Codenamefa

Just a little eye candy for those who are wanting the most out of there M18x R2 with 980m Sli.

Hey @Swick1981, Just found a weird glitch that might interest you. So I bought @Rengsey R. H- Jr.'s 3940xm to replace my 2960xm that was graceously sold to me by DumbDumb. Anyways I installed the 3940xm after I had already installed the bios on the system with the 2960xm, when I was going thru the setup I found that it for some odd reason recognizes the cpu as the 3940xm but it treats it like the 2960xm, limits the max non turbo to 27 instead of 32. Only reason I started searching was it kept getting watch dog timeouts among other errors, along with weird response times with the cpu, which means bad core, and I popped the 2960xm back in and it was fine, so plugged it back in with the 3940xm and again crash and burn even after a full system wipe, after testing and testing, I had an epiphany, I had only installed the bios with the 2960xm, So I ended up blind flashing back to A03, then flashing your bios back on and it resolved all the issues I was having with the 3940xm, No more watch dog timeout, no random errors other than when I overclocked it and forgot to set the vid a little higher. Rengsey can confirm that from the second I got his cpu I was skeptical of the situation and trying to find out what it was. In the end all it took was noticing one odd thing out of place to show where the problem was. I'm pretty sure this is something that can be reproduced by flashing back to the normal unlocked bios and then putting the 2960xm in and then flashing your bios on and then swapping the 3940xm on. Anyways I'm hitting the hay, if you need anything let me know on here or NBR, same username.

My only advise for flashing is when you do it make sure to do it 1 card at a time. Worse case is 1 card gets a bad flash and you just pop it in the secondary slot boot up with the other one in the main slot and boom you're on your way. Hasn't failed me yet doing it this way. Never had to do a blind flash yet. Knock on wood.

I bought mine from PCHub and paid like $32 I think and It works great for clocking my 2960xm at 4.5ghz constantly. Never will tip past 80C on the cores with it but I keep my house pretty cold all the time.

By my understanding from talking with a dell rep at CES earlier this year most companies are going to be going to DDR3L and forcing the bios to require the ram to run at 1.35v. Maybe if Mr. Svl7 can shed some light on this by getting his hands on 1 of the new Alienware's Bios we might be able to see if that is true.

My m18x at an idle my 680m's are about 10c different in temps and that is normal for it. Only time they are about the same is about a minute after gaming or benching at idle. But while gaming my temps are about the same roughly.

Ya Replacing the m18x display is a pain. Its almost better to buy off ebay one that is ready to go that is just missing the backplate.