T-Face

It's possible the sound only came through the graphics display, which requires a discrete GPU.

Recently a new owner of a m18x R1 Alienware I picked up for only $250

 

It came with a GTX560M installed which is pretty lax for these days, managed to pick up a GTX 765M on ebay for roughly $80, However having some issues since installation.

 

At first installation it was only a black screen and would not post. I reinstalled the GTX 560M and awaited a secondary heat-sink to install it into the second slot independently.

 

Once I received it, I installed it with relative ease and windows recognizes it... as a "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter", figured I only needed to do an INF mod in order to install it, however it only gave me a code 43 on startup and have been flashing the vbios with several different bios's without luck. Is there anything I need to do beforehand that will make it work? Or do I just need to find the right vbios? It was already obvious the stock one did not work as is (which I still have backed up just in case). 

 

One thing I do NOT have access to is the m18x BIOS, it is password locked and cMOS wipe did NOT work.

I'm struggling with something similar myself, except with 765M

I'm sad to see that there isn't ever a list of compatible GPU parts, seems to be pretty free-form especially for the aftermarket parts

just tore mine down recently, thought it was going to be pretty rough but now that i've done it a few times it's not so bad.

It has potential to cause some severe damage to the motherboard depending on what kind of damage it causes, likely only to the card itself.