How I installed a 6970M Dell OEM (m18x) in my w860cu (pics)

I've been getting some questions about the 6970m and the w860cu lately. I just installed the card myself, and I also had a lot of questions prior to doing this. Now I would like to give something back to this wonderful community so here is a summary of my experiences with getting the 6970m working in my w860cu.

First of all, I have to mention that there are a lot of different 6970m available. The Clevo version is green and probably your safest bet. There is also a blue version (which eurocom/upgradeyourlaptop) sells and a black version which I believe are the ES'. My card is dark brown and it is a OEM 6970m pulled from a m18x. It looks like this (forgot to take a picture so I grabbed this of the net):




Obviously I was anxiuos to see if the alienware card would work problem free with my clevo, and it eventually did! What follows is a summary Of the steps I needed to take to get it working, pictures included.

When the card arrived the first thing that struck me is that it came without a retention bracket. It was basically stripped down, with no way of installing it without getting hold of a retention bracket.

Before doing anything at all I tested the card by laying the computer upside down so that the heatsink had at least some contact. I plugged in an external monitor and installed the drivers successfully. I ran GPU-Z to see that everything was in order, and it checked out!



After ensuring that the card actually worked I decided to remove the retention bracket from my gtx 285m. This was a bit tricky as it is glued on the bottom of the card but I evetually got it off and put it in the 6970m. I don't have any pictures of this process, however.

The next step was installing the 6970m securely in the mxm slot. I decided that the best alternative would be to put the card in the vga-box, so it would be properly alligned and have the right height. However, as others have reported, the 6970m is a bit longer than the 285m/5870m, so I had to make some changes to fit the card in the vga box. I made four new holes in the box. Two in the middle to fasten the vga-box to the card and two along the sides, to fasten the card to the machine. I also added thermal pads to the backside of the card. You can see pictures of where they should go over at mxm-upgrade.com.






The heatsink was next. Thanks to Ice-Tea and other forum members I already knew which parts that needed to go. I used a hacksaw to remove the parts of the heatsink that interfered with the card.



I put the thermal pads directly on the card, in a way that makes them attach to the heatsink rather than the card. This is important because the alignment is slightly off, so if you don't do this the pads won't cover the memory modules correctly.



As you can see from the above picture I use a lot of thermal paste. I tried using the "pea method" but fond that the paste wouldn't spread out evenly. So instead I put some here and there (someone will probably flame me for this...) and it worked great temp-wise. The paste I use is Noctua NT-H1.

So, I attached the heatsink (which I've modified with ram heatsinks here and there) and closed the machine up!



I decided to undervolt my card as I'm still using the 120W PSU. Using Ati Tray Tools automatic overclocking I idle at

100/150 MHz @ 0.75V and game at 680/900 MHz @ 1V. Here are my temps after 5 minutes of idling (sitting flat on my desk):



After playing several maps in Battlefied 3 my temps max out at 71c on the core and 80/81 on the memory/shader. This is on top of my Notepal U2 without the fans running.

I also did some 3Dmark11 runs to check my performance and even overclocked a bit. I won't include the screenshots here, but the GPU Scores were as follows:

680/900 MHZ - 2890
800/1000 MhZ - 3362
825/1000 Mhz - 3450

I dont overclock my card when I game. If I try clocks a bit over 815/1000 the screen will go black. I'm assuming this is a limitation of the PSU.

So there you have it, my experiences with installing the 6970m into the w860cu. I must say that i'm extremely satisfied with the upgrade, and I encourage anyone who likes to take on a challenge to do the same! The jump from the

285m to the 6970m gave me almost double the performance. I'm now playing Battlefield 3 with textures at ultra, everything else high (except for AA deferred) and HBAO on, and it never dips below 30 fps.

Thanks go out to all the people who have contributed with information/experiences on how to install the 6970m. You know who you are!


Some helpful links:
Clevo W870CU
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...-clevo-w860cu-w870cu-sager-np8690-np8760.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...878-official-w860cu-np8690-owners-lounge.html
http://www.google.dk/url?sa=t&rct=j...3-LZTGZU7A48L1_Rw&sig2=ebhN2EjyXVZuF29ZYSl_jw

Thanks for reading!

 

A very nice comprehensive guide! Plus rep! Makes me feel proud and lucky to have one of these babies (a blue one ) in my 860cu too!!

What heatsink did you have I see you had to do extensive modding while the heatsink in mine looks pristine

Were there various different heatsinks? I will take a piccy and upload next week

Also I recommend upgrading to a 180W adapter. The Liteon Targus serves me perfectly and is of great built quality!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/TARGUS-UNIV...s_Chargers&hash=item5ae2aa208e#ht_5681wt_1116

Make sure you buy correct tip. L1 fits perfectly. Although L2 also fits. L3 WON'T fit.

 

Thanks!

There are three different heatsinks for the w860cu. Yours probably has the latest heatsink which is used for the 5870m/460m (part 6-31-w860n-061).

Mine is the updated heatsink for the 280m/285m, part 6-31-w860n-023. The old part number is 6-31-w860n-022 and it is supposedly missing the third heat pipe above the vRAM modules.

I want to get a 180W adapter and I've been looking for the targus, but unfortunately the dealer only ships in the US.
A new one will cost me about $75 here in Denmark, so I'll have to consider if it's worth it. Thanks for info regarding the tips.

Attached a picture of my heatsink.

 

Here we go mate LITEON PA-1181-08 180W 19V 9.5A AC POWER ADAPTER Refurbished

20 pounds. I am sure they will ship to Denmark and because you are in the EU you won't have to pay customs or tax on it just shipping.

Extra info is the full part number :LITEON PA-1181-08

Type this into google and you will find much more info about it.


On another note I tried the 100/150 trick and my idle temps have dropped down to 37/37/34.5/34C

Perhaps you should get a new heatsink too

edit: those clocks give me black screen when I watch a video so back to normal lol

 

No, there's no need for a new heatsink. The one I've got is doing a great job! My temps would be close to yours if I didn't have the heat turned up in my room

I might attach som more ram-heatsinks and mod it further though. But that is only for my own amusement

 

Really your idle temps are lower than 34C!! I guess all those ram sinks do make a difference! I was thinking perhaps to put some on top

Played a bit of crysis 2 at 1920x1080 with all settings on ultra and things seem pretty fluid at stock clocks! Downloading dx11 textures pack now lol

 

Very informative, there aren't many photo (and basically no video) tutorials on replacing parts or showing the inner workings of the Sager/Clevo models.

 

I made a mistake in that last post. My temps are certainly a bit higher than yours, around 40 on the core.

Are you overclocking?

 

Not too much. I usually dial in 700/900 at 1V (stock 1.1V 680/900)

I played crysis 2 for over an hour last night with everything set to maximum at 1080p resolution and the highest temp sensor showed 79C the lowest about 74C so pretty good (the 920xm was hotter with 82C max temp! OCed though ). 1.1V heats things up quite alot so I think I will test slowly over time and see what 1V can do. I think 715/950 it can no problem.

Then again at 900mhz 2GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256bit bus gives 120GB/s of bandwidth. I think is fairly pointless to OC the memory. It just uses lots of power and generates lots of heat! By the time a bottleneck is reached the core will be choking anyway

I did also test 800/1000 at 1.1V in Crysis but it wasn't stable. Oddly 1.075V at same clocks in crysis warhead was fine though...


Just a thought you could re-name the thread to "Sager NP8690/Clevo W860CU upgrade to ATI 6000M series upgrade discussion" I think the notebook has plenty of mileage left in it and many more people will try the upgrade perhaps even to the 6990M. I personally would like to try the 7000M series in a years time, so a place to discuss improved the graphics in this beast is awesome!

 

What are you running the 920xm at? I really want to get one, but I can't justify it seeing there is no significant increase in games performance. Would love it if someone proved me wrong though

I'm also a bit weary about straining the motherboard. I don't want it to fail from excessive power draw (6970m + overclocked 920xm).

I agree on the memory overclocking. I'm not sure how much is to be gained from that.

I'll see about changing the title. These machines certainly have some life left in them. I'm planning on keeping mine at least until I finish my studies in a year and half, and with the 6970m upgrade that seems reasonable.

 

It is a very reasonable upgrade. I paid roughly £170 for mine. It is ES but it peforms just as well as a expensive OEM version. Sold my OEM 720qm for around £50 so that makes it a £120 upgrade. Just don't bother with the 940xm. £100 more for what? 133mhz lol. Our 15.6" laptops couldn't handle the heat anyways at the extreme edges that separate the 2 chips!

It is a nice upgrade. A few modern games out really can use it especially BF3. Also Crysis 2 makes use of it, plus your day to day tasks will be really speeded up.

I run it at 20x for all 4 cores which is 2.6ghz, 22x for 3 cores which is a tad over 2.8ghz and for 1 and 2 cores I run 26x which is 3.5ghz

stock is 2.26ghz max for 4 cores and 3.2ghz for 1 core. Already at those speeds the 920xm is a tidy upgrade. It really future proofs the machine though. At my clocks which are in fact fairly conservative (many have the 920xm running at 3.2ghz across all 4 cores!) the performance is level with the modern non extreme 2820qm. I could push a little more and easily get performance that only a 2920xm or 2960xm OCed could beat!


What I need now is a SSD but I was an early adopter and got burned on that one so I still don't think they are worth it!

 

Yes, getting the 920xm instead of the 940xm is a no-brainer. The 920xm can be had for as low as $250 now, shipping included. A very nice deal indeed.

Do you think it would be possible for you to do some casual BF3 cpu-scaling benchmarks? What I'm interested in is the FPS difference between 720qm multipliers, stock 920xm multipliers and your overclock of 2.6GHz. You could just find a static scene in the campaign with some building burning or something, and check the differences. If it's not too much trouble, I would really appreciate it

I really want an SSD as well, but they are too expensive in my opinion. I might get 8gb of RAM as it is cheap now. That and a new PSU is definitely on my list!

I did some follow up on what you said about overclocking the memory of the 6970m, hoe it was pretty useless. I actually UNDERclocked it quite a bit. I like my fans to run a bit quieter, and I've seen that they ramp up at around 70C. So I downclocked the memory as low as 750 without any noticeable drop in frames while running battlefield. The card ran slightly cooler, and I guess it doesn't draw as much power as well, which is nice. I actually didn't notice any significant drop in frames before getting down to around 680 on the memory clock. I guess that is one of the advantages of running a 900p screen.

I still haven't found the limit for undervolting my card, but I guess it is between 0.925 and 0.950.

EDIT: If you decide you want to do some thorough benches, here is the notebookcheck benchmark settings for BF3 : http://www.notebookcheck.net/Battlefield-3.65495.0.html

 

I would love to do some benches but I haven't got BF3 I found out the BF3 chews through a 920XM from another user on here.

I have to say though my machine does feel more responsive since swapping out the processor.

Interesting information on the memory. I think I will just leave it 900mhz for now but it seems it is unlikely to become much of a bottleneck! The 5870 which is a weaker card was bottlenecked by having only 128bit memory bandwidth. So I reckon 100GB+ is ample! We have 119GB out of the box

 

For anyone who has installed this card and is using ATI Tray Tools in order to auto overclock when a 3D instance is detected, I have found a solution for ATT to boot on startup without asking for low level drivers and/or digital signing and the like. Here is the solution.

Download this ATT Loader. and place it in the installation folder of ATT

http://rapidshare.com/files/150928433/ATTLoader.rar

Then :

1. Place the loader in the ATT folder
2. In control panel go to scheduled tasks
3. In right hand pane select "create task"
4. Type in name then tick "run with highest privileges"
5. Click triggers, click new then choose "at log on"
6. Click actions and browse to attloader
7. Click conditions and untick everything
8. Close everything
9. Log off windows, then back on and ATT will load automatically!

 

oan001 the pic you have up GPU-z says subvender: clevo/kapok?? is this correct?? did you flash the card with clevo v-bios? or is that just a pic off the net?

 

That is a screenshot I took myself.

I did not flash the card with a clevo v-bios. I'm not sure this would work. I would really like to get fan control through RBE, though so it might be worth a shot.

It states subvendor clevo/kapok because the card is in a clevo machine I guess...

 

W860CU and many other clevo machines will get their VGA card's vbios shadowed to clevo/kapok as subvendor when booting. If one dumped the vbios from the dell card installed on W860CU, he would find the subvendor as 0x1028 dell still.

And I am sure if one flashed the vbios of clevo version 6970m/6990m to dell ones, he would brick the dell version cards.

 

Just to let you know that the copper heatsink wont make any difference as copper has very good thermal conductivity (its aim) but has low thermal dissipation rate...so by putting this ram heatsink, it won't make any difference at all (could even be slightly worse...)
You need to get some Aluminum ram heatsinks and position them as you did with yours copper heatsinks and you will see a big temps difference.

 

That is what I'm afraid of. Do you know any way to edit the fan settings in RBE with this card? The vBios is posted here btw: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/584140-6970m-vbios-m18x.html#post7572588

The lack of fan control is the only gripe I'm having with this card as it is constantly on, and much louder than with my old gtx.

I've seen some w860cu users with cards from eurocom being able to edit the fan tables, so I hope this will be possible for me as well..

I'm not sure this is true. I saw a marked difference in temperatures after I added the copper ram heatsinks, especially when I aim my Notepal U2 at them. A lot of experienced users on this board recommend copper over aluminium so I'm eager to see any evidence that aluminium heatsinks will do a better job.

 

I'm with you on that. Aluminum is not as good at transferring heat as is copper - there shouldn't be any situation where an equivalent copper sink doesn't outperform an aluminum one. I've been cooling and watercooling computers for a long time, and aluminum is cheap and light - but never as effective at transferring heat away from the source.

Rate of dissipation depends on multiple factors...but includes thermal conductivity, amount of surface area etc. It's inaccurate to say that copper has a lower thermal dissipation rate than aluminum if all other factors are the same.

 

Thermal aluminium heatsink is used in all sort of applications and especially with PCB to dissipate heat away unlike copper heatsinks which are mainly used to conduct heat from one point to another which is basically ventilated.

Perhaps the copper heatsink has helped due to your cooler forced-ventilation which makes sense but I can tell you that aluminium heatsink are aiming at giving heat away more than copper heatsink

 

So why do Zalmon, and other manufacturers known for making passive (no fans) heatsinks for CPU, GPU, RAM and mosfets - make copper heatsinks for use in situations like we're discussing - if Aluminium costs less and works better?

 

In our laptops, you can see that the heatsink is in copper while the large plate is in aluminium to save on costs. You're right to say that Aluminium is much more cost effective but where I work (electronics dpt), we use both copper and aluminium heatsinks and to drag away the heat from large chips, ICs, transistors, fets etc...
If you check here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/msi/639104-ms16f2-along-gtx580m-dell-rev3.html
I have just installed a 580m to upgrade my 460m, and done some cooling mods to handle the heat, and so far it's been pretty amazing while we know MSI laptop has only 1 fan (more powerful though) compared to Clevo laptops. I am sure the aluminum heatsink on the GPU copper sinks would drag more heat away than a copper one.

 

I know this is an older thread, but will a Dell/Alienware 6990m bolt into a Clevo(Eurocom technically) laptop that use a 6970m without any heatsink modifications? What about the vbios? Any mods to the bios needed? Or is this a straight plug n play affair?

 

Eurocom laptops are technically Clevo, not the other way around.

It should be plug and play. I don't believe that the card layout is any different - atleast it isn't on the 6970m. A dell card worked fine for me as you can see from this thread.

I've even recently flashed a x7200 6970m vbios to my dell card and it worked perfectly. No big difference though so I flashed back.

Good luck if you try switching cards between your P180HM and M18x!

 

Yes I know Eurocom is Clevo, but I have the "Eurocom" colored cards. Some guy on Ebay mispelled a pair of Dell 6990m's(and they havent sold in like a month)so he doesnt get many hits and he is willing to take my "best offer" for the pair........basically 2 for the price of one. But I didnt want to buy em if there will be vbios or heatsink fitment issues. Then I can turn around and sell off my new 6970m's for relatively cheap to garentee a quick sale and I won't be out a single dime for the slight upgrade.

Also, I assume I won't lose "fan control" on the P180HM? Not sure if thats done via the chipset on the mb or through the video cards themselves.

 

Where do I find the download for the vbios of a Clevo P180hm 6990m? And what is the procedure to flash? Links? Appreciated.

 

Sorry I am not familiar with ATI, but this thread should give you an answer to the flashing procedure:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/576540-6970m-undervolting.html

 

Curious in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/633084-6990m-single-card-vbios-required.html

Another member claims that flashing a Dell Radeon 6900 series card with a Clevo vBIOS will brick it.......any insight on this?

 

OK, how exactly did you reflash your 6970's vbios? Step by step spelling it out possible or a link that spells it out step by step?

 

Hi guys, I've just stumbled across this as I'm thinking of doing the same mod myself

HD6970m into a w860cu

I had no idea i'd have to be drilling holes and hacksawing things up though! are these bits of hardware so incompatible that they don't even fit together properly??

 

The heatsink is not compatible with the card (parts of the 6970m is higher than the 285m/460m/5870m), so the heatsink needs to be trimmed in order to make proper contact with the 6970m.

 

Did you solder the Thermal blocks onto the heatsink pipelines? Tempting to do this on mine too.

 

I used Sekisui thermal adhesive tape from ebay.

 

Thanks

 

hay oan001 did you ever ger the fan sorted out to work normaly? dous the fan control work normal with a clevo 6990m?

 

The fan is plug and play with both the 6970m and 6990m. So it works normally, and you don't have to do anything to get it working.

However, I never managed to adjust the fans manually like I wanted to. I would like to turn the fan off when I'm not gaming, but I haven't found a way, and I don't think there ever will be