M15x + ATI 5870 (MOD)

Ok, I havea few questions about this mod,

1, What is the best thermal material and pads for doing this mod?
2. OP said he doubled pads for mem, is that absolutely critical?
3. because stealth doesnt work, what are the clocks for stealth mode so i know what to down set it to. Aswell as what are reg clocks,
5. What GPU should i get with the m15x at time of purchase? I know the 5870m card comes with the heat pipes, so does it matter which card I get? I was gonna go with the cheapest card to save some $$$.
6. And I think there was one more question but I forgot it .

 

1. I order mine 5870 with the heatsink so I mixed the thermal pad from my 260m with the 5870 pad.
2. I did use the double pad at first but it was to thick which caused the heatsink to not have a full contact with the gpu so my temp was a little high. After that i replace it with single pad and my tempearature was good. I think there is a certain pad you could buy which is better than oem. I don't know where to get it. You might want to ask Inap for that.
3. the stock clock is 700/1000. I set mine to 200/300 using AMD GPU clock whenever I'm not playing game. Which help signifactly with your temperature.
5. I would get the 240m because it the same heatsink as the gtx 260m or the ati 5850. So that would save you some money.

 

1. i'm using this. EK Thermal Pad Sheet - 160mm x 155mm x 1mm - FrozenCPU.com

2.actual too much padding isn't a good idea, one layer should be fine as long as the pad touches the heatsink and the memory, but experiment you could find a better solution.

3. stock clocks is 700/1000, i'm using 200/300 for my downclock.

5. yeah just get the cheapest option available, all the heatsinks are the same. also you will have to use the stock card heatsink for the install, so save your money and don't buy the 5870 heatsink.

6. good luck,lol.

 

Ive been inside a desktop comp doing this kinda thing, from the looks of it its a similar process, except you guys say use the heatsink to spread the material, I use a card, so im guessing just use the heatsink and dont use a card then lol. And thanks for the advice about the heatsink, babyhemis page makes it sound like it comes with it, im assuming its extra though?

EDIT: and how many grains of rice roughly?

 

the size of 1 grain, here is a video showing why the spread method fails.

YouTube - How Thermal Compound Spreads

but i wouldnt use the x method on laptop parts because so small, just a rice grain in the middle and use heatsink and apply even pressure.

 

Sorry for the confusion. If you buy the card the heatsink is just $19.00 more. These heatsinks are designed for Clevo or Sager not Alienware as they sit, unless you know how to modify them at your own risk that is...

 

Haha alright, just one more question you got them in stock hemi? and how much longer you expecting to have them for ?

EDIT: I remember the question I was going to ask!!!!!


Does the HDMI port still work on the m15x after the new 5870 is installed??

 

Even with the heating its still the cheapest price around. Babyhemi you da man,lol
Do I get a commission, hahahahahHaha

Hdmi still works but no audio through it at the moment.

 

REALLY, oh poop, I dont know if this will work then. When I game Ill be on my 52 inch sharp, so hdmi is a must, and audio, Ive got an older amp from like 2000 and it only has optical audio and as it is I'll have to get a pass through box to split the 5.1 channel to optical, this totally messes up everything, Id have to concider the m17x. Is there any way of fixing that problem, or is it just no hope??

 

We just have to wait for new drivers. Even with NVIDIA cards, sound through hdmi only works on a few drivers.

 

UGH, thats a huge huge issue, do you know when possibly the drivers will be out?

 

Sorry no clue, I spent a whole day trying different drivers but no luck yet.

 

does the computer surround sound still work like, the 5 head phone jack one?? Because im pretty sure I could get a converter for that too then

 

Who can help me with the thermal pads? My m15x is continue overheating.

I have put everywhere thermalpads (something like the pictures in the opening post) but now it looks like the thermal pads are raising the heatsink too much (read: the gpu now needs way too much thermal paste to make contact).

I have: 0.5mm for the memory (makes good contact as far as I can see), 1mm for the 3 toppest chips and everything else mixed up to 4.5mm so it looks that the whole board makes contact with the heatsink.

The gpu gets a temp raising to 105 degrees celcius and after that the laptop turns to black (shutdown).

So does everything needs to make contact and if not what components need to make contact? And what is a good height for the 3 heighest chips, 1mm looks good for me.

So if anyone has a recent photo with the heights he used I think that you help a lot of ppl here. The first post only talks about to make as much as contact as possible.

 

the audio jacks still works. just the hdmi audio out isn't working.

 

Ok thats a little bit of a relief time to search google for a converter

 

the pink part i put 1 layer, the yellow i put 2 layers so it evens up. the trick is to not use too much. 4.5 is way too much, just put enough to make contact, otherwise the heat will not dissipate.

 

Ok so google has nothing for sound card to optical audio which is bunk, but theres a usb to optical and appearently has one driver to install, that may work, possibley, if it infact does 5.1 individual channels out .

 

Thanks a lot, one layer is 1mm? or 0.5mm thick?

This picture should be in the opening post or did you already add it in your guide?

 

It's 0.5mm , yeah not a part of my guide but I will add it.

 

Oh NBR... why do you make me want to go broke! These forums are the reason I bought my M15X in the first place. Extremely pleased. I don't post often but I do come back every week or so and try to catch up on all the post I missed on the 'All powerful M15X' postings.

And now... this...

Whelp.. gonna have to go ahead and buy that 5870 there is no way I can resist after spending all of tonight reading from page 1 until the last. I can only pray that babyhemi has the cards til Friday if he even still has them now.

Though first I have to get Dell to come out and replace my DVD drive considering that it no longer is able to read any disc so I'm unable to update my bios. It's been a while but I'm such a slacker!

 

Hey I have a question regarding about external monitor. I'm about to buy the samsung px2370 and i'm using it to connect to my M15x. So all I need is a displayport to hdmi and a hdmi cable? Does it work with the 5870?

 

Video output from dp works just the audio doesn't. Yeah just need hdmi to dp converter or cable. When I have time I'll try out the 5850 driver to see if I can get the audio to work.

 

It doesn't matter if I use a headphone right Inap?

 

Can you try that? No matter what I do, I get a "the driver selected for this device does not support this version of Windows" problem whenever trying to install the dell driver

 

Yeah headphones work no problem.

I will gave the 5850 driver a go when I have some free time, wattos. Hopefully tomorrow.

 

ok let me know. I managed to install the driver only by modifying the inf file myself. But, I couldnt tes the sound output, but most likely it still didnt work as the monitor showed up as DVI on the CCC

 

Hey guys, I'm having a bit trouble installing the driver for my 5870. I just installed it today and shows as "stardard VGA adapter" in my device manager. I've tried to install the Dell 5850 driver, but it will install and wont load. >.< GPU-z says its idling at 70C which is pretty hot just idling. I don't know what to do, any suggestions?

EDIT: Okay I installed the 5800 series driver which, thank god, got everything in order! running a stable 60 using Arctic Silver MX-3 which I reapplied the when I was super confused about the driver. But how do I get the specific 5870 driver?

 

OK, got mine. The CAT 10.5 drivers installed, idling at 55C but these cards are over-volted. Have you guys under-volted them yet?

 

No not yet pretty much everyone seems to run them stock.

 

Mandrake, we're not really sure they are over-volted. The vbios purports to set voltage at 1.15v, but AMD Clock Tool reports VDDC as 1.05v. The drop down box provides an apparent option for the 1.15v setting, but selecting has no effect on VDDC. Same occurs if the vbios is modified to 1.10v. There just doesn't seem to be any change. I have not been able to find any other utility that reports the actual measured card voltage and am very interested in your analysis of the subject.

 

I just changed the 3D clocks to 1.10v and idle temps dropped by 8c.

 

I have not had the same experience with reducing the voltage. I'll try it again. What does AMD Clock Tool report?

 

I'll have to gt back to you, I'm doing more vbios modification. I think I can make this card scream.

 

Tried again. Flashed vbios to 700/1000 at 1.10v. No discernible change in idle temps. AMD Clock Tool still reports 1.05v. Have to drop clocks to 250/300 to get that kind of temp drop. Hope to learn a better way.

 

Which CCC are you using?

 

Most use the ccc from the m15x 5850 driver or m17x 5870 driver.

 

I'm using 10.5 (Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.0504.2152.37420).

 

Greetings. I own an older M15x purchased in January 2009 with an Intel Core2 Duo T9300 CPU, nVidia GeForce 9800m GT GPU, and 4 GB of RAM. It is currently running Windows 7 (64 bit) and has the x36 BIOS. Would I be able to upgrade the GPU to the 5870 or is my M15x too behind the times? The reason I'm asking is that my 9800 is starting to die. I just want to know what my options are short of trying to bake this GPU. Thanks in advance.

 

no but you can upgrade to the ati 3870.

 

Greetings. I own an older M15x purchased in January 2009 with an Intel Core2 Duo T9300 CPU, nVidia GeForce 9800m GT GPU, and 4 GB of RAM. It is currently running Windows 7 (64 bit) and has the x36 BIOS. Would I be able to upgrade the GPU to the 5870 or is my M15x too behind the times? The reason I'm asking is that my 9800 is starting to die. I just want to know what my options are short of trying to bake this GPU. Thanks in advance.

Are you sure that's it? I'm no expert but isn't the 3870 a downgrade from the 9800 with the 260 being a sidegrade and the 280 being a slight upgrade? What about the 4850 or 4870 then?

 

4850 might work....technically any MXM 2.1 card should work as long as their is bios support for it.

 

sweet.....

 

Where did Overdrive come from? I have never had it included in CCC under any version.

Have you found an MSI vbios? Except your vbios version appears to be the same as mine.

 

Yes!....all I need to do is change the SSID.

 

How do you do that?

 

What I meant was if I do that then anyone can use the bios without any special switches.

 

But how did you get Overdrive accessible and functional on your M15x?

 

Drooling here, how can I get this mandrake.

 

how can i get that as well