sangemaru

For Alienware it's easier to get a 330W power brick and use Nospheratu's method, if you don't plan to overclock higher. Yea, you'll destroy a brick's detection (although you can get the chip on ebay and program it yourself) but you'll have a re-usable adapter.

Try prema's clevo vbios version here: http://forum.techinferno.com/clevo/3119-%5Bbios-mods%5D-prema-mod-latest-stock-bios.html#post54056 I suggest PM'ing him first though, to ask if it usually works ok on dell cards (I assume you have dell).

675M or 675MX? 675M is fermi and not compatible with these vbioses.

What slim said. That being said, back when we were testing for bottlenecks on the m17x R2 with TWO 7970m's, there was no difference in framerate in either Metro 2033, Metro Last Light or Tomb Raider benchmark between a superclocked 940XM and a lowly 720qm. Of course, everything was maxed out graphically. 60fps wasn't much of an issue. That being said, Starcraft 2 and Crysis 3 are a whole different ballpark.

I'm glad to hear it wasn't permanent. By the way, how does that dual-core CPU cope with a 780m?

Thanks for the heads up PremaBro. I guess just the original dump file then

I considered svet's bios tool too, but really I have no guarantee that it would cover all the possible board combinations for my card (ASUS, DELL, MSI, CLEVO, in 1.5GB and 3GB flavours). Don't want to end up wasting the 15$, plus I've noticed that he doesn't seem very forthcoming with supporting any products other than MSI ones.

Sorry bro, looked up and down for one but can't locate. Look for someone who still has an unmodded card or mail rjtech or eurocom and ask them nicely for a vbios would be my suggestion. EDIT: Or... you can try this VGA Bios Collection: Dell GTX 780M 4096 MB | techPowerUp

150W is not enough for 9x0XM + 7970m, even underclocked. I had an EXTREMELY good targus 150W PSU that could handle it, but effective power draw was over 180W. I've also used a 240W PSU which failed to handle the combo. You need 210W or above PSU if you plan to reliably use that combination. Excepting CPU-bound games (and mantle may make short work of that in the future), I couldn't discern reliable performance differences between a 720QM and a superclocked 940XM (@ 3.6GHz-3.8Ghz). I'd say first prio is GPU, then upgrade PSU, then maybe upgrade CPU. @svl7: Bro, I hope I'm not nagging, just wondering if you saw my pm or post in the Kepler vbios mod thread.

GPU-z is more accurate afaik. Doesn't really matter though.

960 looks nice. Regarding temps, I max out at 66C

Generic VGA video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3840QM,Dell Inc. 096J9P - P5810 -- Graphics Score 5591 That's an interesting score, since mine is bigger I'm using 250Mhz slower memory than you are. How do you cool the underside chips? Have you had any overheating troubles, or corruption with it? I haven't, but I am worried about it. The bottom of my laptop does get a bit warm.

Hey svl7, would you mind doing an unlocked voltage slider version of the MSI 670MX (1.5GB) vbios on the first page? I have a card that I didn't even bother to tweak, just OC'd to 1000Mhz / 2150MHz, it froze after a few seconds, lowered clock core to 950MHz and running smooth like a bird. It smells like a very good chip to me (most 670mx oc's i see can hardly touch 900core at stock voltage, and usually lower memory clocks - i'd oc the memory more but I can't cool the underside chips) and I want to see how brightly it can blaze I'd be happy to drop a few beers' worth in your Paypal.

Aye, it's pretty easy to figure out. For a single 7970m you don't need any extra advice, but if you decide to get a second card and crossfire them, do feel free to visit my thread @ notebookreview where I've posted a guide of requirements and pitfalls to avoid.

@properhit: As far as I know, all you need to do with the m17x R2 heatsink is to replace the screws used with the ones of the clevo card, and make sure not to overtighten (i'd heard it's a risk for clevo users - for dell cards the screws fit just right once the washers are removed). Use padding in the right places (over inductors, ram and VRM's) and enjoy.

An i5 with the cooling mod (especially if you repaste), should be in temp heaven. To be honest, I don't think you need the cooling mod, just some quality paste (something like PK-3), but I won't vouch for that, heh

It's not so much the fan that's the problem. The cooling system is just badly designed. One single measly heatpipe can't hope to cool a quad-core i7 CPU during hard workloads. Anyway, I have to admit that I've moved on since then. I sold the acer and moved on to an extremely highly specced alienware

Go for it Flingin bro'. Nospheratu, great guide, great layout and great pics .

And yet two years later, second GPU is automatically turned off by PowerPlay through ULPS

Mr. Fox, the level of performance you've managed to pull from a non-desktop machine is downright scary.

Alienhack and Nospheratu (above) have managed to power overclocked 920XM cpu's with 7970m CrossfireX'd cards on m17x-R2 machines with stock 240W PSU's - over at NBR Don't diss that sweetie-pie, it does its job well. That being said, has anyone managed to get the 330W Delta PSU to actually pull that much from the wall at least on any machine other than the m18x?

I'd like to give a little input as a user of 920XM and ONE 7970m on a 150W PSU: The quality of the PSU matters a great deal. I use a MSI 16F1 platform, and while measuring power draw at the wall while i was experimenting with overclocking, I determined that the stock system pulls around 120W with 920XM + 7970m (including all the other components that needed working). (just prime95). Power draw would increase to about 165W prime95 + furmark stock. However, a simple overclock to 3.2GHz across all cores would push my power consumption at the wall to over 220W under load when running just prime95. This means that the CPU by itself may EASILY account for over 150W-160W power draw. If we assume an average of 100W power draw/card stock (i forgot to mention, I keep my card undervolted to 1.1V), then a simple CPU overclock to 3.2GHz across all cores will push the power draw upwards of 350-360W for 920XM/940XM + 7970m crossfire. So it makes sense that a dual-psu would be needed for this system to actually have a chance to exploit it. Unfortunately, not overclocking the CPU is too much of a bottleneck, since the old nehalem sometimes bottlenecks even a single card, even massively overclocked. Now, the point, is this: I have two PSU's on this system. One Delta rated at 150W (fat one) and one Delta rated at 240W (slim one). The 240W was modded to work with the MSI machine. I can push the CPU on the 150W to any frequency so long as I don't attempt to do massive overclocks on the 7970m. Something like 900/1300 clocks on GPU with 3.2GHz on CPU will work just fine. The 240W will trip and shutdown on any GPU overclock, and the CPU may trip if it's above 3.05GHz. So, PSU quality makes a huge deal of difference. The 240W-rated PSU can barely take 220W. Any higher and it will trip. The 150W PSU however, has been tested for hours under loads of over 250W. It finally tripped at 265W on the wall. @aarpcard: My 240W PSU used to trip at 150W, but a friend checked it and found areas where, instead of the MOSFETS that should have been there by design, the PSU came from the factory with... resistors. He replaced them with mosfets and power capacity increased to 220W. Maybe you could give it a try. Otherwise, replace it. I still believe a proper 330W PSU will feed the m17x R2 just fine, providing not too high overclocks on the CPU and a little undervolt on the GPU. If someone gets lucky, even a decent 240W could power it. But nobody should expect this situation to work stock.

I wasn't able to alter the fan speed either, no matter what I tried. Even with modded bios and trying to direct write to the EC controller, it would keep doing its own thing after a few seconds. That's why I made the hardware mod.

Self-made design as far as I know. I'll send you the contact details of the dude that did the job by PM, you can ask him about it directly.

Repasted with PK1 and installed the new controller, yes. Even gave me overclock headroom on the GPU. I'm not too sure drilling holes in it is a very good idea, you should try it out to see how it works prior to doing that. One of the reasons I liked the solution on mine so much was exactly because it was so elegant. Anything above 70 celsius would send the fan to full, no visible case mods needed.