0x29A

That's exactly right. There were people replacing factory thermal pads on 580Ms in m18xes with ICD and the results were quite stunning. The point is to remember to use a non-conductive non-bleeding and thick enough paste to prevent short circuiting and proper application.

Like hell you did. Right. Unwilling to post results? You just don't have any, do you? Proper knowledge is empirically proven knowledge. You made a claim and you cannot support it with proofs. All you are is just talk. Well... I think we are done here :-/ You are clearly unable to prove your point.

"Indeed" what? There is no IC Diamond featured in that 'roundup'. How can this prove anything? IC Perihelion is a different product. If we are talking ICD, let's talk ICD. Edit: Note that ICP is a "cost effective" product as IC describes it. It's price is much lower than ICD's too. Clearly, it's not the same quality there. ICP is meant for mass, cost effective applications. And how exactly did you observe that? Let's face it, you didn't. You never conducted in-depth tests nor used that many computers in very heavy stress environments. You're just trolling. ICD's performance became already common knowledge and indeed can be proven in many test. The thing is you just decided you know better and keep talking shit. Your 'expert' does not even seem to notice that the digit stands for volume of the tube with paste. 7 or 24 is not the name of the compound itself. If we are talking proper knowledge, let's talk proper knowledge and not just anything found on any blog anywhere. This is the problem with kids of the wikipedia era. You think that if you googled it it must be right. Again, this is common knowledge mobile CPUs are lidless. So what exactly? The fragment you quoted does not prove anything else apart the fact that questionable expert 'recommends' things (well, in the same way like you do). You haven't really proven anything, have you? So far we established that ICD scratches dies' surface, but apart from that nothing really. Are scratches bad and therefore make ICD perform worse than competition? Prove it, properly this time. BTW, I really can't be your "bro". You're troll. I am human. Two different species. Are you sure this place is for you? You seem more like an NBR type to me. ADMIN NOTE: Highlights in red are the only reason we ban people here at T|I. We don't ask much from visitors here except to be respectful towards other members. If you can't do that, this forum is not for you.

Your "core" is supposed to work properly and be cooled so, not look good, GeoCake. Nobody can see it anyway. The goal of the 'race' is obvious: thermal paste that conducts best wins.

Why risk disappointment, bleeding or anything else? Just get IC Diamond. Well known, performs well and won't disappoint.

I cannot say I've had many Logitech mice, since if you get one it last for 3-5 years easily. G500 and G700 at my end at the moment, both perform really well. If I were you I'd go for G500. It features the Logitech classic form factor (which I find very comfortable) plus you can adjust mouse's weight what makes the device very accurate. G500 also offers 2x DPI and it only some 10 € more expensive. Anyhow, Logitech is good brand. I am pretty sure G300 will perform well too if you choose to get that one.

AFAIR, talking mobile GPUs, the point of the whole 40nm -> 28nm switch is first and foremost getting more performance per Watt. This means that indeed a card like 675 may be expected to have similar performance to 580, yet it will require way less power to achieve it, say 60W instead of 100W+ 580m likes. If you look at the specs of desktop line you can easily see that the Wattage requirements remain generally the same but GFLOPS number is at least tripled, so this in syn what Nvidia said some times about getting ~x3 more performance per Watt. However, just as well we may see 680M still running at 100W and reaching 3x the performance of 580M. Who knows. It feels undeniably good to be sporting the best mobile GPU SLI setup on the planet. It feels less funny being aware it will soon be over Hmm... Well, as longs as my 580M SLI runs any game maxed out I am fine with it.

Don't give up, daveh98. Remember that at the other end of the line there is just a corporate drone sitting there. No point arguing. Be patient, if the person you're talking to starts to be annoying and/or inept, simply and patiently ask for another person or perhaps a manager. I've had my share of technical "support" from Dell and apart of the fact most of those people were annoyingly slow thinkers it all ended well. The point is to be patient. In the end Dell offers the best warranty conditions out there.

Very nice, good for both of you!

The heatsink finally came. In total I spent 31 EUR -> the cost of the HS in the US plus shipping to Europe. If I got it from Dell EU as it was originally intended, I'd pay 36 inc. shipping, so in the end I saved myself more Dell's bullshit and those extra 5 EUR.

Was that a rhetoric questions or perhaps nobody really knows what's new in A08? A07 is supposed to limit Sata speeds at 3Gb/s, hence my question is this limitations are also present in A08. Thanks for help.

Still running A05. Does A08 plain/modded also lock SATA speeds at SATA II? My SSD works just fine at 6Gbi/s, so no reason to mess that up.

Great work, svl7!

Finally, the 2-piped HS is on its way. A friend ordered it for me in the States for $18 + another $35 porto to Europe = $53 total -> ~40 EUR, so only 4 EUR more than if ordered from Dell Europe. Case closed \o/

The best policy is to flash the stock clocks anti-throttle vbios where P0 = P1 (that's the AW_GTX580M_06_P1_P0_matched_087.ROM from the packages above) and then do further overclocking using Nvidia Inspector (see here for Nvidia Inspector details). Sound popping is caused by latency problem of the A04 BIOS (that's the proper bios, not vbios). Just downgrade to A03 and you will be fine. Simply flash the old bios. It is safe and it will work. I attached the original A03 bios for you. M18xR1A03.zip

I will try. Most modern forums auto-merge consequential forums posts by the same poster, btw. Maybe such a function would be worth looking into if too many of consequential posts is an issue.

And what makes you think so? 680M looks very much like 580M, at this first glance. The only difference is the 3DMark score (some +5000) which can actually be achieved by the 40nm -> 28nm switch, especially as it still requires 100W.

To be honest so far I had no issue with Dell. Just don't expect wonders and be reasonable about what you want. If only the rep could sell my the HS, I'd be running it already. 36EUR courier shipment inclusive is not a lot.

The infamous throttle is the issue. When a 580M card hits maximum Wattage a MXM port can take, it downclocks to a lower performance level (see the first post). To work around this we use a moddified bios where the highest performance level P0 and "anti-throttle" second performance level (to which by default the card downclock) P1 are made equal, so it the end the cards downclock to... same clocks it runs by default. This, plus 285.26+ drivers = pretty much no throttle at all.

I flashed my cards many times. It is perfectly safe, as it seemed so far.

I thought you already run moddified vbios, skygunner27. What I can do is simply to repeat the instructions both bar-code and me posted on the NBR forum. 1) Put a moddified vbios of your choice along with this Nvidia flashing utility in the same folder. It is safe to flash from Windows. 2) Open Command Prompt and go to that folder. 3) Firstly, backup your current vbios. You have to do it for both cards. The program will ask you which card to choose, so run it twice: nvflash.exe -b backup#.rom (where # is the card number 0 or 1, for example) 3) When you are done with that, type nvflash.exe -i0 -5 -6 vbios.rom (where vbios.rom is the modified ROM file link to which can be found in the #4 post in this thread) then nvflash.exe -i1 -5 -6 vbios.rom -i# - Force a specific device index. -5 - Allow firmware and adapter PCI device ID mismatch. -6 - Allow firmware and adapter PCI subsystem ID mismatch. You will be asked to press y twice. Let it finish flashing. Done. 4) Reboot. You don't have to reinstall the drivers. As the Dell engineer told us during the conference call, from 285.62 on Wattage cap and switching to lower pefromance level is managed in a more efficient way, so if you want to run a moddified vbios upgrade to 285.62 or higher.

I tried to find out how much would be shipping from the US and some American told me it would be some 60 bucks. Now, 60 bucks for 20 bucks worth HS isn't really worth it. It could just as well be a myth re so expensive delivery, fingers crossed. Thanks for help. Would be truly awesome if I could actually get it at reasonable cost.

A single experience so far. The right ALT key was acting funny on the m18x. I called the hotline and requested a new keyboard. They want to send a technicial, I refused. Asked for the keyboard only. They sent me a new KB right away and it came next morning. No bullshit questions, no nothing. That was quite impressive I must say. (BTW, if I only knew that the 2-pipe HS cannot be ordered for DYI installation, I'd actually request a technician to install both, the KB and that goddamn heatsink...)

M18x 2-pipe HS #HD9NJ The long story short, AW refused to sell me a 2-pipe CPU HS since the part is not considered user replaceable. They don't mind me taking my laptop apart as long as I send the thing back for service/replacement (and so on) in exactly same condition/configuration it came. It's kinda don't ask, don't tell policy. The problem with the heatsink is that if they sell it to me it would imply that they silently approve I take the laptop apart etc. etc. so in the end this is not possible. Simple question: Does anybody in the EU owns two such heatsinks and is willing to sell one, or perhaps, is ordering a new one? - In such a case, get you get an extra one for me too or sell me one? AW Europe said the thing costs 36 EUR (including delivery, less than 25 EUR for the part only). I can send the money at any moment through PayPal. Thanks for help. Edit: if any of you Americans is about to visit Europe, why don't you bring a new HS along? The thing is $20 in the US and can be ordered without any problem.

Edit: For ROMs see the attachments Flash AW_GTX580M_06_P1_P0_matched_087.ROM and run drivers 285.62 (or higher) to get rid of the throttle pretty much completely. Do you want to go heavier? Choose AW_GTX580M_06_750_850_092.ROM - 750 Mhz core/850 Mhz memory @ 0.92V. It is safe as far as I've tested. The cards run faster and score higher in benchmarks, but also heat up faster. The temperature difference running auto fans in a room with ambient temp ~25*C is somewhere between 6-8*C on full load (so with IC Diamond and fans freshly blown against the dust that's like 78-80*C max at full load). That's some 73-74*C on stock clocks and stock paste. Personally, I am running the the P0=P1 version. Really no reason to go higher for regular use. 580M SLI chew on anything anyway. If any of you needs instructions how to flash 580M or is unsure about any step, don't hesitate to reply in here. All ROMs moddified by Saltius AW_GTX580M_06_modified_vbios_1.zip AW_GTX580M_06_modified_vbios_2.zip