcode the new clocks into the GPU vbios wich is not recomended unless they are really tested.

 

oooh okay.. damn the 570/870 gives up after about 5 good hours of playing ahahaha.. I think i gotta lower it a littlemore

[EDIT] Another thing, what's the RPM limits on our fans?

 

@mfox143


try the fan trick from my first post and you will know the max ,)

change 40 to -> 02

 

Hi again,
Have anyone succeeded to boot in RAID mode on dell xps l502x?
I've flashed my bios with unlocked RAID option and tried to follow this guide to boot

but it's seems I can't see any SATA devices once RAID is enabled
maybe it's only works in L702x?
followme seemed to have it working with moded l702x....
https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-UEFI-Dell-XPS-15z-L511z-modded-BIOS-and-HOWTO?page=158

Can anyone guide me how to make it working? I just need to boot with RAID controller enabled...

 

can help me remove password Bios

 

I know how to remove them, but my method involves hardware mods, so not sure if interested.

 

Is the solution makes an problems

 

I tested it and it works, but it need a external programmer.

 

can Tell me Steps and external programmer

 

@ahmedshiko

everything is explained at the first post.

basically the steps would be

1 - get a L502X flash dump without password (I can provide one)
2 - build a LPT programmer or buy one (Instructions to build one are at first post)
3 - take appart the L502X and desolder the chip
4 - attach the chip to the external programmer
5 - flash the modified dump to the chip (its also recomended to unlock the descriptor of the dump before flash it)
6 - remove the chip from the external programmer and solder it back to the L502X motherboard
7 - have fun

 

can explained pictures

 

there is already pictures of it on the first post......

also some members had success already with this method, if you need more info or you have questions about some specific step, just let me know.

 

I'm still getting the freeze on stock clock. Even if I reduce it to 650, 600, or even 500. It stops freezing at 450 though, but that's way to low. That's how low I had it before modding my bios.
I am using V6 of the 0.83, 0.85 A12 bios. I have checked HWmoniter and it has changed my voltages. And my Dell symbol is of an eagle. Though I still freeze in games. There is a change though, instead of it freezing and I have to shutdown my whole pc, most of the times now it just freezes and I must task manager it, or the game crashes by itself. Any help would be appreciated.

 

mmm, usually flashing bios, and in some cases also reducing the clock speed, is enough.

your case seems to be different.

if I would be you, I would try also underclocking the GPU memory try set it to 850 mhz instead to 900 and check if you have better results.

you may also need to take appart the system and check if the heatsink is properly attacked and is cooling all the GPU memory units and the GPU core itself.

installing heatsinks on the voltage regulators seems also did the trick for some people.

also if you are going to take appart the machine, clean the dust from the heatsink and it will run better.

if nothing works, and your dedicated GPU still crashing you will need to replace the motherboard or just use the integrated graphics (intel graphics instead nvidia dedicated GPU)

 

At the same time, take the time to repaste with proper cooling paste. That made my L502x a _lot_ cooler.

 

need change my battery best brand 9cell or 6 cell

 

mmm, I would go for the 9 cell battery, I just have the 6 cell one, but I'm not satisfected with the battery time duration, specially after 40% battery wear

also the 9 cell gives better laptop inclination and cooling relating the comments.

 

Looking to setup RAID-0 SATA 3 SSDs in Win7 on a L502X with GT540M. Has anyone successfully done this and validated TRIM is operational on the RAID setup?

 

hi Captainkasar
i'm using ur bios since last year and it really helped me alot getting rid of my BSOD error and game crashes

but recently i got into bigger trouble...

my laptop is tripping off suddenly anytime... sometimes it runs for and hour and some time 6-7 hour... but sometime it will not even last 10-15 mins

suddenlly it tripps off without any warning

i read few online fixes and tried them all....but no luck yet... it still trips off need your help

Things i've tried so far
~cleaning dust inside my laptop
~removing dust filters
~changing thermal paste...i read somewhere that its coz of my thermal paste dried off so i cleaned old paste and applied new..

please help waiting for your response

i am using DELL XPS L502X
i5 2450m
GT540m underclocked to lowest CoreClock 355 Mhz & MemoryClock 450 Mhz
6Gigs Ram

 

@
capitankasar

problem light
can replace cable

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-Del...444?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ac21ba4b4