SLI MSI 1070 MXM in P370EM... An adventure

Update:
Latest bench results: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...0em-an-adventure.806069/page-12#post-10573446 (also see signature for 3dmark links)

The good

• Functional 1080p 120Hz internal display that is totally maxed out by the GPUs.
• 4.2GHz overclocked quad core XM CPU - draws up to 80W - No throttling. (somewhat harmed by my heatsink mods)
• GPUs perform very well, locked at 1950mhz/0.95V core (stock memory) with increased power limits
• 32Gb RAM (4x8Gb) installed
• Safe temperatures: temps max out up to 90C on the slave on full fans (unless ambient is really hot) and generally sit in the 60s or 70s depending on how intensive a game workload is, since 1070SLI is overkill for 1080p.
• Watercooled: the GPUs sit in the 60s at 150W each...
• Extremely stable. Very few unplanned crashes, black screens, reboots etc

"Issues":

• Driver updating is problematic. Drivers working right now are 375.70 and require specific INF mods and testing rather than just the standard easy "add your device ID" INF mod.
• No brightness control on the screen panel (have tried all the registry hacks...) but it is somewhat controllable using the nvidia control center's colour profile.
• The GPUs have the MSI Turboboost 3.0 hardware bug (as seen in GT62VR/GT73VR 1070 models), causing random crashes when left on the stock dynamic frequency curve. The fix is to edit the curve in MSI afterburner to be flat beyond the maximum voltage point (I have used 1975mhz/0.975V for months and months now, without a single crash) so prevent the card going beyond this. It's effectively forcing an undervolt on the card which as a positive effect frees up power headroom under the power limit. Limiting at 1.013V does not limit attainable overclock as the chassis power limit in SLI (at over 500W as measured by wall draw) is hit before these cards hit any of their own constraints when hybrid liquid cooled.

Prior to vBIOS mods increasing power limits and installation of the XM CPU:
Firestrike Standard 17653 http://www.3dmark.com/fs/13037846
Firestrike Extreme 12285 http://www.3dmark.com/fs/13037927
Firestrike Ultra 7205 http://www.3dmark.com/fs/13037980
Timespy 8205 http://www.3dmark.com/spy/2018131

Post XM and watercooled:
FS >20500 (~37500 GPU score)
Timespy >9600

------

So while I still wait on my p870dm mobo saga to resolve I found used MSI 1070 on ebay for a price I couldn't refuse.

So instead of them just laying there thought I may as well see if it works in the P370EM



Case mod to fit was not hard. The internal frame had to be modded in three places to fit the slightly bigger MSI card. Inserting the card requires removing the cpu fan and bending the frame slightly to fit the card on the angle required to insert into the mxm slot, so you could mod that 4th area too but I can get away with it for now.

The panel in it is LVDS so I know I won't get internal panel display.

And the old 2 part EM gpu heatsink is the weakest of all the options for the P37x chassis so I'm expecting heavy underclocks will be required.

So this is a proof of concept exercise. The main annoyance is that without an internal display, my options for now are:
1. HDMI out, I actually don't have anything hdmi capable in the house other than TVs in other rooms which is inconvenient (the less the mrs knows where I spend my $ and time the better lol)
2. DP out doesn't work - also didn't with 670M without driver.

I'm trying to INF mod a driver install completely blind other than through remote connection via Teamviewer.

But the good news is:
No beeping
Booted through to Windows first time
Device ID is visible in device manager (ven_10DE & dev_1BA1 & subsys 03711558)
Hwinfo gives a temp readout (37-38C idle) with the fan on a constant low speed


Stock driver install failed. Hardware not detected. MSI GPU and Clevo subsys, no surprise there
Disabled driver signature by blind selecting the option from the legacy startup menu:
bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy
(spam F8 on startup, wait for no hard drive actvity for 20sec, then three up and enter)
INF mod from here with 382.33: https://www.techinferno.com/index.p...er-support-modded-inf/&page=67#comment-159235
=> Installed driver.

No animated 3D thingo in nvidia control panel, hmmm.
No display out through DP detected so still doing everything remotely
BUT
With an underclock in nvinspector of -200core/-1000mem - was able to load it up to its 120W TDP in a tiny furmark window and not have it burn up straight away.

So it is at least functional within my expectations so far
Apart from not giving me any external display. But then I've not tried an eDP cable/panel or HDMI out (yet).

 

Case mods and test fits.



first and main area of case mod.









ok over near the subwoofer / mSATA EXCEPT I cleared a bit of the raised housing around the screw hole as the card didn't feel it was lying completely flat:



cut near the screw hole. Retained the actual hole and thread.
Note later on I cut off the hole (fuzzy one in mid/upper right that the bottom case screws into) as that occluded the card upon initial insert into the slot



Need to remove the CPU fan and push the housing inwards to give clearance for the small chokes (1R2) when inserting but once the card is installed flat there's no problem

 

driver install process.

First boot (visible through remote connection - teamviewer)









unmodded stock drivers - I am jack's complete lack of surprise


After driver installed through INF mod + driver signature disable:










Yes, thermal runaway even underclocked, but expected, and I stopped at that point. (Actually it's just old thermal paste, some years old AS5 mixed with various smaller tubes I've collected over the years that I've mixed up in a plastic syringe - and it's had the wimpy heatsink on and off it multiple times since application while fitting it - so temps were expected to be terrible.).

 

Hmmm I don't think the fan actually sped up at all. Maybe there's a better flavour of driver than this.

Also the max fans hotkey that should be available with the P370EM prema bios doesn't do anything. On second thoughts - it still has (lol, had) the Metabox splash screen at POST, maybe I never actually installed it on this laptop?...

 

Use @j95's modded INFs1, they work for me just fine....along with booting the laptop with driver signing enforcement disabled.

 

That is exactly where the techinferno link in OP goes
J95's inf was what I used to get them installed

 

Are you going to get an eDP screen (you can, but will need to mod the cable), or just leave it as is?

If you upgrade the heatsink to an SM series the temps should be pretty good.

Getting a P870DM doesn't really seem to be worth the cost me to me, hence the heavily modded P150EM.

 

ok, but it seems like you're having issues with the install.

 

Well that was easy. HDMI worked straight away.

 

Which revision of primary GPU heatsink are you using? IIRC you can use the latest versions from the SM series.

 

Someone asked for the vBIOS. Pulled straight off the chip by programmer. I re-read straight after and it verified OK, I had to hold the adapter clip down to keep the connection stable. Should be OK but maybe don't use this without a way to unbrick just in case it's bad

edit: wtf am i saying, you'd be flashing it with a programmer, nevermind...

Basic 2 piece one, 1st gen EM I think. I have two master GPU heatsinks one from a 7970M the other a 670M and they look identical (and identical to the heatsink in my P170EM)

 

Hi bennyg

Is this MSI GTX 1070 card compatible with P170EM machine, what do you think?

 

there's an updated vBIOS for the GPU.

http://download.msi.com/archive/frm_exe/nb/86.04.56.00.3A.zip

I flashed it and it works for me.

 

Deleted...

 

I mustn't have flashed the Prema BIOS. I'm getting a 1.2ghz CPU throttle.

edit: nevermind, idiot me had it on a 230W adapter

 

Some more mods...

Pre cut













Post cut


-> gota bit close to going through there on the right. it's a bit more flexy than I'd like but I kept the screwhole at least.



Sitting nice and flat:



I was a bit worried about underside components hitting the black ports where the pins from the audio board are, but that was ok in the end.
I had to remove one of the standoffs on the rear. It was hitting the card reader which gave me an "oh s***** what have I missed" moment.

Next problem: the SLI cable.
Since the cards are mounted at right angles, and the SLI ports are displaced on the MSI board approx 3mm further away from the 3.0b standard layout, and the cable is completely custom designed for the P370 chassis, this induces an awkward twist on the flex cable as the Master end is shifted towards the CPU and the slave end towards the slave fan. It required cutting out some additional areas on the CPU fan frame both near the Master card port and about halfway along the cable, so it wasn't contacting anything on an edge or with pressure:

Before (couldn't actually plug it in):



After:



then after some more mods to the CPU fan frame near the RAM slots, it sits a lot flatter


The slave card tab does occlude the top SATA space just slightly... the bottom one is completely fine and can even be removed with the card in place. But a standard thickness drive in the top would be sitting on the card and be slightly misaligned in the port.


A mSATA-to-SATA adapter board would fit just fine though


All done!



NOTE: the core retaining screws on these 1070s are slightly bigger than those on the 670M/7970M. Lucky I disassembled an old hard drive and CD-DVD drive and kept the screws. They're torx head but they fit fine.

The placing of thermal pads was time consuming, the ridge at the back end of each heatsink means they miss contacting a little bit of the FET chips up the back, and if too thick a chunk is used they start hitting the chokes on the other side. I found the FETs required 4mm thickness, the chokes 0.5mm, and the memory 1mm thick. These yumcha pads are fairly spongy so a higher quality pad might need to be more exact.

 

First boot.




-> right click, Update Driver, Select the Driver option, clicked the 1070 option, it took a while but installed no probs.



Rebooted, opened Nvidia Control Panel, "Optimise performance" was selected, SLI was active!

Forced Kombuster to AFR1 in a custom profile, and voila:
(note the low core util% and power draw I later figured was due to 1.2ghz CPU throttle)

 

Gtx1070 SLI?

 

Bench scores understandably terrible since CPU is 1.2ghz after the first couple of seconds.

Graphics score on 3dmark Time Spy was on par with 980M SLIs. While horribly CPU and power bottlenecked. From stupid me running it on a 230W adapter by accident.

Yep.

 

When you said pre cut and showed the GPU PCB I thought you meant to cut the GPU PCB lol.

 

admittedly, that thought also entered my mind for like a second

 

Nice, even got SLI working. I really want to try that on the P870DM-G but it would require shaving the pc of the slave gpu to fit.

Sent from my SM-T560NU using Tapatalk

 

Me too I have another idea though.

 

Other than shaving the tab of the slave PCB? The gap between card slots is literally like 1-2mm smaller than I wanted. I also don't like the idea of bending the PCB either.

Sent from my SM-N910G using Tapatalk

 

Here's the listing if anybody is interested

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NVidia-GTX-1070-8GB-N17E-G2-A1-Video-Graphics-Card-GPU106/182588894256

I can't see why it wouldn't be compatible (1060s certainly are) - you'd even have no trouble with the LVDS screen due to Optimus translating card output to LVDS - but fitting might be the problem: from the quick look I had in my P170EM there's a tower capacitor sitting too close to the slot - it will get in the way of the the protruding wing side of this 1070. It's hidden under the frame in this pic (between CPU and GPU - which you'd probably have to cut out entirely) but you can juuuuust see a tiny bit of it to the right of the JUL-12 sticker. You'd also need to cut into the external casing on the bottom left which would leave it a bit ugly looking.

 

hot damn that price is killer for 1070. Too bad there is no way I can mod the GT60/GT70 chassis to work with it

 

Thanks for the info.
That capacitor comes really close to the edge of a MSI card, damn "wing"!
Maybe it doesn't fit. I must open a bottom case and check myself... next week, too busy right now on work.

 

Firestrike 17621
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/12934421


Time Spy 8370
http://www.3dmark.com/spy/1952039

Stock 1070 clocks
CPU with unlimited turbo limits +400Mhz (so 3.9Ghz with turbo to 4.1ghz)
Budget CL11-DDR3-1600
Heatsinks are ok for short bursts. Highest was 85C on Time spy graphics test 2

Silly 3dmark keeps trying to tell me this:


Gsync vbios? Monitor is a Dell U2311H thats from a time before gsync existed
Maybe flashing to a non-gsync vbios would get DP-out working?

 

A short lead where the capacitor is sits to a different place should still work. Try and keep it as short as possible to minimise the impact.

 

should i pull the trigger for my p377sm-a?

 

Full load they sit on 79C master, 86C slave. Takes literally 5 minutes, of both going full bore, they nudge over 90C before the fans wake up to spin to full.

Mining eth at 58mh/s, 295W wall draw btw. Return at current price 790%

Since when has running an electric heater made money? This world is bonkers

www.indra.com/8ball/front.html

Seriously, noone can answer that for you. Do you have the skills and tools (and patience) to follow my mods, accept the risk and the ~1200usd cost (less any sale of existing gpu/s), for the return of a 1080ti equivalent in your laptop?

 

Put some liquid metal on it. Needed bugger all of the stuff, heat sinks fit really well, probably due to small size and weight (compared with the p870dm ones I had to repeatedly manhandle to get appropriate core contact with)

While it idles a good 10C less, temps under load dropped maybe 4-5C. I suspect because the limiter is heatsink fin area. Cpu fared better, couldn't get it over 73C at all and it didn't even spin up to full.

Still annoying the GPU fans don't spin up to full to settle on a steady load temp until the slave reaches 90C.

 

If you are just mining, leave it turned upside down with the bottom off and a desk fan blowing on everything to help keep it alive as you abuse it

 

Lol that wont warm my feet under the desk though (middle of Melbourne winter right now ~15C day max 5-10C overnight)

 

Sounds toasty warm to me

 

Really considering this if fits.

 

Dammit you just reminded me I meant to get the calipers out and measure up the wing and tab so people like yourself can know beforehand with certainty about fitting. Sorry to dangle that at you as it's unlikely I'll get a chance before later next week!...

 

Try Unigine Heaven few runs and check the temps then. Would be awesome if it still be cool. Then my 4year old would see another upgrade in future. 680m sli -> 980m sli -> 1070 sli

Sent from my D5803 using Tapatalk

 

I would count a single 1070 as a nice upgrade from 980m sli.

 

My calipers' batteries are flat and it's actually hard to do with the heatsinks on. I'll get around to it when I start disassembling it for vBIOS flashing.

Hmmm a sidegrade in terms of performance, my overclocked 980M's were generally a tick faster than a stock power limit 1070 in @the_gh0sts' exact same model P870DM - unless limited by SLI. A single 1070 will use far less power though

However if you get the 1070 through the ebay link I did, and sold the 980Ms, it's highly probable you'd end up ahead in $ terms.

 

Yes and modern titles are working with SLI less these days :/ hopefully that changes or other options are given.

 

So. Most Unigene Heaven runs, it starts CPU throttling between halfway through and the end. A completed run at stock CPU settings (I forgot to open Throttlestop) yielded 108fps (Heaven, 1080p/Ultra quality/Extreme Tessellation/8xAA). Up to 118fps on one run where it didn't throttle. It seems when wall draw goes beyond 315W, most times it'll do the 1.2GHz CPU perma-throttle so it's tripping some hard limit. It happens whether I set a flat -200mhz core or +200mhz core clock in afterburner. One time the 330W powerbrick shut off so maybe it's being caused by that?...

It's not temp related either. One run completed with auto fans on and the slave GPU was 88-90C the whole time. With max fans it takes a while to warm up but settles on about 70/80C for the two GPUs.

I need to get my head around the GPU Boost 3.0 clock/volt slider or see if I can find a vBIOS that allows me to set an undervolt

I have some detailed HWInfo logs to go through and plot up but it looks like reported clocks are changing by 13mhz with EACH 1C change in temperature. Mind you it still hung around 1650-1800 at stock clocks and spent a fair bit of time at >2000mhz under a +200mhz core OC. Very hard to tell what's going on when boost, volts, and util% are all over the place.

 

the clocks go higher when capped to like 60fps.

 

I'm benching without vsync so that's not the case. Util% does drop below 100% quite frequently though, there's some bottleneck there

 

Yeah, I see the same with single card configs.

 

A stock run (I think this was the one without TS open and thus no CPU overclock) without throttling

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0
FPS:
118.6
Score:
2988
Min FPS:
26.9
Max FPS:
214.2
System
Platform:
Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit
CPU model:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3740QM CPU @ 2.70GHz (2693MHz) x4
GPU model:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 22.21.13.8233 (4095MB) x2
Settings
Render:
Direct3D11
Mode:
1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Preset
Custom
Quality
Ultra
Tessellation:
Extreme

This was with the usual CPU @ 3.9-4.1 and +200mhz core OC it throttled near the end - when it throttles the fps drops to 30-50 when usually it spends most of the run at 110-130fps
Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0
FPS:
120.2
Score:
3027
Min FPS:
27.7
Max FPS:
214.9
System
Platform:
Windows NT 6.2 (build 9200) 64bit
CPU model:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3740QM CPU @ 2.70GHz (2693MHz) x4
GPU model:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 22.21.13.8233 (4095MB) x2
Settings
Render:
Direct3D11
Mode:
1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Preset
Custom
Quality
Ultra
Tessellation:
Extreme

 

Even when capped it doesn't hold the max OC for long. +170 gets you around 2GHz for the most part before throttling occurs.

 

Firestrike Standard 17653 http://www.3dmark.com/fs/13037846

Firestrike Extreme 12285 http://www.3dmark.com/fs/13037927

Firestrike Ultra 7205 http://www.3dmark.com/fs/13037980

Timespy 8205 http://www.3dmark.com/spy/2018131


Hmmm. Can run these firestrike benches that pull 325-330W from the wall, no CPU throttle. I wonder if the powerbrick is heating up on the longer Heaven benchmark and that's causing the CPU throttle to trigger.

 

so sli scores an extra 1100 points over a single gpu?

 

Which score?
Remember these are stock GPU clocks (are you comparing a stock clock/TDP single GPU score?) and also the CPU scores only a nudge over 10K in FS physics which would bring all the overall scores down

There's definitely a CPU bottleneck: http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/12934846/fs/12934421
All that was different between those two was stock CPU (3.5ghz) vs overclocked (3.9) and the graphics score went up by quite a few %