ram1913

I just upgraded a few weeks ago with with my m17x from 560m to 780m. you should have no issue's with heat sinks or x brackets. Just make sure to get some good thermal pads, and make sure they have contact with your heat sinks. follow j95 guide in the forum link bikaso gave. After install, if you start getting beeps and black screen when restarting computer. Take out card and reinstall they arn;t sitting right. Happened to me, and I had a slight panic

Oops, forgot to say it is an Alienware m18x. So I tore the whole thing down, huge PITA, and found the heatsinks caked with dust. I replaced the thermal compound and put her back together. I had to use regular cheap off brand thermal compound as it was all I could find here, but even then I see much better temps, 87C max (@83.7W!):

http://i.imgur.com/DuZI8B4.png

So, you were pretty much right, the fan couldn't cool the CPU well enough because the heatsink was super clogged.

Here's a pic of them:

ya dust is evil, I got my old m17x r2 up to 110 C. not good. try to keep things below 80 to keep your hardware alive

I know the basics are the same comparing the two cards and other then double the VRAM the cards are basically just a rebrand. That being said, I really wish my 780's ran at the stock clock speeds the 880 runs at.

1) Is this absolutely doable? If so will it be putting a large strain on the cardS GPU and Memory? I was hoping to try to flash the780M using the custom bios on this website, but everytime I try I fail miserably, I have posted over 5 posts and still can't download any files from this site. I can't private message anyone and I can't seem to find how to just pay money to get the custom files.

just alittle backround i have a

i7 4930MX processor currently running alienware 18 stock bios A8 Level 1 overclock. 32gigs of ram, two 512 GB Samsung 840 Series Pro in Raid 0, and two GTX 780M's In SLI, completly stock. I did download afterburner , but never changed anything. I really jus twant my two video cards to run at the same speeds the new 880M's are stock running at. Not sure if thats a easy fix. If so someone please help me out. Thank you very much. I have had the laptop since last august and have yet to have it run correctly. Once it went on fire and they had to replace it completely while i was at work

This video compares the 2 cards head to head stock for stock, and their basically the same. the main difference is the 880m actually run a little hotter. What is suspected the 880m might oc a little better if provided a good cooling solution, but the 780m's do just fine.

from what I have read and seen on people testing. the best method is as little as possible (aka small dot so center of chip covered but not spilling over). The thinner the paste the less distance needed for heat to travel to the copper of the heat sink which is much more conductive then any past. personally i use MX-4 good so far.