mxm gpu upgrade Dell Precison M6800 MxM GPU

[MelonicOverlord]

So it's not enough to just bend the copper bit upwards against the aluminium

[Aaron44126]

27 minutes ago, MelonicOverlord said:

This is my cooler presently. Am I right in saying this (circled) is the only part which needs to be removed from the NVIDIA heatsink to fit the Tesla M6?

 

You need to flip it over.  The part that needs to be removed is on the "bottom" side (the side that makes contact with the GPU card).  It is around that area and it will be pretty obvious.

[MelonicOverlord]

Is the circled part the bit which needs to be removed underneath though? And if so is bending the copper part up agains the aluminium enough spacing? I am going to need to get creative with cutting it otherwise.

[Aaron44126]

1 minute ago, MelonicOverlord said:

Is the circled part the bit which needs to be removed underneath though? And if so is bending the copper part up agains the aluminium enough spacing? I am going to need to get creative with cutting it otherwise.

 

It is around that spot.  It will be pretty obvious.  You need to make it "flat" so that it is in line with the other parts that cover VRMs on the card.  Cutting/grounding down is the obvious way to do that, but "bending" would be fine if you can make it work.

[MelonicOverlord]

Is it likely better to wait until I get the card before doing this? Or is there a way I can estimate the location using the K3100M?

[MelonicOverlord]

After doing some truly advanced mathematical calculations (totally not loading up a pic of a Maxwell card, scaling it down to the size of the K3100M and comparing) I have come to the conclusion that the MOSFET will not stick out any further inwards than 1 of the black... resistors? The SMD's inbetween basically.

 

Should I remove the bit of the cooler which needs to be taken off all of the way through, or does part of it need to be left to provide cooling for the MOSFET?

 

Update.. I did it. This is really not my finest work, and it is a massive mess. It should do the job though. Just need to do some final work to it.

I ended up using a metal hacksaw since I literally have nothing else available, and no I can't cut straight for the life of me.

 

Hi all,

The Tesla M6 came. Just for some future documentation if anyone else ever does this:

- The vBIOS did not need flashing, even though this card was brand new and a HP spare

- Drivers need modding with nvcleanstall and driver booster is required to get rid of the Microsoft Basic Display adapter (this person's video shows the process well, although it is in Spanish it is quite easy to follow)

- Don't do what I did and use a hacksaw to cut off the required part for the MOSFETs to fit. This caused the structure of the cooler to be lost, and the entire bottom right side (square copper side) fell off. I have had to produce a fix for this. JUST USE A DREMEL!!!

- This card has a 100w TDP. This is a laptop. It gets loud. Very loud. Temps actually stay very under control, at a max of about 80c, and 40-60c idle. Note that the laptop turns into a space heater too and will very much heat the immediate area outside the fan exit vents.

- My battery life just halved & this is even a brand new battery with probably barely even 20 cycles on it (might be able to fix this after playing with some settings)

- Linux I am yet to play with / get working

- There is no option in the right click menu to select what GPU you start a program with. You'll need to use NVIDIA control panel / settings to manually set it (maybe a fix for this?)

Gaming performance is very good, for example I have gone from average 30-50fps low custom settings on BeamNG to high-preset 55-60fps constant. Of course you will not be able to use any display ports which are not running through optimus. As of right now this seems like ONLY VGA even on my E Port dock. This is an issue since I run 2 displays on my setup. I think there is some sort of way to enable optimus on the Display Port of the dock but I don't know how (any guidance?).

Well worth £72 compared to the nearly £300 average for a 980M.

[Aaron44126]

Check video section in BIOS setup. There is a checkbox that will move one of the ePort outputs to the iGPU.

 

I think it is normal for the right-click GPU selector to be missing these days. It is “supposed” to automatically pick the appropriate GPU, but you can override in either NVIDIA control panel or Windows advanced graphics settings.

 

Unlike with Windows, you should not have to do any modding to get the driver to load in Linux. Ideally, your distro has an NVIDIA GPU driver package in the standard repos… install that and you’re good to go?

[MelonicOverlord]

Yeah, I'm running Gentoo and I have a pretty complex switching graphics setup. Might take a bit to get working.

 

I've checked the video section but I can just turn off optimus, change brightness, or there's another setting but it didn't seem to affect the dp

[Aaron44126]

The option is something like "Enable dock Display Port through Integrated Graphics".  If enabled, it will move one of the DVI/DP ports on the dock to the iGPU.  (I used to use this with my Precision M4800.)

[MelonicOverlord]

Where am I supposed to find that? I don't see it in my bios anywhere as far as I'm aware.

[Aaron44126]

It is listed as being under the "Video" section, which is where I found it on the M4800.

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/precision-m6800-workstation/precm6800om/system-setup-options?guid=guid-fafcef15-7de3-4df2-a3f1-00e66aba9d3a&lang=en-us

[MelonicOverlord]

Unless I'm blind or there's another submenu I'm missing it's not there

[Aaron44126]

Found this picture.  Its the checkbox on the right (which should be available to click if switchable graphics is enabled).  If it is not there on your system, don't know what to suggest.  (Despite the name of the option and the help text, it will permanently attach that display to the iGPU.)

 

[MelonicOverlord]

Ah, so that option I do have. That was the one I forgot the name of that I mentioned. I have tried with it both on and off and I don't seem to get anything out of the dock dp. Does it only attach one of them?

[Aaron44126]

Just now, MelonicOverlord said:

Ah, so that option I do have. That was the one I forgot the name of that I mentioned. I have tried with it both on and off and I don't seem to get anything out of the dock dp. Does it only attach one of them?

 

Yes, it applies to one of the ports but not the other.

[MelonicOverlord]

Right okay when I'm home in a couple of hours I'll try both and see what happens. Thanks

 

Righty we have a development. It certainly seems to be doing something with that port. At a BIOS level, it's causing the laptop eDP to flicker on and off, and in the OS it seems to be recognised but I don't think it has any settings etc. I'm going to maybe try connecting to a different display? It's possible it doesn't like this adapter.

 

Update, screen is live & working. Going to have to do some display cable rerouting though since I think it's not kicking on due to no aux power on the cable for audio.

[MelonicOverlord]

Is it possible for the Dell Fan Management software found on a thread here to cause damage to the BIOS? E.g. fully bricking it? I was going to use it but the startup warning was concerning me.

 

[Aaron44126]

2 minutes ago, MelonicOverlord said:

Is it possible for the Dell Fan Management software found on a thread here to cause damage to the BIOS? E.g. fully bricking it? I was going to use it but the startup warning was concerning me.

 

No.  If the program causes trouble (which is unlikely), fully power off the laptop and then turn it back on.  There is nothing that it does that survives a full shutdown.

[Reciever]

Do not re-post multiple times, it removes visibility to other threads. If you have additional content you wish to convey, edit the last post. 

 

Thanks.

[MelonicOverlord]

I apologise however it's a totally different subject to the last post and is not deserving of its own post for one simple answer.

Does the fan manager save the settings past a reboot?

[Aaron44126]

6 minutes ago, MelonicOverlord said:

Does the fan manager save the settings past a reboot?

 

Instructions given to the embedded controller to modify the fan behavior will persist past a reboot.  A full shutdown is needed to fully reset it.

Dell Fan Manager will remember its previous settings but they will not be "applied" to your system until you actually run the app.

[MelonicOverlord]

Thanks, that's good to know. Seems to be working so far, but the embedded controller doesn't seem to be activating the fans in consistency mode - so far I only seem to be getting it to work in Manual mode with EC off.

Going to read any information/docs that there are.

[Aaron44126]

Consistency mode has specific requirements.  Its purpose is to lock the fan speed at a low level, but you have to wait for the EC to "decide" to turn the fans on before they can be locked.  The reason is to prevent the fans from turning off (I detest the constant on/off cycling).  They will automatically be unlocked if the temperature rises above the threshold set.  The status bar will show the current status of this mode.

[MelonicOverlord]

Ah, I see now - I thought this mode variated the fanspeed between 0 to the max RPM threshold between the set temps. How can I unlock the set thermal settings? Since it would be nice this to just have a much more steep fan curve (which isn't stationary) so it isn't idling at like 70c cpu and 50c gpu.

[Aaron44126]

Unfortunately, the only things you can do with the fan "manually" are set the fan to off/low/high.  Consistency mode is a "hack" I put in place to lock the speed at a slightly lower setting than what you get if you just select "low".

 

The thermal settings (optimized/cool/quiet/performance) are Dell settings.  This tool can only set them on newer model laptops.  However you should be able to set them in the "Dell Power Manager" app that you can download directly from Dell.

 

If you want to play with a custom fan curve, you can use SpeedFan.  I have a post on setting that up here.  It refers to an older tool "DellFanCmd" but you can use Dell Fan Management in place of that.  It supports the same command line options, or you can use the GUI to turn off automatic EC fan control which is the only requirement for SpeedFan to work.  Note that SpeedFan is constrained to the same rule, there are only three speeds it can set the fan to (off/low/high).