P775TM1 Build Help

Hello Everyone!

I've got my first barebones laptop coming in next week. I'm pretty competent with computer building/repair, i'm an E.E. by trade which means absolutely nothing because 90% of my co-workers can't even change out an electrical socket. I'm somewhere between "able to reflow a GPU with an smd station" and "definitely not a smooth-brain" I'm really just looking for some pointers on how to get the most I can out of my laptop. The parts I have currently are: RTX 2070, i9-9900k(which i'm planning on delidding as soon as my LM comes in), and a WD 1tb SN750 NVME. This computer will not be used solely for gaming as I do 3D modeling, Coding, Visual design, as well as a decent amount of 2D CAD. I have several questions listed below, if you're willing to share your knowledge and experiences with me I would be very grateful!

Questions:

1) BIOS: I'm assuming a good BIOS is a great start to maximizing what I can do. Can I get a good BIOS flashed through USB or do i need to break out my skypro II again? What is/Who has the best BIOS for customization?

2) RAM: I've seen some P775TM1's listed with DDR4-3200 and some with a max of DDR4-3000, is this a bios thing?

3) RAM: Does 3200 make a worthwhile difference over 3000? If so are there any particular options you'd recommend? Vengeance, HyperX, Ripjaws?

4) WLAN: Whats the word on WiFi 6? Any m.2 form-factor cards that support it and are supported by the laptop?

5) WLAN: Are the Killer cards that much better than Intel? Explain your answer with a 3 paragraph essay

6) Thermal: What will keep my temps way down, I have no problem with fan noise. Are there upgraded fans I can get? Do better thermal pads matter on the heatsink? Lets get this thing cool so I can overclock it!!!

7) POWWA: I'm guessing a 330 watt charger isn't gonna cut it for extreme gameplay. Does the 2-1 660watt(2x330) adapter actually matter? Is the 780watt adapter worth the money?

8) MISC: What am i missing? Are you sitting there thinking "how could this moron forget about "xxxxx", what a stupidface-dummyhead" I'm willing to learn and welcome all suggestions, Let Me Know!!

Thank you for reading

Edit 1: I've gone with Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3200 CL16 BL2K16G32C16S4B as my ram. Reasoning below . Also I chose a RTX 2070 as i'm planning on doing a TDP mod to get ~2080 performance.

Edit 2: I've gone with an Intel AX200 over a killer card, less bloatware same card. Power doesn't seem to be an issue. Things are still in progress for thermals!

 

3200 and 3000 are not that different typically.

Physical stuff would be first, ensuring perfect contact and adjusting thermal pads to achieve that.

 

Thanks for the advice!

I'm usually extremely careful with my installations to a fault as I've wasted my fair share of TIM and time just rechecking my work.

 

Update: I've decided on my RAM. I'm going to go with Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3200 CL16 BL2K16G32C16S4B. The price was right compared to the other DDR4-3000 options and the timings for other 3200 that I saw sucked. I can include a link if anyone is interested

 

The model number works, the best source is going to vary by region after all.

 

Why you want to put more than 2666 ram???I9 9900k support max 2666,so more than this is waste of money.

 

Ever heard about Intel XMP? And you know that Clevo LGA laptops support it?

 

Yes i know that,you can put xmp 300000000x,i9 or i7 8700k support ONLY 2666 mhz transfer data between ram, chip and cpu,if you got ram on 3000mhz,the cpu gonne take only 2666.Intel 8 and 9 generation support max 2666,with intel 10 generation is another storry support DDR4-3200, LPDDR4-3733: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/d...1065g7-processor-8m-cache-up-to-3-90-ghz.html

 

And here I sit with an 5 years old Clevo P870 running 9900K on old Z170 chipset and oc'd ram. Stock ram speed 2133MHz running 2802 or better say ram oc'd +31%.

 

They can clock up to 3200mhz quite easily on the desktop, it's a little trickier on the crowded tracing on the notebook but doable. You get some reasonable performance scaling up to about there from 2666mhz.

 

Both 8700K and 9900K have a good strong IMC relative to what is achievable on the p7/p8 boards. But, as we always have to mention, it's very much up to the actual trace quality of the individual board. Currently, it's been possible to run 3700Mhz at the very top end, but most stability seems to begin to getting compromised around 3460Mhz.

2666Mhz is Intel reference, but I've yet to see a single 8700k/9900k that was not able to go beyond that on a p7/p8 with decent memory. However, there are other systems, 51m for instance, that were gimped and locked out from running anything above reference.

 

Dell’s gaming flagship hasn’t even Intel’s reference clock speed for ram. Capped at 2400MHz. Aka specs below what you can find from the cheapest Jokebooks with 8th and 9th gen Intel Core processors. It’s up to the notebook manufacturers add In Intel’s reference ram specs or top it with XMP support.

 

What I've seen and gathered from other threads is that 3200Mhz is definitely doable and even if I chose to underclock to 3000Mhz (what the P775TM1 has listed as max) my timings are still going to be better than 2666 memory I've seen for the same price.

Thanks for all your input!

 

This is a great example of "is it worth the money?" and i'm glad you posted it, but i won't solely be using the laptop for gaming. I will game on it quite a bit, however I do 3D modeling, Coding, Visual design, as well as a decent amount of 2D CAD. I have a feeling non gaming benchmarks will show slightly higher benefits since the GPU does most of the work with most games.

 

If you use CAD,coding and so,buy 2666 but 64gb or more if the laptop support that.

 

Honestly if the price difference was there I would. But 32gb of 3200 was about $160 USD, 32gb of 2666 with comparable timings was about $140.

20% increase in MAX transfer rate (25600 - 21300) for $20 USD feels like a reasonable budgeting decision.

In the mean time I have 64gb of 2666 in my other laptop. I can take 32gb out and temporarily place put them in this laptop to do some benchmarks ( gaming and CAD). I will compare them once the ballistix come in!

Also how nice is it that the ram is under the keyboard and the keyboard is removable!?! My MSI GT73VR was a pain in the butt to swap the top memory as the whole motherboard had to come out. That's the first laptop I haven't ended up with an extra screw or two and I used to work in computer repair.

 

Indeed, it's nice when designers thought about things like that.

 

I followed the link in your signature about your lapped 9900k. Was it worth the time involved and would you recommend others to do it?

 

As you saw, it was a combination of a few mods to get it to that point. Where the 9900K would top out at 65c for 5Ghz Cinebench R15.
(lapping the die, custom IHS, fixing the VRM thermalpads, LM, 3rd fan and fixing warping in my TM1 heatsink.)

Lapping the die alone might drop anywhere from 5 to 10c, depending on how much you sand off. However, I wouldn't recommend lapping it as thin as mine. As by the second lapping, the 9900K was considerably thinner than a 8700K, which inevitably would be the end of it.

Initially it was fine and ran frosty cold. Despite that, I had to disassemble the system several times to check up on some elements. And inadvertently stressing the already thin die, by frequently dismounting and remounting the heatsink and IHS. Last disasenembly I might have actually cracked the die, as the 9900K no longer booted and is now on it's way to USA for an autopsy.

Having mentioned all that, I wouldn't recommend it for the average user. But, if you were to lap the die, I would suggest not sanding it down as much as me.
Since a very thin die paired with a much thicker (4.37mm) IHS will put a lot of stress on the silicon.

For my new 9900KF, I modified the ILM in order to mitigate the mounting pressure from the aforementioned. Since it's paired with the same BartX IHS, but has a non-lapped 9900KF die.

 

Thank you for the advice! I'm definitely not shooting for 65c under that kind of load, its awesome that you got it down that far. I'm planning on lapping my die only to get a flat surface area. I have a Rockit copper IHS, however I heard that it gave minimal thermal gain over the stock IHS. I might look into a custom one if i decide to give lapping a full try. I am definitely going to try and get everything nice and flat for optimal contact from the die to the heatsink and everything in between. I've already got my micrometer calibrated I'm looking into better thermal pads as well!

 

I'm also looking forward to see what kind of progress you make with the 9900kf if you try to push the limits again!

 

Thanks, no extreme plans for the KF at the moment. The chip has "only" gone through a delidding and a light die lapping, to level out the surface silicon. It will basically be the same mod using the BartX IHS, LM, 2nd CPU fan etc. But with some small improvements and tweaks here and there. Although, not lapped as thin this time around.

Regarding minimal gains from a custom copper IHS over the stock Intel one:
There is some lottery when it comes to heatsinks and the ILM (retention bracket) on Clevo machines. Where some heatsinks actually rest on top of the ILM instead of the IHS. The poor fit results in sub optimal temperatures and is multiplied by several fold when it's combined with liquid metal. I found it to be especially bad with the 9th gen chips, since they have a thinner IHS.
I would suggest that you check whether the ILM is taller than the IHS, by either a razor or something that you know has a flat edge. Setting it on the ILM and testing all four corners along the IHS.
As well as checking whether the CPU heatsink is completely flat, by having the IHS on top of it and shining a flashlight from the opposite side, checking for any light bleed.

PS.
You might want to keep an eye out for @ole!!! as he is working on implementing a vapor chamber to the CPU heatsink and some other very cool mods.

 

Having the IHS be a bit taller is the main difference performance wise. Especially with no glue that makes the chip/ihs combo thinner.

 

You've given me a lot to think about. I have something I want to try this weekend. I'll have to bust out my micrometer and calibrate it at work. I will post an update about my progress Monday. In the mean time I'll continue looking for a which bios i'm going to use and which wireless card seems like the best fit. Thanks again for all the advice and info!

 

Back to some of your original questions,

1. Bios
Prema bios hands down, however only possible by buying from a partnered reseller. However, with the 9900K thermals will be a bigger issue than having the stock "unlocked" bios. 4.7/4.8Ghz allcore 9900K should be attainable paired with a proper undervolt.

4/5.
I have a Killer card, but have never used it with their software. It works fine without the bloated software package.

6.
Fn+1 toggles max fans. No need for the bloated Clevo Control Center package

7.
I have used my P870TM1 at 5.2Ghz 9900K and an overclocked + powermodded 1080 on a single 330W brick without issues. The 330W power supply can peak to around 424W from what I recall brother @Papusan mentioning.

8.
Get Windows 10 LTSC with a 4$ ebay key, strip it further with WUB and ESO.

 

May as well pick up an ax200 wifi card as they are not expensive.

 

So life has gotten in the way over the past week, setting me behind a little. I have everything in place at the moment and the laptop boots. I am currently looking into BIOS options and prema is the front runner so far. I also ran some benchmarks *stock* and temps stayed below 60c for firestrike with fans at max. I went with an Intel ax200 over the Killer as i saw some people had issues with the killer software being automatically installed by windows as soon as it recognized the card, plus the Intel was close to half the price and it's basically the same card but bloatware free. Also looking into an LTSC license.

 

A couple of things i noticed while putting it together were:

There's enough space to get a heatsink on my NMVE, which would have been nice to know before i bought the one without a built in heatsink.

My CPU ILM is scary tight, I thought I was doing something wrong at first.

The heatsink for the TM1 could be better, but it measures decently flat with my micrometer on the edges, i'll have to work on a way to test the centers. I still plan on polishing up the surfaces.

My 9900K seems to run cooler than what i've seen others report, which leads me to believe it'll be easy to OC and temp manage...once i get around to delidding and lapping

 

Space to fit a heatsink is not necessarily enough space for a heatsink.

 

I have a similar configuration with 9900k delid, in recent times I am experiencing an increase in cpu temperatures, and while I was in video decoding the pc also turned off. normally I know that I have 4.8ghz cores with extreme profile, the temps go up to 90 ° -100 °. I'm worried because I have the delid, undervolt at -120mv and a little modding on the heatskin. Could it be some damned win 10 update?
Actually I had to limit the cores to avoid strange things, I lowered to 4.4 ghz with a -150 undervolt

 

If we were talking about some sort of active cooling I would agree. But it's just a heatsink for an NVME and there's good enough ventilation that I don't see any issue with temps yet without a heatsink. Time will tell though, I have yet to push the system and won't be able to until next week as life get's in the way again

 

Potentially could be the liquid metal application, check it and reapply if it has diffused into the heatsink.

It's not so much the edges, as the center parts where the heatpipes are soldered onto the thin heatspreader plate. Some warping occurs there, and since stock intel Ihs is ~29x29mm, you want it to have good contact with the concave intel ihs. Or as flat as possible when using a 3rd party IHS.

Nvme heatsinks, I use a thermalpad between my 970pro and the motherboard, haven't had any issues.

 

thank you jc denton ,
I check the dissipation under the heatsink cpu .. the work with the dissipation on the cpu does not have much time, about 3 months ago, could already have problems? as I have already posted I have adopted the maximum possibilities of heat dissipation
this is my work

 

In the initial LM application your copper heatsink will act like a sponge, soaking up the gallium and creating an alloy layer, as the machine thermal cycles. How much time before thermal degradation depends on the quantity of LM you initially applied. Check the application, if it's no longer wet, then remove the residual indium and tin and apply a fresh coat.

 

I finally got around to relidding my i9-9900k. I took some pictures if anyone wants to take a look here's the link: https://imgur.com/a/9BlEybh

It was a fairly simple process, but I can see how it would be easy for someone to mess up. I have to say the Rockit 89 kit didn't let me down as far as removal and replacement of the IHS. However i was disappointed with the copper upgrade IHS. The milling marks on the underside really could have been cleaned up. There were a couple of machining burs that I had to sand off on one side of the IHS just because it was bothering me. Final complaint on the IHS: the sides were not the same height, there was roughly a 0.002" difference in thickness from one side to the other. This took a couple of minutes but i got it down to less than 0.001"

Ran Intel XTU to stress the CPU and the temps never got above 72. Started tuning and tweaking settings here and there. Somehow ended up with the benchmark score that's in the last photo in that link. I do see the temps fluctuate a decent amount during stress testing it'll dip down to 65 then back up to 72. and as soon as the stress test is over the temps plummet back to sub 40. Before there would be a few second before the temp would drop that far. Is this normal?

Overall i'm pretty happy with the progress of the CPU, but i'm always open to suggestions!

Next up i'll TDP mod the RTX 2070 and see what level that benchmarks at.

 

Great job on the delid and lapping, it looks stellar. How are your temps in Cinebench R15 at 5Ghz with Fn+1 fans? Btw, since its the first LM application, as mentioned above, temps might go as copper soaks up the gallium in the initial stages.

 

Thank You! I tried to be as meticulous as I could and tried to take a photo or two when I remembered. I'll run Cinebench R15 tonight before I mess with the GPU, I have noticed the fans are not as loud or powerful as the ones on my GT73VR (fans and heatsinks are from a GT75VR). I'm going to do some digging to see if there are any that fit and are upgrades.

Also I've been reading up on PremaMod and it was mentioned that they have coded out some stock throttling/limitations in their bios, just wondering how accurate this information is. Basically just me hoping to squeeze a bit more performance out of this CPU.

As far as the copper soaking up the gallium alloy, I put a decent amount in the IHS and set it in the oven for 10 min. When I took it out I spread the excess around until the IHS cooled down to like 30-40c. I then removed the excess from the IHS, put a very thin fresh layer on the CPU die and proceeded to relid, forgot to take pictures of this part. Hopefully that helped saturate the copper with the gallium alloy.

I will definitely keep an eye on my temps and reapply LM as needed. Thanks again for the tip!

 

I was looking into something similar a while back, give this a read.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/msi-16l13-eurocom-tornado-f5-fan-modifications.810712/
This is the fan, SN: ab08812hx26db00

Thicc fan.

 

The prema bios does let you take all the limits off yes, though that can have consequences.

 

I was able to run CB15 and during the first few runs my temps stayed in the low 70's. After about 10 consecutive benchmarks with no down time my computer finally crashed. I'm thinking about increasing the cpu voltage offset a little from -0.125 to -0.115. My settings are in the image below, if anything could be tweaked to make the system more stable without compromising too much on performance i'm all ears!


Edit: Uploading picture didn't work: https://imgur.com/a/P6UAks0

 

I'm on the prowl for the thicc fan! And i'm taking measurements so if anything good happens from it i'll post an update!

 

CB15 on loop will hit your system hard and likely crash it. I run it a couple times to get an average with cool down periods in between.
It's good for quick and dirty stability testing, but you should also try putting some load on the IMC as well, to see if the undervolt is stable, since they share the same rail.
For this HWinfo64 is a neat tool that allows monitoring of voltages, temps, perf flags and logs any L0 errors that you might not see.

For instance, my 5Ghz would pass R15 at -165mV, however it would give me an WHEA BSOD error (too low vcore/imc voltage) when running AIDA64 cache benchmark.
So I had to lower the overall offset until it passed. A more realistic workload would be to run TimeSpy/FireStrike physics on loop for 15min or something like BFV/MW that uses AVX and stresses your IMC.

As for the fan, make sure to read up on rewiring it for the correct pinout, since you do not want to fry your motherboard. I believe you can find the schematics of the p775tm board in the manual.

 

I agree, one wrong move and my computer is toast. I'm really just getting this all done by the seat of my pants. Plus from what I've read there's no guarantee I can actually convince Prema to bestow it upon me (after financial compensation of course). Would you suggest a different BIOS option that doesn't remove the limits but still has other benefits? or just stay with the stock one for now?

 

Getting HWinfo64 now, I'll definitely check and see if everything is okay with my IMC. I was also unaware that you could loop specific parts of 3dmark benchmarks, I will have to give that a try!

I'll dig the manual out of my downloads and make sure to triple check the wiring, because you're right I do not want to fry this mobo.

I will report back with all my findings and probably some more questions!

Thank You!

 

You can with the 'advanced version', I got mine for a couple $ on steam sale. Run custom -> only check physics, then loop and windowed mode.
Whilst having hwinfo64 running in the background and logging temps and any perf cap reasons, should there be any throttling.

 

On all cores? Ah yes, the 9900kf.

What are your temps in a title such as Battlefield V?

 

It has been one of the perks for the advances series for a long time also just running bits of the test.

 

This KF is R0 stepping and runs much hotter that my old P0 at 5Ghz, not to mention it's voltage/frequency curve is definitely not silicon lottery
I don't have BFV on this, it finishes R15 at ~77-84c depending on ambient.