Dell M6700 with GTX 980m upgrade, Windows 10?

Greetings all,
Was thinking about upgrading an M6700 to a GTX 980m. Apparently it has been done, although if someone Polish could translate more accurately that google it would be helpful

http://www.nhl.pl/index.php?showtopic=80714&st=0

From what it looks like, the vbios was stock Clevo, and did not use an Alienware version and was mostly plug and play with optimus enabled? At least in Windows 7,
But I don't know if that holds true for Windows 8 or Windows 10. There is mention of 8 in the thread but the google translate didn't do it well enough for me to understand.

 

IIRC the precision laptop have secure flash, nobody have been able to flash a mod bios with the 980M capability.

Polish thread must've worked some magic.

 

They do, but installing other cards in these has not been unheard of, but generally the vbios in the card being Dell was helpful.
I know of successful transplants of 680m, 780m, 880m in these units but those cards are essentially variations of K5000m and K5100m quadro cards.
Someone may have done it with an M6800, but the problem there lies in the Heatsink requires mod to the slightly different 980m module pattern, and the M6800 heatsinks are virtually non-existent.
M6700 may not have that problem as they use a different heatsink

The temptation to power in the 980m though is substantial. It performs above several Desktop class cards in a thermally efficient package.
If new Dell 7710 came with touchscreen I would not be considering a more radical option like this.

 

Okay, so confirmed 980m works in M6800 with modded heatsink
M6700 with Quadro M5000m confirmed (same as 980m). Just need someone to translate the polish in the article.
M6700 cooling system is supposedly superior to M6800, or at least quieter which to me makes it the better candidate.
Also 980m is substantially cheaper than M5000M

 

Ofc the 980M is cheaper, it's not meant for CAD apps. IMO the kepler gen quadro is better because of the DP performance.

Do you need to buy another heatsink for modding? Maybe try calling up dell if you can't find the exact part on ebay.

 

Well I didn't thought Precision series was upgrade-able across Quadro and GeForce, 980M is definitely the best mobile chip now. Sadly Intel gone full BGA Xeons also now...

 

Most EliteBooks, ZBooks and Precisions (means 15" and 17", the smaller are understandably soldered) have swappable graphics. All of the EliteBooks have MXM connector, some of the latest have vBIOS into the system BIOS (15") and have upgrade issues. The ZBooks are MXM as well, don't know how they go in terms of upgrading (mostly about 15", 17" should be fine). Precisions used proprietary, but after and including Mx600 series, they went MXM.

 

You might want to check the dedicated Dell Precision M6700 thread.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...0-owners-thread.682401/page-306#post-10165268

 

Finally upgraded my m6700 to a GTX 980m GPU. That's the max we can go on a m6700. Too bad it doesn't support standard mxm GTX 1060 but 980m still shows plenty of gaming power and 8gb VRAM is great for texture settings

 

1060 is barely better then a 980M.... You can easily reach 1060 speeds with a 980M so enjoy!

 

1060 has more potential though. 16nm vs 980m's 28nm process and that thing clocks like a beast (1700 w/ boost vs 1127 w/ boost for GTX 980m). I'm happy with the 980m though. Only that card doesn't overclock well in m6700 while others have crazy core clocks like 1300+ or even 1400 with prema mod and some juice. My card have pretty decent Asics of 75%, it just doesn't really like OC and screen went white after 10 mins of gaming with a merely +100 core and +200 Mem...

 

What are your temperatures like? Mine goes over the top sometimes and throttles.

 

@ijozic my temp never goes above 70c without overclock. But somehow it just doesn't like overclock and have all sort of errors from games stopped working to black screen.

Make sure you swap the x-bracket from your old card to the 980m though. Whatever 980m cards are their x-bracket's screwholes are more protruded and the heaksink would have a huge gap from the gpu die. Normally maxwell cards runs very cool even for the top notch 980m. I used to have a 780m and it can go as high as 82c but that's when I overclocked that card to 1ghz core.

It's kinda a disappointment I cannot squeeze more juice from 980m. Even so, the 980m beats my overclocked 780m by a landslide.

 

Interesting. This is on M6700 and ultra performance power profile? Which vBIOS are you using?

I did swap the x-bracket as the one which came with the Alienware 980M wasn't compatible IIRC.

I got some new paste and a new GPU fan so hopefully the reassembly will help with the temps as they can reach up to 87 and cause some throttling in demanding games.

 

Hmm, that's odd. I was changing the GPU fan and CPU heatsink so decided to repaste the GPU and CPU with GC Extreme. I messed up the CPU heatsink upgrade as I guess the VRM pads were 1,5 mm, but I only had 1,0 mm on me so I doubled them and I suspect the heatsink is perhaps not straight on the CPU now. The max CPU temps dropped down by 10 degrees with the stronger heatsink, but I think the idle temps went up and I can see some core difference occasionally. What a waste of expensive Gelid thermal pads. I ordered some cheaper Phobiya's 1,5mm to replace the pads on the CPU heatsink so hopefully the heatsink won't get warped in the meantime.

But, the GPU temps went down considerably. I even tried Prema's vBIOS and temps didn't go over 70 on max fan power setting, which is much better than the 87 degrees I was reaching in any more demanding game. I get the impression that my 980M temps were lower when I upgraded, but then quickly started overheating, not sure why. Is it possible that it's due to the rather old MX-2 paste I had at hand and used for my upgrade? I didn't notice anything wrong with the old installation when I disassembled the GPU heatsink, hence why I suspect the paste if such degradation is possible.

In any case, I'm quite pleased with the results. Plus, the M6700 construction is pretty good, it's all metal on the inside so it handles multiple upgrades with ease. I just need to fix the CPU heatsink results as the fans tend to run more often in idle than they used to.

No reason to replace the laptop then, especially if I can fit one of those Quadro P5000 (if their MXM design is really exactly the same as the 980M). Perhaps that Aetina 1070 MXM can fit too. It has more inductors, but they are much smaller than the big units on 980M so perhaps no heatsink mod is required (as their is some ridge in the middle of the heatsink, which goes over the VRM area between the large inductors on the Kepler and Maxwell cards). Because of that ridge, the Zotac/Gecube card wouldn't fit I presume without getting it off with a dremel first.

 

Interesting, why using thermal pad on CPU should it be thermal paste?

MX-2 is a bit old. I'm using MX-4 on my CPU and it runs like a charm (3.3Ghz under med-heavy load). GPU side was tricky. I agreed that gelid is a waste of money even on the memory chips and vrm modules, because previously I use them on 780m and the pads got hardened and sticked on the components, and I end up tearing the pads off and changed them into some generic pads. I remember i'm using 1.5mm on memory chips and 2mm on other components. The new pads have good contacts though.

The power supply is tricky too. In order to overclock 200 core I have to dial the core voltage to 1.1625v (prema has overvolted .0625 already). Though initially stable, my 240w brick cannot take that and just cut off all the juice and I have to replug it. Using a meter I got 210w under load with stock clock and prema mod, so the overclock is a bit more power hungry.

 

Sorry, the thermal pad was not used for the CPU itself, but for the chipset and VRM of the CPU heatsink. But 2 mm (2x1) might be too thick compared to the stock pad thickness and when I tried to mount it with only one layer of 1 mm, I could see that the some VRM chips were not making an imprint so the contact was not good enough.

I didn't have problems with MX-2 before and it didn't harden or anything; I just can't explain the difference in temperatures except if spreading the paste all over the GPU created some hot air pockets, but I never encountered such an issue before either. This time with GC Extreme paste I just applied a small amount to the middle of the core.

I also used the Gelid pads for those big inductor chips on the GPU as the one I initially used on the 980M hardened and fell apart when removing the GPU. So, I guess I can expect a similar thing with these then. I better get some cheaper 2,5 mm arctic cooling or something to have at hand if I need to remove the GPU heatsink again.

 

FYI all, athina doesnt sell to end users.. the only possibility for a MXM 1070 would be the gecube standard module.

 

IIRC, the Gecube design looked like the card in Zotac En1070 (multiple large inductor chips rather than the three on 980M cards or two on Kepler cards) which is a no-go for the Dell heatsink without modding it (scraping off this ridge in the middle of the VRM related part).

Regarding my earlier temperature issue, I now presume it was due to some noname thermal pad (it wasn't that cheap though price-wise) I used for the two inductors on left side (as the stock pads on the heatsink set for the Kepler card wouldn't cover the two inductors, but just one or both partly), rather than the MX-2 paste. I found it quite dry and foamy when I was repasting the card, so perhaps it hardened and got larger and raised the heatsink slightly on that corner reducing the main contact with the GPU itself. I replaced it and the stock one on the other side with the Gelid pads, hopefully they won't do a similar thing with time.

 

I had asked them last month or the month before and they were willing to sell they're non spec 1070 for $900

 

did you mention you weren't an enterprise ? I asked for a quote for the 1060 and the 1070. Nothing..

 

Let me dig up the email log

 

Sanitized for my privacy

 

well, she told me no sooooo..

 

Interesting, was it daisy who said that? How long ago?

 

yeap it was her, like 5 days ago, she said, no end user selling. Plus their prices are high (she didn't gave me prices, but seeing them really pisses me off, since gecube's 1070 is 600 USD)

but what about this : https://store.alezka.com/en/laptop-gpus/9-nvidia-gtx-1060-6gb-mxm-msi.html

 

contact @woodzstack if you want the product from that store


his discord ( http://discordapp.com/) is Azmodeth#1393 if you want to contact and buy, don't PM through NBR

 

Perhaps they decided selling to end users wasn't worth it but yeah their prices are absolutely deal breaking

If you are willing to communicate direct with a Taobao Chinese distributer you can get a 1060 for under $500 IIRC

 

600$ for the 1070 sounds great ! Would be able to build F5's for almost 200$ less by just buying the barebones and the CPU and all components separately. Sounds too good to be true though.

Anyways yeah that is my WIP progress store, I should just update the pricing and let it go live with the content it has now, but I want to actually have more content before doing so.

 

it's not barely better. It's more of a difference then the 680M was on the 580M, or the 780M to the 680M or even the 880M to the 780M - however, the 980M was muhc larger of a gap compared to the 880M was then the 1060 is to the 980M - but if you OC both of them, you will find the 1060M OC's just as easily if not even more so, then the 980M.

Now, most the 980M circulating are the Clevo varieties which tend to favour being alive, and while the 1060N's are nice, they are from MSI and are a bit more fragile, or not as rugged.

 

HI

For those who upgraded M6700 to a gtx 980m. Had the heatsink to be modded? Thanks in advance.

 

Heatsink no, but you have to modify/add some thermal pads for the extra inductor unit.

 

After reading about everyone's experiences with upgrading the GPU in the Precision M6700, I decided to go for it.

Here are a couple of helpful tips going from a Nvidia Quadro card to the GTX 980M 8GB:
1. Purchase some 1.5mm thick thermal pad material (I bought a 100mm x 15mm piece and it was more than enough)
2. Get a Dell Nvidia compatible X-Bracket. My card came with the Sager/Clevo version, so I ended up prying the old one off of my K5000M. (Do not try using the Non-Dell version!)
3. Make sure you have enough thermal paste on hand for both the GPU and CPU as the CPU heatsink needs to be removed before the GPU heatsink.
Make sure to clean all of the old thermal paste off of the heatsinks and CPU before applying new paste.
4. This is also a good opportunity to clean the dust out of your heatsinks and fans.

The card I bough was New and claimed compatibility with Alienware (Dell) machines.
After installation it showed in the Bois as unknown 8GB GPU as expected.
I hate Optimus and have always had it disabled, so I will not be using it on this card either.
Booted into Windows 10 Pro and decided to try installing the GPU drivers without modding them.
Install completed with no errors and with the GPU fully functioning.

With this GPU my Precision M6700 can now max out the graphics settings on most games @ 1080p
Newest game I've tried so far is Mass Effect Andromeda locked at 1080p with Max Settings.
GPU idles at 35c gets up to 72c under full load while maintaining a 1126Mhz boost clock

 

So no other mods necessary? Awesome write up! Do you think it will be equally as straight forward in a M6800?

 

I don't see why you would have any problems, but you should probably look at posts that deal with GPU upgrades on your exact model. (all of the tips that I listed above should still be relevant for your model)

 

Awesome thanks! One last thing. Did you use the 1.5mm thermal pads for the whole card?

 

Some of the pads are 1mm and some are 1.5mm thickness. The one that needs to be replaced with a larger one is 1.5mm when going from a Kx000M or a Kxx00M to a GTX 980M

 

Hello!
I am now owner of this awesome machine, i have some questions about graphic card update

1. I wanna update graphic card to this geforce gtx 980m, so what model of this PCB should be ? For example on this auction:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Clevo-Alie...324674?hash=item3d3ae88f82:g:PksAAOSwRXRZSoU2
PCB have this numbers :N16E-GX-A1. Will be good?

For Dell M4600 when you wanna update to firepro m5100 PCB model is very important.

2. Is Optimus working?

3. What kind of BIOS version should i install?

 

Hi,
I just want to upgrade my M6700 to 980m. There are a few card sources - Clevo, MSI, Alienware (others?). All of them look pretty the same to me. Are there any clues which one should I look for?
Eg. this one looks almost the same as Clevo: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DHL...16E-GX-A1-Video-Graphic-Card/32816559158.html

What about LCD panel compatibility? I have "standard" 1080p screen, not 3dVision / PremierColor ones.

 

I managed a m6700 on eBay for just under $300 but it only has a k3000m and a 3520m... not great. But I love old dell laptops and especially the precision series. After doing some research, I concluded on a 980m and a 3820qm(for its lower tdp at 45w). But for me the optimus technology is interesting and wanted to know if it would work on the 980m. I understand that it is not functional when using the M5000M and that is basically a 980m on ballin drivers, but there are also a lot more people wanting to use their m67oo with a 980m rather than a M5000M. If anyone has any ideas that would be great! Thanks in advance.

 

Pretty cool that this ugprade works!
I'm gonna try upgrade with this one too

Btw, anyone have a link to buy Dell Nvidia compatible X-Brackets? The only one I can find is this one but it doesn't come with screws.. Also I can't find a guide on how to install the X-bracket

Also are these thermal pads good?

Thanks for the help!

UPDATE: This X-bracket (with screws!) from Eurocom should work right? But damn, shipping from Canada is twice the price of the bracket....

 

This one looks different to the 1st one on ebay, but similar to the one from Eurocom. Is this the right one?

 

Answering my own questions + some comments:
- I bought that exact card I linked
- Works out-of box. Windows 10 installed drivers automatically.
- After test-fitting by screwing card into radiator out of notebook, I don't know what's the deal with thermal pads thickness - I measured all elements with caliper and they looks the same height to me. I only moved one of pads a bit - this one that on K3000m there's a single VRM coil (?) and 980m has double.
- Temperatures - I got 68 degrees max while playing Crysis on max settings. I used Gelid GC-Extreme thermal paste.
- To remove x-bracket from K3000m I just simply pushed each screw thread with small screwdriver
- LCD panel - just works with standard (LVDS) one.
- UEFI shows Unknown video card with ~3.5GB of VRAM. In OS all 8GB are visible. That's with Optimus disabled. I'm not going to enable it as I'll run three 2.5k screens anyway...

Still a great price! For mine (3840QM / K3000m) I paid $650 equiv. and that was very cheap in Poland.

 

So far I noticed only a few problems with docking station (PR02x USB3) outputs.
I run three screens - HP Z27i and 2x Dell U2715h. All three are 2560x1440 and HP runs from DP, Dells are daisy-chained into single DP. Issues are when booting notebook:
- when I boot it with lid closed, all external screens are dark; after I open the lid/undock notebook internal LCD is dark - all I can do is to turn it off. As driver reset changes nothing, it may be hanging as well.
- boot with lid open - sometimes it boots with HP as secondary display and notebook as primary one, sometimes as it supposed to be.
- after driver reset (CTRL+WIN+SHIFT+B) it often resets into HP 2560x1440, dell 1920x1080 (one directly connected), internal display 1920x1080 and set as primary.
- after undocking screen configuration won't update until I'll put it in sleep and wake again.

Has anyone experienced (and solved) similar issues? Optimus is disabled, maybe it will help?
I'm using driver from Windows Update.

[e] Problems are even with latest driver from nvidia.com. Those 'all monitors dark' moments are BSODs. Yesterday I had them each time I docked my laptop... until I swapped displayports used for each monitor. Which makes no sense for me...

On my workplace I have PR03x USB2 version with two screens connected via DVI and VGA (and DVI is indeed internally handled through DP) and I had no problems at all.

 

I presume it's because there's a limit on how much bandwidth a single DP 1.2 output can provide.

https://www.displayport.org/cables/driving-multiple-displays-from-a-single-displayport-output/

BTW, when I recently upgraded my Dell M6700 with 980M to Windows 10, I just downloaded the latest drivers from Nvidia site and installed them without any inf file mods (which were a necessity on Windows 7 and I think even on the initial Windows 10 release I installed to register my upgrade).

When did this become a thing?

 

Yup, and it can handle up to two 2560x1600 or four 1920x1200 displays from single port. I'm running two 2560x1440 and it should be perfectly fine.
I'm going to try with Optimus, maybe Intel will handle those outputs better.

 

After some checking it seems to be caused by DP MST handling. After I connected all monitors directly to notebook, problems disappeared. Unfortunately that means that I need to have one screen connected directly to notebooks DP since AFAIK dock can drive only two of DP/DVI outputs at same time (correct me if I'm wrong as Z27i has dual-link DVI input)

BTW: even with Optimus turned on (works out-of box), after docking and using dock outputs Win10 switches completely to Nvidia graphics.

[e] I just checked - the moment I plug DP, corresponding DVI is disabled. This means that unless nVidia fixes drivers, DP MST is unusable - at least for me.

[e] Probably found the reason - firmware of MST controller in dock. Keyword "VMM3320" leads to ton of topics where people had problems with different laptops running E-Dock's.
But firmware upgrade requires Latitude Exxxx, I need to find someone with such model and try to upgrade fw in my dock.
Indeed I also have occasional screen flickering, both on PR02x with DP monitors and PR03x with VGA + DVI one.

[e] Checked and docking stations doesn't contain any MST hub inside. Unfortunately that means that there's no fix for M6700.

 

Hi, I am new to the form. Sorry for the late reply to this thread.

I just picked up a M6700 with a 3840qm, 32 gb ram, k3000m and a 1tb SSD for 350. I am looking to replace the GPU in the laptop, but I am having trouble finding good places to purchase these cards from. All of the places I have seen so far are asking 700+ for a 970m, and i have seen 980m in excess of $1000. Which makes no sense to me.

 

I went through ebay when I did my upgrade.
Make sure that you are getting the alienware version, as this one will work out of the box and install the Nvidia drivers without any hassle.

The cheapest Alienware GTX 980M on ebay is currently a pre-owned one : $399.00 + $3.50 and ships from Mississippi
The Cheapest New one ships from china and claims to be alienware compatible for $426.00 and $8.00 shipping

This is a very nice upgrade for the M7600. I run pretty much every game on maxed out settings as 1080p.