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Alienware M18x GPU Cooling Design


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Take a look at those heatpipes! *phew!*

3 thick heapipes per GPU. This thing can easily take a couple of 485m's.

The questions remain:

  • Power Circuitry? is it going to be enough? (probably)
  • Bios whitelisting? Will the bios block non-approved cards? (also, probably)

I am moving in August, and my job contract ends in July, so I will be buying my m18x in sept-oct this year. If by then they still dont have the 485m sli as a selection, my plan is to:

  1. Buy the base config with 460m sli from USA
  2. Buy the 485m sli pair from logicalblueone (local supplier) and MAKE IT WORK
  3. ???
  4. Profit!

Im sure someone will want to buy an SLI pair of 460m's somewhere on ebay if I can get it to work, but overall, I'm excited and hopeful!

I was in doubt about the 485m's until I saw the cooling. It looks monstrous!

As soon as I know everything is all working, I am going to proceed to see if I can do any cooling improvements to this behemoth. It will be interesting to see if they learned from all our work on the M17x-R2.

-Ash

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Yeah I told ya, the cooling is much improved this generation. The R3 has a similar 3 heatpipe design except it seems with the added ducting and plate over the fans, the M18x will have better airflow. One thing I wish they hadn't done is put the GPU's in the middle again like they did with the R2, that is extremely annoying when you need to repaste. Since it can handle a 330W PSU, I'd surmise that the power circuitry is more than adequate for 485M SLi.

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The CPU heatsink is placed close to the exhaust and back edge of computer unlike the M17xR2 having this in the center of the system. That's an improvement. The extra copper pipes are going to be excellent at keeping the systems cooler.

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  • 1 month later...

After pasting my memory chips I noticed they weren't quite touching the heatsink (dell 6970 in m17x, but essentially same as 18x for area over memory).

That said, temps dropped massively vs. pads....even without proper contact.

I was wondering how bad of an idea it'd be if I picked up a thin sheet of copper and affixed it to the heatsink over the memory chips.

1. to close the gap

2. I'd use silver, but it's super expensive. Copper's a decent conductor.

Would really like some input before I do something potentially (more) retarded (than usual).

Edited by kune
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The problem is that you can't properly attach the copper shin to the heatsink, there is always some air between the copper and the heatsink, which is really insulating.

Why did you remove the thermal pads? And which temps dropped? Usually the gap between the memory and the heatsink is about 0.5-1.0mm, and this too big for a proper use of thermal paste. Pads are the best way to go imo, you only have to be careful that the pads are compressible and not too thick, because this will increase the gap between the die and the heatsink.

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Because I had an extra GPU to mess around with.

Memory temps are what dropped, and they dropped by a good 20C ++ vs. the terribad Dell stock pad job. I saw memory temps around 100C before.

10minxtremeburn.th.png

Thanks for adding some logic to my bad heatsink idea lol

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Looking at pictures I would also say that the new types of fans they are using in the R3 and M18x R1 are great too. For quieter and better air flow.

I know I would sure like to have those fans in my R2 let alone the new cooling design. :Banane52:

Cheers. :)

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Check this out guys... (these are words copied directly from M18x manual - so I don't own these words they are property of Dell+Alienware)

AC Adapter

Output current

240 W

12.30 A (continuous)

330 W

16.92 A

Output power

240 W

240 W

330 W

330 W

Rated output voltage

19.50 VDC

Temperature range

Operating

240 W

0 °C to 40 °C (32 °F to 104 °F)

330 W

10 °C to 35 °C (50 °F to 95 °F)

Storage

–40 °C to 70 °C (–40 °F to 158 °F)

Connector types

DC connector

3-pin, 7.4 mm plug

AC connector

3-pin — C13 (150 W)

3-pin — C13 (240 W)

Now if anyone remembers my overclocked system that I used a custom air cooled design on my power-supply? I had temps atleast up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So that means the temps were well above the safe rating. If we overclock on that 330W I think it is important for the life of the power-supply to do the same and add a cooler to it if overclocking to maintain lower than the rated 95 degrees Fahrenheit. This may not be news but to me that is.

http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/215-laptop-ac-dc-power-adapter-cooler.html

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The problem is that you can't properly attach the copper shin to the heatsink, there is always some air between the copper and the heatsink, which is really insulating.

Why did you remove the thermal pads? And which temps dropped? Usually the gap between the memory and the heatsink is about 0.5-1.0mm, and this too big for a proper use of thermal paste. Pads are the best way to go imo, you only have to be careful that the pads are compressible and not too thick, because this will increase the gap between the die and the heatsink.

I did the same, - pasted the memory chips with TX-4. Had to apply a very thick layer on the chips but it was well worth it - 10-20C drop across the board. Pads are no longer a good solution for GDDR5 the way I see it.

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Yes, if the gap between the die and the heatsink can get minimized by removing the thermal pads, the temps can really improve.

Recently I got to the conclusion, that the vram modules aren't running that hot... the modules on the back of the 470m which I put in the M15x weren't cooled at all by a heatsink or similar, and it worked fine.

I realized that in the G73JW the gap between heatsink and vram modules was pretty huge and Asus filled it with a chewing-gum like paste, and the system worked fine too. I guess the vram modules don't need as much cooling as generally assumed... I should try measuring the temps of the modules under load sometime.

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It is virtually impossible for a VRAM module to overheat, even when bare naked. A VRM module though, can but this is very rare. Two very different circumstances separated by just 1 letter.

Toms hardware guide get this mixed up way too fucking much. So do a lot of online hardware stores.

-Ash

Edited by Ashtefere
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I did it with my R2 here i know is on different forum but i hope OPs dont cut out the knowledge.

M17x-R2 CFX 5870 modding for extreme oc

After pasting my memory chips I noticed they weren't quite touching the heatsink (dell 6970 in m17x, but essentially same as 18x for area over memory).

That said, temps dropped massively vs. pads....even without proper contact.

I was wondering how bad of an idea it'd be if I picked up a thin sheet of copper and affixed it to the heatsink over the memory chips.

1. to close the gap

2. I'd use silver, but it's super expensive. Copper's a decent conductor.

Would really like some input before I do something potentially (more) retarded (than usual).

Edited by svl7
link was broken, fixed it for you ;)
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So not a bad idea at all using aluminum and paste on both sides and not a bad idea on using just paste so how bout just using a thick paste on the vram and one that has long reliability that doesn't bake out like the IC Diamond in the test/giveaway... Its a paste that doesn't exactly melt like some others so you may be able to add extra for a thicker application over the vram chips so it contacts the chips and the normal heatsink so no extra material from a shim would be needed and would prevent a small amount of heat trapped by using the shim since the shim isn't "soldered".

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Aye! U R right . Cooling the vram is not pressing isue it mostly stand for 1300Mhz EZ without cooling. I have not checked but i sore they had some reference standard up to that XXX it must work stable. The pressing issue is the GPU cooling m17x GPU cooling is relatively not bad but is lack of proper design. Since the highest gpu is 5870 for m17x dell had no interest to do anything. R3 housing a single 6970M performs similar than 2 5870 not really point to go for single.

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Aye! U R right . Cooling the vram is not pressing isue it mostly stand for 1300Mhz EZ without cooling. I have not checked but i sore they had some reference standard up to that XXX it must work stable. The pressing issue is the GPU cooling m17x GPU cooling is relatively not bad but is lack of proper design. Since the highest gpu is 5870 for m17x dell had no interest to do anything. R3 housing a single 6970M performs similar than 2 5870 not really point to go for single.

there is a point to get a single 6970m the R3 M17x having one gpu you don't have to deal with crossfire problems (there aren't really any but microstutter and that's not a big deal), its lighter than the R2 and supports the 2nd generation I7 chipset, faster and more amounts of ram and sata 3 hard drive support. So getting an R3 is a nice powerful portable package that doesn't have crossfire issues. R2 has the RGB display and fully unlocked tdp on CPU with xm first generation I7 chips.

Edited by mw86
changed data 3 to sata 3
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I know the tech works behind R3, i mean for me is no point only i find one attractive element 16GB of ram when you dealing with Hyper-V or vmware it could come handy. Personally i much prefer dual grafics (remembe my 1st one 2xVoodoo2 24MB from Diamond) soon we going to hit 4gb on a single card.

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Merged into a new thread/topic, I encouraged the discussion I apologize... that was my first move of a bunch of posts I see how it helps organize the forum. Back on topic I will be using the IC diamond on my GPUs and CPU on my incoming M18x it will be the second one I repaste with it so I get a little practice before hand. I believe I am going to try a thicker layer of IC Diamond over the various places Dell has use pads on the video cards to see if all temps can be dropped on the GPUs.

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