Let's share upcoming upgrade plans for the M15x beast :)

yup yup: http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/...=de&hloc=pl&hloc=uk&hloc=eu&plz=&dist=&sort=p

listed are all currently available single modules and dual module kits with 16 gb sticks. mushkin offers 1866 mhz flavour both in single and dual kit, latter one priced at 320 € *lol*

 

thanks, gonna bookmark that

 

Weirdest thing happened to me, i had a semi-faulty ram in the second slot, and while the M15x did boot to os with it, it caused the 740QM CPU (hardware level) to report itself as a 3 core cpu. It also disabled hyper threading. The 4-th core was sometimes enabled, sometimes not, but HT was always off. I've removed the shady ram and now poof HT on and always recognizing all 4 cores ...

Interesting how a ram stick can fck up a cpu lol

 

So I have a 720QM here now, if I install that, 12GB should be recognized.???

 

Yes

 

So I installed the 720QM, and now my scroll and caps are flashing

 

Hmm, that would be the code for GPU error have no idea how that could come from CPU upgrade, try reseating the GPU.

 

Could that be because of the ribbon cable I had to unplug to get access to the cpu?

 

So I put the i3 back in, and still no post, and now the machine is power cycling, is there anything I am missing in this cpu upgrade??

 

Reseat RAM, GPU, CPU and anything else you can see without taking top part of the chassis off. Be sure to power drain before and after doing anything inside this laptop.

 

So, I got the machine to post, but not with the 720QM, with the i3-330M. I am running BIOS A05. Anything else I can do, or do I have a dead chip?

 

You dont need to unplug any ribbon cable to get access and or change cpu. Something already wrong there!

It is good you are asking questions but it is important to take extra care and do some research before plunging in for the first time.

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This. Also, as suggested already, you should upgrade your BIOS to A09 before proceeding with any upgrades.

 

There are M15x disasembly videos. 3 videos; parts 1 to 3. I recommend you and any novice to watch them all through before attempting any hardware change.

M15x is the most user friendly laptop ever built however there are small fiddly parts that can easily be broken (eg tiny ribbon cables) if care is not taken or ignorance is present.

As Kosti says update your bios to A09 and research thoroughly how to do this too

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Most user friendly except where the slot ODD is concerned. That is a pain to get to quickly....

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Yes I realized this. The ribbon cable in question was the one under the power button connecting it to the motherboard. I also put A09 on a USB stick but the BIOS never recognized the drive. Do I have to format it in a special way?

 

The ribbon cable fir the power button is one I remove as well. Gotta put that cover off to get to the vent screw.

Sent from my overpriced Galaxy S6 Edge +

 

You don't need to remove that ribbon cable, just gently move the power panel out of the way to get to the vent screws with the cable still in place, then put the panel back in place and close the lid.

Do this for flashing the BIOS:

1- Download the A09 package from Dell. You need the R293649.exe file, not the ISO file.
2- Download Rufus : https://rufus.akeo.ie/
3- Run Rufus and format your flash drive. Make sure "Create a bootable disk using FreeDOS" is checked, and make sure there's no data on the flash drive because it will be wiped.
4- After Rufus is done, extract the Dell Bios package directly to the USB flash drive. There will be a folder called M15R1A09 on the flash drive.
5- Reboot your M15X. Press F12 at the BIOS splash screen. Choose your USB drive from the boot menu.
6- At the DOS prompt, type cd M15R1A09 and press Enter.
7- Type the letter F and press Enter. The flashing process should start.

If your USB flash drive is not recognized by the BIOS, try plugging in to another USB port.

 

I have never had to touch the power button side of the laptop to remove the vent covers. What gives?

A pic would be great? I have opened and changed things MANY times so this perplexes me!

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Seems like there's some confusion here

Each vent is held with three screws, two of which are located underneath the power panel. To get to these screws, the power panel must be detached from the magnesium cover, however it is not entirely necessary to unplug the power panel's ribbon cable. You just need to maneuver the power panel in order to give yourself some room to get to these screws. Once these two screws are removed, the third screw on the underside of the chassis needs to be removed, releasing the vents.

KOI, it could be that the top side screws on your vents were removed at some point and never put back, therefore each vent is only held with one screw on the underside of the chassis.

Around 4:50 in the following vid shows these screws:

 

Yeah you could be right. Pointless screws they must be

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lol

So this is where you shop aye

 

920XM running on the 80s during windows update, think it's caused by a bad contact by having too thick thermal pad on the 3 grey coils.




@King of Interns @kosti what do you guys think?

3.6GHz on 27x133

 

I think the stock green pads were .75mm but you're gonna have a hard time finding that size. Currently I'm using 1mm Arctic Cooling pads and contact between cpu die and heatsink is perfect. Get some good quality 1mm pads that compress well. Try to avoid those generic Chinese pads as I find they don't compress well, nor do they stick well to surfaces. Also try using Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal paste or CLU which really works wonders on the 920xm especially when overclocked.

3.6GHz is an extreme overclock though . I think you're gonna have overheating issues no matter what with that level of overclock. I'm at 3.2GHz and with the liquid paste it tops at in the low to mid 90s after 10 minutes of P95 stress testing (without extra cooling). Without the liquid metal paste, the system shuts down in under a minute.

I did some tests with the modded tray and cooler using Conductonaut. Not sure if you saw it or not but here's the link:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/another-coolermaster-u3-bottom-tray-mod.789298/page-5

PS: I thought you were selling your M15X, or do you have more than one?

 

My 920xm isnt running well with clu. I think bad contact. Gpu has excellent contact though.

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That's weird

During tstop run without external cooling the cpu can reach 99c, I know it wouldn't reach these kind of temps in game but still...

 

No heatsink is exactly the same I guess

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Ordered a 8260 2x2 wifi card for 9usd (wow!), going to see if it works with M15x.

 

Interesting. What does this model feature?

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afaik its basically an optimized 7265 same specs and max. bandwidth, just more power efficient and (i think) a tad improved range

 

Not much, compared to 7260HMWG the only difference is BT4.2.
Newer chipset, less power, better driver is ony my guess.

The kicker is that I bought it on ebay for 9usd! Compared to my 7260HMWG which is 25usd!





https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/wireless-product-selection-guide.html

 

sounds like u got a pretty sweet deal keep us updated on how it performs

 

The 8260 won't physically fit in the M15x, it uses a different connection, and the antennae connectors are much smaller too... Unless there is a 8260 mpci-e version that i don't know about...

AFAIK the only AC adapters that fit into our machines are Dell Wireless 1550 AC and Intel 7260 AC... correct me if im wrong

 

ah yes ure totally right... i forgot about the 8260 being m.2 exclusive...whereas the 7265 and 7260 came in both m.2 and mini pcie flavors. maybe a m.2 to mpcie adapter could help out in this case?

Sent from my Huawei Mate 8 NXT-AL10

 

Nope, the 7265 is also M.2 from what i've read... and even if we used the adaptor, the antennae connections wont fit on that card.

 

Connections are now MHF4 (new standard) and not U.FL (old standard), though there are adapters on ebay

 

Ah well, at least I have a wireless card I'm going to put in the P870DM when pascal comes out :]

 

I'm currently using the 7260-N model (not the AC model) with integrated BT. I had some issues finding the right BT drivers, but the card works great. My router is limited to 300Mbps so I won't benefit from the AC model anyway, and the integrated BT frees up the 2nd mini pci-e slot which I now use with a USB adapter to connect my Logitech G700's receiver. Works great and frees up an external USB port. The card cost me under $10 from China.

 

i guess thats the most up to date wifi adapter thats pnp compatible with the m15x.

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The very best mPCIe WiFi is AzureWave AW-CB160H - mPCIe (!!!), AC, BT 4.0, 3x3. What's not to like The only downside is that it uses MHF4 connectors, but that's easily fixable. And for those of you that miss the Killer prioritizing software, there's cFosSpeed.

 

Would it be possibile to just completely replacing the connectors with U.FL ones?.. unsolder the old MHF4 connectors and solder U.FL ones on

 

That's what I'm planing to do once I remove the whitelist on my machine, the adapters are for everyone who can't be bothered to deal with soldering.

 

What do you mean whitelisting? The M15x accepts almost every wifi card you can buy out there.

 

I don't have M15x

 

It shouldn't be that hard. I replaced a UFL cable already on my M15X for the BT antenna.

 

How is the reliability of the AW-CB160H card? If it's as stable as 7260 i'm gonna get that one for my M18x R2 ... then i just need to get someone that can change the connectors for me ...

 

These adapters will allow you to keep the existing antennas.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/U-FL-female...089959?hash=item2a545e4267:g:DNYAAOSwPcVVr6Sg

Some double sided tape should hold these to the magnesium cover securely. Otherwise you can desolder the stock wires and get some MHF4 wires and solder them on to the existing antenna PCB. I wouldn't try to replace the MHF4 connectors on the card itself. The new solder they are using is usually lead-free and is a pain to work with.

 

I have the AMD 8970M. This past weekend I set it up for my son's wife to play MechWarrior Online. She was doing OK, but the default is to run in a window. During the process of trying to change this the game crashed every time. A google search told me to uninstall Vulcan, Rapt and Play.TV. I did this and all is well.

 

Well if you change the wires, then when you want / if you need to go back to 7260 or some other card it's a problem.

 

That's why it's better to use the adapters You can also get ready made antennas with MHF4 connectors and attach them to the screen lid (they usually come with double-sided tape). Since the new card has built in BT, you can just remove all the stock antennas entirely.