[GUIDE] Dell 330W Power Adapter Mod for the M17X

[digz6666]

Can someone mod and sell few on ebay? I bet it will sells out fast

[MC-Sammer]

Debating weather or not to give this a try or go with

[phobos1984]

Hello everybody,

 

sorry for reviving two years old thread. 
I just bought a 330W PSU for my M17xR4 and it seems to work out of the box. Just a quick question: in BIOS the laptop shows "330W PSU". Is this a clear sign that everything is working as intended, or it is just showing what I connected, but that doesn't mean it will use the full power?

 

Thanks! 

Edited May 17, 2018 by phobos1984

[naightmehr]

The m17x R4 works fine with the 330W power supply. I personally tested this by having the cpu and gpu (both overclocked) run at full speed while monitoring the amount of power it pulls from the socket. It seems to work fine. I got an i7-3940xm and a gtx 1070.

[FirebirdTA01]

Quote

The m17x R4 works fine with the 330W power supply. I personally tested this by having the cpu and gpu (both overclocked) run at full speed while monitoring the amount of power it pulls from the socket. It seems to work fine. I got an i7-3940xm and a gtx 1070.

Quote

sorry for reviving two years old thread. 
I just bought a 330W PSU for my M17xR4 and it seems to work out of the box. Just a quick question: in BIOS the laptop shows "330W PSU". Is this a clear sign that everything is working as intended, or it is just showing what I connected, but that doesn't mean it will use the full power?

First, I also apologize for bringing back a mostly dead thread. The reason I do so is that @phobos1984 and @naightmehr are the only people I've found that mention the 330W psu working out of the box on an M17x. A user on another forum has said that his worked for him right out of the box, but only for a day or two, after which it dropped down to a 240W max draw.  I have an M17x r4 that I'm in the process of upgrading to a i7-3940xm and a gtx 1070. Can either of you confirm that your 330W power supplies have continued working with no modification and without falling back to 240W?

 

Thank you both, and I appreciate the time you may take to answer my questions.

Edited July 12, 2018 by FirebirdTA01
Stricken a mistake

[naightmehr]

I've had the i7-3940xm and gtx 1070 combination with the 330W psu working fine for around 7 months now, never had any trouble with bottlenecking, both my cpu and gpu are overclocked as well. Bios recognizes the 330W psu, it's a regular 330W watt psu with no modification whatsoever. Though keep in mind the i7-3940xm is a hothead, I was only able to cool it properly after several modding projects, e.g. the m14x fan, 3 copper heatpipe mod and I used liquid metal as thermal paste.

 

Another thing to keep in mind which also seems to be quite inconsistent is that in some cases the gtx1070 won't run at full power unless you put your laptop in hibernate first, my own laptop suffers from this.

[FirebirdTA01]

@naightmehr, thank you for the reply. I've bought the fan from the m14x r2 to do the cooling mod and I was planning on using grizzly kryonaut thermal compound (it's the best i.m.o. before going to liquid metal) as I was concerned the gallium would corrode the aluminum heatsink mount that's around the copper. I have not been able to find any 3 pipe coolers for the m17x. What did you do to yours? Do you have pictures? Any place you could point me to if I was going to undergo a similar mod to either my current heatsink or a new one? Thanks again.

 

EDIT: Also, do you think the cpu could push 32gb of ram at 2133mhz? I know the 3rd gen intels don't officially support over 1600mhz memory, but I've seen some people push 1866mhz with some lower end i7s and some push 2133 with some higher end 3rd gen i7s, and our motherboards have the option in the bios, but 32gb at that clock?  Also, if it could handle it, would it need even more power to do so? More than the 330W brick could supply with the 3940xm and 1070?  One last thing, what do you use to monitor the gpu power consumption/clock? Just hwinfo64 or something else?

 

EDIT 2: One last thing, are you running windows 10 or an older OS? What bios are you running? I know the a11 unlocked is what most people use when putting in a 10 series card, but is it required still since the a14 bios is somewhat unlocked from dell now?  I don't see the display mode options (i.e. optimus, peg, etc) in my bios so I'm assuming I'll need to roll back to a11 then a11 unlocked? I haven't yet purchased my new display for use with the 1070.

Edited July 14, 2018 by FirebirdTA01
A follow up question

[naightmehr]

I purchased a lot of items from taobao through yoybuy, such as the gtx1070, the nebula red covers and the 3-pipe heatsink. It's basically a regular heatsink but fully made from copper and an extra pipe added on top. I actually compared it to the original heatsink and it makes a 5-10 degrees difference.

 

For the gtx 1070 I purchased a 5-copper heatsink, though you don't need one actually, the 3 copper one works fine but I wanted to buy a 2nd heatsink since I had to mill out a small portion for it to fit on top of the gtx 1070, if I have to go back to my hd7970m I can just take the old heatsink out the closet. ( see image below for comparison )

 

I am using the latest version of Windows 10 64-bit and I have the A11 unlocked bios. I went from stock A12 to unlocked A11, should work fine if you properly follow the instructions.

( My laptop wasn't plugged in when I took the photo, the 330W psu works fine and it's enough juice to fully power an overclocked i7-3940xm and gtx1070, I measured it with a watt meter before, it drew around 280-300 watt when fully loading both the cpu and gpu. )

 

I haven't really played much with the memory and this is primarily because my laptop has 1 set of 2 1866mhz and a set of 2 1600mhz sticks, so I don't feel comfortable overclocking the memory.

 

You pretty much require the A11 unlocked bios and the 120hz display, I couldn't get the gtx1070 working without putting the video option to "PEG" but once I got the unlocked bios it was literally plug-and-play. Put the bios on PEG, install gtx 1070 and it should fire right up. Keep in mind that you'll have to mod the drivers, in case you need some reference material I thoroughly explained how to mod the drivers in this post: 

 

[FirebirdTA01]

@naightmehr, thanks for your responses. They really are a lot of help. One last thing, does your HDMI input still work? I figured it would be incompatible with a 120hz screen since I think it ran on the integrated intel gpu.

[naightmehr]

3 hours ago, FirebirdTA01 said:

@naightmehr, thanks for your responses. They really are a lot of help. One last thing, does your HDMI input still work? I figured it would be incompatible with a 120hz screen since I think it ran on the integrated intel gpu.

 

Every port works fine with the gtx1070, HDMI, Mini-displayport and VGA. I personally got 2 screens connected through the HDMI and mini-displayport so you should be good.

[FirebirdTA01]

2 hours ago, naightmehr said:

 

Every port works fine with the gtx1070, HDMI, Mini-displayport and VGA. I personally got 2 screens connected through the HDMI and mini-displayport so you should be good.

I mean the HDMI input, not the output. I use this laptop every once in a while to hook my ps4 up to when I go to some friends' places. I prefer it over lugging a TV around. Do you know if your HDMI input still works? Can you test it? Thanks again for all of the help

[naightmehr]

13 hours ago, FirebirdTA01 said:

I mean the HDMI input, not the output. I use this laptop every once in a while to hook my ps4 up to when I go to some friends' places. I prefer it over lugging a TV around. Do you know if your HDMI input still works? Can you test it? Thanks again for all of the help

 

HDMI input works fine as well.

[FirebirdTA01]

1 hour ago, naightmehr said:

 

HDMI input works fine as well.

That's excellent news, I was not expecting that. I didn't think the onboard intel gpu would drive a 120hz screen (Isn't the HDMI input a pass-through from that chipset?). Thank you for all of your help and the time you've taken to answer my questions. It's much appreciated.

Edited July 18, 2018 by FirebirdTA01

[naightmehr]

51 minutes ago, FirebirdTA01 said:

That's excellent news, I was not expecting that. I didn't think the onboard intel gpu would drive a 120hz screen (Isn't the HDMI input a pass-through from that chipset?). Thank you for all of your help and the time you've taken to answer my questions. It's much appreciated.

 

Since you mentioned a console I actually tested my own ps3 and ps4 just now but unfortunately those don't work through the HDMI input, a PC however seems to work fine

[FirebirdTA01]

On 7/18/2018 at 8:44 AM, naightmehr said:

 

Since you mentioned a console I actually tested my own ps3 and ps4 just now but unfortunately those don't work through the HDMI input, a PC however seems to work fine

I wonder why that is. I'm going to try, to the best of my ability, to get the 1070 working on a 60hz screen. That means I still need to get a new screen, as mine is only 1600x900 (My biggest gripe with the system so far). I don't want to loose my HDMI input and I think that moving to a 120hz screen will break it. I'll report back after I get a new 1920x1080 non 3D 60hz screen to test things out with. Hopefully I can get it all working, and if I do, I'll do a write-up on the full upgrade list. I have an idea for a cooling mod that I want to try that I don't think has been done in one of these laptops yet, so I'll experiment with that as well.

[naightmehr]

I believe someone got a 1060 working in an m18x r2 but I assume the proces is the same for the 1070, basically running the laptop in optimus mode.

[userOK]

On 10.03.2015 at 12:26 AM, Nospheratu said:

if i remember correctly CLEVO owners only need to ground the ID line (the thin blue wire in the guide). This simply means the blue wire needs to be connected to the negative wire (you can see a picture of the stripped cable in the guide showing the positive, negative and ID wires).

You may also need to get the specific connector for your laptop (If its not the same as Dells) or just cut your your existing CLEVO PSU connector and use that. You dont need to connect the ID line to the connector as CLEVO's dont use the ID line.

it's really work? 

 

I have new Dell PSU 330W DA330PM1111 Y90RR + adapter with 7.4x5.0mm to 5.5x2.5mm 

I bought it for a laptop CLEVO P150EM (SAGER NP9150) 

I understand that because of the built-in chip Dell and ID line, my PSU will work at 240 watts maximum (without modifications)? 

Please, tell me how to modify it so that it works for 330W? 

Edited July 22, 2018 by userOK

[Krampoc]

Thanks for provided info!

[epa.caguei]

Hello guys, 

First of all thanks for the great guide @Nospheratu.

I'm currently facing some stupid issues with my alienware m18x (I know I'm in the m17x forums).

I'm currently somewhere other than my usual living place. Last time I was here, I used a 240w adapater on my m18x and all my games and "heavier" processes worked just fine. So I was quite happy that I could avoid carrying around the huge 330w brick while travelling.

Now I'm back and my 240w is nowhere near enough to run how it usually does, however it's not a question of power - it's artificial throttling from alienware.

I've tried using "throttlestop" and "MSI Afterburner" to counteract the issue temporarily, but nothing seems to work. I know for a fact it's artifical throttling, because all is fine when I unplug the laptop and it's using the battery, but this is not sustainable.

Would this mod work? Basically I assume that I need to trick the computer into thinking that it's a 330w adapter.

 

Thanks.

[Fucking_signup_BS]

The internal of the 330w PSUs seems to have changed. There was a post in another forum about making sure to ground the side of the ID chip to allow for the full 400W output of the 330W PSU using the 240W ID chip.

On 7/18/2018 at 4:20 AM, naightmehr said:

 

HDMI input works fine as well.

Are you using Win10 or Win7 for the HDMI in?