Alienware M18xR1 last upgrade

Hi everyone.
I need advice and help.
Since its almost 4y now that i have this laptop and it was my first Alienware im realy satisfied.
Because there is no need to change anything but GPU i would be greatfull if you can help me whit this.
I have found a reseller that have all sort of parts for Dell Alienware includng GPUs on Aliexpress.
He is 5 diamonds. Btw that is my only option since i dont have Dell parts center in my country nor i can buy anything except new laptop here.
Had 2xHD6990m, one died out last year. Since i cant finde any info on GTX980m(can at least one work, no SLI) i want to ask you what is best option for this laptop atm? Also if you can provide me whit dell part nubers i would be greatfull.

 

GTX 980M is confirmed not working in M18xR1. Best options are

• GTX 980M/SLI - Confirmed not working (Nvidia UEFI restriction)
• GTX 780M/SLI - Confirmed working flawlessly
• GTX 880M/SLI - You may need to flash vBIOS. Confirmed working in my laptop.
• GTX 680M/SLI - still not bad if you can have it for a good price but failure ratio is higher than newer models

AMD:

• 7970M - Working but not recommended due to high failure ratio (just slightly better than 6990M)
• 8970M - I don't know
• R9 M290X - I don't know
• R9 M390X - I don't know

If you want to change from AMD to NV you will need to change heatsinks or if you like DIY then you can modify them (check my signature, I did it) . I don't know parts numbers as I order everything from ebay, never got cheated. My country is ignored by Alienware. There are also some very good quality cards sellers on the forum but forgot their nicks, they may saw your thread already.

As for CPU:

• i7-2920XM ES - Very good cpu for very low price, buy on ebay. Minuses - no AES instruction (do you need it?), thermal sensors are a bit weird in this ES
• i7-2920XM QS - No known problems, lower price than Production unit
• i7-2920XM Production Unit/i7-2960XM - Very good choice but price is high

For al CPUs you will need to flash unlocked vBIOS. It's easy and takes 5 minutes.

 

Tanks. I saw your mode and i already planed mine if i dont finde factory heatsink. Il go for GTX 780m. Found them for a good price althou i would like to try R9-s but it seems no one upgrades to new AMD and that is the reason im going for nVidia. I dont want to risk upgrading to something that no one knows will it work.

This is my cfg:

CPU: i7-2920XM i tink its PU cause it was able to OC up to 5Ghz when i first tryed it.
RAM: 16GB HyperX Impact PnP( reacent upgrade) @ 2133Mhz
HDD: 750GB HTSG data
SSD: going to buy 500GB Samsung EVO 850 next mounth
GPU: well it looks like HD6990m is going to rethire.

 

M18xR1 with 680M SLI or 780M SLI will be a massive upgrade to your single 6990M. My R1 still runs nearly everything at maximum settings. When I do have to turn down graphics settings, it's usually because the game is poorly coded and not because the system can't handle it.

 

As for the CPU. I7-2920XM world record was beaten on ES

 

i think that the 980m makes a good case for an upgrade to R2

780m SLI is fine but i found mine maxed out on several games, even overclocked, also there are many popular games that do not support SLI leaving you with half the performance of a single 980m

 

Hey Everyone,
I don't know if this is even the correct place to post this, but... I was able to MOD the bios for the m18xR1 to include the latest microcode for the 2960QM, and the latest Intel OpROM to support TRIM in RAID0 - OpRom v. 12.9.0 - I also have 12.5, with the TRIM in RAID0 mod, but out chipset seems to use the 12.9.0 best from my testing (Though, full disclosure, I could be wrong). Anyway, here is the link to the post where I put the downloads:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...me-upgrade-7-1-80.787339/page-2#post-10190690
Ive also included instructions on how to upgrade the Intel Managemenet Engine to 7.1.8 - Our system has 7.0.4... It DOES add additional support!
Anyway, I hope you guys like and that this can help ya'll!
The TRIM on RAID0 support is a really sweet additional feature, i promise you won't be disappointed! (I hope) LoL