Tcoil

Wow... Well done on troubleshooting! I may have surface level knowledge on what you guys are doing but I'm quite impressed on what you guys have accomplished. Looks like newer MXM Cards are soon to be used in R1s!

Approximate cost of upgrade Been a while. Thanks for the info, Panda. After doing some research, the cost to upgrade the laptop to what is equivocally an R2 is ~$622 CAD (Approx. $450 USD) This includes an RTX 3000 card and I7 3820QM. along with buying the laptop, the cost would be around $700 CAD in total. I could sell the leftover parts, but given how they may not be in demand, nor are they 100% condition, it is not likely they would sell (in my opinion) At this point, so far. It may be cheaper for me to buy an R2. Perchance an Alienware 17 R1, although, it wouldn't be as much fun to upgrade...🤔 Would love to know what you guys think!

Hey! Thanks for the guidance! I'll be sure to reach out if I require any assistance in the future! hopefully someone figures out a way around the UEFI support limitations on the M18x R1 in the future soon...

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT know what I'm exactly doing, I am new when it comes to modding laptops. I am looking for help and guidance and to come up with the possibilities of upgrading before I give up. I recently picked up an Alienware M18xR1, hoping to upgrade the components inside and make it work as close to a modern gaming laptop as possible by replacing the SLI 580Ms inside with something like GTX 1070m, or an RTX 3000m, etc. But choosing an R1 was a bit of an oversight on my part. Combing some threads, I have seen the most common conclusion that due to something with the vBIOS/MUX switching in the M18xR1 being different in some way to the M18xR2/M17xR4. I saw claims on a thread that someone was able to use a M5000M in a M18xR1/M17xR3 (according to ssj92) which gives the slightest hope it may be possible. So far, here are my solutions. Replace the Motherboard in my R1 with a Motherboard from an R2 Since the motherboard in the M18xR2 appear to have the layout, components and mounts, replacing the motherboard seems to me like a possible option. Pros would be having a better preforming CPU (I7 2920QM to a I7 3820XM) I have experience replacing laptop motherboards, so this would possibly the easiest solution for me. Cons are I have heard that Alienware laptops will only run if that specific laptop's hardware is being used, or something like that. It would also be a bit more on the expensive side as well... M18xR1 Motherboard M18xR2 Motherboard Soldering a R2 Bios chip into an R1 Motherboard This "solution" seems to be the cheapest and "easiest" so far. Replacing/soldering the bio chip wouldn't be difficult, although so far, it seems no one has ever done this before. Setting this up would be past my expertise as well, I'm not sure it work as the R1 uses Sandy bridge processers and the R2 uses ivy bridge processers, maybe this doesn't effect anything? I don't know. I also saw that the R1 cant be flashed with the R2 BIOS due to "size constraints" (according to Azther) Again, this is out of my expertise... Messing around in BIOS When it comes to messing around in BIOS of computers, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm someone who finds a YouTube tutorial that sounds similar to my problem and go from there. I would greatly need assistance with doing this... Simply replacing the GPU I would imagine there would a lot less questions about upgrading the GPU in an r1 if this was possible. Could there be a chance that I could just replace the 580M with say a GTX 1070m, route signal to the IGPU and do whatever process makes this card works, not matter how much performance you get out of it. Again, I imagine this isn't exactly possible... These are all the possibilities I have came up with so far when it comes to upgrading to a modern MXM card in an R1. Hopefully someone figures out a solution before I do or give up. Are any of these solutions viable in any way? I'm leaning towards the option of replacing the Motherboard. Any sort of help with this, in any way would be greatly appreciated and I will continue with researching on ways to upgrade.

Hi there, I recently picked up an Alienware M18X R1 from 2011, hoping to upgrade it. I was looking for MXM GPU upgrades for the laptop and so far it seems that the best GPU I can upgrade to is an 880M due the UEFI support on R1. I was hoping to replace the SLI 580Ms I have in it with something like a GTX 1070 or an RTX 3000 MXM card. I was also wondering if there's anything else I should upgrade/replace in the laptop as well. Specs sheet is below. Any help is much appreciated! - I7-2860QM at 2.50 GHz -32GB DDR3 1600 MHz -Dual GTX 580M in SLI - 256 GB M.2 SSD and 1TB 2.5" SSD