Unlocked Alienware M17x-R2 Bios Version 1 Released!

[Brian]

Read all about it here: Unlocked Alienware M17x-R2 Bios Released! | Tech|Inferno and continue the discussion in this thread.

[DanXbix]

Thanks for the write up and great work to the guys. Can't wait until more GPU's are supported & possible unlock of AC Adaptors

[Brian]

Welcome to the forum dan. That's what I'm hoping for at this point too..adding a 6970M in Crossfire would be amazing.

[DanXbix]

Same Brian or 485m SLI but not sure we would have enough juice

[StamatisX]

2x6970 + 330W PSU

[mw86]

Who knows maybe slim profile 500W adapters will become a feasible option for the mobile crowd. Then we could fry eggs and get the next best bench score. In fact when testing my rig under heavy load my 240W PSU for my M17X R2 got very hot to the touch. Curious to know just how hot it was getting I placed a basic indoor outdoor thermometer on top of it while gaming with crossfire. When it maxed the thermometer at 122 degrees F I decided I would build a basic fan for it. I wasn't going for aesthetics and it probably wasn't needed. I attribute that heat to throttlestop, cpu volt and a high tdp. I'm sure your 3Ghz+ 4 core Bryan tends to have your PSU a bit warm. Heres some pics. I made it out of an old aluminum external hard drive enclosure with a dremel to make holes and a small case fan which converted easily to a standard power connector. I reused the original PSU from enclosure. With this unlocked BIOS we have a lot of adjustments available including the fan control and thermal trip point. We will be able to easily max out performance and cool our rigs with that much freedom. I think what I am getting at is that with all these new ways to improve performance maybe we need to watch out for our PSU's. I believe that an older 5870m crossfire setup with the XM cpus at stock pushes close to 200W already. As for the bios I hope more options surface such as more available vcores and higher OC/baseclock adjustment for fine tuning. Thanks to those of you that helped and are helping in testing the unlocked bios and future revisions.

[Brian]

Hi Mark,

That's a pretty creative solution for the PSU and you're right, heat is a definitely a factor in PSU efficiency and longevity. Could you post some higher resolution and larger pictures? You can use our upload feature to create a gallery if needed. I can (or you can) create a separate thread for this PSU mod if you decide to put up higher resolution photos + a how to for those that may want to do it.

[Michael]

nice work and good idea mw86!

+1 on the higher quality pix request

[mw86]

Thank you, you are too kind. I'll upload all needed pics of the cooler asap. I'll get some good shots and take the thing apart to show its construction. I'll show the process i went through and hopefully what everyone will get from this is that its construction was practically free, these were just parts laying around my computer work area! One could even power a basic PC fan in any way, put feet on the bottom and top and place their power adapter on top of it. With mine theres no need to buy anything more than a basic 12v PC fan, some kind of enclosure made of a naturally cool material (i choose aluminum) and a basic power-supply strong enough for a small fan (mine was built into enclosure). The fan is attached in a way to create a basic seal around bottom inside of enclosure with it pulling air in the hole on bottom and up through chassis of enclosure till spreading the cooler moving air out evenly of those holes on top dowsing the entire bottom of laptop power-supply with cool moving air. Any other heat dissipating naturally from the top of power supply unit. I'll get a guide done in the next day or so. Cutting metal is involved. The fan noise is a little on the higher side but that shouldn't stop anyone who's over-clocked, in fact its probably a welcomed sound. I think ill just need to be acquainted with the upload tools i'm not familiar with them.

[Ashtefere]

Brian, see if you can prod TheWiz to get the C-States option unlocked. If can disable c-states, we can have fast ssd's!

[DR650SE]

I have yet to put the 920XM back in the system Nice work TheWiz!

[Brian]

Thank you, you are too kind. I'll upload all needed pics of the cooler asap. I'll get some good shots and take the thing apart to show its construction. I'll show the process i went through and hopefully what everyone will get from this is that its construction was practically free, these were just parts laying around my computer work area! One could even power a basic PC fan in any way, put feet on the bottom and top and place their power adapter on top of it. With mine theres no need to buy anything more than a basic 12v PC fan, some kind of enclosure made of a naturally cool material (i choose aluminum) and a basic power-supply strong enough for a small fan (mine was built into enclosure). The fan is attached in a way to create a basic seal around bottom inside of enclosure with it pulling air in the hole on bottom and up through chassis of enclosure till spreading the cooler moving air out evenly of those holes on top dowsing the entire bottom of laptop power-supply with cool moving air. Any other heat dissipating naturally from the top of power supply unit. I'll get a guide done in the next day or so. Cutting metal is involved. The fan noise is a little on the higher side but that shouldn't stop anyone who's over-clocked, in fact its probably a welcomed sound. I think ill just need to be acquainted with the upload tools i'm not familiar with them.

Fantastic! Looking forward to your write-up. If you need help w/the images, let me know.

Brian, see if you can prod TheWiz to get the C-States option unlocked. If can disable c-states, we can have fast ssd's!

I'll PM him on his forum tonight and see what he says.

I have yet to put the 920XM back in the system Nice work TheWiz!

Welcome to the forum bud! Any luck with the fan trip points yet?

[DR650SE]

Brian, see if you can prod TheWiz to get the C-States option unlocked. If can disable c-states, we can have fast ssd's!

I'll also talk to him about this. He asked me to look into this when I mentioned it, but I havn't had much time. I'll go back through some links and info on it, and I'll pass it on to him tonight so that he can look into it. I know he really wants to get this done as well, and hopefully functioning fan control and disabled c-states will be in V2.

Welcome to the forum bud! Any luck with the fan trip points yet?

Thanks, great site! Added to Favorite Bar. Keep up the good work. As far as fan control, I havn't gotten a new test BIOS but I'll talk to TheWiz about it. Maybe I can get him in contact with Mumak and they can put thier heads together.

[Brian]

A mumak and unclewebb combo would be awesome! It all depends on them I guess. Or better yet, a mumak/wiz/unclewebb ultimate triad.

[mw86]

Brian can you also request an adjustment from 5-10% overclock in bios like set fsb does? I don't know if it's even possible to add stuff like that to the bios. Atleast on XM processors or even non XM would be even better.

[Brian]

Brian can you also request an adjustment from 5-10% overclock in bios like set fsb does? I don't know if it's even possible to add stuff like that to the bios. Atleast on XM processors or even non XM would be even better.

Funny you mention it because he's already working on something like that.

[DR650SE]

Brian can you also request an adjustment from 5-10% overclock in bios like set fsb does? I don't know if it's even possible to add stuff like that to the bios. Atleast on XM processors or even non XM would be even better.

Yea, I think he's going to attempt to change the string values for the 1%-5% so it's something like 1%, 3%, 5%, 7%, 10%. I'm hoping it works out well. Maybe he can start and it can be an OC of 5%, 7%, 8%, 9%, 10% since no one really uses 1%-5%. I'm guessing most people just set it to 5%?

[mw86]

Wow I can't wait those will be some amazing accomplishements. I'm still in shock from their version 1 bios, I plan to install it tonight after typing that guide up. I took all the pictures needed. By the way what resolution should I use, there were more than just a couple of pics. They are now in 10megapixel I can shrink them to any resoulution you see fit. The forum rules I thought said 640x480 that's why I did small thumbnails first so not to slow down forum pages.

[Brian]

Hi Mark,

You can use the attachment feature and upload pictures there. If that doesn't work, just e-mail them to me and I'll add them to our main server and give you the links to the images. PM me if the images are too large and it doesn't let you upload them. There are also other online image hosting services you can use such as ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting which give you direct links to thumbnails of the images. That's a service a lot of us use and it works quite well.

[Ashtefere]

I just did the regedit ppm start=4 trick to increase SSD speeds, but after doing that throttlestop wont apply a multiplier above the TRL of 4 core active.

So yeah, cant wait for the disabling of c-states. At the moment I'm in slow ssd mode with 4ghz single core cpu usage, but would like the best of both worlds.

I will hold off until wiz gets v2 (hopefully with cstates options) and full instructions done.

-Ash

[Brian]

I'm also waiting on V2 before I flash because the reason I want this unlocked bios is for the fan control.

[mw86]

What have your experiences been so far with version 1 of the bios if you have loaded it on your computer?

[StamatisX]

I just did the regedit ppm start=4 trick to increase SSD speeds, but after doing that throttlestop wont apply a multiplier above the TRL of 4 core active.

So yeah, cant wait for the disabling of c-states. At the moment I'm in slow ssd mode with 4ghz single core cpu usage, but would like the best of both worlds.

I will hold off until wiz gets v2 (hopefully with cstates options) and full instructions done.

-Ash

I managed to achieve even better results combining ThrottleStop with the registry edit of ppm (basically maxed out my SSD's performance)

---no tweaks----only ppm------ppm+TS---

ThrottleStop settings

As you can see I gained 2MB/s reads and 13MB/s writes. That's a very noticeable improvement. The only problem is the temperatures, I am with the retention mod and still as you can see I get 70+ easily... but I am constantly at 3.5GHz on all 4 cores.

So for me disabling the C states from inside the BIOS is not necessary, but, for those who don't have an extreme CPU it will be...

[Ashtefere]

Hey Stamatisx - one question with the reg tweak - does your turbo multi scale depending on the amount of cores used as well? or is it only scaling to the value for 4 cores?

I would like to keep my 4ghz+ single core performance as well as the higher multi core performance.

-Ash

Edited March 6, 2011 by Ashtefere

[StamatisX]

Hey Stamatisx - one question with the reg tweak - does your turbo multi scale depending on the amount of cores used as well? or is it only scaling to the value for 4 cores?

I would like to keep my 4ghz+ single core performance as well as the higher multi core performance.

-Ash

My multipliers are fixed on all 4 cores, they don't fluctuate at all (unless the CPU gets very hot where they start dropping to keep it cool) I am right now on 26x on all of them, no turbo boost for me either (It's like I am having turbo boost on all 4 cores at the same time constantly)