Steve135

Ho7620, did you end up doing this upgrade? I did something similar a while back and I'm curious how your rig turned out. Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

I purchased duel 780's from someone on this forum a while back. I got them already flashed with VBIOS from slv07, there is a thread on these forums for the update if you have to do it yourself. Do some searching and you'll find it. If not let me know and I'll see if I can find the link again. Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

I just did this upgrade not to long ago and think I may be running into power issues. The PSU will die randomly under load, I have the 330W. I haven't attempted any overclocking yet. I need a way to test the power draw of the system to see if this is indeed the problem. Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

I'll second that, I just installed 780 SLI in my R1 and believe I'm running into some power issues. More investigation is needed here and I'll get back to the forum when I have more information. Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

Looks pretty awesome. If you post the directions I'll consider getting an extra PSU and giving it a try. I'm running an R1 with 2960xm and 780 SLI and I believe I'm running into some power issues as the PSU will just randomly die when under load. Though do you know if I can test the power draw from my system with either software or basic multimeter. I can do basic electrical work but I'm no elec eng. Thanks. Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

Yeah I did. Just got back from a little trip so I haven't been active on the forums. Got the 2960XM with 780 SLI. It runs cool enough, and didn't have any issues when I put the parts in. However after playing Far Cry 4 for a little while sometimes the power supply will kick off, and sometimes the game will just crash. I had thought this may have been due to the dodgy overseas power at the time but came back and my machines still doing it. I think the cards and chip may be to much for the power supply when being pushed, though it's funny to note that this doesn't happen in 3D Mark. Also the cards run pretty cool showing 75 deg temps at load with the fans running at about mid-range.

So I just made the transition from red to green with my R1 and had a slight issue with the new SLI cable. In order to make it work it had to be routed over both GPU heatsinks, whereas the old crossfire cable was designed to fit over the palm rest, making right angles around the heatsinks. I placed some camera lens cleaning cloths between the cable and the heatsinks to provide some separation and just sticky taped them in place. I'm hoping this setup will work. Has anybody else experienced a situation like this? Do you recommend me keeping it this way or should I search for a SLI cable that has the right angles in it to go around the heatsinks? Cheers,

Just remember to change your SATA operation back to AHCI if necessary after resetting to defaults. I just re-flashed my BIOS with the unlocked version of A05, then entered the BIOS setup on reboot to reset to defaults. I had forgot that for my setup I need AHCI selected for SATA operation instead of RAID to make the Vertex 3 boot. So on the initial boot I was a little (ok, a lot) worried when I saw BSOD shortly after the win boot screen. I thought for sure I has messed up the BIOS and was destined to follow the recovery steps (which I had fortunately printed out for such an occasion) to get my machine back. But the BIOS was fine, just had to change SATA operation back to AHCI and all is well. Advanced overclock options available! Though, I'm not sure how much my i7 2720QM would take. Thanks @svl7, beers on me.

Hawkeye, how did it go? I'm about to do the same thing here in about a week.

I love my M18x, at least when I'm not carrying it around - then I'm cursing it as it is heavy! Especially with the PSU. This is the price for carrying around performance, however I travel a lot so it's necessary. I must agree with others on this forum, if you get a gaming rig you need to look beyond the 765's. According to notebookcheck this will get you around a 6400 3DMark GPU score. I get a 5830 score with this rig I can't even begin to play 2014 titles. The wife got me Far Cry 4 for Christmas and it's basically unplayable. It's a GPU upgrade for me to the 780 and I'd suggest you look at for something similar.

Thanks Robbo, I know what you mean about drivers, they seem finicky especially for the Radeon cards. I've had several that have performed worse after a driver 'update.' As far as I can tell, nobody has got an R1 to work with the Maxwell architecture from nVidia so I think I'll avoid them. Though admittedly the price/performance they offer is tantalizing. As far as buying a new notebook, I looked at that already, Alienware seems to have gotten ridiculously expensive these days, so that's a no-go. My best GPU score is in 3DMark11 is 5830. Looking at Notebookcheck, a single 670mx should get a score of 3587. How in the world can you almost double this to 6740!!? I'm assuming you're running with upgraded heat sinks and fans. Or do you have a walk in freezer for gaming? :-). Although I'm running at a higher res (1920x1080) I don't think this effects 3DMark scores (please correct me if I'm wrong). You've got me interested in tweaking this thing once I get my new card(s) so if you have any suggestions let me know.

Thanks guys, that's what I was thinking as well. For my R1, I'm assuming I can get a 780m card from a Clevo, MSI or other brand and just re-flash the VBIOS with ones provided by @svl7. (thanks in advance for that mate) Does this sound about right? or is there something else I'm missing here. I was looking at some second hand parts on ebay and might pull the trigger on this pretty soon. berryracer, I assume your rig is a newer M18. Did the 780m's you have with that come with it or were they an upgrade? How are they working out for 2014 titles (Far Cry 4, Assassins Creed Unity, etc) Thanks again,

My R1 is going to get a GPU upgrade to one of these options, probably adding just a single GPU first and then moving to crossfire/SLI a little later in the year. They seem pretty comparably priced and spec'd. The 6970's I have just don't cut it anymore. Any thoughts? Cheers,

Thanks Robbo, I appreciate the response. I'll just plan on getting a 780m and go from there. I'm curious though, how does your M17xR3 do with 2014 game titles like Far Cry 4 or Assassins Creed Unity? It looks like you've got a few mods in there that keep it purring. Cheers,

gimdi, I'm also looking to upgrade my GPU's, from what I've found AW offers both 75W and 100W heatsinks for the M18x, they should be labeled on the heatsink itself. There is a good video posted by Eurocom Technology showing the physical replacement of GPU's and the labeling on the heatsinks here: In it you can clearly see one of the heatsinks labeled as 75W and the other at 100W. While in the video he doesn't switch out the 75W heatsink, I believe he should have for the 880m's that he put in as they are 100W parts. I'm sure it would probably still work, but I know I'll be upgrading my heatsinks in this rig to the 100W part when I do my GPU upgrade. Cheers,

Is it necessary to unlock the bios to upgrade the GPU's in the M18xR1? According to Speccy, my motherboard is version A05 and I'm looking to do a GPU upgrade here soon. I'm toying between trying the new VBIOS released by @svl7 for a GTX 970m or going with the tried and true GTX 780m. Cheers,

First let me thank svl7 for the significant work he has put into this project. I'm going to upgrade my M18x GPUs and have been researching possibilities online for the past few days. I was about ready to pull the trigger on a GTX 780, as I've heard numerous people report issues when trying to upgrade their older AW rigs with nVidia's 900m series GPU's, when I came across this thread. I was thinking of going with a single GTX 970m initially, and then adding another with a possible CPU upgrade later on down the line. So as a question for the forum, will a single GTX 970m work on my rig with the VBIOS provided here by svl7? and do you think this is a good upgrade path for my rig? or should I go back to the GTX 780m idea? Also, I've heard elsewhere that I may need to upgrade to Win 8 or 10 to run nVidia's Maxwell architecture. What are your thoughts? Any comments or insights are appreciated, Thanks,