MSI GTX 1070 MXM successfully working on Alienware M17X R4 (another socket victory against BGA crap)

[naightmehr]

Some pictures of my own system and heatsink mod:

 

 

Original heatsink (under) modded heatsink (top) as you can see I cut away the red part and milled the green part so it won't interfere with the card.

 

[angelorusso_]

On 11.4.2017 at 6:55 PM, An0npl4y said:

MOD the GPU heatsink to improve cooling

 

 

 

Here you have 2 ways: keep stock heatsink, and mod it so it can fit as explained here: https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/10982-m17x-r4-gtx-1060-upgrade/#comment-155003

Or build a custom made heatsink. This is what I did, I ordered this heatsink with the GPU: https://world.taobao.com/item/540331819333.htm?spm=a312a.7700714.0.0.ZzDuN1#detail%201%20sortie%20sur%20le%20cot%C3%A9%20ok%20et%204%C3%A8me%20stripe%20pour%20cpu%20ok

It was designed for a MSI computer, but it can be modified for the M17X R4 since copper stripes are soldered horizontally. You need to unsolder it, and solder the copper stripes and radiator from stock heatsink instead. You also need to cut off the part which must cover the CPU heatsink, which is not useful. This way, you have a more efficient heatsink, because it was designed for pascal GPU:

 

 

Soldering heatsinks is crap, when you heat one side, you can easily unsolder the other side by mistake because all heat will be transmitted everywhere very quicly. The trick is to put side you don't want to unsolder in water, and heat the other side where you want to unsolder with a torch. But I warn you: soldering this stuff is a real nightmare.

With my modded heatsink (which is so ugly and crappy I can't even make picture of it for now), I reached 72°C max while benchmarking, which seems to be pretty good temp. Right now writing on forum, GPU temp is at 55°c.

 

 

 

First of all, let me thank you for that awesome guide! Awsome work!

 

I got my hands onto the same card as yours (except it came from a GT83VR with SLI 1070's) and followed your instructions by the book :). I did however use the stock heatsink and tried different termal pastes on the gpu. What worked best for me is the Arctic MX4, keeping my temps on full load under 73 Celsius.

 

[handale30]

hello and good day!!!

 

so I did the same GTX 1070 mxm mod, Thanks for all the info it was so helpful and I will be posting a complete guide to my project soon as its another card. 

 

but before everything is settled and ready. My GPU fan is not spinning I have to use HWinfo to make them work.    Do you know if this can be fixed with BIOS update or Vbios change as im using the msi vbios. 

 

thanks in advance for any help and guide coming soon!

[AlienHack]

guys , do you all have the issue with the gpu fan not working except when set through Ηinfo? or only some of you?

[handale30]

Nop I havent and really want to or atleast to get "speedfan" program to work with multiple speeds not only 3. Hw info does work when ec control is enabled but it doesn't have that opcion to change speeds after "x" amount of celcius. So we have fans that go 2500rpm at 55°c. then 3000 at 56°c the immediately 2500rpm as it goes back to 55°c

[AlienHack]

so your gpu fan works automatically as far as you enter windows without any software needed?

 

[handale30]

No, my CPU fan does work automatic but my gpu wont start until I use hwinfo to make it spin and when I do this, hw info takes control of both fans at the same time. Same speed, kinda sucks but I dont know if im habing this issue because my mxm card is zotac or if everyone goes through this.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-m17x-r4-gtx1070-mxm-successful-upgrade.825475/

Edited November 4, 2018 by handale30

[AlienHack]

Anyone selling a used mxm 1070 gtx ? :-D

[Henrik9979]

9 hours ago, AlienHack said:

Anyone selling a used mxm 1070 gtx ? :-D

Just ask rmsmajestic he gets some cheap cards from time to time.

https://ebay.com/usr/rmsmajestic

He is also to fine on techinferno and notebookreview

Edited December 3, 2018 by Henrik9979

[chronos37621]

guys please help me i did change the video setting in PEG and also i enable UEFI with load legacy option rom disabled.. and with the 980m installed when i turn on the laptop it still beeps 8x, i am able to boot with the card on when i chance the video setting in SG or auto but in the discrete graphics 1 it say not detected... please help...

[Henrik9979]

4 hours ago, chronos37621 said:

guys please help me i did change the video setting in PEG and also i enable UEFI with load legacy option rom disabled.. and with the 980m installed when i turn on the laptop it still beeps 8x, i am able to boot with the card on when i chance the video setting in SG or auto but in the discrete graphics 1 it say not detected... please help...

Also go into "integrated graphics" and change the settings from "auto" to disable.

And in discrete graphics change the settings to always on.

[BludBubbles]

Hello TechInferno Folks,

 

I got this bad boy running! Woo hoo! Let me explain some of my experiences. I was doing a complete max out M17x R4 upgrade. I got 1 2Tb Firecuda SSHD, 1 2Tb Baracuda HDD, 1 500Gb mSATA SSD, 32GB(4x8) DDR3L HyperX 2133Mhz RAM, GTX 1070, 5 pipe GPU heatsink, i7-3940xm, 3 pipe CPU heatsink, the 120Hz 3D ready display, and a new Blu-Ray burner UJ267. Also, I exchanged the fan blades of the CPU fan with the blades from a M14x R2 fan. Should I do that to the GPU fan too? I have an extra M14x R2 fan if so. I had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get this baby working. I have Windows 10 Education installed on the mSATA drive. At first, I just threw everything in it and turned it on. I got single beep and immediate power loss. I figured out the power loss was because of the new RAM. I tried with all 4 and with just 2 and it exhibited the same power off behavior. It would boot with just 1 8Gb 2133Mhz RAM chip installed. So I sent them back and reinstalled the RAM I already had. The single beep I got was just the beginning of the 8 beeps and power loss before finishing all 8 beeps because of the display. I solved the throttling issue and then it reappeared again, dropping the Firestrike score in half. I'm not sure if it was the culprit or not but everything is running fine after uninstalling an extra Alienware Control Center that I somehow managed to install over top of the existing one. It really pissed me off that I couldn't find out why it was being throttled. I have had some unfixable errors that I would like some help with though. Thank you for reading and thank you in advance for any support anybody offers.

 

1: The RAM did not work so I'm still using the 16Gb 1600Mhz RAM that I started with(I bought the laptop used). And I'm ordering two more 8Gb 1600Mhz RAM chips to max it out to the 32Gb. I would like to have the 2133Mhz ones working so if anybody knows anything about this, please help a homie out. Is it really a big deal upgrading from 1600Mhz to 2133Mhz?

 

2: I could not get the 120Hz display working for the life of me. Tried many different things and followed all of the current advise on this topic in this thread. I'm just happy everything is working with the 60Hz display, as I rarely use the built-in display with it and I typically have it connected to a large television through a Displayport/HDMI adapter. I would really like to get the 120Hz one working though because I am planning on using the built-in nVidia 3D Vision 2 with Blu-Ray 3D and video games and it is past the return date.

 

3: I cannot connect any external drives to the eSATA port. It just is not recognizing anything that is plugged into it. SATA Operation is set to AHCI, so I do not believe that that is what the issue is. It's not really a big deal but I would like to get that port working.

 

4: There are two unknown devices in Device Manager. I used Driver Genius and it couldn't find those drivers. Any clues on what they could be? Everything seems to be working well though. I just dislike having Unknown Devices.

 

I am going to finish everything off in a few weeks with the RAM upgrade and I'm going to perform a re-paste because I installed the processor and GPU pretty hastily. Also, I'm going to attempt to repair the speakers. I have the speaker rattling issue that many M17x R4 users have experienced. If anybody with knowledge on how to fix the speakers would offer some assistance, it would be greatly appreciated as well. My current Firestrike score is 12700 and hoping to crack 14000 once all is said and done. I attempted to get some help from somebody that has posted on here but he just told me to Google the issue, which is layman's terms for "STFU and stop bothering me". I read through the lines. Any help with these issues would be much appreciated, though. If more information is needed, just ask. Again, I am just happy that it's working with all the current upgrades. This is the most powerful gaming device I've ever owned. After all the costs, I think I spent an approximate total of $2300 on this laptop and upgrades. Getting the above issues resolved is just icing on the cake. The 120Hz display would be awesome to get working though.

 

Thanks again,

BludBubbles

[RaZoRfi84]

Is this 120hz/60hz display thing a Bios issue? Because if it's true that pascal GPUs would need EDP mode to run and have a 120hz panel, then how are you BludBubbles getting the 60hz panel to boot but not the 120hz panel working??

[BludBubbles]

Hi RaZoRfi84,

 

Thank you for responding. I'm not sure if it's a BIOS issue. Some threads say that it changes automatically to PEG mode when installing the 120Hz display. I saw PEG mode when I had the 7970m installed and integrated graphics activated but always got 8 beeps and no post when installing the new display. Yeah, and I also read that somebody said that this nVidia 1070 would require EDP but I suppose it's not true because I have it running with the stock 60Hz display. I tried disabling integrated graphics but I would get no post issue and would have to reset BIOS by removing the CMOS battery. I read that that's because you need Optimus with the nVidia GPUs because BIOS would not load without it. Which kind of makes sense. I tried changing the Active LFP setting in BIOS to EDP but would get no post issue. I think I tried everything described in these threads. But yeah, I can confirm that the 60Hz display works with a 1070 setup and I can't even get the 120Hz one to work. lol I think I got a good deal on it for $100 but it's just wasting away not being used. I will tinker a bit more in the future once I get everything else done. I will probably try again before I do the re-paste. It just sucks that I waiting to attempt to install it until the return date past because I was buying all the new components one at a time and wanted to do all of the upgrades all at once. I suppose something could be wrong with the display but I have no way of testing it. BTW, I'm using unlocked A14 BIOS.

 

Thanks again,

BludBubbles

[RaZoRfi84]

19 minutes ago, BludBubbles said:

Hi RaZoRfi84,

 

Thank you for responding. I'm not sure if it's a BIOS issue. Some threads say that it changes automatically to PEG mode when installing the 120Hz display. I saw PEG mode when I had the 7970m installed and integrated graphics activated but always got 8 beeps and no post when installing the new display. Yeah, and I also read that somebody said that this nVidia 1070 would require EDP but I suppose it's not true because I have it running with the stock 60Hz display. I tried disabling integrated graphics but I would get no post issue and would have to reset BIOS by removing the CMOS battery. I read that that's because you need Optimus with the nVidia GPUs because BIOS would not load without it. Which kind of makes sense. I tried changing the Active LFP setting in BIOS to EDP but would get no post issue. I think I tried everything described in these threads. But yeah, I can confirm that the 60Hz display works with a 1070 setup and I can't even get the 120Hz one to work. lol I think I got a good deal on it for $100 but it's just wasting away not being used. I will tinker a bit more in the future once I get everything else done. I will probably try again before I do the re-paste. It just sucks that I waiting to attempt to install it until the return date past because I was buying all the new components one at a time and wanted to do all of the upgrades all at once. I suppose something could be wrong with the display but I have no way of testing it. BTW, I'm using unlocked A14 BIOS.

 

Thanks again,

BludBubbles 

 

Hi BludBubbles, well even if you are stuck with the 60hz display that was still an awesome deal you got for the card!

[Henrik9979]

Hello Bludbubbles.

 

First to get the 120hz:

In bios you need to go to the video configuration.

Enter settings for integrated GPU and be sure to set it to disabled.

 

Also the video output should be set to Always PEG.

 

I can post pictures of my bios if you want to.

[Henrik9979]

Also one of the two unknown devices is your free fall sensor I would guess. The order could be the cardreader.

Right click on the devices and choose properties.

Go to details and choose hardware ID.

Copy the hardware ID and search on Google. Then you will know what they are.

[BludBubbles]

Hi Henrik9979,

 

That would be cool if you could share some pics of your BIOS if you would be so kind. I think I attempted to set integrated graphics to Disabled and video output to Always PEG using an external monitor but I would always get 8 beeps and no post. When I try again I will change the settings to exactly what you have and see what happens. I contacted the seller on eBay but they haven't contacted me back. I requested a return or exchange so I hope they honor that. Also, RaZoR, I paid about $300 for the 1070 and the $100 was for the 120Hz display. I hope I'm not stuck with the 60Hz display but it's cool since I can hook the laptop up to my 4K smart tv and get 120Hz/1080p picture with this DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

 

Regards,

BludBubbles

I found out the Unknown Device using the method you described. It turns out it is the Fall Detector thingie and the other one is nVidia's audio. I'm just going to leave them like they are, I suppose, since everything is running smoothly.

[Henrik9979]

Also don't expect Nvidia 3D vision to work. I have tried but even though Nvidia 3D stereotypic appears at device manager, there is no settings for 3D vision in Nvidia control panel. No matter what driver I have tried it will nok work.

 

Also Nvidia has discontinued support for 3D vision so new drivers will probably not even have 3d vision installer at all.

By the way you must run you bios in UEFI mode to get the 120hz screen to work.

Legacy is not supported.

[RaZoRfi84]

5 minutes ago, BludBubbles said:

Hi Henrik9979,

 

That would be cool if you could share some pics of your BIOS if you would be so kind. I think I attempted to set integrated graphics to Disabled and video output to Always PEG using an external monitor but I would always get 8 beeps and no post. When I try again I will change the settings to exactly what you have and see what happens. I contacted the seller on eBay but they haven't contacted me back. I requested a return or exchange so I hope they honor that. Also, RaZoR, I paid about $300 for the 1070 and the $100 was for the 120Hz display. I hope I'm not stuck with the 60Hz display but it's cool since I can hook the laptop up to my 4K smart tv and get 120Hz/1080p picture with this DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

 

Regards,

BludBubbles

I found out the Unknown Device using the method you described. It turns out it is the Fall Detector thingie and the other one is nVidia's audio. I'm just going to leave them like they are, I suppose, since everything is running smoothly.

 

That makes more sense, but it's not that bad because I see that most used GTX1060m go for that price still.

[BludBubbles]

That sucks. I was really looking forward to using nVidia 3D Vision. I wonder why they discontinued support. I've heard that it's awesome. I also read on other posts about people who have modified drivers that have gotten the 3D Vision to work on these laptops. I could be wrong though. BTW, the driver that I'm using for the 1070 came from Eurocom and it's the 416.34 version.

[RaZoRfi84]

5 minutes ago, BludBubbles said:

That sucks. I was really looking forward to using nVidia 3D Vision. I wonder why they discontinued support. I've heard that it's awesome. I also read on other posts about people who have modified drivers that have gotten the 3D Vision to work on these laptops. I could be wrong though. BTW, the driver that I'm using for the 1070 came from Eurocom and it's the 416.34 version.

 

12 minutes ago, Henrik9979 said:

Also don't expect Nvidia 3D vision to work. I have tried but even though Nvidia 3D stereotypic appears at device manager, there is no settings for 3D vision in Nvidia control panel. No matter what driver I have tried it will nok work.

 

Also Nvidia has discontinued support for 3D vision so new drivers will probably not even have 3d vision installer at all.

By the way you must run you bios in UEFI mode to get the 120hz screen to work.

Legacy is not supported.

 

It might not work but if it is installed it could be possible to force start nVidia 3D Vision from C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Control Panel Client\nvcplui.exe

[Henrik9979]

Pictures of bios.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lz20808jgl8djg5/AACcGHLx_iArEod2W3MKdEtqa?dl=0

[BludBubbles]

I keep getting BSOD and OSOD and just hard shutdowns. I'm not really sure what's going on and haven't done extensive testing but Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition and Grand Theft Auto V seem to run fine and run good with a little overclocking. But, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Ghost Recon, and Need for Speed games, among others, cause OSOD and hard shutdowns. Anybody have a nice driver they could share that would work well for this M17x-R4. You would think that since we're all using the same laptop that the one driver that works for you will probably work for me. I've tried two different modified drivers. 416 and 441. I've stress tested for hours with FurMark and FireStrike and temps have only gotten as high as 81C. I have a 330w PSU so I don't think that that's the issue. Any guesses?

[Henrik9979]

27 minutes ago, BludBubbles said:

I keep getting BSOD and OSOD and just hard shutdowns. I'm not really sure what's going on and haven't done extensive testing but Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition and Grand Theft Auto V seem to run fine and run good with a little overclocking. But, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Ghost Recon, and Need for Speed games, among others, cause OSOD and hard shutdowns. Anybody have a nice driver they could share that would work well for this M17x-R4. You would think that since we're all using the same laptop that the one driver that works for you will probably work for me. I've tried two different modified drivers. 416 and 441. I've stress tested for hours with FurMark and FireStrike and temps have only gotten as high as 81C. I have a 330w PSU so I don't think that that's the issue. Any guesses?

Even if it seems graphics card related it is possible it could be the network driver or some other driver that is causing the issue.

I can't remember how you find it, but windows error log might give a clue what is going on.

 

If you find an error where WFP is mentioned, it is the network driver.

 

Also try these suggestions:

https://www.google.dk/amp/s/windowsreport.com/orange-screen-of-death-pc-fix/%3famp?espv=1

 

Also try using hwinfo64 to set your fans to run at max speed.

Even though it might not be the issue, the vram runs extremely hot! Don't overclock them. Remember how the heatsink is designed, if the core is 81c the the vram is at least 81c too or more.