No idea where to buy a graphics card at

I don't use a laptop cooler and I use the program Core Temp to see the temperatures. The temperatures of all cores read around 85 degrees. Should I get a laptop cooler? What kind?

 

Amazon.com : CM Storm SF-19 Gaming Laptop Cooling Pad with Two 140mm Turbine Fans (SGA-4000-KKNF1) : Electronics

 

Oh wow that thing looks beast. Is this a must buy? And with my gaming set up, I use my laptop literally, on my lap. I rest it on a cushioned lap rest. Oh and why the 19 inch version and now the 15 inch version?

 

Also have you noticed that the noise from that cooling pad is distracting? A lot of reviews are saying it is very loud.

 

Well I ordered it anyways lol. Can't wait for all this stuff to get here haha.

 

@zaitsev72 , from what i've read on this forum, the 680m would work on your laptop. I have the same laptop as you do and I'm too searching for a video card upgrade.
I'm going for a 680m or 7970m, although the first may be a bit pricey.
Do you guys have any idea if the second 7970m from an m18x crossfireX config would work as the sole video card in an m15x? I see this guy on ebay selling one: Alienware AMD HD DELL 7970M 2GB M18x upgrade incl. heat sink & crossfire cable

 

Haha, one question, have you got an unlimited budget or something to upgrade your M15x? You just brought a ton of stuff haha. And that cooler is good for keeping the temps down even though it may be on the big side.

 

Waste of money I am afraid with my two fans see avatar I am rocking nearly 25cfm! That directly and point blankly over the exposed components. The fans aren't even anything special. Just two 1cm thick 80x80 fans connected with one usb connector.

The monstrosity (meant for M18x I think and maybe W90 lol) can only manage 15.4cfm per fan.

Do my mod and get yourself the thermaltake mobile fan 2:
Amazon.com : Thermaltake Mobile Fan II External USB Cooling Fan - Us : Electronics

It can pump out over 47cfm and is only 80x80mm! That is 3 fans worth from the cooler. Rock two of them and you get nearly 100cfm!

I am afraid the cooler alone won't make a difference to temps in real world usage.

 

Lol I do alright for myself and when I have my heart set on something I get very impulsive and just start buying stuff.

 

Well we will see. All of the reviews and videos on youtube show significantly lower temperatures when using the cooling pad. I will try it out and if I don't like it I will just return it and maybe try your idea. How do you get those fans to stay put on the bottom of your laptop? I move my laptop around so much it seems like it would be difficult to move those fans separately.

 

Velcro my friend

Significantly lower temps with a mid range laptop. To cool the 920xm or 940xm and 7970M or 680M OCed we need a little more extreme cooling to make a difference. Believe me!

Remember all the cooling pad will do is blow air onto the plastic bottom of the case. If you open her up at least and put some mesh over the hole it would help a lot.

Anyways even in ambient 26C I can keep the 7970M at max 78C at 950/1450mhz. At these clocks it consumes much more power than the stock 680M. Also the 920xm I can keep at 89C max in Prime 95 with small ffts at 24x across all cores in same ambient temp. That is pretty insane. With thermaltake fans I fully expect to be able to voltmod the cpu and get away with it running 27x in Prime 95!

However hacking up the laptop is something not many are happy doing but it really it a truly easy mod.

 

See I don't plan on doing any of that overclocking stuff. I just want an upgraded graphics card so I think the cooling pad should suffice. I don't really want to hack my laptop up either! haha.

 

Ok I read back through some of the posts and noticed that I did not buy thermal pads. Do I need these?

 

You can keep the stock ones attached there but I recommend getting the Phobya XT 1.0mm ones I mentioned earlier within this thread

 

Now just waiting for everything else to arrive.

 

I use 1.5mm. Fits well on the three chips above the cpu die. Also it would be a crime not to OC the 940xm!!

If you don:t want to OC it can we swap ;D Just raise multi by one 1x on the 920xm and it is the same speed as stock 940xm.

 

1.5MM thermal pad will work as long as they are squishy, i personally prefer fujipoly pads 1mm, the new ultra extreme line seem solid and i am waiting on delivery now. i have the black sf-19 and its is awesome, it can get pretty loud but it is the best in my opinion, it'll definitely make the M15x look small and they are very modular and i have put cougar fans(120mm and lepa 80mm fans in there with no problem, King is just jealous he cant afford one, jk.

 

Mex how did you get 16g of ram into the m15x?

 

I think you can get 16gb ram in the m15x, but it will be forced at 1333mhz if frequency is higher. Also, the bios will recognize only 8gb, but windows will see all 16.

 

Not jealous! My mod is better than any laptop cooler I have owned the NZXT Cryo LX in the past so I 'am not partial to big coolers. Just not nearly effective I'am afraid and yes expensive!

 

Bought 2-8gig sticks and replaced the 2-4gig sticks, the bios doesnt recognize it so it reads out zero for ram but windows reads it just fine and i tested them using heavyload

 

What is the best way to do the static shock protection while working on the computer?

 

The only thing left to arrive is the x bracket. The cooling pad is awesome! My temperatures are muchhh cooler and the CPU no longer overheats.

 

I just started considering upgrading my m15x and I found this forum and thread. I didn't think there were so many ppl still loving m15x
The thing is, much like the OP, I never did any laptop upgrading, so I am not sure what to buy. Will any alienware gfx card be ok for m15x? (for example this one: New Dell Alienware M18x R2 nVIDIA GTX 680M 2GB SLI Video Card 20HTK N13E-GTX-A2 | eBay)
Is it enough to get card (w bracket) and paste or do I have to buy everything the OP bought here?

 

From what i've read, if you get the video card and the proper x-bracket and screws for it, you're pretty much ok. That and thermal paste...

 

From what I understand you will also need the 240 watt power supply to power the GPU. I also highly recommend that cooler pad that I bought. My M15x was overheating before the pad and now that I have it it runs cool as can be. VERY happy I bought it. Today my bracket should arrive so I should be able to install the GTX 680m. I will let you know how it goes! Right now I am just trying to also get 5 posts on tech inferno so I can download the stuff to flash the card. They have to approve every post over there, so it is taking a while.

 

Yeah good stuff, I'm glad this thread is getting a lot of attention for our beloved M15x! It's an amazing machine as it is fully and easily upgradable, it just shows what the potential of our 4+ year old machine is capable of!

 

Well all stuff is here, but I cant do anything because I dont have the post count on tech inferno to download the bios stuff. Very frustrating.

 

Ok I am in a little over my head here with this BIOS flashing stuff. I did a google search to create a bootable USB drive and came upon a program called Rufus. I don't understand everything I need to input to make it work. I read through the guide on tech forum but I still don't quite understand it. For example I have no idea what this means or how to do it:
"Put the NVflash files to the root of your prepared (DOS bootable) USB drive. Do the same with the Vbios you want to flash."

 

I have the card installed but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to flash the BIOS. When I boot from the USB and try to follow the guide from tech inferno and input the codes, it tells me that NV Flash cannot be run in DOS. I have been researching but I can't figure out what to do.

 

Also when I have GPU-Z open it does not detect the graphics card. Is that because I have not flashed the BIOS? Another method I have tried to flash the BIOS is here Flashing Nvidia Bios Within Windows. I get an error message when I attempt to do it that way. I also attempted to use NiBiTor to open the downloaded VBIOS from tech inferno and it says that it is not a recognized flash. This is really bizarre and hopefully someone can help me out. This has been an extremely frustrating night.

 

UPDATE: I successfully flashed the VBIOS, but GPU-Z still does not detect the graphics card....trying to figure it out now.

 

don't you just need to modify the nvidia drivers?

 

I am not sure. I tried to install a stock driver and it says I dont have the right hardware. I am having trouble finding what I need to do after flashing.

 

Here is what I am dealing with. As you can see the BIOS is correct, but no GPU detected.

 

did you use the drivers from nvidia or dell

 

The only driver I tried was one that i found on Nvidias website.

 

try dell drivers, and did you get any errors while trying to flash the bios?

 

It took me a while to figure out how to flash the BIOS correctly, but when I did I got no errors. I found a user on here LaptopNut who appears to have quite a bit of expereince with modding inf files for GTX 680M, and has done it for like all of the drivers:
My Files

I PMed him, but right now I am trying to figure out how to use one of his inf files myself. No idea how to do it though.

 

its pretty simply just download which ever modded inf you need based on the nvidia driver version your going to install 3XX.XX, then download and extract the corresponding nvidia drivers but do not install yet and remember where the files are being saved too. once thats done go to the file location and access the DisplayDrivers folder and open it and then just drag and drop the modded inf file and copy and replace it and then install the drivers

 

Yeah I did exactly that and it still didn't work. When I was installing it Nvidia checked for compatibility and gave me the error message that there was no compatible hardware.

 

whats your hardware id of your gpu?

 

I am not sure how to find it. I tried going into device manager but it doesn't detect any GPU.

 

it is in device manager, go to display adapter it may read it as standard vga adapter right click that then properties, details tab and scroll down to hardward ids copy and paste that here on the forum

 

These were what were listed:
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11A0&SUBSYS_02A21028&REV_A1
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11A0&SUBSYS_02A21028
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11A0&CC_030000
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_11A0&CC_0300

 

i will send you a pm in about an hour or so.....

 

Thanks! But It appears I have fixed the problem. LapTopNut beat you to it and showed me how to mod the inf with that hardware ID. Thanks for your help though! Rep power for you!

 

I don't have time atm to really put the card to the test, but I will give an update later

 

cool hope everything works out for you

 

Hah, you made it. Gratz!
I'm just completing my buylist now Basically I would need : card (duh), x-bracket, paste, and if the card needs it, a power supply. Right?
Also, what card would fit in there without changing the power supply? I will also change HDD to SSD, not sure if it matters to power.