Dell I9300 w/ 7800GTX for $1700

Ordered my 9300 w/ these upgrades:

2.13GHz CPU
1920x1080 display
DVD+/-RW
9-cell battery

for $1224 w/ shipping.

Bought these items later:

A 130W adaptor for $30 from ebay w/ shipping
2x 1gig ram from Newegg for $164 w/ free shipping
Refurbished go 7800GTX from dell $278 w/shipping

Grand total: A hair under $1700.

XPS M170 w/ same configuration:

$3037+shipping+1 additional stick of ram from Newegg for $82: Total: A shade over $3100.

Both the system and the refurbished GPU are due to ship on Dec. 12th.

I'll let you all know how it goes . . .

 

i can buy a 7800gtx from dell and install it in my I9300?...i have the 6800 now, will i get a huge peformance boost by upgrading?..

 

Yes and yes.

 

goodluck with the cooling.

 

Kingjimmi,

The 9800 U is a great video card, I hope you have success with this experiment...like was said in the last post, you are going to have fun with the cooling...you may be able to fabricate another copper tube to help the cooling, but from what I hear it is going to be fun, you might have to underclock the GPU to keep some of the heat down...but if anything have fun with the experiment, I would love to hear how this is going to work out, PLZ make sure you post your results.

 

The card has the same exact heatsink as that found in the M170. Actually, the 9300 and the M170 share the same exact motherboard. So, once the 7800GTX goes in, the only difference between my 9300 and a m170 is the ugly case lights, the lack of gigbit ethernet, and about $1400. Unless, the M170 itself has heat issues, I'm not too worried.

 

From what I have heard the M170 has more cooling, like I said the second copper pipe to disperse the heat...at least that is what I heard...if it works I wouldn;t mind trying it myself depending on how the 9300 performs stock and with OC's...I have seem people OC their GPU to almost the speed of the Ultra...but with some instability and heating issues...I can't justify the spending of the extra cash right now, but maybe around tax season..

Like I said let me know if it works...I would love to know.

 

Nod, the 9300 only has one copper pipe, but when you buy the new card it comes with the heatsink with 2 copper pipes, one to each fan. I'm just going by what I've read on several forums and pictures from ebay/dell/forums. Once I get everything, I'll post again with details from first hand knowledge. Should be a week or so till I get everything in the mail.

 

KK, you guys got me all nervous so I called up Dell. Yes, indeed the graphics card does come with the two copper pipe heatsink. At least this is what the Dell representitive told me. Anyways, I'm not a very trusting person, so I'll let you all know definitively if it does come with the heatsink and also if it all fits into the 9300 perfectly.

From the pretty pictures I've seen of the insides of the 9300 and the M170 though, I'm fairly confident that there should be no problems whatsoever. I'll update this again when everything arrives and I'm done the mod.

 

Cool....if I can upgrade my vid card without any major mods and I could use the upgrade I would do it, I have been building desktops for a while it will be interesting to try it on laptops, I would experiment on the one I have now, but it is not worth it LOL

It is an old HP 500mhz.

 

Its been done before... Many times, you should know that kingjimmi... The extra heatpipe is attached to the GPU. http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=113866

 

Yes Ardor, I've seen that. But Xeslana mentioned a heat problem. Maybe she knows something we don't? Maybe she read that there are heat problems associated with this mod or knows from firsthand experience?? I haven't seen any in all my research, but I know I didn't read everything there is to read about this.

Besides, only paying $270 for the GPU I can't help but feel that maybe somethings wrong, I mean it's so cheap compared to the $509 that Dell is asking for a new one. Maybe the heatsink isn't included and it's just the card? I stopped smoking pot a long time ago, but hell I think I'm still paranoid.

Anyways Ardor, I'm not really worried about the mod working, like you've said many people have done this already. What I'm mainly worried about is the card I bought for only $270 coming with the new heatsink. The Dell operator told me it did, but /snicker I think they've been wrong before.

 

I believe the copper heatpipes are attached to the GPU, it's just the heatsink, i think you can buy that separately if it does not come with the heat sink.

If you go to that thread, there are a lot of them with the first hand experience. I don't think they had problems with heat or anything.

 

Hey you're forgetting about the free DJ Ditty with the M170 you're missing out on. That sooooo makes it worth it. <end sarcasm>

In all seriousness, though, congrats on your new system. Should be a screamer. I'm jealous as I don't have the balls to risk frying my new notebook with a (I assume) much hotter video card, especially when it voids the warranty.

Does anyone know if upgrading from the 6800 Ultra to a 7800GTX on an M170 keeps the extended warranty?

 

KK, got my laptop this afternoon. Installation of the go7800GTX took like 15mins. Had to take the computer pretty much fully apart. Took off the lcd, keyboard, hinge, palm rest, mini-pci card, battery, and optical drive just to get at the GPU. The card had the two heat pipes as advertised.

It's confirmed, the M170 and the I9300 share the same motherboard and chasis. The only difference is the left side heatpipe. On the I9300 the GPU only has one heatpipe on the right side. So, Dell glues (literally) these two little rubber pieces into the left side where the cooling fins would go to keep dust out. After you rip those out you just slap the new card in and everything fits nicely. Uninstall old video drivers and install the go7800GTX drivers from the Dell site and then you're almost done.

Only pain in the butt about this mod was the flashing of the BIOS. You need to change the I9300 BIOS to the XPS BIOS, but you can't just goto Dell's site and use the flashbios from the support site immediately. This is because the standard Dell BIOS won't allow you to flash the I9300 to the XPS BIOS directly, it says you have incompatible hardware. Instead you have to go about this in a little more shady manner. Anyways, after flashing my I9300 to some hacked XPS A01 BIOS (provided by the members of Notebookforums.com) I could then use the XPS A05 BIOS at Dell's site. This step was extremely uncomfortable as the A01 BIOS made my system really unstable. Had to go through about 3 reboots before I could get the A05 flash to go through, because the lappie would hang before I could do anything.

Anyways, everything is done now and I'm getting a 7328 3DMark05 score with no overclocking. I doubt I'll bother doing any overclocking. Seems like a waste of time cept to push my 3DMark score higher.

The laptop runs cool. A lot cooler than my old I8600. The only thing that gets hot is the memory modules. But I think this is pretty much the case w/ any laptop. The GPU itself has no heat issues whatsoever. It tops out at almost 70C.

Ran World of Warcraft at 1920X1200 w/ all the settings turned to maximum. FPS were in the high 50's and only dropped down to mid 30's when I was in the middle of Ironforge.

 

nice to hear... how much was the refurb 7800 card?

 

$248 from Dell Spare Parts. Came to $278 with tax and shipping.

 

Yeah I agree with USAFdude. Just remember that copper is a conductor and don't shock yourself.

 

Actually xbandaidx, it's a heat pipe. Not solid copper. Works much more efficiently at wicking away the heat. Anyways, I'm not worried about heat at all. The laptop has not gone over 70C once (GPU temp) and that's more than fine with me.

Also, as Ardor pointed out, a lot of people have already done this mod and none of them have issues with heat. One more thing to note xbandaidx, this mod has the exact same cooling solution as the M170. There is no difference at all. If you check the reviews on the M170 you'll see that everyone notes how cool the laptop runs. So, it stands to reason that mine will run cool also.

 

Good to hear it worked. Did you have to buy a XPS 2 Northbridge Heatsink? Does the 9-cell battery stick out of the laptop unlike the 6 cell?

 

no and no.

 

Cool, thanks.