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    i7 2960xm in a Dell XPS17 (L702x) success

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by nmstang218, Jun 1, 2017.

  1. nmstang218

    nmstang218 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi all.
    I understand that my system is quite obsolete and outdated, however I just wanted to update my situation here and maybe take some suggestions. My lappy originally came with the i7 2760qm and I had recently updated to a 2860qm. They both had the same TDP (45W) however, the 2860qm had 8MB of L3 cache where the 2760 had 6MB. There was a nice bump, however, my modding nature prodded me to go to the highest level.
    The 2960xm has a higher TDP at 55W, so I accepted that cooling was going to be an issue. I use a laptop cooling stand also paired with a vacuum cooler. But the key to success here was the thermal paste. I recently started experimenting Thermal Grizzly's Conductonaut and have had some amazing results. So amazing in fact, that I decided to upgrade to this higher TDP processor. That being said, I run emulator programs which are extremely taxing on the CPU. So far, I have run (ran?) these emulators for over 2 to 3 hrs at a time and have only had peak temps of 80 C. (Using HWmonitor to monitor temps)
    The upgrade from the 2860qm to the 2960xm wasnt as sharp as from the 2760qm, but unlock-able multipliers in the 2960xm is what was most enticing to me. However, I cannot set the multipliers using intels XTU or have any options in the bios to do so. As I am running an an unlocked bios by capitankasar, all the options in the bios have been unlocked but there no options for overclock. I haven't had much luck with Thermal Stop, but I am sure its more user error than anything else. Now, can anyone else who is more savvy at modifications such as this suggest a better program to use for overclocking, or am I SOL since there is no option in the BIOS for this situation? Thanks to all for any help. I'm hoping capitankasar makes a famous appearance and shares his wisdom :)
    There was another member who attemped this but wasnt as successful due to limitations of thermal past at the current time, I would like to get his input as well if possible. That thread can be found here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/i7-2960xm-processor-in-xps-17.622821/

    TL: DR I Successfully upgraded my Dell 17 XPS L702x CPU with an i7 2960xm (which had a 10w higher TDP), but cannot find how to overclock the processor still. Any suggestions?
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2017
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