Nofew

Is it possible to use an M18x charger to run an M17x laptop? The overclocking I've thrown at it has it drawing about 210 watts constant load and the adapter that comes with the M17x only supports up to 240. The M18x's can handle 330 watts but I'm worried that my M17x's BIOS might not agree to take a charge from it. Has anyone tried using an M18x charger with an M17x? Are there any issues with it? Can a patch possibly be made to make it accept the new charger? I know it's perfectly capable of handling the wattage (There's a tutorial on TechInferno that explains how to solder two 240 watt PSU's together for use with the M17x, but I figure ordering a second PSU'll cost just as much as an M18x in the first place and pretty much defeat the purpose.), but I also know that my old Dell laptop is *really* picky about the chargers I used and that Alienware's owned by Dell.

newtsy: I get stuttering in some programs too when I near my overclocking limit for the current voltage. Back off a few bins (A "bin" is a multiple of 13 in this case. nVidia's weird.) and it should fix things. Also, the 675 M and MX are quite different. See here and here. andir: If it helps any, my settings are 993 and 2450. I don't think they'll work too good for you though, and regardless your GPU doesn't help with your Physics score in the first place. That's all your CPU. To make matters worse, it's single-threaded. If you want to score high there you need to just bring your clockrate up to ridiculous levels. Mine's at 4.2 ghz.

tigyi: BIOS editing isn't like regular programming. You're trying to modify and already-compiled program rather than make your own from scratch. The approaches are completely different and learning one will not teach you the other. If you want to get started in hardware programming, grab this and this. It'll teach you everything you need to know. As for web design, that's yet another topic entirely and one I know next to nothing about. Good luck! svl7: They do have different drivers. I've been told that's the only thing that makes Quadro cards special. In fact, it's possible to install Quadro drivers on GTX systems if you find the right one. I don't know if you get any extra performance out of it, though.

Which test are you doing in which program, exactly? "Fire Strike"'s pretty intense; 500 means a /lot/. I really doubt it'd "lie" to me, so to speak. If you're only seeing a difference of 50 it makes me wonder if you're doing "Ice Storm" or using 3Dmark 11. 11, on a 680, isn't all that accurate unless you're using the "extreme" preset. ("Performance" works too, sort of, but it can get bottle-necked by the CPU unless you have it at 4 ghz or so) -- The point is, if you're not using it already, go get 3Dmark (Just "3Dmark", that's their newest one), run Fire Strike and base your judgement on that. (You can't pick which tests to run unless you pay for it, but it does give individual results regardless. Scroll down and you should see it.) Sort of off-topic but not. Sorta: Basically, 3Dmark 11's "extreme" preset doesn't lie to you. The score is how many frames you rendered, period. Nothing special. "Performance" multiplies by two (this can result in an odd number; remember that it counts partially-rendered frames), and "Entry" multiplies by four. Nope, kay, they do just adjust the difficulty. I think. A "perfect" score, not counting the physics or combined tests, is 7,200 frames. I figure the extra stuff must come from finishing those two faster than you "should" or something. I don't know. The rest of this post is still accurate, go hug it. (See what happens when I stay up an extra four hours?) Alone, this isn't a problem. What causes the problem is that 3Dmark 11 has vsync enabled. In other words, if you /can/ render over 60 frames per second, it won't let you. There's basically a hard-coded limit for how well you're allowed to do, /and it does affect your score/. In the "Performance" preset, part of the first three tests usually hits 60. This can cause odd patterns in scores to come up. The reason so many people still use the Performance preset is because it's easy to get a "perfect" score, so to speak. If you hit 9,000, that generally means you can't do any better since you're at 60 FPS all the time in all the tests, and realistically no game is going to push your GPU harder (apart from Crysis and stuff like that, but those are /made/ to drive overclockers batty). Even though you can get accurate results using Extreme (since that's definitely not going to hit 60 unless you've got a dual-GPU setup), the fact it's using vsync makes it iffy for me. "3Dmark" (not 11!) doesn't have vsync enabled. If you can pump out more than 60 frames on a certain test, it'll let you and your score will still be accurate. That being said, if you're getting over 1,000 FPS, there's a good chance that your CPU is the bottleneck and it's ability to "feed" the card is becoming a factor; make sure you run a test that suits your card. In general, if you have anything over a 660, you should be doing Fire Strike. ...I probably shouldn't be posting when I'm running off of no sleep, but eh. Here goes.

buluunee: Throttling does decrease the 3D score. Did a benchmark before and after using slv7's vbios. Without it I throttle a lot when I have +135 set. The difference in the score's pretty big; 300-500 on Fire Strike. In your second post, did you say you usually get 1.03 volts? Under what conditions? Is that constant or peak? Mine usually runs at .987 even when I have the clock set to 993, though for split seconds sometimes it goes to 1.012.

My gut's saying that you might need a version of DOS older than the one Windows 98 runs on. That's the only other thing I can think of to help you. Yes, that's what I'm referring to. I have it enabled on mine. The idea behind it is, assuming whoever steals your laptop formats your hard drive, the BIOS will re-install the tracking software. Since it's in the firmware its self it "should" be difficult to remove, though that task becomes a lot easier if there's no write protection. (Of course, it's not too hard removing it in the first place, but I'll take anything I can get if it means slowing a thief down!) Regardless if the tracking's enabled or not, the custom bios should still work.

Decoy101x: That's called your "boost clock". Basically, let's say you got an nVidia 680m. The stock clock on it is 720 mhz. No matter how high you set Afterburner, as long as it's over that, the first thing it'll try doing is running at 720 mhz. If it's fully stressed out (thus clocking faster will benefit framerates), it'll then "boost" up to what you /actually/ have it set to. It's possible the "base clock" will be different; it's possible to set it in the vbios, but the general concept is the same. The constant jumping is happening because you're running the stock bios. I don't know why for sure, but a vbios does fix it while still retaining the "boost" feature. In my case it was even worse; It'd go from 888 mhz down to 135 and back constantly, so often that overclocking actually gave me worse performance. After I flashed I got it to run at 993 mhz constantly, no weird throttling issues, no need for ThrottleStop, and my framerates are better than ever! Keep in mind that, at a certain point, some games and benchmarks get bottlenecked at your CPU. One example is the "Ice Storm" test on 3Dmark. It's so easy for my 680m that no matter what I have the clock set to, and even if I have "prefer maximum performance" set, it'll still downclock to about 405 mhz before the usage goes over 50%. To get a higher score there I had to overclock my CPU, and even with it running at 4.2 ghz my GPU still stayed around 405. That's why they offer more stressful tests like Fire Strike; run those, not the dead-simple ones. I'm not sure of any good programs that can monitor framerates, voltages or clockrates. I personally like HwInfo64 since it can send to Logitech keyboards with screens on them (Google Image Search "Logitech LCD"), but most people don't have those. The perky side is that your GPU doesn't need to draw anything extra on-screen, so as long as your CPU isn't the bottleneck you won't loose any performance. HighBounce: Boot to DOS, run "nvflash --save MYVBIOS.rom", then reboot back to windows. Remember that DOS filenames can only handle eight characters, not counting the dot and three letters that come after it. You could use GPU-Z like slv7 said too, but if you run it in DOS instead then some of those pre-flash jitters you may have tend to go away. slv7: So, I tried editing my vbios by hand. I have no idea how you do it. Apart from two error messages and the thing that appears when the system starts booting I can't recognize anything. My best guess would be something near 0001fe00, but I'm not sure what to change anything to (let alone how to adjust the signature afterwords!). So, if you have the free time, would you mind overvolting the Dell 5B 680m vbios for me? Maybe to 1.025, 1.050, 1.075 and 1.1? I posted my dump on page 179 but you also already have an unlocked edition on your second post, just nothing with an overvolt. Something that'd allow me to underclock it as well (since Optimus is completely disabled on this laptop; the monitor is connected directly to the GPU, not to my CPU) would be great. People say I "should" get seven hours of battery life, but I'm only getting three.

Decoy101x: Certain things cause the clocks to spin up. Generally any changes in resolution, summoning the UAC dialogue or starting a fullscreen 3D game will kick it into gear. I also believe it also runs at full (non-boost) speed during boot. It takes a few minutes for it to realize it can clock down. Try just sitting idle for a few minutes and see if that gets it without starting Afterburner. You may also want to disable UAC (only for a short period of time!) so starting Afterburner doesn't kick it back up.

Short-life internal battery, I didn't think of that.. Great, now I don't know what I want more. That, or dual-batteries so I can run my GPU at full speed without being plugged in. Sometimes I wish I could just lug a car battery around with me everywhere I go. I mean, like, one that isn't busy powering the engine of a car. EDIT: Duuuuh, we can just put extra cells in the single battery the laptop will mainly use, thus having it act like there's two batteries powering it at the same time but halving it's life, provided that that smaller 5-minute battery is there. I mean, obviously we're gunna have extra batteries.. And then bam! More space! EDIT 2: The Samsung Galaxy S4 also functions as a TV remote. Maybe somebody read this and stole my idea..

AngieAndretti: Make sure you copy the files from the folder you pointed the HP format utility to, to your stick. Don't just format and then not copy it over. If you don't understand what I mean, then just copy /everything/ from every folder to the root of the thumb drive (so there are no folders, except those that were already inside folders). ... I may have made that more confusing. My bad. svl7: Is there an "un-prr.exe" somewhere? I'd like to re-enable write protection so LoJack isn't accidentally (or not-so-accidentally) overwritten. -Shifty eyes-

Heh, funny. I moved it down one bin to 993 mhz and it's stable. P7831! Epic! Now I'm just hoping for a Dell 80.04.5B.00.02 version at 1.1 volts.. There's some stuttering when I have it running this high that makes it look like the camera's skipping ahead of where it should be, but other than that there's no obvious issues. I'm pretty sure it's because I'm one step lower than the maximum my card can handle at its current voltage, not an issue with the vbios. I'm not sure if anyone else has discovered this, but running the 680m's memory clock at 2500 doesn't help much. It's actually worse in some tests than leaving it at stock speeds. However, running it slightly lower fixes it. My best guess is that the memory clock and processor clock have to be somewhat in-sync, and if the memory outpaces the processor sometimes the memory ticks /just/ before the processor gives it a command, thus requiring it to wait a longer period of time before the next tick. Chances are there's some magic number the clock needs to be set at to really make things shine.

It's "easy", but you'd need to program it yourself. I figure if you take the bottom ten rows of pixels, average their RGB values and pass them to the keyboard it'll work nice. Might wanna split it up so the keyboard's individual zones can match different parts of the screen.

mcrgibb: That's locked on the CPU, not the BIOS. There's nothing you can do apart from getting something more expensive from Intel. The only "truly unlocked" CPU's are ones with "X" in the product name, like the "i7-3920XM". Ones with "K" are semi-unlocked; you can bring them up to 5.7 ghz or so. Ones without X or K are only overclockable via Turbo Boost, and, if that's not available, it's not possible. (Well, it is, but you'll need to do it by adjusting the Base Clock. This can bring up awkward problems, and depending on your arch might not even work beyond 10 mhz or so.) ...Then again, maybe slv7'll start making modified microcode. That'd be fun. On a side note, woo! Just flashed his FPT A10 BIOS. I forgot to reset the settings before flashing and nearly had a heart attack when the system booted up funny. Luckily it's all okay and everything's running smoothly. Too bad it won't let me adjust the iGPU's rate, though; on my system the output of my dGPU is hooked up directly to the monitor, effectively eradicating nVidia Optimus and making the iGPU completely useless since it's not attached to any outputs. It'd be nice if I could downclock it and undervolt it since it still contributes to the 45-watt limit for Turbo Boost. That's pretty much the only reason I flashed it. Oh well, I'll probably find another use for it at some point!

Nope, no weird artifacts at low clocks. I already have the settings you suggested, and they do bring the clocks lower when the system is idle, but they don't force it to stay low when the laptop's running off its battery.

Thank you, uhh.. Santa! ... I forgot your name, uhh, new here, one second.. -ruffles papers- svl7! Thank you svl7! Just flashed your Dell 80.04.5B.00.02 vbios and it works perfectly! I'm up at 901 mhz before throttling kicks in, and there's no awkward throttling in the middle of benchmarks. (Formerly, it'd run at 888 and keep switching between that and 135 a few times per second.) I'd like to overvolt since I'm not even breaking 70 C and I believe that's what's causing it to throttle down to 901 mhz. Is it safe to flash one of the other Dell vbios's that don't match my version? If it's any help, I've attached my original vbios. It's from an Alienware M17x running a 680m, vbios version number 80.04.5B.00.02 . atjandra: From what I can tell, yes, it'll help. In my experience the stock vbios tends to be unstable at high speeds, including its own Boost Clock. It randomly jumps between 750+ and 135 whenever it's under stress, even if it's not hot. The custom vbios slv7 provides fixes this. I didn't have to re-enter any serial keys or reactivate Windows. I'm running 7, though. I don't know if 8's any different, but there's my two cents. EDIT: Yeah, that's the source of the throttling. I got it to go to 1006 mhz somehow and the GPU kept crashing. It needs more power, Scotty! EDIT AGAIN: We have a massive problem! When this vbios is active, it doesn't downclock the card when the laptop is running off of its battery anymore. At all. Normally it's kept down at 135 mhz and a really low voltage. With it as it is now, it's drawing *over 110 watts from the battery*. This is could be a fire hazard! I'm happy it runs so fast off the battery, but it scares me to do this for more than a few minutes at a time. Plus, it's playing bloody murder on lifetime. I'd estimate that it'd last maybe 30-45 minutes, and that's without a strong load on it. That's just because it refuses to downclock. Is there any way you could bring the clockrange further so I can manually bring it down with MSI Afterburner, slv7? The lowest it's letting me go is 405 mhz, and I'd like to go down to 135 (or lower if possible). I don't want the laptop to forcefully underclock its self all the time so I can still show my system off when I'm not near an outlet, but I'd like it to last a more reasonable amount of time on battery. Edit. 'Gain.: Yeeees indeedily this is more of a problem than I thought. Just decided to do a benchmark off the battery. It got inordinately hot as I slowly tried more intensive tests. Once it hit 125 watts the system shut down due to insufficient power. It did that while running at 405 mhz. In order to play graphically intensive games on battery I'll need to clock lower. What really bothers me was how long it took to cool the battery. It's core must've been outrageously hot since I'd hold it for a few minutes under a box fan, get it to room temperature, walk away for a minute, come back and suddenly it's as hot as it was before, even without being plugged into the laptop. It only took fifteen minutes of discharging for it to act that way. On a side note, it does eventually underclock (and undervolt) down to 135 mhz if it's left to idle long enough. I'd still like some way to /keep/ it down there, though. The ability to bring it even lower would be fun too; maybe I can double my battery life or something. Maybe it'd be best if the vbios still manually forced the GPU to underclock on battery under all circumstances, benchmarks or not. It'd be annoying if my laptop turned off every time I identically pulled the plug while playing a complicated game. Dell_680m_80.04.5B.00.02_Alienware_M17x_stock.zip

Actually, I would pay a few hundred for an optical drive like that. I slept on it, remembered I'm going to be on a somewhat long flight soon, and think it'd be awesome if I could stick 2-3 3D movies in there. I'm not sure if there's enough room in coach to change the optical medium out of a 17 inch laptop. Which ones did you think were weird? These are all features I've been dying for. I know some of them have limited uses (such as having that screen I'd like to add detect things besides fingers), but even that was legitimately researched. (Google "Microsoft Table" -- They were seriously making tables that used infrared to detect when objects were placed on it, and their shape, and then play little animations around them. You put a glass down and little shapes shoot out from it, put a picture frame down and it puts a picture inside, etc. Just woke up and thought of a few more. Liquid-proof keyboards *and trackpads*. I know liquid-proof keyboards exist already, but trackpads, as far as I know, don't. After liquid-proofing, some way to easily remove the keys/trackpad/buttons/etc would be important in case you spilled something smelly. I don't wanna get stuck there removing one key at a time, then washing them all individually, then putting them back one at a time; there should be some tab you can pull that just lifts all the keys up and out together, possibly with the laptop still running. A small device embedded in a hard-to-reach spot that has a GPS, cellular link and separate speaker. I really don't understand how this happened, but once I lost a laptop. A 17 inch laptop. I had it closed up and I was trying to underclock it and see how long I could get the battery to last. I left it somewhere and somehow it got covered with a lot of stuff to the point I couldn't find it without digging around. I actually spent the entire day looking for it since it wasn't making any sounds. Even the fans were off since it was running so cool. It'd be nice if I could send a text from a phone and have it beep, and show me about where it is on a map. Of course this helps if it's stolen too (no matter what it's going to be trackable), but I'm weird. The few times I've had a laptop on my lap, it's gotten hot. Usually this isn't because I have a hot component in direct contact with me, but that the component is hovering a few millimeters above the case and warming it up. If there were a fan dedicated to cooling the inside of the case, rather than the radiators, it'd help prevent the laptop from scorching people. It might not do much to help the components, but that's not the point; it's just to keep it from burning people's legs. Thanks for the complement, by the way! To tell the truth, the only reason I made five posts was to download something. I do OCD over quality, though. Even if you didn't have that rule asking for "quality" posts I'd still write this long. It's pretty much unavoidable. The only drawback is how rare I post, but yeah. That's actually a fairly safe spot for a drink. I know, it sounds nutty, but the only time I've ever spilt a drink was when I was reaching around my screen to grab it and it clipped the edge of the bezel. Went all over my trackpad, seeped right in, shorted out my audio card. It survived just fine, apparently it was smart enough to cut power to its self when it picked up the short. It works fine today and I'm posting with that system right now. When the drink's resting on the right, there's a decently large area for it to sit that's far away from my wrists. The only time it's dangerous is when I'm using Blender (and thus need to use the numberpad a lot). I've been doing this for years now and never once had an accident when it was resting on the laptop. Ironically, it's even safer if there's a glossy coating on it. I've nudged the drink on a laptop with that finish before and it just slid around a little. Something with more friction would've caused it to tip over.

That doesn't sound like a security measure. Based on what you have to do, it sounds like there's a hardware fault somewhere. My gut's saying that the CPU's drawing too much power when it first turns on and it's causing the system to just panic and refuse to power up further unless you try a few times. What happens if you try with the battery in? That might give it enough headroom to boot without problems.

SaT0117: This is not a software limitation. When building your M17x there are three options for your screen; One has a maximum resolution of 1600x900, one has 1920x1080, and one has 1920x1080 running at 120 hz (instead of 60) with an embedded IR emitter so it can display stereoscopic 3D content. You ordered the 1600x900 screen. If you want to get 1080p, you'll need to contact Dell (probably at [email protected] ) and see if they can help. In the future, be sure to read all setup questions thoroughly. Don't just keep clicking "next", especially when you're ordering a multi-thousand dollar system.

I'm one of those people who only buys a new laptop every ten years and always go all-out with it. I treat them like how some people treat sports cars; always out in public with them and always have them out even when I'm not really using them. How they look is a big thing. I'd like to see "true flagship" laptops. I mean, let's face it, if you're paying $4,000 for a laptop, an extra $500-$1,000 to make it truly yours isn't going to deter you. If it were possible to put my own graphics on the case, select the location of some of the ports (I really need the ethernet port on the right side of the case. It drives me nuts when it's on the left.), choose the location of the touchpad (I like it slightly off-center to the left, but some people put it too far over), choose the font for the keyboard's keys (and replace that annoying windows flag with something OS-independent. Fun fact, the official name for the key is "meta".), decide which keys have bumps on them (I don't use homerow. My typing style's weird and it'd help a lot if the "w", "p", "s", "f", "j", "l" and "enter" keys all had bumps) and decide on what kind of keys it has (mechanical, "normal", "short iMac", etc), I'd easily pay an extra $500. I'd go higher if I could specify the color (exactly as I want it, not from a list of 4-16 different choices) or upload concept pictures. On the hardware side of things, it'd be nice if laptops had two battery bays that worked like dual PSU's. That way, you can take one battery out when it gets low and put a new one in without having to power the system down first, plus you could run faster without as much risk of exploding. (It's pretty dangerous to pull more than 100 watts or so from most laptop batteries; that's why your GPU underclocks its self (or even turns off) when you're not plugged in.). While on the topic of batteries, I'd love one that takes up the entire underside of a laptop even if that meant almost doubling its thickness and weight. Most of the time I don't have a laptop on my lap in the first place. Rather than just extending the lifetime, it could be split up multiple batteries (but in the same "battery case") to keep the laptop running at full speed as if it were plugged in. A battery level indicator somewhere easily visible so I don't have to minimize my full-screen programs to check on it would be great, too. Dual-screens would be nice. I wouldn't mind doubling the screen's thickness. My thoughts are to either have the second screen just stuck to the back of the first, and automatically switch the "normal" one to the "back" one when the screen is closed (and enable some touch features so it works like a tablet), or to have the second screen "pull out" of the side of the normal screen, then slide the entire assembly over so you're still centered (but the laptop still closes and fits into a reasonably-sized space like they do today). Heck, why not make the entire thing detachable? Have the display "dock" to the laptop. When docked, it communicates via regular HDMI plus anything else it needs (charging, fancy lights, etc). When you pull it out, the laptop automatically switches over to transmitting to it wirelessely. Suddenly you have a tablet with the power and compatibility of a gaming rig.. Plus, laptops just look awesome with their screens off. Seriously, try to visualize yours without it. Ambient lighting is a big thing for me. I once played a game that changed my keyboard's color to match the action on-screen and it made the experience a /lot/ more immersive. If there was a way to change the bezel's color to match the screen edge's content (like some TV's do with the walls behind them) it'd help me get deeper into my games. GPIO's (general purpose input/output) would be great to have too. I have a few motherboards with GPIO headers that are easy to reach. I work with embedded electronics as a hobby and it's fun using these headers for some novelty projects. It'd be great if I could stick them on a laptop too. Perhaps an entire PCIe slot on the side of the case would be fun. There's some people who don't care about an optical drive and most of the other "holes" on the side of their laptops, so they could be replaced by a desktop GPU. Just stick it in like normal and attach a second PSU to run it. Considering how thick some laptops are, it might end up looking like the laptop was just build with it already attached! A larger camera would be great, too. Why do we have big laptops, some with gigantic bezel areas, and we still use this tiny pinhole-sized webcam? On my laptop (M17x) there's easily enough room for a decently sized lens like you'd find in a point-and-shoot camera. Oddly, a CD changer-type thing might be good for some people too. Think about it for a minute; there are people out there who prefer older games to newer ones, and some older games only work if the CD is in the drive. There's programs meant to copy an .ISO to your hard drive and emulate it, but they don't always work. Plus, the whir of the CD is part of the experience. It brings back nostalgic memories for me. It'd be nice if I could insert multiple discs like some a car stereo and switch between them without having to take them out. On most larger laptops, there's this big awkward area on the bottom right that's just empty. Put something there; a screen that appears to the OS as a second display, a second trackpad (I have actually used two mice at once before. There's times it helps.), macro keys, something. Heck, why not just put a touchscreen there and do something like the Razer Blade does? Maybe have a switch nearby that changes it from acting as a screen (and thus relying on the OS to carry out requests) and emulating a second keyboard directly or something. If it could be built to detect when non-conductive objects are placed on it (such as plastic cups), it could display fancy animations when I set a drink down on it. It might be a useless gimmick to some people, but it'd probably run about $200. Compared to $4,000+ that's pretty much nothing. Fans that run both directions so they can clean themselves. Seriously, why doesn't anyone do this? It seems like common sense! Every day or so the fans should stop spinning and change direction for a few seconds to knock off some dust that's built up. There should be some safety lock to prevent them from doing this if the system's under high load so it doesn't overheat in the time it takes to stop them and reverse their direction. Windspeed or pressure detectors at the exit of the vents. There's been times I sat my laptop down on a table over paper, didn't realize it, and when the fan kicked on high it just sucked the paper up against its self and couldn't breathe anymore. Some indication this is happening besides my computer overheating would be nice. Bring infrared ports back and mount them on the back of the screen. Use it to control your TV. Think about it. You want this. You /need/ this. Lights that are angled down and mounted above each connector port. Sometimes I move the laptop and start pulling wires out part way without realizing it. It'd be nice if the added strain could be detected somehow and a warning light could flash and make the table change color. Second headphone jack, with the ability to choose the audio source (independent left/right outputs, cloned outputs, specific program goes to each output (combines well with the dual-screen thing), etc). Vibration. Provided the laptop has SSD's in it, this is relatively safe. It doesn't have to be very strong; if you've played with vibration long enough it's mostly the sound that makes it register with your brain anyway. It does more than people give it credit for.

The site isn't rated by Web of Trust and it looks fairly fishy. Generally when I see stuff like this it turns out to be some sort of a scam; I'd stay away from it. Generally with these kinds of sites you usually get roped into a six month-long email conversation constantly asking where your product is. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.

jackgarcia7: I've been considering a custom cooling pad for ages now. It seems like every other pad out there makes the system /hotter/ since it "moves" the fans to the wrong places, so to speak. Fun fact, there's already liquid cooling for laptops. Sort of. Go poke at Liquid GPU and CPU Cooling for Laptops and All-In-Ones - Asetek, Inc. . It basically boils down to "this laptop (m18x) has three radiators. We'll put all three of them and all three devices in a single loop so each device can 'rent' cooling time from another.". It probably works in concept, but if all devices are under load then it's pretty much just regular air cooling. If you think you can do it, why not try mounting a big radiator on the back of the screen or something? That'd work a lot better. bigtonyman: Holy crap, thank you. I'm too wussy to do a mod like Jackgarcia. This cooling pad's like, my dream come true. Sort of. I have a lot of dreams.