Alienware 18 ordered. 4940mx, GTX880m sli. I have a few questions!

Hi, so I ordered an Alienware 18.

I opted for the 4940mx, and the GTX880m sli.

1)I have heard there are problems with the 880m throttling in games and benchmark tests? Is this still an issue, and how can I get around this? I will not overclock unless I need to, which shouldn't be a problem if games support SLI.
2)Regarding the CPU, does it run cool at stock? I've seen people say it reaches 90C +?!?! This surely can't be normal? Do I really have to repaste it to keep it running cool even if I keep it stock?
3)Does it matter what hard drive goes in the first bay, this is an issue in my M17x r4 as the faster HD bay is the 2nd one. Also I will be installing my SSD and doing a fresh install, is it hard to remove the Msata / can I just disable it in the bios?
4)Lastly I have a laptop cooler - coolermaster U3, does anybody know if it properly fits on here stably?

Thanks in advance!

-I've been reading more and seeing constant problems with the high temperatures and the i7 4940mx cutting out, a bit more worried now.
It's not too late for me to downgrade to the 4800mq but the price to upgrade was hardly anything, would I have to repaste?
Also with the gtx880m? I would like both of them to run around low 70C. Would I have to repaste, this looks like a hassle. I haven't taken a laptop apart like that before. I just need something that will run cool enough without me having to worry about anything. I will not overclock anything, I just want it to last without any problems.

 

I was going to choose the new alienware 17 with a 4910mq, and a single 880m, with a 120hz display. But I opted for the Alienware 18 with these specs last minute.
Seeing all these issues, especially with the 4940mx is making me doubt my decision, I sort of rushed into this one. And the 880m seems to have serious overheating issues + throttling, although I'm not sure if this is the case with the Alienware 18.
Waiting until March 2015 was not an option for the new high end Nvidia mobile GPU. Do I need to take my laptop apart and repaste the cpu and gpu? If I did this and wanted to repaste all of them, how many Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra Cooling Kits would I need to purchase?

As I stated before, I'm not used to seeing these high temps. When my 7970m was working, it was wonderful. Always gave me decent performance, never ran above 73C. Same with my 3610qm, when things were good,
I've never seen an Alienware 18, or m18x before, and am totally new to SLI mobile gpu's + extreme CPU's in laptops.
Would love some opinions from people who know more about this setup. Would it be better to possibly pick another laptop with different specs?
I've obviously looked at temps from benchmarking reviews, they've been fine. I found horrors on here!

 

If you're concerned about heat and won't be overclocking then there's really no point getting the 4940MX. I understand the point about costing almost nothing to upgrade, but because Intel royally dropped the ball on Haswell, the MX chips are hit and miss, and are complete turds compared to the Ivy Bridge XM chips.

 

Thanks for the response. I couldn't pick a non-haswell, and the price difference was truly next to nothing. I'm just wondering what stock heat I can expect with the stock thermal paste. And what I can expect at stock clocks with and without liquid ultra. Same with the SLI 880m's.

 

I wouldnt buy any Alienware at this point.
Maxwell with superior performance is just around the corner. If you want to make the best purchase, with a notebook that will be extremely powerful and be future proof, wait a couple of months and GTX 880MX should be here

 

Well I assume there was a fairly good reason for needing to upgrade just now.

 

I had to pick this now, I couldn't choose to pay less and get the support with GTX780m's, just concerned about the high temps that are being reported with the GTX880m. Don't know if the earlier chips were a faulty batch, they've been out for 2-3 months now (hopefully this is the case and mine furn out to be fine).

 

The 880M runs hot since it's basically pre-overclocked from nvidia.

 

What's the max safe gpu operating temps, to keep the cards in the best condition possible? I don't want to get them replaced by dell later on. Had the worst record history with replacement parts, they're always faulty and cause even more problems for me!
I've seen 87C for a stock 880m, which seems bizzare. My 7970m ran so much cooler.

 

You got it a little wrong.

GTX 675M: March 2012
GTX 680M: July 2012. Vastly superior and a new architecture.

GTX 670M: March 2012
GTX 670MX: October 2012. New architecture.

They wait 1 year between releases of the same architecture yes. GTX 880M is an overclocked Kepler GTX 780M. GTX 880MX is a new architecture called Maxwell. Between 880MX and GTX 980M there is maybe 1 year.
GTX 880M is very soon to be dead in the water followed by GM204. Nvidia just added driver support for GTX 880MX. That should tell you something

GTX 880MX is 100% going inside notebooks. Same as GTX 670MX and GTX 675MX did.

But if you have to get one now I suppose you have no choice. I`m just doing a friendly reminder that GTX 880MX will be so much better than GTX 880M and if you can wait, do that.

 

Oh wow, sorry about that, I didn't know?!? I thought the only MX gpu from Nvidia was the gtx680. Is there any speculation as to when the 880mx will be released?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/757332-brace-yourself-new-maxwell-cards-incoming.html

Desktop cards are said to arrive in September. Wouldnt surprise me that mobile will follow closely to that since Nvidia added driver support for just mobile N16E graphic cards (Maxwell)

 

If you don't absolutely have to upgrade now, perhaps it's worth holding off till late September and see if the mobile Maxwell is released by then.

 

That wasn't really an option for me.

 

880M and 4940MX are fine if you run them stock. The 880M does appear to run a few degrees hotter than the 780M did at the same clock speed which nobody has figured out but the card stability issues are worked out. If you don't like the throttling, grab the modded vbios which will run 993MHz all day (until 93C when it will throttle) but honestly, I dont mind the stock vbios as these cards chew up everything I throw at them. Benchmarks are worthless but actual gaming performance is fine.

4940MX is a hot chip and likes to run mid to upper 80s out of the box. With some IC Diamond and XTU, I have mine running 3.9GHz on four cores @ 92C max WPrime 1024M 8 thread but normal usage stays in the mid 80s. The Alienware 18 apparently has better stock cooling than my machine so you should be able to exceed my results.

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well i can tell you the 4940mx throttles its butt off.. Ive gotten better performance out of the gpus than i have out of the cpu..

 

i havent seen any thing worth being concerned about with the 880s temps wise.. i have seen temps skyrocket on the cpu tho.. and word of advise.. find the old R2 cpu fan.. extend the wires and use it.. makes a world of difference..

 

Thank you, and wow those temps are quite hot indeed. It's strange because my cpu runs so much cooler. Even if the 880m primary gets to 87C, this is normal? And I don't need to apply liquid ultra? Also I would keep my cpu stock, if it does reach 90C should I worry? Is the 4910qm a better chip overall?

 

What temps exactly do you get with your GTX880m sli setup and 4940mx? Max temps when gaming, rendering, and general use (web browsing, opening lots of tabs in chrome etc). It's just something I can compare to.

 

4910mq is going to keep temps lower... 4940MX is a chip meant for tweaking. It will eat as much power as you throw at it up until you can't dissipate the heat anymore.

The 4910mq actually tries to be more efficient and it has a lower TDP as well, 47W as opposed to the 57W TDP the 4940MX is stock. It has a 200MHz lower stock speed both regular and turbo but you can tweak that with XTU if it's a big deal.

The 880s with forced max in my system won't pass 80C and average in the upper 70s but automatic fan control with a stock vbios will hit 87C, kick the fans up to around 70% or so then they run 80-82C after that.

I don't have temp problems until I flash the modded vbios which will run them to 93C in less than 30 minutes.

Keep in mind that without mods, the Alienware has superior cooling to Clevo machines so ideally you will have lower temps than I do although my ambient doesn't ever change from 21C

Liquid Ultra is on its way to me for my machine but i only need it because my goal is 4.2-4.3GHz for benches and less fan noise with a 4GHz every day clock.

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Thanks! The 4940mx cost £50~ extra for me to upgrade from the 4910mq, so I just went for it. I can quite easily underclock it to make it slower if temps get above 85C, thus reducing temperatures right? I will monitor them, but I just don't feel comfortable with having the GPU or CPU reach over 85C MAX.

By forced max you mean the fan speed? I feel this would make it very loud if my r4 is anything to go by.

Please let me know how that Liquid Ultra works out for you, are you just using it on your cpu? Is there enough in 1 tube to use on both GPU's as well?

 

Honestly 4910MQ is your best bet right now. It will do everything the 4940Mx does except for unlimited overclocking, which you won't need anyway. The issue with the MX chip is that unless you manually clamp down the TDP, it will just keep running turbo until it hits its thermal or TDP throttle limit, hence why it "throttles like all hell", because it's actually trying to push itself until the throttle point.

 

I don't even know if you can force max fans in the 18 but yeah forced max fans in my Clevo is louder than my M17xR1 would get doing a BIOS update which is the only time they ever went max. It's unbearably loud.

The chip is going to run that hot, its designed to. If you undervolt it, for example, it increases your clock speed but the temp stays the same. You can reduce turbo max multipliers and undervolt it (-80mv works great on mine, I'd start at -70 or -60 first) and that will drop temps.

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It's possible to force max fans in the 18 with HWINfo64.

 

It's already been ordered, I can't easily change it now.If I just use the cpu at stock clocks and leave it. Even if it gets to 90C+ would it still last?

Cheers, I will surely give this one a go if mine starts to get hot. Do you notice much speed differences? Would this be comparable to the i7 4910mq speeds if I do the same as you did? What would I need to use use to make this possible? Did you also repaste?
You say it's designed to run that hot, if it starts to get close to 95C it will throttle to prevent it from turning off? My i7 3610qm did throttle but the temp kept on rising after it reached 90C and this turned the PC off when it reached 105C. When gaming, whats the max cpu temp you've seen?

 

I'll give undervolting/overclocking the cpu a go, to try something new.

Will leave the 880m's unless the temps are really low.

 

The chip will aggressively throttle when it's pushed too far but if you are just running it stock, it should maintain between 80 and 90C at full load.
The problem with Haswell is that temperatures are kind of random. I've had the same work load produce a +/-5C difference in the exact same environment because of its adaptive voltage. I have repasted mine with a very bad IC Diamond job (I am 99% sure I used way too much, didn't have any paste experience until I got this machine).

If you would like, you can PM me when you get the machine if you want some help with temps and I'll help you with XTU but in my experience, the chip does a pretty good job of staying within operating temperatures with my undervolt.

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Here you go... I left HWiNFO64 running for the last 20 hours... this gives you an idea of general temps when using the machine.

In the time that its been on I was using it as a media server so there was transcoding and such going on and you can see there was some gaming too, nothing too insane.

Spoiler

Here is what it does stock. Note the clock rate.

Spoiler

Here is what it does stock with just a -80mv undervolt.

Spoiler

Very little difference in temps but the clock rate goes up.

Then finally what you're looking for... The balance between temperatures and performance. This is stock with -80mv undervolt and a 47W TDP for both turbo values - doesn't pass 77C but still runs 3.5GHz

Spoiler

As you can see, there is a LOT of flexibility with MX chips.

This test was actually kind of cool. It makes a perfect example of MX chips using everything you throw at them. Stock my system sets the TDP to 67W with a short burst at 83.75W but 47W for both values achieves the exact same clock rate at 8C lower!

None of these tests were done with max fans, it was all automatically controlled to show what every day temps would look like.

 

It just is amazing how much abuse a laptop cpu will go through if only the pc version's where the same it be unreal .

 

Laptop CPUs are definitely binned, especially the XM and MX chips... These things are pretty amazing. I had 3.9GHz @ 1.1v yesterday but it proved to be somewhat unstable so I settled at 1.13v but my desktop 4770k? It doesn't like 4GHz @ 1.22v and takes a whopping 1.341v to stabilize at 4.4GHz and that is pushing what my H100i can dissipate. It does pretty well keeping it below 80C unless I run Linpack with AVX which shoots it over 85C in a matter of a few minutes.

If I could cool this chip well enough, I have no doubt 4.5GHz would be possible as long as the motherboard didn't freak.

 

I can't thank you enough for this! I will try out the last one when it arrives. Thanks for posting with examples.

 

They are binned but of course there are variations with all of them, the 4xxx vary more than before too as far as I can tell.

 

No problem, it was actually good for me too because I now know how to control my temps which I didn't know before. I've been running the 47W setting now and its *so* much quieter.

Its Haswell... I don't think even Intel could bin them properly because they all vary so much. Haswell is the worst.

 

I also have 880M just less than a month. Performance so far is not too bad. However, I cannot overclock it further than +50MHz due to will crash. I believe Nvidia will come out new vBios to solve this issue soon. Finger criss.

 

That just goes to show the 880M is simply a re-branded 780M that has been pushed to the limits. I don't think you'll be able to squeeze too much out unless you start adding more volts.

 

Why have we got a rebrand for the last 3 flagship cards it not right even if they fixed the GTX880m it should of been next gen

 

AMD and nVidia are both doing it...

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general use and gaming i see nothing of 60c cpu and 70-75 gpu

 

if this is the case then you need a repaste asap! my 4940mx goes no higher than about 60c under load with casual use.. were not talking benching we are talking videos/web/gaming.

 

]brother you got issues.. you need a re paste asap.. if thats stock then good luck using it.. let me show WHAT ITS SUPPOSED TO DO.. I run 4.2-4.3 stock gaming and every thing else with out an issue max temp reach under super load is about 90c but that takes me benching it to get it there at these speeds..




also tdp is

Max TDP

57 W

 

I have repasted. Even with the 47W TDP setting, my 4940MX is idling at 49C right now. It runs hot in this machine. There are some mods that I can do to reduce temps but I'm going to CLU anyway so it will be a moot point.

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Why? Because they can, and people keep paying money for it.

NVIDIA is the master of not going any further than necessary to be just a shade better than AMD's best enthusiast GPU. I really miss the days of the bitter red versus green battles for the performance crown. Since AMD still isn't trying to do any better than the 7970M I think NVIDIA's mediocrity was predictable.

 

Hopefully the M295X forces nVidia to release a high performance Maxwell part early.

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Have you repasted with anything to achieve these temperatures or is this the stock paste from the factory? And you run everything stock?

 

He probably means day to day load which is mostly idle really.

 

stock paste from factory and i run OC 4.3 every day all day long.. thats MY STOCK SETTING LOL

 

NVidia better release something good in desktop card's the Titan z cost about 3 k and give almost half the performance as the Amd 290x3 that cost 1.5k .i'm a green team supporter but might jump to red team i'm sick of getting screwed over every time I buy a flagship card and they charge like there the only manufacture out there. Good on Amd for pushing NVidia harder and maybe we might see a price drop on there products and some new cards and new technology

 

You're kidding me right? The card has a custom water cooler you have to install somewhere in your case and has insane power requirements. NVidia actually chose to stick within the PCIe power specs while AMD did their own thing.

The titan Z has limited gaming appeal and nVidia admits that but the Cuda power on a single card is very appealing for professional applications.

If nVidia wanted to break the power specs they could stomp AMD. The point is... They don't have to and they know that.

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I really don't know how my thread topic has suddenly changed topic but if Nvidia could really outperform AMD greatly in the desktop GPU area, they would have done so already. AMD just need to work on drivers. My 7970m used to run super cool (max 73C, stock thermal paste), and gave me excellent performance.
For me, it was actually the better option in games since I got more fps than if I were to purchase a gtx680m at the time. The price was also less than half of that of the gtx680m. If only AMD bring out something like shadowplay.
However AMD really do give you better value.
Imagine if Nvidia were the only ones in the market, the sole monopoly, we would be doomed to pay 2x these prices. I hope AMD make some huge advancements and spend more on R+D, and hopefully a new company will be in the picture soon.

 

Nvidia holds the most important title - the fastest single GPU gaming video card. That's the 780 Ti and that's where their enthusiast money comes from. Again, if nVidia wanted to stomp all over PCIe specs and force liquid cooling with their own custom block, they could release a card that would absolutely stomp AMD at the same TDP. That's the point. They have no incentive to do that and the blood will be spilt with Maxwell soon but until AMD comes out with that magical gamer's dream single GPU reference or other reasonably cooled card with reasonable power requirements, nVidia is going to continue to own them with the 780 Ti and start pushing out the lower Maxwell SKUs to make sure they have the monopoly for each separate market.

I agree with your point about competition but a 500W card beating a 375W card? You don't say...

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