Alienware M17X R3 upgrade to M290X

[MicroAlex]

Hey there lads,

I am having some trouble with my upgrade decision. Essentially I have thought that just like with desktops I will be able to easily upgrade my laptops GPU... NOPE!

This laptop was rocking a 560M previously, however I have decided to strap a M290X to it. I did manage to get it working by updating to the latest Alienware unlocked BIOS and tweaking some settings.

My problems is that the GPU fan will not spin at all while the laptop is ON. Yes I can control it with a 3rd party software, however I prefer that the fans would work automatically as when you are not in Windows you are baking your laptop.

The fan is not faulty as was tested by swapping with CPU fan. Also GPU fan spins with custom HWiNFO curve and while performing a BIOS flash as both of them ramp up to 100%.

I also did notice that Aida64 reports 1RPM 35% fan speed. I hope all it needs is a small tweak.

Personally I have played around with flashing VBIOS to desktop cards, making slight mods to them and messing with Asus N61JQ AMIBIOS to unlock hidden menus.

Any suggestion on what could be modified, tweaked and so on for this to work properly? Feel free to request additional info.

PS, if to be believed the M290X 4GB card is from a new Alienware 17 series laptop launched sometime in 2013. Bios signature also shows DELL in the description.

I know I do not have the minimum requirements to post or contact svl7 for a Bios mod, but I am curious if it is possible to make it work properly to begin with. I have no problems in making a donation for the help as I know that time is money.

Specs:

Alienware M17X R3

BIOS A12 (unlocked)

Intel i7-2670QM

nVidia 560M (stock GPU)

AMD R9 M290X (upgrade)

16GB DDR3

Stock power brick (also have a 330w brick)

Thank you for your time.

[runix18]

if you have unlocked bios a11, then under the second Advanced tab you will have an optin like thermal platoform. enter there and the you will see the options for the gpu fan. unfortunately it has inly 2 options for the gpu fan speed (low (75 and max(100)) depnding on the temp that you select from underneath this options. Hope it helps you.