M15x Heatsink parts and 5870 upgrade question

Hi guys,

I have a radeon 8570 inbound for my alienware M15-x R2. I heard that the nvidia 240m heatsink that I currently have is inadequate to cool this card. I've seen a few heatsinks on the market for the M15x, but I don't know the parts number of the 260m heatsink. I am also looking to pick up some thermal pads. Which thickness and conductivity do you guys reccomend?

Also after combing through the 5870 mod thread for a while, is there a clear cut answer for the bios changing/updating and solved driver issues for the clevo 5870? I read about 50 pages and the info seems about 2 years old and I'm wondering if there's a solution I've missed.

Thanks for the help!

 

I upgraded to the 5870 2 years ago with that info from a 240m and never changed the heatsink. For me I think it was basically plug, (install AMD drivers), and play. Before the installation you have to upgrade to A09 BIOS though. Depending on your cooling situation (notebook cooler, thermal paste job, air temp) you can probably overvolt and overclock the card to something like 1.1 or 1.15 volts and I think I had mine running at like 900 core and 1100 ram. If the 240m heatsink is really inadequate than I never heard about that because I now have a HD 6990m in the same heatsink!

 

Thanks for the reply. That sounds as good as it can get. Maybe I've been paranoid of people hitting critical level of temperatures (100deg) with the 240m heatsink. Mostly from here: Alienware m15 R2 Upgrade And a few posts regarding the mods. I believe high temperatures are going to be my problem so I'm probably going to underclock the card. Do you have any recorded temperatures when running games or idle that are noticeable?

 

I didn't know there was a difference from 240m heatsink to 260m. I think I had temps in the low 90s but I don't think Ive ever had a shutdown do to 100 degree temps with any graphics card. Unfortunately all I have recorded is one heaven benchmark from each graphics card ive had. It doesnt include temps.

 

Buy the 0.5mm fujipoly thermal pads available at frozen cpu. Best I have used so far.

Fujipoly Premium System Builder Thermal Pad - 1/4 Sheet - 150 x 100 x 0.5 - Thermal Conductivity 6.0 W/mK - FrozenCPU.com

 

Those are the same ones I use. They usually keep ram temps only a few degrees above GPU and shader.

 

Sweet I'll give those a shot, thanks for the recommendation.