My last 880M died. I'm too attached to my M18xR2

Hi there,

My last 880M died. It was a sad moment because for a brief moment realised that this is the end of the line for my beloved machine. It just didn't make any sense on any level to fix it... yet I want to because I've had this machine for so long.

So. I'm going to upgrade it to the best possible single card since SLI is dead.

Which card should I upgrade to? Which bios and which vbios do you recommend?

Thanks for helping out my old timer. I want it to survive till it takes its last breath.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m18x-r2-cpu-gpu-upgrade.832790/

 

Yeah I've seen that post, it's very nice that he got it working. But he only states "No need to mod the heatsink for the 1060 or 1070 if you choose the right one.".How does it differ? He says you don't have to mod the heatsink and others on this forum stated in the past it was needed, including Eurocom. If he could clarify I'd love that.

Also since I've been away I don't know which vbios to run on that card.

So really the question becomes, how to recognize the correct card and which vbios to use?

 

Definitely no need to mod anything if you get a standard MXM 3.0b GTX 1070. If you're going to upgrade then I'd spring for the 1070 rather than the 1060. If you get an MSI GTX 1070 then you'll have to do some modding as there is an extra piece on the side of the PCB as per below;

 

Just upgrade and soldier on lol, there is no reason to dump a M18x unless the board dies plus they still perform well and are just better all round machines compared to the saltine crackers that pass for modern laptops.

 

Ok thanks for the clarification. I would like to go for the 1070 but I'm worried about the TDP. The 1070 has a TDP of 115 to 120 based on Wikpedia, techpowerup and notebookcheck.

The 880M had a TDP of 105 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_800M_series) and that would only barely cool well enough on 100% utilization.

 

I agree the modern laptops suck. I've done 4 major GPU/CPU upgrades on this machine alone. Those could've been 4 dead laptops on the BGA soldered BS.

It's not really worth it to upgrade from an economical standpoint. If you go for a desktop at least. But you're right it's a beast of a machine and I'll keep using it after the upgrade.

 

I believe the MSI 1070 has a TDP of 150 Watts, and it's the best performing 1070 for the upgradable Alienware laptops from before 2014. You will need an upgraded heatsink for this.

As for the 120 Watt version which is in standard MXM format, I believe your current heatsink is fine because your laptop should've come with a 120 Watt heatsink, although correct me if I'm wrong about that. Just make sure to use high quality thermal paste such as Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut or Phobya Nanogrease Extreme.

 

That's very interesting information. I didn't know the MSI version had such a high TDP. I think the R2 comes with either a 75W or 100W TDP heatsink. Mine is 100TDP officially.