Naberius

Do you happen to have a backup of the 1.00v 970m vbios? That one was posted publicly but I wasn't able to track it down recently (and neglected to hold onto it for some reason).

After modding the driver, you'll need to restart with driver signature enforcement disabled. Then you "should" be able to proceed with installation. If it's still giving you trouble, please post which guide and steps you undertook to mod the driver. The process hasn't changed in... like a decade... but different guides are easier to follow than others.

Nicely done! TBH, I still use my M15x as a couch computer (and console emulator... and sometimes another client machine for testing low-end specs on software projects... it gets around). They're surprisingly capable when kitted out. Good choice!

(also, I'd suggest going faster single-gpu if you can over crossfire/SLI; crossfire support was hit and miss and nominally broke after a driver rev I can't recall; not sure it's even properly supported on the legacy channel)

IIRC the power delivery to the CPU was a bit lacking. While I had one, I had to dump the quad-core in favour of a dual-core; The quad-core was over-taxing the board and introducing wild frame-rate problems under load. YMMV but something to watch out for...

That definitely _sounds_ like the way I've had 1070s fail in the past but... do you have another GPU on hand to verify? Pain in the ass step but might answer the question properly...

Hi, NT. I'm working on a list of useful Smokeless UMAF bios options for the M16R1 and M18R1 and could use some assistance cataloguing. If there's interest, I'll keep editing this lead post to reflect submissions. Here's what I have so far: <Intel> Power & Performance > CPU - Power Management Control > CPU Lock Configuration > CFG Lock Suggested setting: <Disabled> Remarks: Not sure if this does anything tbh Power & Performance > CPU - Power Management Control > CPU Lock Configuration > Overclocking Lock Suggested setting: <Disabled> Overclocking Performance Menu > UnderVolt Protection Suggested setting: <Disabled> Remarks: Only available 1.12.1 and earlier. After that, the option is missing from the menu. You can still under-volt from here, however. In Windows, the values you set here will represent the maximum value that ThrottleStop etc will be able to access. We probably need to use grubx64 from here out to change this value. Overclocking Performance Menu > Processor > Per Core Ratio Override OCLV2 = <57/57/54/54/52/52/49/49> Remarks: More-aggressive P-core under-volting may require bringing the 57/57 down to 56/56 Overclocking Performance Menu > Processor > P-core Voltage Offset [P Core] Suggested setting: Varies based on silicone lottery. -50 is generally safe. Overclocking Performance Menu > Ring > Ring Voltage Offset [P Cache] Suggested setting: Varies based on silicone lottery. Broadly safe values not known. Overclocking Performance Menu > GT > GT Voltage Offset [Intel GPU Core] Suggested setting: Varies based on silicone lottery. Broadly safe values not known. CPU Configuration > Legacy Game Compatibility Mode Suggested setting: <Enabled> Remarks: Scroll lock now parks and un-parks your e-cores. Useful if you're having trouble with games throwing their main thread on the e-cores and... don't use scroll lock for anything else. Notes and knowledge gaps: I wasn't able to effectively set the per-core ratio override without first setting the Dell bios to OCLV2 under the performance menu (by effectively I mean that I could set the values but they wouldn't be respected by the time I got to Windows). I'm sure there's something being toggled in there but haven't found it... I've not found a setting for changing the e-cache voltage yet... I've seen some people on the Alienware reddit mention meddling with the ACLL... and I'm not familiar with that acronym. Given that they usually say they set it to 70 from 56, I'm assuming it's one of the power level long limits. I haven't gone looking for it yet... I'd love to find whatever setting is limiting the laptop to drawing only 330w from the PSU (wherein presently when it caps, it pulls from the battery). I have a 780w PSU on hand and would be interested to see how far the M18 would dig in if allowed. Anyway, please say if you'd like to add anything here in terms of useful settings and where to find them...

TBH I ended up selling it; The issues with driving my high refresh rate monitor and VR headsets really limited the laptop's usefulness. Later, I was able to get another MSI v1.0 1070 for a reasonable price. I added some material to the heatink to make better contact with the VRM row and called it a day. And sorry about that, @Ares - I missed your reply and... have since swapped it out. That said, the seller indicated the card was running an MSI vbios. Hard to say whether he was mistaken or they actually did swap in something that might have given the card a shorter-than-you'd-expect lifespan.

(I seem to remember encountering a 280w PSU in the 330w form-factor but I suspect it was either an older spec or made by a third party)

Hi, all. I've noticed that under heavy gaming load (Helldivers 2, specifically - but I've seen a few other titles do it in a less noticeable fashion - looking at you, The Finals) the battery slowly depletes (while the laptop is plugged in). Now, I've read that it's pretty common for gaming laptops to dig into their batteries when the PSU can't deliver the necessary power to field all of the components at full burn. That said, according to HWInfo, a Kill-A-Watt, and a 780w Eurocom PSU (with a little diagnostic LCD on the side), the laptop's not drawing more than ~313w at peak. Granted, this level of battery depletion isn't much of a problem - we're talking like 5% / hour in most cases (under the "normally plugged in" power profile or whatever it's called), it just seems... odd... and like it may be putting unnecessary cycles on the battery. Anyway - has anyone else encountered this? Any speculation as to why the laptop would dig into the battery rather than attempt to draw more from the PSU (especially the over-provisioned, 780w PSU)? And to that, has anyone spotted any PSYS values in UMAF or [can't remember the name of the other way people are modding the bios] that might be capped out below 330w?

Thanks for the tutorial, @ssj92 - Watching it gave me the motivation to finally update to a more recent bios and investigate UMAF. That said, the UnderVolt Protection option is absent after... 1.12.1 seemingly. You can still lock-in an undervolt from UMAF under Overclocking Performance Menu > Processor > P-core Voltage Offset, however. Good enough if you've all ready tested out an undervolt value for the system. I think I saw some reddit chatter about the option being tagged with "hide" from table view (for reasons unknown - might have happened when they restored the undervolt option to the mainline bios interface).

This probably won't help, but it's worth trying because it's quick and represents a strange quirk that affects a number of aw models: both the m17x r4 and 17 r1 would supply more consistent power to oversized/after-market gpus after coming back up from hibernate... (that said, it's probably the resistor... but we can laugh for a bit if something changes post-hib anyway)

Watching with interest! heh heh. But yeah... that offset...

Hi, all My m15x has a new career as a (jenkins agent) build box and (min spec) testing rig. That said, I'd like to re-GPU it because the ancient firepro isn't bringing much to the table. I have a (unmolested) 970m on hand but I seem to recall the m15x not being great at powering it (like, back to pinmod and messing with toggling stealth mode territory). At one point I had a 970m with an undervolted vbios in there (maybe SL7s work?) but it was still a "mess with it every time you're about to do something graphically intensive", which I'd like to avoid for this. Were there other, less flaky/troublesome, options? I noticed m3000ms on ebay for... not much. Anyone mess with those?

This is intensely stupid (perhaps on my part): I was able to get the board to accept a new battery by... firing it up with the new battery, getting the 5 beep rejection, powering down, then (on a lark) powering back up again... Accepted; Just using a regular Duracell CR2032.