4930mx is running higher frequency and cooler than the original 4700/4710mq so that's a plus. Last official GPU supported by Dell is the 980m which is much better than the 880m Awesome video!
Last official is the 980m SLI. But you can get a single 1060 or a 1070 in there. A 1060 fits without issues but you need to modify the heatsink to fit a 1070.
@@InfectedChris Alienware 18 and the M18x R1/R2 are still my favorite "old school" Alienware laptops. It was a somber day when I sold off my last one with a 4930mx and 970m in it to upgrade.
@@lagoleer Yeah. And Dell screwed everyone with the Area 51m by not supporting upgrades even though it had a socketed CPU and MXM GPU. You were stuck with Intel 9th gen so the most you can get in there was a 9900k and a GTX 2080 Super. Dell didn't release the DGF cards to anyone else like how MXM was available. I have a M18x R2 which I went from a 3720qm and 680m SLI to a 3940xm with 980m SLI and a AW18 which already has a 4930mx but I upgraded the GPU's from 780m SLI to a single 1070.
It's really sad how many of these new machines don't even have replaceable storage. I am really concerned about the future of modularity and upgradeability especially with the succes of the M1.
@@JimmyZeng I think low end laptops like the ones used for Chromebooks has it, which can at times also be sold as Windows laptop. Perhaps also various ARM based laptops (which ironically enough is what the Apple is as well, lol).
@epepepe well Steam is starting to be a thing so it is slowly being possible to use them for more intensive tasks than basic webbrowsing, then there are also Android apps. But generally speaking no, lol. Framework does have a Chromebook version of their 13 inch laptop. I am not sure if you can upgrade the motherboard/CPU (it is physically possible but I am not sure if the OS still works etc.) but I am pretty sure you can upgrade RAM and storage.
Dawid Does Tech Stuff : the GTX 880M 8 GB is impressive considering that it was launched in 2014 based on the Kepler GTX 700 series architecture from 2013 and it had a rich amount of 8 GB VRAM which in uncharacteristic for Nvidia to give to us consumers....though that 122 Watt TDP is worrying since it's a discrete GPU but a mobile GPU nontheless.
Yea in one scenario half of your GPU's are not going to do anything (back when SLI was usable in games) And in the other you clearly have not seen the desperation and savage no mobo out IO shield mounting of desperation. I like to see someone try and get that SLI bridge in that laptop in place without taking apart the laptop and it still works after the fact. I have see enough IO shield war crimes. Metal scissors is not the right way to go about it. OR WORSE!
The SLI scaling on GTA V didn't seem to be working properly with the new GPUs. If you look at the usage it seems perfectly split and only using around 50% of each card where as with the old GPUs it was using 60-95% usage on each GPU. SLI was non-existent on BFV and CP77 on both but I assume that's just because SLI was dead by the time those games came out.
Can it be that the gpu's are only getting 75watts? Not the 120 they should have? That seems to me the most obvious reason the performance is not up to scratch. But it is just my guess...
Actually if you are tech savvy it is easy to fix SLI scaling in most games if not all at a rate of 98% scaling when you edit the driver settings like AFR, and other specific profiles for independent games...
In 2021, I remember playing GTA 5 and BF 5 in 1080p comfortably in low/medium settings. at least 60fps consistent. Mostly just played MMO's (WoW, ff14), Esports titles, steam indy games, and emulators. Everything still ran buttery smooth.
The bsod at 1:03 isn't a bad windows install, its the sata configuration mode in the bios. It can either be set to achi or raid on, depends on the device but usually swapping the mode will fix the blue screen.
Why? You're not actually doing anything special, and quite frankly it's a massive ripoff. For the price of the upgrade, you could practically just buy a newer refurb model from a competitor. Except, then you get a full warranty, and you can sell or keep an entire second laptop. It's a cool idea, but dumb as hell when you realize the price of the motherboard/cpu
@epepepe yeah, people are paying for the platform and the cause (right to repair). Everyone has had a favorite laptop that they wish could stay alive forever (IBM fans) and i'd absolutely pay to get a device I can keep, be comfortable with, and upgrade it as I see fit. If you are young you won't get it because change is usually exciting... But i wish I could still be using my 17" gateway from the core2 days. And I have older 15" dells I'd like to be using too (yeah I like big laptops).
@@the.littlest.toaster pretty cool. The M18x had excellent cooling, which you'd expect in such a huge 'laptop'. I then upgraded it to a single GTX 1070 and it even handled that perfectly fine with the stock fan/heatsink. Stayed in the mid to high 70deg range under load.
The Dell Precision M4800 and M6800 are also infamous for being the last laptops to have all these upgradability, and they are also laptop DIY modders dream laptops, and now you can get them much cheaper than ever
Indeed you are correct, and the somewhat lacking community (compared to ThinkPads) are still finding ways of expanding these systems. The M6800 can now have 10, yes TEN, storage options onboard the laptop itself through the use of adapter boards and obviously sacrificing some other components. And that's before you use the USB and eSATA ports!
I've heard that you need to hack the BIOS to actually upgrade the graphics boards past what's on the spec sheet. Is that true? (And obviously the most powerful boards you'd be able to get would be the highest-spec one that the M6800 shipped with because no one was making custom third-party boards.)
Should've got one of the Iris Pro-equipped CPUs with the 128MB eDRAM; iirc it works the same as on the 5775c, the extra cache helps out in games a lot just like it does on the modern X3D Ryzens even if it's dog slow by comparison. Also, Adlink makes an RTX A4500 MXM card that is essentially just a 16GB 3070 on a power diet that might be worth a look. If you still wanted to make use of the multi-gpu part then your best bet is probably 1080's though SLI in [current year] is going to be a joke no matter what, but as another commenter said this all depends if the support after the 980M is just "unofficial" or if it literally doesn't work at all. 2024 edit: there's a site called X-Vision that sells up to 3080M MXM cards now, as well as AMD options like the RX 6600, which would be far easier to source.
last offical support for this machine was an 980m, anything newer and you have to mod the bios to get it to POST And also, the slot only able to get ~95w of power to the card, so newer MxM card will have problem with power draw and will brick and shut the whole laptop down
@@mcslender2965 It's so incredibly niche that it basically isn't. The modern ampere quadro cards are basically for datacenters only where they're used like SXM cards without the proprietary connector (which is why they're not sold retail as far as I can tell) or cost associated with A/H100 tier chips. and the other stuff is just Clevo and that one Arc A370M. All are so low volume that the price tag is really stupid everywhere you can find them.
i always love to see old content brought back to life, even if it's "not worth" the money it's a shame there are so few laptops that can change parts out like this, make a monster david a monster
Sisyphs = dude in green myths that got stuck pushing the boulder up the hill in tartarus just to have it roll back down over and over for all eternity. Modern sisyphean task is fixing a laptop, and every time you put it back together there's a different part you forgot to put back in. So, you spend an eternity tearing it down and rebuilding it.
I love how only one gpu is doing any work in game if you notice one gpu is pinned and the other is doing basically nothing at like 13% so he's using windows 10 with directx 12 which hates and says no to sli working at all
I think the best value GPU in those are probably Pascal MXMs. There's a bit of vBios flash involved, but it does work rather well. Alternatively, there's also some AMD MXMs out there that apparently worked, but it's rather uncommon unless it's the 7970m/8970m/m290x. It does give the benefit of consuming less power while havinf much more GPU power to one's disposition. The other unused MXM slot can even be repurpose for an NVME slot after purchasing the appropriate adapter. It's a fun little unit to dig into! Nice to see you give a hand into this :).
I have a couple generations newer Alienware that came with an i7-6700HQ and a GTX 1070. It served as my daily driver PC for a few years. My daughter is using it for a game server right now. It has run very well. Let's be honest, there is not a whole lot of difference between the 4th and the 6th gen core laptop CPUs, other than die size. I have personally seen benchmark numbers where the 4700 outperformed the 6700. The same also applies to the 4930mx, which Dawid replaced the 4700 with, vs the 6700. Both of the older CPUs can boost to a higher clock speed than the newer 6700. This was during the height of the Intel complacency era, especially on the mobile/laptop side of things. If the 1070 will fit in the laptop, it should give it quite a boost to the graphics and gameplay.
The problem with the 2080 isn't that it is "too much" but rather pretty damn rare in the right format for this machine never mind the eye watering cost but at least those mxm versions come with 16gb of vram for the quadro version. They are more compatible than the Pascal generation from what people have tested thus far.
Dawid Does Tech Stuff is like “Top Gear” for computers. The format, the jokes, the music and the close all remind me of my favorite automotive show. Love your stuff keep up the good work.
I don't know why the manufacturers gave up at amazing upgradeable gaming laptops... The possibility to upgrade laptops CPUs and GPUs, not only RAM and HDD/SSD was extraordinary.
Sadly, those "modern" games you tested aren't optimized to use SLI. You have to use old games that had SLI in mind when developed. The 2nd GPU is essentially useless.
Had an old Dell XPS laptop which was very similar to this and I was upgrading it and using it until only a few months ago. Sucked the power through it though....was sorry to see it go. Thanks for the video, Dawid 🙂
step one design your own bad ass laptops made with steel cases so they last longer and are more durable and then magically you will get more sales because you'll be competing with apple then by making super durable laptops that only last longer then non apple laptops and have more power then those sissy girl apple laptops💪💪 step two give Dawid a free laptop so your laptops are on his channel beating out those sissy girl laptops with higher gaming framrates
I used to have that same laptop. It had a 3rd gen i7 and dual gtx765m in SLI. I only just finally sold it last year. It was a great machine that got many years of heavy use. Best laptop I've ever owned, I kinda miss it.
You should have defiantly replaced those old thermal pads, for the thermal paste replacement I'd recommend PTM7950 (industrial PCM) which whilst pricey for the cost of the surface coverage but the reality is that's got a great thermal conductivity, is rated for a long time and actually gets better with age (also lasts a lot better than traditional thermal pads/liquids). That's why companies like Lenovo are switching over to it in their high end devices...
maybe the laptop not getting enough juice thats whay it crashes ? thats the one drawback though , upgradability at a cost ..though i have a similar laptop (more like a dtr) that uses a desktop proc ,which is not too bad , but the gpu 😅
i3 2nd gen is probably socketed, so you can upgrade it to i7. Ram should be upgradable too. If you have mini pcie slot on the motherboard or expresscard slot then you can connect external GPU
Will connnecting an external 240Hz monitor increase FPS? Also, try to use with 1 x 765m & 1 x 850m as the Dell power AC adapter may not powerful enough.
Lol, power limit throttling the entire time, neither of the GPUs were not even getting close to their max power rating, so simply adding a beefier GPU in there isn't the end all and be all, you also need to consider your power brick
These laptop videos, man. I feel like Dawid has invented a new genre of horror, the tech horror genre. The only thing scarier than taking apart a laptop, replacing components, putting it back together and realizing you forgot something is opening up a laptop and realizing that you can't replace anything, lol.
This is proper laptop upgrading. I hope that framework with their 16 inch model can bring something approaching this kind of upgradeability back to the market
CPU/GPU upgradeable laptops is something I have craved for decades. Yes, decades. When Nvidia went with the MXM design and some laptop brands made some units with socketed CPUs, I got excited. Then the expense, per generation, was insane. It was better over all to buy a new laptop. But seriously, re-pad that too. Most of all, keep your sense of humor. It keeps me coming back. You have put fun back into tech channels.
As one of the OG owners of this beast (the 765m version), godspeed "brick." It was my daily driver 2013 - 2018. We went well beyond Jupiter, and back again, together.
You are doing gods work Anna, I believe I asked you in the last video to tell your husband to make a video and upgrade as much as possible this monstrosity of the laptop and here we go we have a video, tell Dawid he has the best wife :D
I got one of those laptops for free a few years ago, someone listed it as not working and free to collect. I recognised the fault and went with a friend to pick it up, on the drive home I explained to him how to fix it and by the time I was home I had a fully working alienware M17 R3 :)
2:49 I’d assume that’s DDR3 right? As it tops off at 1600mhz whereas DDR4 is 2133 base speed and this is pretty old hardware not sure if it supports DDR4.
Back when gaming laptops were actually trying to give you desktop power by using almost desktop parts! It is crazy seeing the parts in this thing after working on modern laptops!
I had my Clevo P370EM3 GTX680M SLI upgraded to GTX980M SLI and could have even went further by modding the frame to fit larger MXM card. Downside was that I needed modded BIOS and vBIOS that made graphics drivers needed to be modded as well.
I have one of these, runs perfectly to this day. Probably even better than my modern laptop (AW M17). This was the last fully upgradeable laptop out there AFAIK, and its why I haven't gotten rid of it. I just remember my friend with a desktop GTX 980, was surprised when my laptop would perform better than his desktop xD. I pretty much maxed it out except for the GPUs. but you can easily get a single 1080 running in it. Nowadays everything is fully soldered on the mobo even wifi cards(which are notorious to going bad), and you dont get to do stuff like this.
I wonder if the limited upgrade percentage could be due to the power supply limitations? iirc, you can even overclock most of the i7 HQ/MQ variants at the time. Maybe 200 MHz at most, but it may be usable when you throw essentially 2 desktop GTX 680s in SLI in a laptop.
The 880m's were known to run really hot. My 2nd Alienware 18 had the dual 880m's and I was very lucky to have 2 good cards that didn't throttle like crazy like a lot of other people did. My 3rd one with the 4940 and dual 980m's was a beast and I wish I still had it. It was my favorite computer of any form factor ever and modding it and tricking games that didn't support sli into using sli was fantastic. The AW18 was the last true Alienware laptop. After this they stopped pushing boundaries and became more run of the mill like the rest of the market.
Who remembers when laptop CPUs came on a funky daughterboard MXM type deal?..I still use my Pentium II laptop with a BSEL mod to a whopping 333Mhz to this day!
I kind of wonder if the stability issues and possibly some performance was left on the table due to power limits. I noticed the one GPU in use was between 70 and 100w when it was rated for 175w? Wonder if you only had one GPU in there if it would be more stable and maybe the one GPU could use more power and clock higher?
6:00 u defenitely should have done a copper shim mod. and a copper heatpipe mod that are glued to the cooler with thermal glue. On the heatpipe u can install the small copper shims / heatinks. helps a ton!! also good thermal paste like cryonaut would help.
The difference between 880M SLI and a single 965M is just insane. On my 15 R2 i can play Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest settings, 900P with FSR on balanced and still get double the framerate of the 880M's on low 1080P. Sadly, the R2 doesn't use swappable graphics cards, because they had the Graphics Amplifier gimmick that came with it.
Have you ever tried running one of the cards as a dedicated physx card? I have done this with some success depending on how games have implemented it into the game/engine. For some reason people only think of SLI for multiple GPU configs.
The Blue Screen said "Inaccessible Boot Device" which makes me wonder if it was missing a driver. I had a RAID setup on my computer but when I did a firmware update it wouldn't boot into that drive. I believe that it was because when the firmware was updated it messed up something and I needed to get a new driver.
LOL i can't believe how difficult it was to tear that machine down. I had the predecessor to that model (M17x R4) and had just 2 screws to remove from the bottom panel and it exposed (almost) everything worth changing. When the stock AMD 7970 GPU died, i was able to source and install a GTX 980. That gave it another 3-4 years worth of life.
Did this exact thing to my Alienware 17 dropped and 880m I wonder if the bios would support 10 or 20 series granted you would have to get a working heat sync and appropriate power draw.
Do you know the Axioo Pongo Laptop? They coming in 2023 with desktop cpu and it can upgraded just like normal PC desktop. But it's local brand laptop in Indonesia, Idk if they sell outside Indonesia or not
Dell has a RAID ON Feature enabled by default, but you cant install Windows with it on most of the time because the driver is not installed, so you have to switch to AHCI Mode and if the BIOS gets reset you have to switch to AHCI again because RAID is default
I wanted a clevo p870 for so long. Apparently they aren't planning any more mxm laptops cause intel dropped support or something like that. The original p870 came with a z170 chipset and the 6700k. You can bios mod it to accept up to the 9900k. That one came with 900 series gpu's, but if you solder a 3.3v line to the mxm slots you can install GTX 1080's. Newer ones don't need that, but where's the fun in that. The msi 1070 doesn't even need that mod, but gotta go for the best. The rtx 2080 mod has been done, rip sli though. I think even 3080 is now an option. Now that was a good laptop to get back then. The actual challenge is soldering heatpipes to the base plate of another cooler to make the rtx cards fit. I wanted one so much but used was the only option for me and they basically don't exist for sale unless you wizard your way thru eBay. I have to go itx and strap a monitor on there now I guess since ryzen+mxm was never made. This upgrade could have been much better if Kepler was ditched in favor of at least Maxwell. Kepler doesn't run new games well.
10:50 I think those avg and 1% benchmarks aren’t the cyberpunk ones 😅 fun video to watch though, I love seeing u tear down and potentially seeing an explosion or something gone wrong
I was laughing so much that I didn't realize it was already the end. Wait, are we still talking about the video or last night when I went home with that clown from the bar?
Actual workshop here. I had a very similar model one of those come into the workshop with two dead GPU's (fail stress tests). The customer did not want to fork out the $$$ for new (or used) GPU's and didn't really game much anyhow. Amazingly the thing worked with just onboard video. So now there is one of those monster Alienware units out there with Intel graphics only.
I've actually got lots of experience with mxm cards, I have a great many of them that I've pulled put of various HP, dell, and clever notebooks. I've got a quadro p4000 running in a dell precision m6700 that also got a 120hz screen swap and 16gb of ram. The mod to the driver to make it works is surprisingly easy and it runs even today's games great.
The inaccessible boot drive happens quite often with DELL devices if the BIOS was reseted to defaults. They image windows with some strange RAID settings even when there is just one drive installed. You should have toggled the RAID/storage Mode before reinstalling Windows. This COULD have saved you a coupple of hours.
i thought there where 980 cards available mind you after some considerations i hadnt thought off maybe it wouldnt have fit or been to much for the heatsinks and power draw for it to handle, not sure bout the RTX boards think there a different size and position of mosfets etc... probably completely different.
Well, on one hand, now I know it is possible to upgrade certain old laptops. On the other hand, it's totally not worth it and expensive. But at least now we know! Thanks to Dawid, he's the best.
You'll need to keep this laptop in a trough of dry ice to keep it cool now ! 😲 You might want to isolate that long bridge flex cable with Kapton tape to stop it from melting !
I think we deserve to see 2080 upgraded version too
Probably putting two 2080 can make it work like a modern pc even better 💀
It can’t run them sadly…
Should be fine with a single. You can use the other slot for nvme card and skip the sli
@@MyStuffWasNotAvailableDawid can make it work i believe in him
@@lucidnonsense942 It doesn’t fit.
4930mx is running higher frequency and cooler than the original 4700/4710mq so that's a plus.
Last official GPU supported by Dell is the 980m which is much better than the 880m
Awesome video!
Last official is the 980m SLI. But you can get a single 1060 or a 1070 in there. A 1060 fits without issues but you need to modify the heatsink to fit a 1070.
I had a 980m!
@@InfectedChris Alienware 18 and the M18x R1/R2 are still my favorite "old school" Alienware laptops. It was a somber day when I sold off my last one with a 4930mx and 970m in it to upgrade.
Yes, this! Let's all watch the video's commercials a hundred times so Dawid can afford it. :-)
@@lagoleer Yeah. And Dell screwed everyone with the Area 51m by not supporting upgrades even though it had a socketed CPU and MXM GPU. You were stuck with Intel 9th gen so the most you can get in there was a 9900k and a GTX 2080 Super. Dell didn't release the DGF cards to anyone else like how MXM was available.
I have a M18x R2 which I went from a 3720qm and 680m SLI to a 3940xm with 980m SLI and a AW18 which already has a 4930mx but I upgraded the GPU's from 780m SLI to a single 1070.
It's really sad how many of these new machines don't even have replaceable storage. I am really concerned about the future of modularity and upgradeability especially with the succes of the M1.
@@lucidnonsense942 only problem is price, I would love one but will never afford one.
@@dakota48 perhaps get one used
Are you talking about macs? I haven't seen any Windows laptop with soldered storage, especially gaming laptops, they even come with two m.2 slots.
@@JimmyZeng I think low end laptops like the ones used for Chromebooks has it, which can at times also be sold as Windows laptop.
Perhaps also various ARM based laptops (which ironically enough is what the Apple is as well, lol).
@epepepe well Steam is starting to be a thing so it is slowly being possible to use them for more intensive tasks than basic webbrowsing, then there are also Android apps.
But generally speaking no, lol.
Framework does have a Chromebook version of their 13 inch laptop. I am not sure if you can upgrade the motherboard/CPU (it is physically possible but I am not sure if the OS still works etc.) but I am pretty sure you can upgrade RAM and storage.
Dawid Does Tech Stuff : the GTX 880M 8 GB is impressive considering that it was launched in 2014 based on the Kepler GTX 700 series architecture from 2013 and it had a rich amount of 8 GB VRAM which in uncharacteristic for Nvidia to give to us consumers....though that 122 Watt TDP is worrying since it's a discrete GPU but a mobile GPU nontheless.
That TDP isn't as bad as most would think as I've been daily using an 130w RX580 mxm for the past year and a half without issue.
confuses me how they managed 8gb of vram in the 880m but not the 980ti
@@MA-jz4yc It's called Nvidia anti-consumer tactic or Nvidias product EOL control :).
It's absolutely insane that it's drawing more than a 4060 will draw on average, while delivering less than a quarter of the performance
Forgetting the SLI bridge has the same spirit as forgetting the IO shield in a super complicated PC build
Yea in one scenario half of your GPU's are not going to do anything (back when SLI was usable in games) And in the other you clearly have not seen the desperation and savage no mobo out IO shield mounting of desperation. I like to see someone try and get that SLI bridge in that laptop in place without taking apart the laptop and it still works after the fact.
I have see enough IO shield war crimes. Metal scissors is not the right way to go about it. OR WORSE!
Gotta be the dumbest feeling (forgetting the IO shield).
not even close mate trust me i have both a complicated pc and an alienware m14x
It's not like you can play games that need SLI anyway
@@TheDiner50Just so you know they're called tin snips, "The more you know" 😅😂😂😂
The SLI scaling on GTA V didn't seem to be working properly with the new GPUs. If you look at the usage it seems perfectly split and only using around 50% of each card where as with the old GPUs it was using 60-95% usage on each GPU. SLI was non-existent on BFV and CP77 on both but I assume that's just because SLI was dead by the time those games came out.
Probably sli overhead from the game or drivers or a CPU bottleneck in GTA 5.
Can it be that the gpu's are only getting 75watts? Not the 120 they should have? That seems to me the most obvious reason the performance is not up to scratch. But it is just my guess...
@@richardheumann1887 MXM does 150 watt max, it’s not the 75 you get from a pcie slot
Actually if you are tech savvy it is easy to fix SLI scaling in most games if not all at a rate of 98% scaling when you edit the driver settings like AFR, and other specific profiles for independent games...
I've had this laptop from 2014 to 2021 when it finally died. Had it on i7 4700MQ, GTX 760 SLI, and 24GB RAM. Never upgraded it, never needed to
How many newer games could it play?
In 2021, I remember playing GTA 5 and BF 5 in 1080p comfortably in low/medium settings. at least 60fps consistent. Mostly just played MMO's (WoW, ff14), Esports titles, steam indy games, and emulators. Everything still ran buttery smooth.
@@anthonyzheng7274 Damn thats many years it lasted!. Personally me i dont buy more newer expensive gaming laptops as i have converted to cloud gaming
yea old tech lasts for a long time. new stuff now are all made to fail so you'd keep buying replacements
@@anthonyzheng7274 I definitely agree with that thing you said with old tech vs newer tech longevity. It is the same kinda with cars
The bsod at 1:03 isn't a bad windows install, its the sata configuration mode in the bios. It can either be set to achi or raid on, depends on the device but usually swapping the mode will fix the blue screen.
I love Dawid’s baseless optimism. Really giving it his all out here on the computer webs.
“Baseless optimism” sounds like a bit like a back handed compliment. 😂
@@DawidDoesTechStuff It might be. 😀 Still enjoy the videos you make.
Can't wait for him to do this on a framework laptop 16
itll be so easy to do
I want their new prototype laptop.
Three minute video lol
Why? You're not actually doing anything special, and quite frankly it's a massive ripoff. For the price of the upgrade, you could practically just buy a newer refurb model from a competitor. Except, then you get a full warranty, and you can sell or keep an entire second laptop.
It's a cool idea, but dumb as hell when you realize the price of the motherboard/cpu
@epepepe yeah, people are paying for the platform and the cause (right to repair). Everyone has had a favorite laptop that they wish could stay alive forever (IBM fans) and i'd absolutely pay to get a device I can keep, be comfortable with, and upgrade it as I see fit.
If you are young you won't get it because change is usually exciting... But i wish I could still be using my 17" gateway from the core2 days. And I have older 15" dells I'd like to be using too (yeah I like big laptops).
765m to 880m ... holy crap that would have been an expensive upgrade back in the day 😀
Back in 2013 I had the M18x R2 with dual GTX 675M's and I upgraded to dual 780M's, which was the best mobile card at the time. It cost me $1500AUD
@@mbrooker79 yeah that sounds about right. Cool that it was upgradable though 😁
Damn dual 780m's in a laptop how was
Were the thermals?
@@the.littlest.toaster pretty cool. The M18x had excellent cooling, which you'd expect in such a huge 'laptop'. I then upgraded it to a single GTX 1070 and it even handled that perfectly fine with the stock fan/heatsink. Stayed in the mid to high 70deg range under load.
@@mbrooker79 damn that's good temps did it have a i7?
The Dell Precision M4800 and M6800 are also infamous for being the last laptops to have all these upgradability, and they are also laptop DIY modders dream laptops, and now you can get them much cheaper than ever
the dell precision m4800 up to how many gb of graphics could you upgrade it?
Indeed you are correct, and the somewhat lacking community (compared to ThinkPads) are still finding ways of expanding these systems. The M6800 can now have 10, yes TEN, storage options onboard the laptop itself through the use of adapter boards and obviously sacrificing some other components. And that's before you use the USB and eSATA ports!
I've heard that you need to hack the BIOS to actually upgrade the graphics boards past what's on the spec sheet. Is that true? (And obviously the most powerful boards you'd be able to get would be the highest-spec one that the M6800 shipped with because no one was making custom third-party boards.)
Should've got one of the Iris Pro-equipped CPUs with the 128MB eDRAM; iirc it works the same as on the 5775c, the extra cache helps out in games a lot just like it does on the modern X3D Ryzens even if it's dog slow by comparison. Also, Adlink makes an RTX A4500 MXM card that is essentially just a 16GB 3070 on a power diet that might be worth a look. If you still wanted to make use of the multi-gpu part then your best bet is probably 1080's though SLI in [current year] is going to be a joke no matter what, but as another commenter said this all depends if the support after the 980M is just "unofficial" or if it literally doesn't work at all.
2024 edit: there's a site called X-Vision that sells up to 3080M MXM cards now, as well as AMD options like the RX 6600, which would be far easier to source.
last offical support for this machine was an 980m, anything newer and you have to mod the bios to get it to POST
And also, the slot only able to get ~95w of power to the card, so newer MxM card will have problem with power draw and will brick and shut the whole laptop down
I'm surprised that mxm is still supported after so long despite the Nvidia announcement about not supporting it after Pascal
@@YuukiHotaruu That's unfortunate, and dawid failed to google for the non-malware 3060m driver so I'm not exactly hopeful for a bios mod lol
@@mcslender2965 It's so incredibly niche that it basically isn't. The modern ampere quadro cards are basically for datacenters only where they're used like SXM cards without the proprietary connector (which is why they're not sold retail as far as I can tell) or cost associated with A/H100 tier chips. and the other stuff is just Clevo and that one Arc A370M. All are so low volume that the price tag is really stupid everywhere you can find them.
There are no Socket G3 Iris Pro processors, they're all BGA-1364. That option doesn't exist.
i always love to see old content brought back to life, even if it's "not worth" the money
it's a shame there are so few laptops that can change parts out like this, make a monster david
a monster
Sisyphs = dude in green myths that got stuck pushing the boulder up the hill in tartarus just to have it roll back down over and over for all eternity. Modern sisyphean task is fixing a laptop, and every time you put it back together there's a different part you forgot to put back in. So, you spend an eternity tearing it down and rebuilding it.
I Love The Good Old Laptops They Are So Easy To Upgrade
And also very very very expensive, only very high end laptop get mxm graphics cards, and only Alienware does cpu shenanigans every once in a while
gaming laptops are still huge and heavy with shit battery life. Not all of them of course. But the huge ones should have such upgradability.
framework 16 will bring back that availability to newer laptops
@@kirillivanov9638 7840HS 4nm AMD and 4nm 4080m laptop is a good performance machine that can last 2x than intel ones if OEM want them to last so.
@Blue efficiency
One thing I've always wondered is why Nvidia's mobile cards of this period (and Maxwell) had so much more VRAM than their desktop equivalents.
I love how only one gpu is doing any work in game if you notice one gpu is pinned and the other is doing basically nothing at like 13% so he's using windows 10 with directx 12 which hates and says no to sli working at all
I think the best value GPU in those are probably Pascal MXMs. There's a bit of vBios flash involved, but it does work rather well. Alternatively, there's also some AMD MXMs out there that apparently worked, but it's rather uncommon unless it's the 7970m/8970m/m290x. It does give the benefit of consuming less power while havinf much more GPU power to one's disposition. The other unused MXM slot can even be repurpose for an NVME slot after purchasing the appropriate adapter.
It's a fun little unit to dig into! Nice to see you give a hand into this :).
7970m is a high failure rate part like next to Firepro M8900 levels of fail but the later versions of the card fair better and often have 4gb of vram.
Would love to see how far you can get in terms of GPU upgrade. A 2080 might be too much but I can see sth like a 1070 or 1080 works in this Alienware
I have a couple generations newer Alienware that came with an i7-6700HQ and a GTX 1070. It served as my daily driver PC for a few years. My daughter is using it for a game server right now. It has run very well. Let's be honest, there is not a whole lot of difference between the 4th and the 6th gen core laptop CPUs, other than die size. I have personally seen benchmark numbers where the 4700 outperformed the 6700. The same also applies to the 4930mx, which Dawid replaced the 4700 with, vs the 6700. Both of the older CPUs can boost to a higher clock speed than the newer 6700. This was during the height of the Intel complacency era, especially on the mobile/laptop side of things. If the 1070 will fit in the laptop, it should give it quite a boost to the graphics and gameplay.
The problem with the 2080 isn't that it is "too much" but rather pretty damn rare in the right format for this machine never mind the eye watering cost but at least those mxm versions come with 16gb of vram for the quadro version. They are more compatible than the Pascal generation from what people have tested thus far.
Oh the pain of forgetting the SLI bridge, I felt that!
Forgetting the SLI bridge cable made me laugh much more that it should of haha. Love these videos
Suffering is often funny. 😂
@@DawidDoesTechStuff 🤣🤣
Dawid Does Tech Stuff is like “Top Gear” for computers. The format, the jokes, the music and the close all remind me of my favorite automotive show. Love your stuff keep up the good work.
Thank you! That’s a huge compliment. Glad you enjoy the videos. 😃
i always find it fun to upgrade something to the factory limits!
I don't know why the manufacturers gave up at amazing upgradeable gaming laptops... The possibility to upgrade laptops CPUs and GPUs, not only RAM and HDD/SSD was extraordinary.
No kidding man, I had a ROG G751J laptop that thing was a absolute beast with a 970. I ended up trading for a equal desktop.
Capitalism. Why sell upgrades, when you can force consumers to just buy a whole new laptop?
You get a weird norbook, after 4 years you need it to be 3 % faster ?
Never upgrade them please, not worth it.
Sadly, those "modern" games you tested aren't optimized to use SLI. You have to use old games that had SLI in mind when developed. The 2nd GPU is essentially useless.
I was noticing it was going 99% gpu 1 and maybe 20% gpu2
This laptop is insane. Shame they don’t make ones like this anymore
Upgradable laptops is a waste, we all know that.
Just get newer model when it's old !
What Gaming Laptop u use now ? Not only now ?
Happy to see the MXM GPU and CPU upgrade suggestions put into play!
Had an old Dell XPS laptop which was very similar to this and I was upgrading it and using it until only a few months ago. Sucked the power through it though....was sorry to see it go. Thanks for the video, Dawid 🙂
step one design your own bad ass laptops made with steel cases so they last longer and are more durable and then magically you will get more sales because you'll be competing with apple then by making super durable laptops that only last longer then non apple laptops and have more power then those sissy girl apple laptops💪💪
step two give Dawid a free laptop so your laptops are on his channel beating out those sissy girl laptops with higher gaming framrates
I have a top end 2014 alienware 18. Talk about two upgradable gpus in one laptop.
Edit:
Specs are
2x gtx 880m sli
i7 4940mx
32gb ram
1tb hd
500gb ssd
Same here, except I have purchased my machine about a year ago for little over $200
I used to have that same laptop. It had a 3rd gen i7 and dual gtx765m in SLI. I only just finally sold it last year. It was a great machine that got many years of heavy use. Best laptop I've ever owned, I kinda miss it.
Do the 765m "SLI" in the Lenovo Y510p perform anywhere near the ones in this Alienate system?
Alienware and Razor are two brand names I stay far away from. Iv recently added Asus to this list for how they handled the 7800X3D situation
You should have defiantly replaced those old thermal pads, for the thermal paste replacement I'd recommend PTM7950 (industrial PCM) which whilst pricey for the cost of the surface coverage but the reality is that's got a great thermal conductivity, is rated for a long time and actually gets better with age (also lasts a lot better than traditional thermal pads/liquids). That's why companies like Lenovo are switching over to it in their high end devices...
You should 100% try the 2080, i feel like that would be really cool to see. -edit 1 2080, not sli, just to see the difference :)
3:11 really giving me skylander vibes
maybe the laptop not getting enough juice thats whay it crashes ? thats the one drawback though , upgradability at a cost ..though i have a similar laptop (more like a dtr) that uses a desktop proc ,which is not too bad , but the gpu 😅
Your alienware videos have all been entertaining, I'd like to see more videos on old alienwares. Great video
Meanwhile Me gaming with a laptop that is 11 years old and it has i3 2310m and 6gb ram with 500gb hdd and intel hd 3000💀
Which games are you playing?
same
@@raaga1994not much 😂 fr tho I feel his pain
i3 2nd gen is probably socketed, so you can upgrade it to i7. Ram should be upgradable too. If you have mini pcie slot on the motherboard or expresscard slot then you can connect external GPU
@@balmashev93 VRM and cooling may not support it
Will connnecting an external 240Hz monitor increase FPS? Also, try to use with 1 x 765m & 1 x 850m as the Dell power AC adapter may not powerful enough.
Try using external gpu with this would be a nice experiment if possible
The finger in the opening lives rent free in my mind constantly. Is it ever going to touch that mirrored surface???
Lol, power limit throttling the entire time, neither of the GPUs were not even getting close to their max power rating, so simply adding a beefier GPU in there isn't the end all and be all, you also need to consider your power brick
These laptop videos, man. I feel like Dawid has invented a new genre of horror, the tech horror genre. The only thing scarier than taking apart a laptop, replacing components, putting it back together and realizing you forgot something is opening up a laptop and realizing that you can't replace anything, lol.
This is proper laptop upgrading. I hope that framework with their 16 inch model can bring something approaching this kind of upgradeability back to the market
Thank you so much Dawid for doing a follow up video on this laptop🥰
It's cool to see the whole process but probably it's better value to buy a more modern one 😅
CPU/GPU upgradeable laptops is something I have craved for decades. Yes, decades. When Nvidia went with the MXM design and some laptop brands made some units with socketed CPUs, I got excited. Then the expense, per generation, was insane. It was better over all to buy a new laptop.
But seriously, re-pad that too.
Most of all, keep your sense of humor. It keeps me coming back. You have put fun back into tech channels.
This actually got me wondering if my 2014 Alienware laptop was upgradable, until I heard the eye-watering cost to upgrade yours. 🤑
As one of the OG owners of this beast (the 765m version), godspeed "brick." It was my daily driver 2013 - 2018. We went well beyond Jupiter, and back again, together.
Eyy good job.
He did have me biting my finger nails when he was working on those GPU cards and my finger nails were ALREADY very short beforehand. OUTCH!! 😵😂
@@arthurmann578 same!! Especially when he had to redo it for the SLI.
@@AnnaDoes Lol! Glad he decided NOT to show that then! 😂
You are doing gods work Anna, I believe I asked you in the last video to tell your husband to make a video and upgrade as much as possible this monstrosity of the laptop and here we go we have a video, tell Dawid he has the best wife :D
@@kigasdj2 aww I’ll definitely tell him 😎
I got one of those laptops for free a few years ago, someone listed it as not working and free to collect. I recognised the fault and went with a friend to pick it up, on the drive home I explained to him how to fix it and by the time I was home I had a fully working alienware M17 R3 :)
something about those cyberpunk scores at the end doesnt seem right 🤔
2:49 I’d assume that’s DDR3 right? As it tops off at 1600mhz whereas DDR4 is 2133 base speed and this is pretty old hardware not sure if it supports DDR4.
Skididi bom bom bom
Back when gaming laptops were actually trying to give you desktop power by using almost desktop parts! It is crazy seeing the parts in this thing after working on modern laptops!
First
I was first, I commented and refreshed the page, mine was the only one.
Lol it literally says 5m ago on mine and 4 on yours...
@@blackcobra123 yours says 8 min, mine says 8 min.
@@EpicCheeseball fight fight fight fight fight
I was FIRST. I typed my comment in invisible ink though.
The SLI male connector looks corroded on one of the boards. 3:53 Put some vinegar on it.
I had my Clevo P370EM3 GTX680M SLI upgraded to GTX980M SLI and could have even went further by modding the frame to fit larger MXM card. Downside was that I needed modded BIOS and vBIOS that made graphics drivers needed to be modded as well.
11 mins in exactly i am still wondering if you upgraded the drivers or not
I have one of these, runs perfectly to this day. Probably even better than my modern laptop (AW M17). This was the last fully upgradeable laptop out there AFAIK, and its why I haven't gotten rid of it. I just remember my friend with a desktop GTX 980, was surprised when my laptop would perform better than his desktop xD. I pretty much maxed it out except for the GPUs. but you can easily get a single 1080 running in it.
Nowadays everything is fully soldered on the mobo even wifi cards(which are notorious to going bad), and you dont get to do stuff like this.
Dawid I think you have upped you game for past couple of months you content keeps getting interesting which I love
I wonder if the limited upgrade percentage could be due to the power supply limitations?
iirc, you can even overclock most of the i7 HQ/MQ variants at the time. Maybe 200 MHz at most, but it may be usable when you throw essentially 2 desktop GTX 680s in SLI in a laptop.
I KNEW HE WOULD FORGET THE SLI BRIDGE!!
Btw 900-1000 series cards would almost certainly work!
That "ops" at 6:30 got me every time 😂
The 880m's were known to run really hot. My 2nd Alienware 18 had the dual 880m's and I was very lucky to have 2 good cards that didn't throttle like crazy like a lot of other people did. My 3rd one with the 4940 and dual 980m's was a beast and I wish I still had it. It was my favorite computer of any form factor ever and modding it and tricking games that didn't support sli into using sli was fantastic. The AW18 was the last true Alienware laptop. After this they stopped pushing boundaries and became more run of the mill like the rest of the market.
Who remembers when laptop CPUs came on a funky daughterboard MXM type deal?..I still use my Pentium II laptop with a BSEL mod to a whopping 333Mhz to this day!
I kind of wonder if the stability issues and possibly some performance was left on the table due to power limits. I noticed the one GPU in use was between 70 and 100w when it was rated for 175w? Wonder if you only had one GPU in there if it would be more stable and maybe the one GPU could use more power and clock higher?
5:11 That's a lotta screwing.
6:00 u defenitely should have done a copper shim mod.
and a copper heatpipe mod that are glued to the cooler with thermal glue. On the heatpipe u can install the small copper shims / heatinks.
helps a ton!!
also good thermal paste like cryonaut would help.
ok I lost it over the whole "show dolphins" statemen, that was a beautiful analogy my friend!
I have been waiting for this video! Good stuff!
The difference between 880M SLI and a single 965M is just insane.
On my 15 R2 i can play Cyberpunk 2077 at the highest settings, 900P with FSR on balanced and still get double the framerate of the 880M's on low 1080P.
Sadly, the R2 doesn't use swappable graphics cards, because they had the Graphics Amplifier gimmick that came with it.
Have you ever tried running one of the cards as a dedicated physx card? I have done this with some success depending on how games have implemented it into the game/engine. For some reason people only think of SLI for multiple GPU configs.
i hope frame works can get to the point where stuff like this is affordable. this is awesome.
The Blue Screen said "Inaccessible Boot Device" which makes me wonder if it was missing a driver. I had a RAID setup on my computer but when I did a firmware update it wouldn't boot into that drive. I believe that it was because when the firmware was updated it messed up something and I needed to get a new driver.
oh yeah! Nice that you did that upgrades :)
LOL i can't believe how difficult it was to tear that machine down. I had the predecessor to that model (M17x R4) and had just 2 screws to remove from the bottom panel and it exposed (almost) everything worth changing. When the stock AMD 7970 GPU died, i was able to source and install a GTX 980. That gave it another 3-4 years worth of life.
honestly, for how old this thing is, this thing packs quite a punch, I wouldn't mind using this as a main computer at all
Wow 🤩 a Dawid Alienware upgrade video and a caught hacker …… made my day 🥰💪🤩👍
Did this exact thing to my Alienware 17 dropped and 880m I wonder if the bios would support 10 or 20 series granted you would have to get a working heat sync and appropriate power draw.
Did you check your power adapter wattage? Can it handle the extra load needed for upgraded parts?
Do you know the Axioo Pongo Laptop? They coming in 2023 with desktop cpu and it can upgraded just like normal PC desktop. But it's local brand laptop in Indonesia, Idk if they sell outside Indonesia or not
Dell has a RAID ON Feature enabled by default, but you cant install Windows with it on most of the time because the driver is not installed, so you have to switch to AHCI Mode and if the BIOS gets reset you have to switch to AHCI again because RAID is default
some laptops can user dedicated gpu only on external monitors also you can define in windows on what cpu an app should go
4:00 Good news, an 880M throttled to 75W is going to be a heck of alot faster in most titles, especially modern, than a 770M overclocked to 150w
I wanted a clevo p870 for so long. Apparently they aren't planning any more mxm laptops cause intel dropped support or something like that. The original p870 came with a z170 chipset and the 6700k. You can bios mod it to accept up to the 9900k. That one came with 900 series gpu's, but if you solder a 3.3v line to the mxm slots you can install GTX 1080's. Newer ones don't need that, but where's the fun in that. The msi 1070 doesn't even need that mod, but gotta go for the best. The rtx 2080 mod has been done, rip sli though. I think even 3080 is now an option. Now that was a good laptop to get back then. The actual challenge is soldering heatpipes to the base plate of another cooler to make the rtx cards fit. I wanted one so much but used was the only option for me and they basically don't exist for sale unless you wizard your way thru eBay. I have to go itx and strap a monitor on there now I guess since ryzen+mxm was never made. This upgrade could have been much better if Kepler was ditched in favor of at least Maxwell. Kepler doesn't run new games well.
10:50 I think those avg and 1% benchmarks aren’t the cyberpunk ones 😅 fun video to watch though, I love seeing u tear down and potentially seeing an explosion or something gone wrong
YOOOOOOO its a GTX 800 series in the wild, actually quite rare, only exists on the laptop platform. thank you for this one !!
Used to own one of these which I upgraded to 980M..you just need a modified bios that adds the 980M device/hardware ID's, also a modified gpu driver.
I was laughing so much that I didn't realize it was already the end. Wait, are we still talking about the video or last night when I went home with that clown from the bar?
I did this to my Qosmio X870 laptop. Upgraded from a 670M to a 970M. Still runs decent today.
Actual workshop here. I had a very similar model one of those come into the workshop with two dead GPU's (fail stress tests). The customer did not want to fork out the $$$ for new (or used) GPU's and didn't really game much anyhow. Amazingly the thing worked with just onboard video. So now there is one of those monster Alienware units out there with Intel graphics only.
“This may potentially not go very well.” Sums up this entire channel in one sentence.
Jeeze at 10:50 you dropped the ball with the FPS stats Jarred.
I've actually got lots of experience with mxm cards, I have a great many of them that I've pulled put of various HP, dell, and clever notebooks. I've got a quadro p4000 running in a dell precision m6700 that also got a 120hz screen swap and 16gb of ram. The mod to the driver to make it works is surprisingly easy and it runs even today's games great.
The inaccessible boot drive happens quite often with DELL devices if the BIOS was reseted to defaults. They image windows with some strange RAID settings even when there is just one drive installed. You should have toggled the RAID/storage Mode before reinstalling Windows. This COULD have saved you a coupple of hours.
i thought there where 980 cards available mind you after some considerations i hadnt thought off maybe it wouldnt have fit or been to much for the heatsinks and power draw for it to handle, not sure bout the RTX boards think there a different size and position of mosfets etc... probably completely different.
2:16 I thought this was one of those one in a million reload animations until I realized the hand wasnt on screen lol
Well, on one hand, now I know it is possible to upgrade certain old laptops. On the other hand, it's totally not worth it and expensive. But at least now we know! Thanks to Dawid, he's the best.
i swapped the sli 770m's from my m18x out with some 980m's from aliexpress and all i had to do was dremel the heatsinks a bit and the cards work fine.
You'll need to keep this laptop in a trough of dry ice to keep it cool now ! 😲
You might want to isolate that long bridge flex cable with Kapton tape to stop it from melting !