How to Overclock the Alienware 18 and Haswell CPU (or actually have it run full stock Turbo Speed)

I think it has to be hardware.

 

Well time to go replace the power management chip on my motherboard...lol...I hope its software related or can at least be overwritten with a bios/chip update.

 

I hope so, too. If I knew what it was, it would already be fixed or I would be beating the bushes looking for information on how to fix it.

 

Probably an embedded piece of firmware set on a chip.

 

Bumped****

 

Of all the issues with the current AW18, the single PSU limitation is the one that makes me scratch my head the most. I mean unless it was an engineering oversight (possible, though unlikely), this almost certainly had to be a deliberate move on Dell/Alienware's part. But why? The only semi-logical explanation I have is that they got burned with people sending in warranty claims for machines that died due to improper overclocking, so they're using every trick in the book to make sure the AW18 is as gimped as it can be for overclocking.

 

Nah, they haven't been burned by that, at least not very often, or we would have heard about it. None of the avid Alienware M18xR1/R2 overclockers have had any issues with reliability. Unlocked system BIOS and modded vBIOS have not caused any damage... improper or careless firmware flashing has resulted in a few examples of bricked hardware, but no damage from the firmware itself. In most cases those examples have been remedied by blind/crisis recovery flash (which no longer works on the new machines).

The only overclocking examples I have ever seen that caused damage or outright failures was people doing unconventional things with the GPU vRAM overclocking and using crazy voltage levels (pushing it way beyond reason). Those examples are few and they did not involve Alienware machines.

I think the explanation is they did not check it out to discover what the limitations are. The truth of the situation is that one 330W AC adapter is enough for a moderate GPU core overclock using stock GPU voltage. Plus, you can overclock the CPU all you want to with one AC adapter under those circumstances. One 330W AC adapter was not even enough for the M18xR2 with 680M SLI when heavily overclocked, so nothing has actually changed in that regard.

The only thing that is different with the 18 is some kind of power handling restriction. This could be an intentional limitation that was imposed, but I do not think this is very likely because they do not seem to think this way. Nobody was using a dual AC adapter mod with the M18xR2 at the time the new 18 was under development, so there was nothing for them to try to intentionally block in regard to that mod.

It could be something as simple as the traces on the motherboard are not robust enough to handle the extra power or they cut corners on voltage regulators. We may never know the answer to this question, but my guess would be that on the basis that it works great stock with a single AC adapter that is as far as their testing went. They do not seem to really care about producing a machine that overclocks like a banshee any more. They seem to be more focused on aesthetic changes than performance. I also suspect that they were never counting on GTX 780M drawing well beyond 100W (because it does not with a stock vBIOS).

 

I think the biggest problem is that Haswell uses too much power OCed. After abit of playing around on the R2 I've found a good all round high peformance mode for exteme gaming on 330w to be about 4.3Ghz CPU and +160/+330 on the GPU at 1.41 volts. Perhaps that would work out similar to the AW18 but at around 4.1 Ghz on the CPU (guesswork here). Beyond that for gaming purposes my concern would be temps rather than PSU limitations. I'm keen to see what liquid metal will do on these setting for the GPU.
All in all I actually think the R2 and AW18 are both pretty power efficient in the grand scheme of things when you look at the numbers they put out compared with anything else using 330w. I'd really like to see a bigger PSU in future models though.

 

Now I feel stupid for ordering a Alienware 18 with 4930XM....

 

I give up, did all the settings and clicked on the benchmark button intel extreme utility and went right to a blue screen of death.
my computer was running fine for awhile using only the overclock settings in the bios that dell has in there. I ran a benchmark and scored well, temps were fine , then i ran the benchmark in the intel program and the computer froze. mouse wouldn't move ect. had to hold down the power button to reset.

currenlty i only have the bios setting overclock and it works fine for awhile. ill hope it lasts long enough this time. using the intel extreme software causing my cpu temps alarm to keep going off as it would go from 100 degrees, to 70 degrees. it was all over the place then, BSOD. i even ran my "who crashed" program to view the BSOD and it tells you what happened for those of us who don't understand BSOD information. the program didn't detect the BSOD so i dont know what caused it.

im bummed , i spent 5k for this laptop and fortunately im able to run games ect awesome, i hate the fact i can't run it the way i want to. 100 degrees? im not perfect but im guessing thats too hot to run . stupid 4930MX!!! lmfao.

oh well, hopefully just running it stock (well not the stock promised) will be powerful enough to keep up with games ect in the future. So far even at default i run games with everty

 

^that really sucks, but keep in mind each chip is different, so what works for one may or may not work for another

Also, for the vast majority of games out there the CPU won't be the bottleneck (even Crysis 3 isn't bottlenecked that much). And trust me when I say you haven't experienced a CPU bottleneck until you've played Flight Simulator X, where you'll need a 10 GHz chip to run the thing at full blast, because it was coded to run on a single core only LOL

 

It sounds like you need to increase the flex in the bios to avoid those BSOD's. Problem is that will increase your heat. I'd seriously consider repasting your CPU using Liquid Ultra Metal and then go at it again.

 

I think a better way would be to decrease the multiplier. A lot of Haswell are inconsistent with the clock speed they can be pushed. He has heat problem already, and pushing it further will just means more heat. A repaste should be able to help, but he'll need to open it up. Some people are hesitant with opening up their new laptops.

 

If he's just OCing for gaming, I'd actually advise against using liquid metal paste unless he's comfortable with the risks and doesn't mind routine maintenance. IMO it's not worth it if you're just gaming and not chasing numbers, unless you have a solid reason to want to squeeze very last MHz out of your chip like me and FSX...

 

Yes dialing back the multipliers would be a good way to fix things. In fact I should have asked what they were set at.
Rhutor I disagree though. OCing that CPU isn't just for number chasing. Having a higher CPU OC affects minimum frame rates in busy scenes of games (think bf4), then a minority of games maximum frame rates like Crysis 3, FC3, Metro, Skyrim ENB etc
Anyway those Haswell's aren't total slouches but almost need Liquid Ultra to do a decent job and also transfer heat.

 

What I meant was that for the frames you'll gain by OCing another 200 MHz, the ROI (if it can be called that) is just too small for the risks that you're taking with iquid metal (and this is coming from someone who took the plunge anyway LOL).

It's just that from the posts here and some other threads, Mr. jtravapd does not seem too comfortable with finding his own best settings for his 4930MX, so I reasoned asking him to repaste with liquid metal probably wouldn't be the best idea. (not meant to be a slight to anybody)

 

Yeah, I can totally understand not wanting to tear down a brand new machine - especially if one is not comfortable doing so which I may have missed from Mr. jtravapd's other posts. If that's the case the only option for our friend is to lower the multipliers

 

Thanks for the replies guys. You are correct in saying i do not feel comfortable pulling apart the laptop and repasting. I have been building desktops and messing around with them for years now. for some reason the laptop im more hesitant to pull apart. I did however watch a tech take apart the entire laptop and replace the motherboard at my house when the alienware lights stopped working. There seemed to be 50 million screws to take off and then put back, not to mention the cpu itself was held down with some sort of alen key , not a regular screw driver. So I could repaste, yes, but it just doesn't seem to be worth the trouble. i would love my machine to have all cores running at 4ghz, but i will take 3.9ghz . right now its at 3.8, and idle temps are in the 50's, i wsa just playing "wargame air land battle" and i actually heard the fans turn on! i checked and my temps were in the mid 70's . I didn't check to see what the graphics cards were at.


ALso autodetect put the settings of that game (i know its not the most demanding) at ultra for everything except one setting, so that makes me pretty happy. I have ran every game you can think of on this machine and i have to say its handled it fine. Bf4, COD , even titan fall (had some really bad tearing) but still all ran fine at 1080P. I just want to make sure my machine is still running fast, im not looking to break records. just everyday use for gaming, movie decoding and recoding ect. I think i like the idea of setting all the multipliers at 39 each. I just don't know what to set all the other volts and such settings , damnit. And to think i went to school for computer engineering only for two years then left. lol. First two years was all advanced math and science ect. No computer stuff at all. lol.

 

What is strange is even in its crippled state , this cpu (4930mx) beats the cpu scores of my old desktop cpu (I7 990x @ 4.2-4.6ghz) in all of the vantage benchmarks. I just dont see how thats possible considering the 990X had 6 cores, was very easily overclocked in the bios (liquid cooled)and it crushed games and whatever i threw at it. My 4930 is running at around 3.9ghz (and probably throttling) yet still scores higher on benchmarks. And i have tried them all.

I know people bash haswell but anyone have any idea what this CPU (4930) has over the i7 990X? im curious to know.

Also in that machine i had two MSI GTX 580 lightening extreme editions in SLI for video cards (both with higher clocks then my cards now (two 780M's in sli). Only thing this laptop has is more ram running slower (32gigs @1600,mhz) then the desktop (12 gigs running at 1866mhz) and i didn't have a raid set up in my desktop.

its funny my girlfriend was saying to me to stop ing , the computer is fast as hell, stop messing with it. Although she is right, she just doesn'[t understand why we MUST mess with it lol. I mean i couldn't wait for it to get it in the mail only to immediately rip it apart, set up a raid 0 and delete everything on it. Everyone on this board understands the sickness, and if your like me and have watched unboxing videos on youtube, then you have the sickness. lol.

 

What 3Dmark score are we getting on a 4930MX and 780SLi?

 

Not very good. Look at the leaderboard in the benchmark thread and you will see my "world record" for it is 1200 points less than 3920XM and 780M SLI. The 18 is only a tiny bit (580 points) better than 680M SLI in the M18xR2. While it is a great gamer machine, the Alienware 18 is not a good system for overclocked benching fans. It does not do very well with that task, at all. It cannot have the GPUs overclocked anywhere near far enough for serious benching. That's why I made the comment the other day that while 880M SLI is going to be better than 780M SLI, there is no point in holding out for 880M SLI on the Alienware 18 simply because it won't provide any benefits to the folks with a system that can't really be overclocked much. It will be a fantastic upgrade to 780M SLI for the M18xR2 since it has the capacity for overclocking that far exceeds what the new 18 is capable of achieving.

Edit: Since a lot of people don't read anything posted earlier in so many threads and misinterpret what they are reading without context... for the point of clarity... it should be mentioned that the 4930MX overclocks nicely with A05. Now that the CPU problem is fixed, we still have an impediment with GPU overclocking to contend with. I just updated the thread title because the BIOS is no longer messed up as far as CPU performance goes... it now simply needs to be unlocked (hidden menus exposed) to be fully functional and fine-tuned.

 

Well, I got an offer for 3200 dollars for a brand new 4930MX and 780M SLi with 1 TB of SSD storing so I guess that's a good price. It might not perform as well as its true potential but it will work as a gaming computer when Im out traveling.

why not, I bought the Alienware 18..

 

Okay its time I push my 4800mq a little I want it to overclock stably while running on its stock cooling system. Its always worth a little more

 

Could someone please tell me the steps to overclocking it's cpu? (Since the i7 4930mx is tuned for overclocking)

And also, would overclocking it's cpu increase gaming performance by a significant amount?

Thank you!

 

The responses to your topic will probably point you to this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-18-m18x/734696-how-overclock-alienware-18-haswell-cpu.html

It is full of examples, pics and programs that you will need. Chief among all the comments or those of Mr. Fox, read them closely. I would suggest read thoroughly, and don't rush, rushing leads to BSODs (I know). The two programs you will be using will be XTU, and Throttlestop (Google them ). Read the below thread for link to Throttlestop guide, and UTX examples:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-encountering-whea_uncorrectable_error-2.html

 

The 4930MX is not tuned for overclocking, it's a blank a slate as possible so you can tune it.

 

Anyone have an idea why my new 4910mq wont surpass 3.75 on turbo when its suppose to hit 3.9hz?

I even installed Intel's XM Software to verify settings and ran a stress test and it didnt surpass 3.75.

Did I do something wrong during installation or is the A07 bios limiting its abilitiy?

 

It's because the wrong settings are being used. The default values in the BIOS do not support Haswell CPUs operating at even their default frequencies intended by Intel. You are going to need to use Intel XTU to implement settings that allow the CPU to function at the frequencies Intel intended them to.

We already have an established thread for this discussion. I will merge it for you. You'll find information already posted on how to proceed.

 

Thank you!

 

Thanks! Sorry for asking !!

Really appreciate the link & merge!

I honestly had no idea it was this bad!!

 

yeah you should absolutely be able to handle your heat dissipation in that kind of environment, I wish I could run my AC all year long!

 

Here's something fitting for this thread...

 

Another record on the road to world domination.....

 

Hello,

for some reason i remember having all those setting in XTU, but now i am missing pretty much everything .... look :

is there a setting in xtu or bios that i need to change to have all the option on my 4900mq ?

thank you

 

What version of XTU? Click the Intel logo in the upper left corner and a pop-up window will tell you the version.

 

its version 4.4.0.4

 

That is the correct version, so something is clearly wrong with the installation or something else. Are you running Secure Boot or Legacy mode? Have you enabled overclocking in the BIOS?

 

hey thank you for your help again!

so here is a pics of my bios. think its ok.

im using Windows 8.1 in legacy mode no secure boot bs ....

 

Yes, that looks OK. I'm puzzled about XTU being all grayed out like that. There is probably a simple explanation for it. Someone else with an M18xR1 and an XM CPU was experiencing the same problem here not too long ago.

Have you already tried uninstalling it, shutting down (not reboot) and then reinstall it from scratch? Download a new copy of XTU rather than reuse the same one.

 

yeah i uninstalled XTU went to bios saved it and booted into windows re-installed xtu. same thing. really weird.

i will try to uninstall XTU now , reboot to bios change setting to no overclock boot to windows ... reboot set oc option back and boot to windows and try installing xtu again.

update:i removed XTU i rebooted to bios loaded default, booted to windows reflashed A09, rebooted to bios changed back o/c (it remembered but 42,41,40,40 settings for some reason), booted to windows installed XTU rebooted , same problem... that is really weird.


also while flashing i can hear the fan going full speed (normal behavior) but when using HWinfo at maximum speed i can barely hear it! is that normal too or part of the problem?

 

I am almost thinking your Windows installation has something screwed up. What you are experiencing is not normal. It is not due to the new BIOS or XTU because this has not happened to everyone else.

My next steps would be to format and do a clean installation of Windows because it appears something is messed up.

 

Out of curiosity... Does the 18 have the cooling to support 4.3GHz out of the box or is the thermal limit keeping the overclock significantly lower without Liquid Metal? Trying to gauge how much better the cooling in the 18 is for the CPU. I've got my 4940MX to 3.9GHz with max core at 87C, 1.112v running a single 1024M 8 thread (score 245.114) with what is likely way too much IC Diamond that is going to be fun cleaning up and the fans on max. 3.9GHz seems to be my compromise right now.

Plugging in those settings for 4.3GHz pushed the CPU into throttle territory about halfway through an XTU benchmark.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

alright i will fetch an extra ssd i have and do a clean test install. and see. as soon as i have some free time. will post back result.


thank you

 

Overclock with a program called XTU. Set all four multipliers to 40 if possible on 4800. Set cpu Vcore to around 1.15v and increase processor current to around 110 Amps as well as the other current setting to 110 Amps. Current settings can be set a bit higher if you like they aren't critical but as far as Vcore goes you shouldn't need any more than that. Stock Vcore from memory is actually 1.2V which is higher than it needs to be. Test for stability with XTU stability test or AIDA 64.....I would not recommend using something like prime 95 on Haswell.

 

There is a sticky post about 7 posts above your post on this very topic. In it you will find a wealth of information on your topic given by Mr. FOX and a whole host of others. You'll also find the tools that you will need and a bunch of examples.

 

dito, if your look here : http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-18-m18x/734696-how-overclock-alienware-18-haswell-cpu-actually-have-run-full-stock-turbo-speed.html

all the info is there Mr.Fox os the god all knowing of alienware

 

Set maximum power to around 160 watts.....that's plenty. Also set uncore anywhere between 35 and 40 for an 4 Ghz overclock set uncore volts to same as Vcore 1.15v. I can't post screenshots from my mobile at the moment...if you can put up a screenshot I will guide you through it.

 

Just FYI the 4800MQ can only do 3.9GHz max on all 4 cores. It's the 48 10MQ that will do 4GHz.

 

I'm at work atm will do when I get home

Ok try these XTU settings,note you may need to increase Vcore depending on how good your CPU is Silicon lottery (Do not exceed 1.225Vcore as you WILL run into heat problems!)

 

Bios setting will be different as my CPU isn't the same as yours,not really relevant as XTU over rides what you have done in the BIOS anyway :thumbsup: