Official Studio XPS 13 & 16 MODIFICATION thread!

This thread is for all sxps 1340 & 1640 owners that would like to share or make any modifications to their studio xps laptops, (internal mods, cosmetic mods, skins, paint, stickers, copper mods, performance, any mods!!!)

If you have any pictures to share of how unique your system looks now or how you applied any changes feel free to post.

The only mods I have done are:
Copper mod
overclock processor from 2.4 to 2.7
slighty overclocked 9400mg

I would love to do as much as I can to make this system unique. I hope overs will join.

BTW I hope someone out there tries to drill a few more horizontal slots on the air vent (more towards the bottom) so we get a better airflow.... If anyone out there knows how to do it withour ruining the look of it let us know please

 

you should change the title to XPS 1340 & 1640 as the cases are very similar so im sure case mods could be shared for the most part and internals possibly too.

I for one would love to see someone make a piece that lowers the vents to have more pointing down ones for better ventilation... modding the fans to be more powerful.

etc.

also there are mini fans available that can be installed inside, id love to make a chipset fan mod for this baby

http://www.sunon.com/mmfan/mmfan_e.htm

 

I was thinking of renaming it too but I dont see that option when I click edit. I think its only moderator can change it or rename it, or maybe im wrong mind telling me where to look in order to change thread or delete it and make a new one "'Official Studio XPS 13&16 MOIDIFICATIONS thread"

2. That would he helpful for xps16 to have those fans. But whats really realistic is drilling more slot holes on the air vent to move it a lil lower like you said!!! I also had this idea for 2 months put kinda gave up with lack of hardware tool knowledge. I dont want to make it ugly lol. But im all for it!!!

If you want just let me know how to retitle the thread or just create one yourself and pm me and ill join

 

Do you think we could jam this fan onto the southbridge of the 1640?

 

I think you have a good chance since its only 3mm thin. But I never saw the ati gpu.. If it works you have to make sure you have holes directly on bottom of the panel, if none are in that specific place, drill them Im guessing and also im guessing a place to plug in the fan to power it...

Btw any tips how on how to rename the thread or its upto moderator?

 

I think its already been discussed endlessly that there isn't any real way to remove the heat around the south bridge on the 1640.

As for renaming the thread, I'm pretty sure you can do it, look closely after the title, there should be an edit button IIRC.

 

I wonder how we could wire the fans in. There's plenty of holes at the bottom of the XPS, maybe we can just install tons of them if there's enough clearance.

 

What did you use to overclock it to 2.7Ghz?
I tried the NV utility but whenever i clocked it the XPS just froze.

 

Found the the renaming option but everytime I rename it and save changes, then refresh the page it goes back to old title maybe this needs approval from mod?

As for a real way to take off heat from 1640. everyone should do a copper mod! that is real! I did it on my low end 9400mg and it helped a lot! you should deffinetly try it on your ati!!!

I used Nvidia performance tools. (its same as Ntune) But I found out the hardway when I download Ntunes specificly it always gets my systems stuck nomatter what! and if I download performace tools its all ok. Its funny because in performance tools its really ntune but it never gets stuck!
as where to download the performance tools to this link:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_system_tools_6.05.html

if your processor is 2.4 you'll see on settings it will be 267 with 9.0 or 9.5 multiplier just raise then number to 287 or more, figure out by trying slowy like increasing it in tens until you get the bsod and then lower it by like 20points to make sure your always stable!

 

I changed the thread title for you... lemme know if you want it changed to something else.

 

Thank You, Thank YOU!!!!

 

how does this affect throttling? or power saver mode if any

 

If your asking about overclocking: I havent checked times on battery. But if there is any difference its very unnoticable, as for temperatures while idle or just surfind the web they are about the same maybe 1c higher if your gaming ofcourse it gona get hotter but i never had my cpu over 75C after 1 hour of playing crysis (ofcourse all low settings)... but the copper mod really helps as soon as my temps rise when understress they go away in matter of half a minute to full minute to their idle temps which are cpu 40-42c gpu 42-45c.
So copper modding really helps also. but processor speed is noticable from 2.4 to 2.7, not a lot but I can see the difference

See copper helps alot because there are no other cooling methods for laptops other than heatsinks and heatsinks use thermal pads which are bad heat conducters,,, if you take them off and apply thermal paste to both sides of copper shim and then place the copper shim instead of thermal pads, the heat will transfer a lot better from gpu to the heatsinks itself making cooling a lot better.

 

I was wondering if it was possible to OC as well as undervolt.
Also, I noticed you said you did a copper mod on your laptop. I'm not aware of what that is. I know there's a thermal paste mod for the xps 13, and the 1330 has a copper mod, but does the xps 13 have a thermal pad that can be replaced?

 

the 1330 stock doesnt have a copper mod. you've seen people do a copper mod on 1330, thats the same rules I used to do a copper mod. Basicly Ive dont thermal paste on cpu( as5 paste ) but if i remove the thermal pad from the GPU it will have a gap and heat sink will not touch it... this is due to nvidia chipset being set a lil lower than cpu... Basicly I took off the thermal pad put a copper piece to use instead of a thermal pad. I applied as5 thermal paste on both sides of the copper shim and set in on the gpu then applied the screws to hold the heatsink in place. I would recommend using mx-3 thermal paste as its a lil better by 1C but the main thing it wont conduct electricity so it wont damage anything.

Note ofcourse if you do this you will void your warranty, unless if you do it the smart way, if you ever need to do any labor on your laptop in future, just buy same color thermal pad, and before the onsite tech comes take out the copper mod and make it look stock lol.
Undervolting is deffinetly possible but I know nothing about it.

To be honest people make a bigger deal about heat problems than they really are. Yes it gets pretty hot when under great stress but thats all. do a copper mod and ur good. or drill the Sh**t out of the air vent so it has more air slots for air to come out of

Always Glad to help

 

Alex, 1640 owers cant do a copper mod on the GPU as it has direct contact with the heatsink. It doesnt use a heatpad as per lower end GPU's.

1640 owners should still replace the thermal compound on the CPU & GPU though as this does make a big difference over the rubbish dell use.

 

I wasnt aware of that. but yes putting a better thermal paste like mx-3 would still help..
I guess we gotta wait for someone with balls who can make some more slots on the air vent then....

it sucks that no one is really trying to mod or make their sxps unique

 

I have been tempted to modify my 1640's base plate and vent but I think I will be selling it soon to get the i7 version when it is finally released in the UK

 

that version is a lot better but if you have just a little bit more i would advise you to get the all new m15x also with i7 but with gtx 260m

 

just got my 1640, and i loaded up some games. the mesh creates an insane amount of noise, i am keen to remove the mesh to see if it helps.

has anyone tried gaming while the laptop is upside down and the plate off? (using another monitor)

 

mesh would not have anything to do with noise. as its a little thin metal piece that simply doesnt move it just protects ur laptop from dust!... Most people that report noise think its something else. 95% of the time its the 7200rpm hard drive!!! this seagate is garbage simply because its the only one that makes a lot of noise... and I wouldnt recommend flipping the laptop upside down! all components that move like hdd and cdrom are placed the way they should be played... upside down would only give u problem if not now possibly in future.

 

thats complete rubbish, you sound like an old man talking about cd drives that had to be flat and level to operate, it doesnt matter if the hdd is horizontal or vertical, its still going to spin.

flipping the laptop over will allow for hot air to escape, i used to do this with my 1530 and the fan was noticeably quieter and ran cooler.

and the mesh will make the fans louder, also will reduce cfm air flow

 

haha im an old man i guess.. dont be a female dont take it close to the heart I was just trying to help. I guess Im a bad man for that

 

na your ok i am just stirring. just annoying when ppl post stuff like "no no dont do that or you'll void your warranty!"

 

Im not saying ull void ur warranty. It just cant be mesh. I know cd roms can stand vertically, I never heard of upside down tho ( i have no clue in cd-rom category) but anyway I think its the harddrive because on both xps13 and xps16 thats the only reported noise factor. the slot drive makes noise too but you would know if it was a slot drive. take pff the bottom cover. and play some games at least like that you can put ur ear to different parts and see which one exactly it is.

 

I can tell you that it isn't the hard drive that makes the noise, even for the 500gb seagate (I own that very hard drive). The hard drive does tick a little bit though when seeking and sometimes makes a very quiet beep like the sound lorrys make when they reverse. I have once or twice had the dreaded arm tick which people have been complaining about, it's not a regular thing though and hopefully new firmware will fix all of it. When the optical drive is running full tilt, it can get a bit noisy then

One thing which I did notice is that when run on battery, after a while the fan will go so quiet you have to put your head to the vent to even be able to tell it's spinning. When this first happened I actually though the fan had turned off altogether. I still don't understand why computer run hotter on the power adapter though, surely the power comes in the same either way

 

Quick Question. I have an I7 1645 coming next month. I do most of my work in Linux, so I want to dual boot it. I'm assuming the nvidia overclocking tool only works in windows? If I reboot into Linux, I will not be able to overclock?

Thanks,
Frank

 

The 1645 comes with an ATI 4670 so you will not be able to use nvidia overclocking tools. Also there is no tool able to overclock the ati 4670 as Dell have locked it at BIOS level

 

lol you wont be able to overclock ati with nvidia software.
You got yourself a nice laptop I7, medium level graphics card, in your shoes I would be happy with that, it will work much longer and wont give you any problems if you dont overclock anything.

 

I understand the GPU is ATI. The original post said they had overclocked the system, so I assumed they were talking about using ntune to modify the FSB and multiplier. I had assumed the XPS 16 used an nvidia chipset.

I develop FPGAs for a living. It's not unheard of to have simulations or synthesis runs that take hours, so if I could get an extra 5% it makes a difference. Then maybe I'd have time to use my laptop for some fun

Thanks for the info though.

-F

 

well you are right the ntune modifies the multipliers to give you better cpu clock and gpu clock. But you dont have the nvidia chipset... Sorry I dont know what FPGA is.... if your looking for 5% increase try to see if you can overclock ur cpu, even tho its not the gpu it should give u some percentage.... Just keep googling overclocking for ur processor or ur gpu, maybe there is something out there. Good luck

 

Thanks for the reply. FPGA's are re-programmble chips. I design them for radio's.

One thing I am confused about is that I had read the 1645 is mostly the same as the 1640 which is why I thought this thread may be applicable to me. Is the 1640 capable of overclocking in the BIOS, or does it use a different chipset? One of the replies here said that the 1645 can't overclock via the bios, so I guess that option is out for me. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The only reason I'm interested is that I've been overclocking for years. Not sure how well the I7 mobile chips would overclock, and there is the heat problem, but my Q6600 has been running at 3.2Ghz for 2 years.

Thanks again to all who replied.
-F

 

I know this is a rather bold (and probably stupid) question, but would it be possible for us to mod the bios to include overclocking features or would it just be too hard seeing as it's all written in assembly

 

the bios is blocked on all dell laptops except thier co-company: alienware, on alienware the bios is open for almost anything. Other than that all dell's bios are locked. But that doesnt mean there isnt a way around it. if ntune worked for me and my bios is locked. Then I think there should be something out there for ati?
like software that can configure your clocks and save them to a custom profile that loads at boot up.

@ funky monk. I know nothing advanced like bios flashing or editing. But I know that alienware has a p8600 processor option, and older models also came or still come with ati chips. maybe theres a way to edit the m17x bios and then flash it on xps16. Like you said maybe I sound stupid saying this because I dont have any clue in this department.

 

Is bios written in specific chunks for each componant or is it a mess like a .exe file? If it's in different parts then we may be able to splice in the p8600 bit from the old alienware and leave the rest intact

 

that I dont know... But I've heard of custom bios while surfing the web. So there has to be some way into this, I dont know how save it might be or how difficult, or if you'll ever be able to revert to old stock bios in case of warranty issues.. But if you find a way you'll be a hero to all xps16 owners

 

There is, of course, the possibility that the FSB is actually locked on the mobo. If this is the case then we might be ablle to get round it by bridging some gaps with wires like you can do with some AMD's but it might take a lot of thinking to find out which. I heard that the guy who does set FSB is gonna make a version for the SXPS16 if we can find out the clock generator though

Edit: Also, if we are going to play about with the bios, does anyone know if there is a backup utilitu on the mobo for the bios so that if it screws up we can put it back to what it was? It would be much better that way as if we screw up we can always go back to the good ol' dell bios instead of bricking our PC's

 

I think there is a backup on bios, because ive noticed when I updated to a11, when it was falshing it says erasing old stuff, copying new stuff, blah blah, then backing up old bios...

 

There's an A11 bios for the SXPS16?!

 

lol no I have xps13,,, this is a thread for xps13 and 16 mods

 

All right:

The guy who said something about not using the laptop upside down: this can VERY dangerous for the slot-loading drives, especially if there is a disc inside! HDDs don't matter much, but discs which are spinning can be damaged if you flip the computer upside down. I accidentally left Office 2007 installing with the disc and when I got up and tilted the laptop, I could hear the disc making funky noises. It might be OK to use it if you put the CD in while the laptop is upside, but try with something that isn't important first.

Let's calm down about insulting people: that is never OK, and frankly, you were the one that was incorrect, so let's research our statements before saying them.

Right: SXPS 16 uses an Intel chipset, so no nVidia-chipset software for us.

Overclocking an i7: I mean, all the i7 chips have Turbo Boost which will OC the cores (even all 4 if they're all being used) when under heavy-use, supposedly. But, I guess you want more?

 

I've run my computer upside down many a time, the HD won't mind. The optical drive could cause problems though, my rule is that if you move it fast enough for it to make funky noises then slow down. The CD works like a gyroscope and doesn't want to move so if you tilt the laptop too quickly it can crash the laser. The HD should be fine though provided you don't shake it round like a mad paerson. The HD platters are much more rigid that an CD an flex a lot less so they are unlikely to crash.

Normally it's ok to use a laptop upside down, even if there is a cd inside since the read head should take into account of the sagging of the CD by focusing again (yes, optical drives have to focus). When you turn it upside down though just do it slowly, if you hear any noises coming from it then move it slower or you could risk scratching your disk (think about what happens when a 360 falls over and you get the idea, that is a worst case scenario though).

 

TBH, I got the noise by just tilting it for about 1/2 second before I stopped because of the noise. And the angle was pretty small, too.

If someone cares to experiment, go ahead. Maybe I just had a funky drive.

~Ibrahim~

 

If you think about a cd like a gyroscope (it's fast and spinning), when you turn the cd along its axis, the bit at the center will flex a little because the cd won't want to change its plane of rotation. You just have to make sure that the amount it flexes isn't as much as the sistance between the read head or any other part of the drive and the cd or it will crash. Right, so the cd wants to stay in the same plane of rotation mkay? On the other hand the read head doesn't happen to be spinng at several thousand RPM and can move wherever it likes without much problem... so in effect, it's not the cd crashing the drive but the other way round.

It's kinda hard to get your head round but if you've played with a gyroscope then you should be able to grasp what I'm talking about

 

I kind of get the idea; unfortunately, I've never played with a gyroscope. But the main idea is that it doesn't flex so far as to hit the actual drive, right?

Right: the drive won't get damaged, that I'm pretty sure of; it's the discs I'm worried about.

~Ibrahim~

 

So far, 45 posts, 5 pages, and not a single viable modification has been presented, unless you consider turning your SXPS upside down is a modification!

Is there even anything one can do to a SXPS 13 or 16?

 

lol ^^ thank you... it upsets me a lot that no one really did anything to their system, even something minor

 

back on topic! lol

 

Things you can do to the SXPS 16:

change thermal compund
copper mod
possible overclock
put a coloured gel under the backlit keyboard and touch buttons for funky light show (I did it on my old phone and it was pretty cool)
battery mods (jamming in more cells)... although I suppose this isn't an SXPS mod per ce
fan mods (maybe putting one on the devilish southbridge)
mods to the stupid edge to edge glass thing
"accidently" spilling coffe on it if it is announced that they have run out of replacement hd3670 mobos... definitely not a mod but worth mentioning anyway

Those are all I can think of as of the moment

 

^^^ LOL spilling coffee to get a better gpu... I like that... now I only need to find out when they run out of 9400mg motherboard and 9500mge motherboars so i can get the 210m...

I like the colored jells idea thats pretty unique.. can you provide more instructions please?