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Alienware is still under bed in a box. Thought i would ask my AI about it; The reply; that Alienware story is painfully familiar, and everything you described matches exactly what happens when an M18x R1/R2 BIOS gets corrupted by IGFX memory changes or BAR toggling. Those machines were absolute beasts, but their BIOS was fragile, and once it went, you were basically locked out unless you had the tools to reflash the chip directly. Let me walk through what happened — because your description is textbook M18x failure behaviour. ⭐ Why changing IGFX memory or BAR bricked your Alienware M18x BIOS The M18x had a very specific vulnerability: 1. IGFX memory (128MB / 256MB) was tied to the system’s UMA region Changing it altered: the memory map the PCIe address space the Optimus mux routing the BIOS’s internal device table If the BIOS didn’t like the new configuration, it would: fail to initialise IGFX fail to initialise PEG fail to initialise the mux fail to initialise the EC (embedded controller) fail POST entirely This is exactly the “black screen, fans spin, no POST” behaviour you saw. 2. Enabling BAR (Base Address Register) on a muxless system BAR resizing changes: PCIe MMIO allocation GPU memory aperture address space mapping On a system with: IGFX dual discrete GPUs muxless Optimus routing …changing BAR could corrupt the BIOS’s PCIe device map. Once that happens, the BIOS can’t enumerate GPUs → POST fails → brick. ⭐ Why clearing CMOS didn’t fix it On the M18x: CMOS reset only clears settings but IGFX memory and BAR changes affect firmware-level tables So even if you: removed the battery shorted the pads held power for 60 seconds removed RAM tried blind recovery …the corrupted firmware tables remained. This is why it never came back. ⭐ Why the YouTube repair guy couldn’t fix it The M18x BIOS chip is: soldered not socketed requires hot-air rework requires a CH341A or RT809H programmer requires the correct Dell HDR → BIN conversion requires the correct ME region requires the correct EC firmware pairing If he didn’t: desolder the chip dump it clean the ME region flash a known-good BIN reflow the chip verify the EC pairing …then the machine would come back exactly as you sent it. Which is what happened. Most “YouTube repair guys” don’t have the tools or the knowledge to fix Alienware BIOS corruption — especially on the M18x, which is notorious for this exact failure. ⭐ Why the M18x is still recoverable — but only with a proper reflash Your machine isn’t dead. It’s just stuck with a corrupted BIOS. The fix is: Remove the BIOS chip Dump the corrupted firmware Clean the Intel ME region Flash a known-good M18x R1/R2 BIOS BIN Reflow the chip Reassemble and test Once that’s done, the machine will POST again. But it requires: hot-air station flux CH341A programmer SOIC8 clip or direct solder pads correct firmware tools correct Alienware BIOS image This is why DIY attempts never work. ⭐ You didn’t “break” the machine — the BIOS simply corrupted itself The M18x was famous for: IGFX memory corruption mux routing failures Optimus table corruption PCIe address map corruption BAR-related brickings EC desync issues You hit one of the known triggers. It wasn’t your fault — the BIOS was fragile. ⭐ If you ever want it revived I can tell you: which BIOS chip it uses which programmer you need which BIN file is safe how to clean the ME region how to reflash it properly how to avoid future brick triggers Just say the word. And yes — that machine is absolutely recoverable. It’s not dead, just stuck.

What in the world! I come back from a hiatus (thanks @Mr. Fox for reaching out, I miss my brothers here!) and almost everyone is running AMD CPUs. Update on what I've been doing: I got back (never really left, just didn't buy inventory) into the S.I. business at the wrong time, lol. I purchased several Gigabyte mobos and 4070 Ti's, 13700K's, and no one is buying locally. Doesn't help that I went with DDR5 boards and hence, DDR5 RAM and storage prices. LOL, I had people offer to trade puppies, PS5's, old bikes and etc. 😂 Trying to talk to people through my YT community about overclocking is funny. These people are engineers, that can completely build a 3D printer from scratch, but try talking about overclocking RAM, CPUs or GPUs, they aren't interested. However, say anything bad about certain companies like Prusa or Bambu Lab, they attack LOL. I do miss overclocking, but it's no real fun with a 5070 Ti/9070XT. I need the big boy but that comes with big boy pricing. I am hoping Intel's next platform brings me back into the fold. I hope all of you and your families are doing well, mine is doing well. I'm back now, lurking as normal.

News: Everything that's from 2012 to 2019 from Clevo with eDP will work with RTX 30XX, 40XX and even 5080 with the backlight mod v2. X170SM and X170KM don't work! RTX 40XX and any standard MXM 3.0/3.1 won't work! GPU die is cold. Laptop successfully has backlight control with my mod (laptop boots) but nothing on the main screen. Nothing in HDMI and DP. Well on the P775, the RTX 3080/2080 from X170 are working. So the same can be said for the RTX 4070/4090. It means the P775 is compatible with any formats and the X170 is different. Does anybody have the schematics for the X170KM? I want to see if there are any RSVD pins dedicated for "detecting a compatible GPU" or is it just a power failure? Like pads E1 to E4 don't work and the only main power comes from the external power cable? What a shame. Latest compatible MXM laptops are HP Zbook G6 17 and P775 series and one more I forgot...

Yes.. it should be

So I finally got my most wanted laptop, the Acer Aspire 8930g! Came across its existence around the beginning of the year when i was looking at an article about unique looking laptops and this machine was on there and ever since i seen i wanted it SOOO bad lol. But as soon as i looked on Ebay to get one, all i find is parts and I know as a collector that's not a good sign lol. So as months go by and only seeing parts I finally got tired of just waiting. After trying to buy these machines from seller from Europe who didn't want to sell to me, assuming they didn't want to deal with the hassle, which is understandable. So I discovered someone made a post on a Facebook page about PC's etc about last year, about wanting to fix it up. So i message him asking if he had done anything to it and wanted to sell it. Normally, I dont do that but i wanted this machine so bad lol. So he said he hadn't done anything to it and was willing to sell it since he didn't want it just sitting there. So i buy it and i get it today. I go to plug it in and when I tried to do that i noticed it wouldnt go into the port. So i look and the power jack pin was bent. So i straighten out best i can and then it finally plugs in and turn it on since there's no hdd or ssd in it, i just go to BIOS. Just to see it if it works. It boots to Bios. Good. So i get an ssd and put it in and connect my windows installation usb. As soon as it boots into the the installation drive, it shuts off. Im like hmm...that's strange...lets try that again...and it shuts down again. Im like wow...never encountered this before. So i put the usb into another port, same thing. And then another port, same thing. Then, i thought maybe the charger is too much for the machine? (135w adapter). I unplug it and it boots into the installation disk. So then i look up why that is and apparently its a motherboard issue? I really hope not lol. I bought another power jack since maybe its because of the power jack pin being bent. But it probably is the motherboard since it wont boot to windows via just adapter. If it is the motherboard at least i have all the parts and all i gotta do is get another motherboard. This isnt a need help post, as im just posting about my machine in general, but if you want to give advice on what i can do about this not working feel free!

Thanks! I can see some areas to flesh out, but once I started tightening up my Corsair Vengeance 9200 sticks even at 6000 temps shot to 76c and errors so I plan on testing no fan (obvious overheating) vs with the included ram fan to see where it tops out vs the 140mm blaster master. Corsair heatsinks are just the worst.....followed by Patriots. Middle of the pack are G.Skill heat blankets and Kingston (HP). Best I've seen so far are KingBank and TeamGroup. Good call. That setup was just not delivering. Did you check Gear 4 just to remove the MB from the equation? The fact it was open box always leaves a "why was it returned?" on the table. 2200 fclk, 6400 and 8000 are the minimum entry bar for being "acceptable" in my book. I've binned ~7 9800X3D CPUs and sent back 4 and sold off 2 to guildies who don't care about that criteria. You would have to really remove the GPU wrong and it would take at least 50-60+ insertions and removals to notice anything. If you picked up the newer revision with the AIO power connector on board, it has been corrected on that model. It sucks that we sometimes have to parts fish, but for us PnP doesn't cut it. I assume you kept the Astral? Time to play around with mVolt+ with that big 'ole heatsink on it. I've been working with the eval x870e Dark Hero for ~3 days now and 2200/6400 and 8000-8200 is no problem on this delidded 9850X3D. I can't stabilize 8400 but I'll keep trying but I'm asking for unicorn magic sooo....yeah. I really like this motherboard as it is basically the Extreme bones underneath this time around vs the normal Hero and it shows. I may kick it into gear 4 so I can see if the Dark Hero can truly do 9200 since it is rated up to 9600 and I've already tested these Corsair sticks up to 9066 on the z890 Strix-A once in Gear 4 I do the no fan vs included Dark Hero fan vs 140mm fan tests as outlined above. On the other hand, I am also a firm believer that eval and review samples may get an extra bit of QC too..... Hopefully this 9950X3D2 is a 8400+ monster!

"We've all been too ambitious": Sam Altman says our old habits are delaying the great AI transition Altman says people prefer familiar tools as the AI industry struggles to win over skeptics

I ended up with it by accident. I was purchasing a second X870E AORUS Master (also a fantastic motherboard) and it arrived damaged. I ordered it from Central Computer. The large NVMe heatsink had come loose in shipping and slammed around damaging all sorts of stuff. I asked Central to open the box and check the replacement and they opened all 25 boxes they had in stock and the same thing was wrong with all of them. They offered me the X870E-E Strix as a replacement at no cost (normally about $50 more due to the A$$zeus ROG tax) and I accepted. It served me well alongside my first X870E AORUS Master mobo. They performed identically, but the ASUS BIOS is much better than Gigabyte's BIOS. One thing that seems universal with Gigabyte is their BIOS never has a way to disable the onboard WiFi/BT module, and I just hated that. (I do not use either one and the WiFi/BT driver bloatware impairs CPU and memory benchmark scores when that crap is enabled.) I ended up removing the VRM heatsink and pulling out the WiFi card on the Gigabutt mobo as a workaround.

Yeah I liked my setup, but it was kinda weak. Booting 7600 1:2 was a miracle scenario maybe 1 out of 4 tries in that platform. I was kind of bummed about the 2167 fclk, but not a deal breaker for me. That's really good to hear about the motherboard!

If you get a good setup, like what I sold to @Reciever and offered to you, the 9950X3D2 will be great. I do not know why, but is seems like with the X3D chips (all of them) it is harder to find one that has an IMC strong enough to handle 8000 and 2200 FCLK. I had the Strix X870E-E motherboard for a good while and it was a very good motherboard. I think you will like it. It overclocked the memory as well as the X870E Apex does with a good CPU. Ran it 8000-8200 daily. No issues.

One by one they go into history. RIP

I returned all of my stuff to BestBuy a few days ago, I came home spent a couple days browsing and I decided to try some different parts instead. More or less the same setup. (1) 9950X3D2 (Really love this CPU I bought it again could not resist) (2) Asus X870E Strix E-E (This one has Debug LED, does not have a quick release PCIe though and these can damage GPU's with improper removal apparently? (3) Gskill DDR5 2x16GB 6800C34 (This was the same cost as my Corsair kit) Hopefully this setup can hit the measly DDR5 8000. 💀 Almost went 270K Plus route, but I found my self splurging much more on Z890 motherboard cost and Z890 ram cost, which easily bridged the gap from 270KP to 9950X3D2 cost. So the savings of 270KP were just getting stuffed in to fancier board and ram to run the 270KP. I really liked the 9950X3D2!! I ran it for a solid 2 months. Gaming performance with 5090 Astral OC was excellent, it really impressed me so much. I just wasn't happy with my combination of parts, or quality of parts, so it all went back. My original open box X870 Dark Hero was questionable, my CPU bin was questionable, and even my Hynix A-Die SR ram was very questionable. Would like to play around with 8000-8200 Gear 2. Or daily 6400 Gear 1. 😁

CPU does max 1.17V at 4.1GHz all cores at max TDP unlocked

Hi SuperMG, Yes, this method always works for me. The only thing is that the battery on my laptops has to be fully charged; as soon as Windows shows the "Charging" status, it doesn't work. Glad to hear you found a solution that works for you 👍 P.S.: You got a really high-quality chip—the power consumption and temperature readings are fantastic!

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Unless you want to pay me 400USD then yes. I sold all RTX 30XX/40XX heatsinks. I have the CAD files and schematics for the heatsink. I contacted Ythermal manufacturer for that. Since Cicichen couldn't do it. 5090 compatibility is unknown. 5080 can work the same as the 4080/4090.

Are there any plans to design and manufacture a heatsink compatible with the RTX 5090 for the P570WM?

It's the same VBIOS. Same eDP on B rather than on D. The only difference is the wattage. ZRT VBIOS does 115W and X-VSION does 150W. @DynamiteZerghas one ZRT 4090 MXM. It has a sticker that states "150W" but the VBIOS he dumped was a 115W one. ZRT VBIOS is good for weaker heatsinks.

Yes, it is made by X-Vsion. It is not that I have given up on buying from ZRT, but using an import agency would make the cost too high, so I cannot purchase it. By the way, is there any difference in performance between the ZRT version and the X-Vsion version?

This and the previous two WireView Pro 2 I bought on Amazon for the same price as ordering from Thermal Grizzly directly. Roman seems to be leveraging Amazon for distribution of many of his product offerings. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H83WL9JW?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1 I never really tuned 6000 to the max. I got it stable and then focused on increasing speed with the same timings, but here is the 6200 C26 settings I have tuned on the B850MPOWER now using the weak V-Color dual rank 48GB trash kit. You might be able to run the same timings at 6400 with a good single rank kit. If you are using 16GB modules you should be able to tighten up tRFC. This is all I really have so I hope it helps. Edit: the WHEA error above is because I had too much CO negative offset to maximize CPU clock. This hits the 3D cache harder than a non-3D cached CPU. Below (without WHEA error) is the same memory settings with a less aggressive CO undervolt.

You sure that's ZRT... It's X-VSION design lol. The VBIOS chip should be in front of the card not in the back.

I also purchased an RTX 4090 MXM from X-vision. I haven't been able to verify its operation yet.

That was quick delivery. Are they available stateside for the wired version? Do you happen to have your best AM5 6000 2x24GB zentimings tune on hand? I'm in the process of tuning the Vengeance 9200 2x24GB sticks at 6000 now so I want to see how they stack up while dialing them in. I'll then take a small break to benchmark the 9070xt's and 5080 for comparison to the 14900KS / 270k data I've collected in WoW and FO76. Then head on to 2133/6400 and 8000 after. My ETA for actual Hero to Dark Hero swap is probably a week to ten days from now.

eBay chat is working no problem.I was talk on eBay

I had a dickens of a time figuring out where I could mount the WireView Pro 2 Wired version in this small case. It does not look nearly as clean as it would attached to the GPU and I am not "thrilled" with the mounting location. But, I think it is better to have it than to not have it. Maybe in a week or two when I am bored and want something pointless to do I will route the EPDM tubing a slightly different way so it looks less "busy" than it does now. At least it is easily viewed in the current location. Looks like the shunt mod is working, so that's good. MrFox's 3DMark - Steel Nomad DX12 Score 10202 marks with GeForce RTX 5080 @ 3435.00/2250 MHz