mw86

Great this was a great guide before it was taken down i'm thank you for posting it again.

Nice upgrade on that ram GETFOUND. This place is certainly where we all are collectively gathering we just didn't know it. I have a feeling this forum will definately be the haven we all have been looking for. It's like that fabled line, "If you build it they will come!" Great job everyone.

Welcome to the forum TMI. Brian would you say just utilizing a modified VBIOS would work the same for a 900mhz core overclock? Or is that not stable without using Rivatuner?

Now I have heard of Dell not owning up to their mistakes but to leave something unresolved like that is outrageous. They should have canceled the whole order and made the actual customer solve their own issue by reordering and notifying them their order wasn't processed correctly. That's something else Brian. Typical Dell.

True but at 32gb max for those how would use it that seems like a +1 for R3. I know what you mean I barely noticed a difference from my last computers 4gb to my R2's 8gb.

As always you've been a great help Brian. I'll try booting without Raid enabled didn't try that yet. I glanced at the parts list and invoice. How can determine the serials? I don't want to open case up unless that's only way possible. My system was ordered 6/6/2010 and shipped 6/16/2010. *** Found those serials when Bios posts. They are 001008SY008B7476 and 801012SE012A6125

+1 to safer clip mod. Great Idea Ash I think I'll follow your lead when I can get some good thermal paste.

I didn't see anyone mention the R3 having 12gb DDR3 max as compared to R2 8Gb DDR3. Like the R3 posted in your signature DaneGRClose.

Okay I feel like dummy. To make a long story short I can't boot into windows anymore. I did an inplace upgrade to fix a couple inconsistencies that were preventing the installation of windows 7 service pack1. That went fine until starting to reinstall drivers windows automatically tried catching up on updates and I was also in process of setting up latest catalyst drivers. Between windows update or the free fall sensor driver for the hard drive, something messed up. I could system rrestore it was enabled at the time and I have no full backups currently I was waiting to purchase a drive for a full backup. So I tried disabling the problematic st electronics free fall sensor and I'm getting no where. The sensor enabled itself on both my ssd drives in raid and must be kicking in at boot. There's a commmand for command prompt but you need to be already in windows. So I decided this is my best time to update the firmware on both my Samsung PM800 (256gb). The files is listed as one of our drivers on dells website. Should I do that or will I just end up bricking my drives? Does anyone know if this firmware update will enable trim. If not am I better using a different firmware? I rememeber reading a firmware that will enable trim that wasn't released by dell or samsung. Please I need some advice before I start with a clean install all over again. (BTW I'll be posting those pics for powersupply mod tonight they weren't lost)

I'm waiting for the money to get some good thermal paste myself. I will probably do the retention mod but I'm hesitant, towers have more room and parts are even smaller and delicate. Those ribbon cables scare me they can tear if they get to much tension on them. But the temp difference would basically make it a completely different computer. Can't pass that up.

Wow I can't wait those will be some amazing accomplishements. I'm still in shock from their version 1 bios, I plan to install it tonight after typing that guide up. I took all the pictures needed. By the way what resolution should I use, there were more than just a couple of pics. They are now in 10megapixel I can shrink them to any resoulution you see fit. The forum rules I thought said 640x480 that's why I did small thumbnails first so not to slow down forum pages.

Nicely said Brian and DR650SE. Larger power supply on the R3 $100, New Sandy Bridge Processor $500, Crossfire 6970m with an unlocked bios by the WIZ and the ability to overclock tdp priceless!

Brian can you also request an adjustment from 5-10% overclock in bios like set fsb does? I don't know if it's even possible to add stuff like that to the bios. Atleast on XM processors or even non XM would be even better.

RBE bios Editor, set your over-clock using existing bios files and save the new ones. Flash them to your cards using the manual dos based flashing method that Brian posted under the ATI/AMD 5870m Vbios Flash Thread. Use that exact method except utilize the one or in case of crossfire two files you created. Note type in names exactly as named if you've named the bios files a different name. This method i think is best because it maintains your cards speed profiles under modes like 3D mode, Video mode, Desktop Mode, and low power/overheating mode. your card normally doesn't run at full speed until you launch something 3D. Hope this helps. There should be guides on RBE.

Thank you, you are too kind. I'll upload all needed pics of the cooler asap. I'll get some good shots and take the thing apart to show its construction. I'll show the process i went through and hopefully what everyone will get from this is that its construction was practically free, these were just parts laying around my computer work area! One could even power a basic PC fan in any way, put feet on the bottom and top and place their power adapter on top of it. With mine theres no need to buy anything more than a basic 12v PC fan, some kind of enclosure made of a naturally cool material (i choose aluminum) and a basic power-supply strong enough for a small fan (mine was built into enclosure). The fan is attached in a way to create a basic seal around bottom inside of enclosure with it pulling air in the hole on bottom and up through chassis of enclosure till spreading the cooler moving air out evenly of those holes on top dowsing the entire bottom of laptop power-supply with cool moving air. Any other heat dissipating naturally from the top of power supply unit. I'll get a guide done in the next day or so. Cutting metal is involved. The fan noise is a little on the higher side but that shouldn't stop anyone who's over-clocked, in fact its probably a welcomed sound. I think ill just need to be acquainted with the upload tools i'm not familiar with them.

Who knows maybe slim profile 500W adapters will become a feasible option for the mobile crowd. Then we could fry eggs and get the next best bench score. In fact when testing my rig under heavy load my 240W PSU for my M17X R2 got very hot to the touch. Curious to know just how hot it was getting I placed a basic indoor outdoor thermometer on top of it while gaming with crossfire. When it maxed the thermometer at 122 degrees F I decided I would build a basic fan for it. I wasn't going for aesthetics and it probably wasn't needed. I attribute that heat to throttlestop, cpu volt and a high tdp. I'm sure your 3Ghz+ 4 core Bryan tends to have your PSU a bit warm. Heres some pics. I made it out of an old aluminum external hard drive enclosure with a dremel to make holes and a small case fan which converted easily to a standard power connector. I reused the original PSU from enclosure. With this unlocked BIOS we have a lot of adjustments available including the fan control and thermal trip point. We will be able to easily max out performance and cool our rigs with that much freedom. I think what I am getting at is that with all these new ways to improve performance maybe we need to watch out for our PSU's. I believe that an older 5870m crossfire setup with the XM cpus at stock pushes close to 200W already. As for the bios I hope more options surface such as more available vcores and higher OC/baseclock adjustment for fine tuning. Thanks to those of you that helped and are helping in testing the unlocked bios and future revisions.

You can go to device manager, properties, and the performance tab and for windows 7 check the boxes for write caching and turning off write back caching. You will get wei to show 7+ for disk drives instead of 5.9. But don't lose power, have an improper shutdown or even bsod with these enabled as this will cause data loss. If overclocking and unsure of stability don't use these options yet. I had it happen, windows became un bootable saying sxs.dll was corrupt my fix was booting from windows dvd getting to command prompt and deleting the damaged file and replacing it with a copy from another windows installation with use of a usb stick. The file was in the windows folder and the sxs folder. I may be the only one to make this mistake, who knows lol.

Thank you I understand now. Really looking forward to that bios. The 920xm and 940xm are beasts. Thanks Brian.

Simply amazing. I'll give it a try. I've been using throttlestop and bios but this could be amazing. When the bios overclock is done or the setfsb overclock is done we are raising our base clock and therefore raising our ram operating frequency among others such as the qpi. Since both are locked at a certain ratio of base clock what speeds could our qpi and our ram handle on stock parts? Should we raise ram voltage from 1.5 to 1.6 or even the 1.7 option. I've read 1.65 is Intels max recomended voltage. All this ties in with that magic base clock we are raising. Any advice based on your experience thus far?

Hi everyone new here I haven't been in any forums. I was marcwaters86 at freeforums and I joined here as mw86 instead. I'm happy to be here. I'm amongst great people here. First Alienware I've ever owned and I feel like I've joined a wonderful communuty. Thanks for having me. Oh and yes the cooling mods should be implemented. Rather should have been shipped like that from the start using more dependable materials like the ones suggested in the guide. Dell back from 2004 to 2006 (dates could be wrong) sold faulty hardware they claimed in all cases was the clients fault when in fact there was physical server hardware that had over heating capacitors that burst. To get to the point if Dell decided to use only the best then they may have a chance to be a name to stand behind. I love my M17X R2 but I have noticed throttling problems on graphics with the HD5870 crossfired that as pointed out could have easily been solved with more dependable materials like high quality thermal material on their processors and gpus.