M15x & 6970M / 6990M - What you need to know - upgrading, problems, solutions

Heatpipe mod? Although that'd negate any chance of returning the card to Dell.

Or maybe they won't notice?

 

done heatpipe mod (returning isnt possible anyway). again all seem to work except my screen stays black.

 

Did you clean the contacts?

 

Yes i did alcohol cleaner.

 

have you try running it with an external monitor? vga or dp

 

Nope i dint try a external monitor, but my screen works as my 5730m is installed again (like now).

edit:
i doesnt matter anyways i cant see BOOT on a monitor Right?

Like i say everthing seem to work accept the screen stays black from system start up untill windows is loaded.

 

I see boot on my external

 

to be honest i never did start my alien connected to other screens but even if it does still dont fix the problem....

 

Are there any updates to crashing?

Would using a 240W PSU help..?

 

If you have a external monitor i recommend that you should try it out. This happen to me before with my M15x but with a gtx 460m. After i install and turn it on, i could heard the window sound but the screen was black. So i hook it to a external monitor and that when i could see the picture. To make sure nothing was wrong with my system i install my old card back and everything was normal. I still dont know what was the reason that cause it only to work with the external monitor.

 

What is a normal temps. for M15x with 6990 and 6970 (stock/oc)?

 

Hi fellas! one of my buds installed 6990m from Sager on his m15x and everything went fine. His temps doesn't go higher than 85c and the 3dmark vantage and 11 scores are just right: 12k and 3.4k, but 3dmark 06 only goes to 11k, which is abnormal. He's got 720qm cpu which could be a bottleneck and 150w stock psu. He also claims, that battlefield 3 runs only on middle settings with 30fps max. Latest stock bios used. Does anyone know what the problem might be? I'll appreciate any help)

 

well i tryed a other screen .....sniff.......i think its clear now 6970m is dead i think.

 

Stealth mode?

Did you try to reflash the VBIOS, maybe a different version?

Because the 5870m has similar issues when used with the wrong VBIOS.

 

svl7, would using a 240W PSU help in countering shutdowns? Other than that I dont know what to think anymore besides upgrading to 920/940

 

No, the PSU won't help and the CPU won't help either, all you can do is making sure that the contact of the heatsink is as good as possible and that the system runs as cool as possible.

I used it with the 720QM for quite a while for testing, no issues at all. And I used the 920xm and 6970m combo with the 150W PSU for about half a year, no issues, not even when overclocked.

 

Hm I guess I'll try repasting/padding again, seems like there's nothing else to try. What are all the possible places for padding, or is it only useful on the GPU?

 

Don't worry to much about pads, make sure that the heatsink fits properly. Which backplate are you using?

 

I have the GTX 260m backplate for my card. I was following your guide and it was slightly difficult to get on, but it seemed to fit nicely in the end.

 

Since performance is normal in Vantage and 3dMark11, the system appears to be fine. I would reinstall 3dMark06. In my experience, installing Vantage and Mark11 and the later versions of Futuremark Systeminfo sometimes screwed up '06. A fresh install would usually fix it. My old M15x (920xm/6970M) would do about 17K in 06 at stock clocks. The 720qm might slow him down a little, but with the 6990M, I would expect at least 16K using stock settings.

 

Is the 620m a lot weaker than 720qm?

On a side note: whenever I try to open up Catalyst control center, it says "could not load file or assembly 'CLI.Implementations or one if its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified." How can I fix this?

 

How can the GPU be dead when you have the screen pictures?! Something could be wrong (touching the contacts) or maybe you should try a different vbios like someone suggested. It is very strange on what happens with your GPU specially when it was good as new (maybe used for maxim 2 months). Most of the games I played were maxed out and temperature never went above 75-76 C.

Did you do any modification to the GPU (if not, I can get it replaced for you)? Did you try it in a different system?

 

Thanks for the replies, guys. Also, is the PA-9E 240w psu the right psu for m15x? Do i need tochange any settings in bios to make it work with tye laptop? And what is the performance in BF3 in your m15x and 6990M, since my buddy for some reason can't crank it higher than medium and 30fps max...

 

@Red_Line, that shouldn't be right. I can get an average of 40-50 fps with a 6970m on mostly high, turned off AA and I believe SSAO and 1x filtering. Is stealth mode on? Powerplay in CCC engaged? You shouldn't have to mess with BIOS at all.

 

I dint do anything just made sure it got safe in my system, Used the ground thingy on my whrist, maybe something went wrong during shipping i dont know.
Its the original Vbios never changed that, i had this from the start so dont know what happend really.

for now i stop trying and take some relax time first.

BTW Juliant thanks for all youre help so far youre a good guy nodoubt about that

 

Yeah thats the right psu, last i checked there was one at the marketplace for sale. When you use the bigger psu the m15x will detect that its not the proper psu and give you the option to switch it a the default psu. I play bf3 on high with only shadows on med and aa lower a bit i get 30 to 45 frames.

 

Does anyone have the answer to this? Also I was looking at inap's pasting guide and he doesn't seem to spread the paste evenly, rather he just pushes it down. Does that method work better, or?

 

^^ well the 620m(2core, 4 threads) is not a quad core as opposed to the 720qm which is (4core, 8threads). the bus speed of the 620m is faster then the 720qm 2.66vs1.6ghz(turbo @3.33vs2.8ghz) if your big in multitasking then you would benefit more from a quad. the 620m only has 4mb cache and the 720qm has 6mb (basically a fast memory storage area that feeds directly to the cores, the more you have the faster it can process the data from your ram). And your 620m is limited to using ddr3 1066 ram while the 720qm can take advantage of the using a faster ddr3 1333. So yes the 720 is faster in my opinion (unless you only use 2 core) overall the 720 is faster and stronger. but i dont like comparing 4 core to 2 core its not really fair......

as for your gpu driver problem i would completely uninstall them and install the latest official 11.12 drivers (what are? and where did you get your current drivers?)

 

I'm on 11.11c right now.

 

ok..........

 

My specs are:
intel 820qm
4GB 1333Mhz ram
500gb HDD
Dell 6970m - stock clocks 680/900
12.1 preview drivers

I finally had the chance to install mine 2 days ago and still testing with only 3hrs of play but no shutdowns or BSOD *touchwood*

Up till now i have only played BF2 with maxed settings and the temps never went past 78 degrees

Let me share my experience with the install and see if it helps anybody:
1. i used the 260m X-backplate with the insulation sticker still on it
2. i used IC diamond 24karat paste (chose not to use silver based paste scared it would short things out)
3. i used 1.5 and 1.0mm phobya pads and used the 4mm puffy pads from my 260m
4. the phobya pads isnt sticky at all so i also bought the 3M 8815 heat transfer tape and not just any old double sided tape

Note: i have not done the heatpipe mod yet, as im a lil shakey with the idea and will only do it if i have the shutdowns and BSOD

 

thanks for sharing f klo, you even add icing to the cake by providing your specs.

anyways did you mean bf3 instead of 2? because bf2 shouldn't push your temp that far. also it would be great if you could test skyrim for us, that game is the ones which cause shutdowns for most people with issues.

by the way i still have shutdown issues, very very frustrating

 

BF2 Maxed as in 1920x1080 AA8 AF16 everything on high.... if my temps are too hot then maybe i need to repaste or something

 

Nah, 78 is fine. You seem to be quite lucky ^.^

I'm still experiencing them too Hel20eS I'm gonna repaste near the end of this month since I forgot to bring my paste back to college >.> I don't know how much that'll help though but worth a shot.



Do any of these numbers seem out of place? This was taken after BF3 froze on me, so snapshotted and then had to hard reboot.

 

Long time lurker on the forums but I've only recently posted, but inspired by all the work you guys have done on this upgrade I thought I would give it a shot.

Installed a dell 6990m last night on my system , first time mucking around with thermal pads and paste but it seems to have gone quite well.

Temps seem to max out around 81 degrees on 3dMark11

Followed most of the suggestions from the forum
1.Used my 260m Backplate.
2. For paste I used Mx-4 with the pea method.
3. i used 1 and 0.5mm phobya XT and the 4mm puffy pads from my 260m
4. Had cleaned out the gpu fan earlier, no heatpipe mod.
5. Used the 11.5a modded drivers

Ran starcraft 2 maxed out for 15-20 mins and seemed to cope very well.

The only issue I've had is when running 3DMark Vantage, it seemed to freeze when loading the cpu test 2. The laptop was still running fine and when I shutdown Vantage none of the temps had gone above 81 degrees according to HWiNFO64.

Any suggestions ? Is my 720qm causing issues perhaps ? Should I try throttlestop?
Maybe try the latest drivers 11.12 ?

Cheers

tk

 

kumquat, did you try padding like mexic00ls yet ?, i think it's around page 152 where he shows the location and what mm he use when padding the card. i was going to try that, but i have to wait till i'm back in Australia since ebay won't ship to my hometown in Thailand

 

I actually have no idea how he placed those pads on in the 1st picture haha...that seems interesting though, could you explain? I for sure dont have that many pads on my card though.

 

the first picture just pad the whole back of the card with 0.5mm fujipoly

 

Tk429, you might want to uninstall and reinstall vantage as it might not have installed properly. The XT pads are pretty nice and you have some good temps too, hope everything works out for you.
And the heat pipe mod is not needed if you have clearence between the heat pipes and gpu

 

So it's pretty much place the x-plate on and then cover that whole thing in pads before placing the GPU in? I'll try that once I get my thermal pads from home then hopefully.

 

Pretty much that is what I did Kumquat, didn't cover the x-plate though, just everything around it.

Also have you got any excess paste around the die? there are little transistor things around the die, I cleaned all those up when i last pasted, dunno if it helped but smooth sailing for me now.

 

How did you clean those up again? Mine is slightly messy >.<

 

It is a bit of a pain to clean, just dabbed it with a alcohol soaked cloth and used my fingernail covered in the cloth to get in between the blocks.

 

Hey so everything was fine after I installed the 6990m before but the other day I had a random shutdown and my idle temps were a bit high (55+ to 60) with game temps (78-89) so I decided to get in there and repaste and replace the old default thermal pads with the fujipoly 1mm pads I had bought but didn't use on my first installation.

After everything seemed okay though my idle temps were a bit higher even after I re-pasted and my temps seem to fluctuate at odd times though after gaming for hours yesterday the temps were at 72-78 which seemed great, never going above 82 but it was idling at 60 so that concerned me so I gave it another shot.

So I've re-pasted for the third time and my idle temps as of typing this are 50 MemIO 53 DispIO and 47 Shader, when I'm watching a YT video they go up to 60 and gaming they now went up to 94 after only a few minutes playing SWTOR. Here are some pictures from what my 2nd paste job looked like and now my third paste job, as well as the application in between the two...

I use a coffee filter to clean with and Arctic Silver cleaning material, and MX-4 paste.

Album with labels: 6990m Pasting - Imgur

1) Is it possibly the new thermal pads? I put them exactly where the old ones were with about the same size cut wise.
2) Why are the memory slots on the card now "wet" stained a bit with the new thermal pads?
3) Do you have any tips for cleaning the paste away around the die that spilled over?
4) Any ideas why temps might be this high and fluctuating so wildly?

- The heat sink is on tight and it looks to me like it has proper contact with the die. Fans are clean.
- It's a dell OEM card, I can hear the fan working perfectly fine. It only had one random shutdown since I've installed it, relatively problem free, and no issue besides fluctuating temps of zero consistency and high temps since my third paste.

Edit: Now I'm trying again and I'm getting 68-70. I really don't get it.

Now even lower low 60s. Haven't seen it go back up to 90s but it still concerns me that it did.

 

Crazy...

Maybe its because the pads where not fully covering the memory chips, you say that you used 1 mm pads but i think (and they look like 2 mm) they are way too thick there for not covering the mem fully.

youre past job seems a little weird just a dot in the middele, why not a stripe with less thermal paste?

Is it me or does it appear that you backplate is putting pressure on the 6990m card? did it fit right i mean did you have to really push it down in order to get the screws in ( when you remove it do you see prints of the card on the black platic cover of the m15x frame? ).

Greets Mike and good luck

 

1) They're 1mm according to my order.
2) The dot in the middle was what was suggested in the GPU thermal paste guide on these forums.
3) Do you mean it's putting too much pressure or too little? I never had a problem with the backplate and it fit right for me, I don't have to push down at all.

 

it seems that the mem is not fully covered look at the marks on the thermalpads.

the dot is for square die you have a retangle die.

ok it looked on the picture like it was bent a little....my bad. make sure you dont have to apply pressure or look if it bents a little while screwing it down.
my 6970m did bent a little but i noticed that so i removed the xplate and made a different way (little studs).

You might also check if the coolerplate is flat........

 

1) I'll check out the thermalpads the next time I open it up.
2) The prongs on the heatsink that I screw on top of the card do bend as I tighten the screws if that's what you mean.

 

No i meant the board it self, i made custom studs holding the cooler on top of the die and mem. the prong you mean are on the cooler right "the four arms" (i am dutch ).
But you really must check the thermal pads they need to be equal pressed down, you should'nt see just one side print on them.

 

Thanks Mexic00ls the reinstall of 3d Vantage seemed to do the job. Temps maxing out when oc around 85 degrees on Vantage.

Only got a 150 watt power supply , is it worth getting a 180/240 ? Seems to be some conflicting advice on the forums.