M18x R1/R2 - Creative Use for the Empty Mini-PCI Slot (WIHD socket on systems without WIHD)

All interesting stuff. I'd be satisfied with nothing but an mSATA bracket to attach to the end of my cable, LOL. It's amazing that Dell cannot identify a part number and no service part seems to be available. Beyond that, I am not sure I am looking to add much more to my system in the way of power-sapping devices. Adding two more drives might mean less benching due to increased power distribution, and I'm not willing to sacrifice the benching fun at this point.

 

at idle, non OS drives should be fine. im looking foward to WD's new SSHD black and seagate's new SSHD but have a feeling WD will destroy seagate in the 2.5" HDD realm.

I am also desperate about the msata. I convinced myself once I got the R2 from Aiki I'd be satisfied with it without msata.. was totally wrong LOL. I already managed to put in a long 3 inch wireless dongle into my machine without having to cut the chassis, now wireless headset works with R2 and dont have to worry about no audio lol. with msata I will be 90% complete =D

 

I not convinced that that it will be fine. It would be fine running stock, but with CPU and GPUs heavily overclocked, I already have to turn off AlienFX, dim the display all the way down, disconnect USB devices, etc. to avoid running out of power with only 330W available. So, adding more power draw at this point is not an attractive option. I want the mSATA as an option that would allow me to put the BD burner back inside of the chassis without losing drive count. I could use the mSATA to boot W8 and put the 1TB HDD in place of the 128GB M4 I am using for W8 right now.

 

so maybe theres difference between 680m and 6990m and 3940xm and 2960xm. power draw of these prob differs quite a bit when overclocked. I overclock CPU but rarely GPU, by 100mhz at most though, however I have all my backlit on with usb devices plugged in. besides the sata port and usb port can only provide so much power since its designed that way it will never pull more power so in the worst case SSD/HDD will just have poorer performance.

do you get bluescreen if you dont turn off the backlit keyboard?

 

No BSOD. If you draw more power than the AC adapter can provide, the end result is generally like unplugging an appliance from a wall outlet. It turns off abruptly and trips the circuit breaker inside of the AC adapter. If the power draw is "adaptive" (meaning that it fluctuates based on load) you will see anomalies like the display getting dim and bright and a drop in performance before it turns off. This in controllable, and I am able to work around it. And, it only needs to be worked around for heavily overclocked operations. What my concern is has to do with adding more devices and having to distribute the finite power resources among more devices. This should not be a problem for anyone that is running stock or only mild to moderate overclocking with stock GPU voltage.

 

ah that sucks, AW needs at least a 350W powerbrick now.. im wondering if we could get clevo's 2x powerbrick + converter to work with AW. from my experience most of the brick where it connects to a laptop is generalized but not entirely sure, could be only for all dell machines as I own 3.

I tried plugging in my 15 inch brick into my AW it boots but tells me I might need more power lol, i havent tried HP/Asus brick into AW though.

 

The AC adapter has a chip that the motherboard needs to recognize for it to work. There are mods posted on the web for the M17x R2, but nothing tested for the M18x yet.

 

i dont think mini pcie in R1/R2 is bootable but will try when my 7 pin sata to mini pcie gets here, and 7p sata cable.

@mr Fox, would lower VID helps with power? i mean do we really need 80+ VID to overclock stable at 4.7/4.8ghz? that way you dont have to turn off AlienFX or give you more room to overclock. or maybe lower tiny bit of voltage on ram cause those are power hunger, but return poorer results.

 

mr fox, they ship out your bracket yetÉ

 

Yes, they sure did. I would not be surprised if it is delivered on Monday. The mSATA SSD is also due for delivery on Monday.

Here is what I posted in the other thread...

 

Sorry I do not have a pic but if you look at the the M18x R2 just above the hard drive caddy to the left of the wireless card, there is a card slot. What is that for?

 

This one? With the red thing in it? To the left of the WiFi slot is a fan. This would be more below and to the right.

 

Yes that. What is that slot for and what you got in it?

Sorry I was looking from the other side of the laptop.

 

That picture is of a project Mr. Fox was doing with the port. It is a Mini-PCI slot.

Creative Use For Mini-PCI Slot

 

aw thanks. would have been nice to be usb 3.0 instead. Anyone know of a converter to msata 3? as i heard the msata is only msata 2.

 

No point since the slot wont offer enough speed.

 

True, it wouldn't do any difference.

 

With all of the external ports available (USB and eSATA) having a high speed USB 3.0 internal port would have limited value, especially since that slot does not appear to support bootable devices. Using that internal USB 2.0 card to permanently install a hidden HID micro dongle or have a small flash drive to store drivers or other files that are rarely needed is a nice use of an otherwise wasted space on the motherboard. It does not need to be USB 3.0 to serve that purpose extremely well... USB 2.0 is more than adequate for that.

 

how much current does this thing draw?
mini pcie got .375mA and 3.3v so it isn't a whole lot.
also looking for something that small, but around 2-4gb, with write protective switch

 

how so? it's mini pcie 1.0 with 250mb/s right? thats faster than the USB 3.0 standard on alienware machine already.

 

The area in the chassis is so limited that we have identified no device small enough to fit would benefit if it is full speed PCI-e. Not sure whether the slot is connected to PCI-e bus or USB on the motherboard.

I don't know how much current the Cruzer Fit 16GB draws. I haven't bothered to check. I recently got a G700 mouse and put the dongle in there instead of the Cruzer fit.

 

Just got mini pci-e USB adapter: Mini PCI-e to USB 2.0 Adapter - Connect USB2.0 Device to Mini PCI Express socket | eBay. tried using it for my Microsoft 4000 wireless mouse transceiver but there was too much lag. It works fine in any other USB port.

 

My Logitech mouse has severe lag using the internal USB port as well. Not sure why that is happening. It might be a power issue (meaning the USB port doesn't put out enough juice). Johnksss has the same issue with his Logitech mouse. I put the USB flash memory back inside because of that. It works fine with the internal port.

 

It could be because it is close to the wifi card.

 

It could be... I thought of that... clashing radio signals, perhaps. Even though they are not the same band, they are just inches apart.

 

I put the circuit board of my wireless 360 controller receiver hard wired to usb port. Waiting on a controller to test it

Sent from my GT-N7105T using Tapatalk 2

 

Let me know how it goes! I literally just thought about doing this the other day.

 

And, please post photos. I don't own a 360 wireless controller because the receiver is so idiotically large, and it's on a wire, so there is really no point in having one with a laptop... might as well use a wired controller. If that works, I would get a wireless controller.

 

Well I was able to get my Logitech G930 Wireless receiver to fit inside there (By going under the plastic plate) Had to tear apart the receiver but got it to fit! I also have a wireless Xbox 360 Controller that I didn't think about even trying to fit the receiver in there... anyways here's a picture of it !

 

I had my 360 receiver mounted inside(just the circuit board) but and soldered wires directly to the usb points. the 360 circuit board even cut down a little is too big and can only be mounted above the ram.
I took it out now as i got my WiiU Pro controller to work with the Toshiba Bluetooth stack (modded devID). I ordered this now
so can adapt it to something else thinking head tracker for use with my Sont HMZ-T2 VR HMDS (these are so worth getting or the oculus Rift

 

I'm experiencing an issue with the second miniPCIe slot; no USB devices are being recognized. I tried using it with both the stock and modded (unlocked) A05 bios, but no dice. The device I am trying to use is a miniPCIe Telit HE910 ( link) 3G module. I know it works because another PC detects it flawlessly in its card slot. Any advice? I would assume that the slot does follow the miniPCIe standard and has its USB D- and D+ lines on pins 36 and 38, respectively.

Thanks

 

Not sure if m18x has slot for a SIM card, if the SIM card slot is not present then it will give issues unless you get a flex adapter that blocks few pins of the card and let's you use SIM card.

Edit: This is what you need to get the wwan card working if laptop has no SIM card slot.

Solderless Usim Sim Socket Holder for Minipcie WWAN Modem Card 3G WCDMA | eBay

 

I already ordered one of those adapters, but my problem is that the card (which works over USB) is not recognized at all; this part should be independent from the SIM card (since the miniPCIe connector only provides optional pins to connect a SIM from a slot on the mainboard).

 

Maybe try covering the pins with electrical tape and see if that solves the issue.

Are you using this card in a mpcie-to-USB adapter to use externally and now using same card internally? Can also be the issue of 5v on external USB vs 3.3v on internal mpcie.

 

Although I don't see why this would help, I can try (but presumably the SIM contacts of the connector are just left unconnected on the mainboard).

No, I previously tried using the card in another computer with a standard internal miniPCIe slot with 3.3 V logic levels, where it was recognized without any problems.

 

The only other thing I can think of dell whitelisting cards ?

 

Unless it requires some slightly funky electronics board side.

 

So, theres no way to get this slot to hold any type of device to be recognized before post ?

Would have made a nice drive to use for flashing BIOS's without the hassle of ever losing it or such....

And to MR.FOX didn't you mod your PSU for the m18 you have , so that its 2 x 330watts going straight to a rectifier/ in parallel to effectively make like 660+ ?

I ask, because you mentioned in some posts, you wouldn't use this slot for anything because your already personally low on power...

Also, in some other post you mentioned something about there being some chip inside the AC adapter that needs to communicate with the MB to be recognized, was this referring to the 18' alienware laptops ? Does it apply ? Or am I thinking something else in context ?

I've been waiting for my replacement to the m18x-r2 I bought, and when the replacement finally gets here, I'll only have 30 days of warranty because it took over a year to fix issues/offer replacement..


Things kept cancelling... so sad..

Always the excuse that parts are short... and then they'd remake the order.

 

What we need is a full alienware 18 teardown, repaste, unlocked bios and full on description of benchmarking, because it seems that the cpu and gpu's throttle for some people, so monitoring every detail seems to be needed in properly assessing if this machine is worth the money.. we need a review with that information in it..

if I damn well have to, I might do it, but, man - I'm new here, I'd almost expect there was this stuff already..

 

Knock yourself out dude. We don't mind a new guy lending a hand. That would be awesome.

Good luck with the unlocked BIOS for the new 18. If you have found a way to defeat Secure Flash so we can flash whatever firmware we feel like flashing, we will be all over that.

There's no reason to repaste my Alienware 18. The CPU and GPU throttling is caused by poorly designed firmware and wrong settings, not temps. The temps are high only because the fans don't turn on until the machine has already started overheating because of the fans not running as early as they should.

 

svl7 says he's waiting on some feedback form a few testers, but otherwise has unlocked BIOS's for the AW 18, but on chip. Probably a 4-8mb EEPROM, I asked for one... but simultaneously he suggested I might want to wait, and implied he may have a work around.

Without being able to control some settings for the fans and the current/power on the cpu, I don't think a review is valuable at this time. To the casual end user, who wants a review, theres like 50 sites that all do reviews that' are cut and paste the same as any static review you've seen, showing a limited list of competitors, and few benchmarks and highlights designs and a few pro's/cons. These guys who do these reviews all work for their advertising , and they also get a lot of money from big companies like DELL, you know they do, its obvious, because DELL even sends them the flagship to play with free of charge.

And those reviews are screwed up, and never really accurate, more like ballpark reviews viewing a system from some random standpoint.

The funny part is, in all those reviews lately, everyone is placing the m18x-r2 above the AW 18, in many aspects, like anything cpu related, minimum FPS in games... and roughly on par without noticeable difference in other aspects.

The problem is, they don't even address the reason WHY the AW 18 is not kicking its predecessors butt. Firmwae/BIOS/Drivers, Optimise Settings, not having enough power/WATTS...

 

That is because they are incompetent and don't know how to do an accurate and comprehensive review, or determine why the 18 isn't doing its best. I'm sure in their ignorance they don't even recognize that things are not working right. With respect to performance, they are pushing the power button and reporting what happens when they do "A" or when they run "B" game/benchmark. That probably represents the extent of most reviewer technical skills.

That said, the 18 isn't going to necessarily kick the teeth out of an M18xR2. In fact, the opposite is actually true with a stock Alienware 18. Haswell doesn't offer a big performance increase and 780M SLI is not remarkably better than 680M SLI except under certain conditions. Using the stock 780M vBIOS, they're not going to see much of a benefit to 780M SLI and you know they aren't going to flash a modded vBIOS for their review.

If you want to have things fixed like the fans not working and the CPU not having the power it needs, or anything else, to some extent you're wasting energy complaining about it here. Anyone that is experiencing that should jump over to the Alienware Club at Dell Community Forums and post about it. Otherwise, it might not be recognized and acted upon in a timely manner. They need more useful feedback from people that actually own the product. It is important to let them know in that kind of venue. A phone call to complain and nothing more isn't that helpful either. The more people that post about it in the Alienware Club at Dell Community Forum, the greater the likelihood that a need for action will be recognized and acted upon.

You can also tweet @DellCares and let them know about the difficulties in addition to posting in the Alienware Club forum.

 

Very good valid points. I also looked at a tear down of AW 18 and see no real reason why they needed to remove the comfortable curved cut at the front of the laptop, which adds comfort to your palms resting on the mouse/keyboard like in the previous models..

that's a silly change. I try and envision the new model with it... and it would still look great.

 

One thing that tends to mask problems like the fans not working correctly and the BIOS crippling the CPU is the unfortunate fact that too many average users are exactly like those reviewers. They are fascinated by the awesome look and feel. It play games and does other things so much better and faster than what they are used to experiencing from a grossly inferior machine that they don't recognize their system is seriously under-performing. When the CPU isn't capable of reaching it's stock turbo speed and holding it under load, the fans don't need to work well because it doesn't generate enough heat to matter. That's why it is very important that everyone that does recognize the issues (the real performance enthusiasts) take time to make sure the issues get bubbled up to the attention of the folks that need to fix it. I have no doubt that the engineers that designed these beasts don't want them to malfunction. They generally take pride in their work and want it to be right. Sometimes when working with a third-party vendor (Compal in this case) to deliver a new product it needs to have some kinks worked to before it becomes what the engineers intended and envisioned it to be.

Once it gets the attention of the right people, the fix is generally forthcoming in short order, and it's generally a simply firmware (BIOS/EC) update that puts the issue to rest.

 

I should point out then, the one serious thing I notice, from stock AW laptops, having gone through over 12 in the last 2 years... 75% of them have mismatched RAM, and the bios's try and set the timings to something common between them, rather then setting them all to JEDEC standards, like hyndai and Samsung RAM in the same machine for instance.. I've seen this lower the bandwidths to 8-12,000mb/s i.e in benchmarks, we're taking serious numbers loss... but in actual performance, not so much... as timings maybe slow and power settings too low.. but the physical amount of ram for the pool is still available and functional, so its not noticed as much.

This is a HUGE pet peave of mine. Especially since I know what I'm doing when it comes to RAM.

sorry for being off topic.- my bad.

I actually recycled a WiHD form a m17 I ordered to use in the m18x-r2.. I got it to work, even though DELL says it shouldn't with their drivers... its also not as back as people say it is, with hands or people walking infront of the signal disrupting it, nor is it strictly 10ft only.... but I'd say 15-20ft.. enough to go from desk to TV or couch to TV... etc... half way across most rooms.

however, the DMC slot in the new AW 18's I think is.. totally useless...

I wonder though, which haswell CPU's support WiDi...(again off topic)

and what else can a DMC slot be used for, in terms of latest gear.. maybe just a small usb stick for custom BIOS implementations?

Has anyone tried to make a keylogger usb stick for it ? Or a snifter yo secretly stash in there.. hehe, always nice to know everyones passwords who use your machine... imagine it gets stolen for a prank....

 

I have heard that and know it happens sometimes, but (knock on wood) I have never experienced it myself. I have had two M17xR2 and two M18xR1 and all modules on those 4 machines where identical. The modules in the AW 17 and 18 were also properly matched. Faster RAM used to be a good value in performance upgrades back in the day, but not so much any more. The difference between DDR3-1600, 1866 and 2133 is almost indiscernible. It makes a small measurable difference in certain tests/benchmarks, but not something I can sense or feel in normal use scenarios or gaming. I consider it borderline on being a waste of money when I purchased HyperX PnP 1866 (which I have since flashed to 2133).

 

I wonder how high we can run the ram at in the newer systems, without being able to increase the voltage...stuck at 1.35v

(Man that's a bad implementation from AW this time around)

Its all really silly. Since LoVo RAM is identical to regular RAM, just maybe its newer , faster, later generation IC.. electrostatically and programming wise its the very same (though maybe some modules have the voltage needs set to 1.35,,whoopydoo)

Its still the very same architecture... but its as if they want people to think its some new technology or something... which it is not.... its just lower voltage on the RAM... we have this option already..... its something that's always existed....

they were going to go to ddr4 and have lower voltage/power consumption, but , yeah things have been rough in terms of innovation RAM/IC wise for the last 4-5 years. I was running DDR3 1600 RAM 4 years ago.... at 1.35v

pretty stupid...IMO.. very lame implementation, very limiting...

 

It's not alienware, it's intel that locked 1.35V.

Max clocks will be IC dependant.

 

you mean the HM87 chipset is what limited the voltage >?

if so, sounds like they're making the first steps to forcing ARM/soldered on cpu's onto motherboards with their chipsets...

 

We already know that things are headed down the sewer pipe toward soldered CPUs. MANY new mainstream systems already have that idiotic trash in place. If I am not mistaken all Intel "U" series processors are soldered filth. This really makes me mad, but that's one way of ensuring consumers CANNOT save money on upgrades, structuring obsolescence and boosting new computer sales. Replacement parts become too expensive and less attractive. Put the consumer in a box... just like a PC.

"Wan't something better, stronger, faster? Sure, we're glad to sell you a new computer. Here's what we offer. Take it or leave it."