3940XM overclocking - parameters to change.

[emcze]

Hi, 

 

I decided to upgrade my "new" M18X R2. First GPU and CPU.

 

Originally I had 3740QM with one pipe heatsink.

 

 

I bought 3940XM and three pipes heatsink. I bought liquid metal too.

 

 

I installed CPU in slot and used Conductonaut

 

 

 

 

BIOS recognized XM at start. Time to tests....

[emcze]

Before I replaced CPU I check temps in CPU-Z and Speccy. Old 3740QM with thermal paste and one pipe heatsink had about 85C in stress test.

 

 

3940XM on the same CPU-Z stress test had about 73C

 

 

I chenged BIOS OC options to Level 3 and started again, started stress this time CPU has about 81C

 

 

I want more !!! I changed Level 3 option :

1 -Core Ratio Limit from 44 to 45

2 -Core Ratio Limit from 42 to 44

3 -Core Ratio Limit from 41 to 43

4 -Core Ratio Limit from 40 to 42

started system and pushed stress test. Fan goes with higher RPM ( but still can goes higher ) and temps are about 80C. 

 

 

System is stable. Temps are stable. Can I go higher with clock ?? If yes, please tell me what else I should change in BIOS.

 

EDIT:

 

I rise ratio to 45. System works stable with 87 C. 

 

 

... what now to go higher ??

[jonv8944s]

REALLY looking forward to this!  I gave my son my m18x R2 about 2 years ago, and now I have it all apart for upgrades, ALTHOUGH I already had upgraded to the 3940 about 6-7 years ago.  But now I have 1800mhz ram coming, newest wifi card w/Bluetooth 5, an RTX 3000 (replace his 680m sli setup) and hopefully the mxm to nvme adapter soon.  So to now have a good basis for his overclocks on the 3940xm will be fantastic to finish the project!!  (All so he can play fortnight lol).

[Maks0098]

3 hours ago, emcze said:

System is stable. Temps are stable. Can I go higher with clock ?? If yes, please tell me what else I should change in BIOS.

You can increase the multipliers further until the system becomes unstable, at which point you will need to increase the Flex VID Override (this is an increase in CPU voltage). Personally, everything works stably for me on 46, 46, 46, 46 and 44 Flex VID Override, and on 42 Flex VID Override everything is also stable. But I have a couple of games where it crashes after about an hour. So, I set it a little larger for maximum stability. I'm using a dual heatsink and Gelid GC-Extreme thermal paste, but want to switch to liquid metal. Since the temperatures in the stress tests are high, I even temporarily lowered all the multipliers to 45 and Flex VID Override to 39, since the thermal paste lost a little of its properties in just two weeks. It's time to change it to liquid metal or stay at 44 or 45 and replace it with new thermal paste. When I change to liquid metal, I might even try to use 47 multipliers on an ongoing basis.

 

But you may have slightly better or slightly worse overclocking results, since all processors are different and there are better ones. And you have a 3940XM, and I have a 3920XM.

[Maks0098]

4 minutes ago, Maks0098 said:

I'm using a dual heatsink and Gelid GC-Extreme thermal paste, but want to switch to liquid metal.

And I don't know if it's worth doing. because the radiator can go bad, right?

[Maks0098]

3 hours ago, emcze said:

 

And I also noticed that you do not have a copper radiator. since this is a homemade 3-pipe, but I seem to have seen somewhere that it is a couple of degrees steeper than my two-pipe, even though it has a copper radiator (I attach a photo of mine). there you can see that one tube is made of steel, and two tubes are made of copper. yours is also steel.

[emcze]

1 hour ago, Maks0098 said:

And I don't know if it's worth doing. because the radiator can go bad, right?

 

You don't need to afraid about radiator. I used liquid metal on other systems and copper radiator is still in good condition.

 

Look at this:

 

I done the same like on this video in 16:45 - after one month clean everything and put ne layer of liquid metal.

 

The same liquid metal I will use on RTX3000.

 

2 hours ago, Maks0098 said:

You can increase the multipliers further until the system becomes unstable, at which point you will need to increase the Flex VID Override (this is an increase in CPU voltage).

 

Thank you, I will try it. System works stable with ratio 45 but at 46 and higher is windows blue screen on start. 

 

[Maks0098]

6 hours ago, emcze said:

System works stable with ratio 45 but at 46 and higher is windows blue screen on start. 

 

this is extremely low, did you definitely increase the Flex VID Override manually or did you try to get the most out of the standard Level 3 Flex VID Override? and what is your flex vid override at level 3? 25? and by the way, Flex VID Override does not set values greater than 50.

[emcze]

13 hours ago, Maks0098 said:

this is extremely low, did you definitely increase the Flex VID Override manually or did you try to get the most out of the standard Level 3 Flex VID Override?

 

Standard Level 3 has 25, I put 40 and half night played "Shadow of the Tomb Rider" and "Expeditions A MudRunner Game" at 4.5 Ghz to check stability. Everything was good and stable. I try to go higher in weekend but with 4,5 Ghz I have about 30 % better benchmark result than on standard. If it is stable is enought for me.

 

I read somewhere that Alienware sold factory overclocked m18x r2. Do you know factory OC BIOS parameters ??

 

EDIT:

 

wiki says:

 

M18x-R2 (discontinued) – 2012 revision of the M18x; originally shipped with Intel Sandy Bridge processors, later shipped with updated with Intel Ivy Bridge processors, single or dual Nvidia GeForce 600 series GPU(s), single or dual AMD Radeon HD 7970M Radeon HD 7000 series GPU(s), up to 32 GB of DDR3-1600 MHz, and optional factory overclock.

[Maks0098]

57 minutes ago, emcze said:

and optional factory overclock.

isn't this what we call Level 1, 2, 3?

[emcze]

17 minutes ago, Maks0098 said:

isn't this what we call Level 1, 2, 3?

 

Yes. You have right.

 

I found some test with photo of BIOS Level 1, 2 ,3 and description :

"OVERCLOCKING:

Normally I wouldn't write about this in a notebook review, but the M18x deserves special mention given it's key overclocking ability. The system BIOS shipped from Dell provides multiple options for CPU overclocking...

... On the CPU side, you can see from the image shown that there are three preset performance bins available for boosting CPU frequencies. Dell's factory OC on the 3920XM takes it up one bin to 4.1GHz (single core)"

 

[emcze]

I cheched 3DMark FireStrike and had about 72C temp on CPU overclocked to 4,5Ghz ( 5192 on HD7970M 🙂 ). I can use laptop on my legs. My Alienware 14 goes much higher with temps.

 

I think that it is good result compared to this:

  

On 2/5/2024 at 12:36 AM, ssj92 said:

I use 4.1Ghz 24/7 clocks without any voltage on 3920XM. I can go as high as 4.7Ghz but that requires lots of voltage and a fan under the laptop. 

 

[Maks0098]

On 6/13/2024 at 6:35 PM, emcze said:

I done the same like on this video in 16:45 - after one month clean everything and put ne layer of liquid metal.

and forgot to ask, what kind of liquid metal did you use? what company?

 

EDIT:

Sorry, I didn’t see it in the photo at the very beginning and a little later you said that Conductonaut

Edited June 14, 2024 by Maks0098

[emcze]

11 hours ago, Maks0098 said:

Conductonaut

 

Yes, Thermal Grizzly with TG Shield - red varnish for protection against short circuits for CPU and GPU pins and smd elements ( but I used Conductonaut few times and always stay in place ). 

[CircleLoading]

thats way too much liquid metal on cpu...

[emcze]

3 hours ago, CircleLoading said:

thats way too much liquid metal on cpu...

 

This drop from third photo was aplied on both side - CPU and radiator and some part from it stayed on plastic aplicator. 

It is like it should be. I can show you foto after removed radiator, before I put new layer. 

[jonv8944s]

Care to share the screenshots of you bios setting for OC?  I assume you are also using unlocked bios.  I am a little bit lost on where the OC stuff is.  I have 1866mhz mem and 3940, so I’d like to do some OC’ing of them but still keep it on the stable side.  Any help is greatly appreciated!

[emcze]

8 hours ago, jonv8944s said:

Care to share the screenshots of you bios setting for OC?

 

I use this for CPU. It is my daily setup. 

 

[jonv8944s]

Ok I copied those, is there anything else below that I need to change?  Some setting below your screenshot you aren’t showing 

[jonv8944s]

Also any memory clock settings?

[emcze]

17 minutes ago, jonv8944s said:

Some setting below your screenshot you aren’t showing

No.

 

15 minutes ago, jonv8944s said:

Also any memory clock settings?

 

I wait for new memory and start to overclock. Now is standard.

[jonv8944s]

These are the ones I am saying you aren’t showing in your screenshot.  Also what memory did you get?

[emcze]

 

23 hours ago, jonv8944s said:

screenshot

 Your system is stable on 4.2. Try go higher with flex vid override. You have standard 25, I have 33, you can go over 40 but with higher temp because it is voltage. 

[emcze]

On 7/1/2024 at 4:20 PM, emcze said:

I have 33

 

I still work and play with CPU overclocked to 4,5 ghz. It's my daily settings but... I rised flex vid override to 37 because in few programs where I need more CPU power (as 3DMark in physics test ) my system somethimes had blue screen. Now is few degrees warmer but always stable. 

 

OC is not 5 minutes proces, it takes long time to finish with stable unit.

[Busta Bloodnut]

I know this thread is sort of old, but I will show you my specs and for future inquiring folk who want to overclock a 3940xm:
 

 

 

 

It only goes up to 4.79 Ghz. I tried any combination with 49 core ratio limit (either with just one 49, then two and so on with finally all four of them having 49 but with all four it just wont boot Windows at all) but with just 1-3 having 49, it always seems to crash after like 1 minute of booting unto windows 10. Idk how it would be for 11. So i had to just stick with all cores at 48 for now. But, in order for my specs to run properly, you will have to: 

• Get a Llano cooling pad (Or something similar). I know they are expensive but they are totally worth it. Only downside is that these cooling pads are a little loud, but what can you do? You get used to it mad quick though. 1000 rpm is a good speed for me and my ears. This machine WILL crash without the cooing pad though because of the high temps. No way around that.
• Use PTM 7950 as a thermal conductor. Also a little expensive, but works better than liquid metal (in my experience anyway) and last way longer and is MUCH easier to apply.

• The heatshink should ALL be copper. From the pipes to the fins. The guy on Ebay (cicichen) doesn't have any triple copper pipe hetasinks that have copper fins listed anymore (sold out atm), but theres listings on AliExpress, though im unsure if its the same guy or someone different.

• Optional: Brand new/Open Box CPU. I got mine Open Box and it just seems to work better than used.

• Optional: 780w adapter. Eurocom makes them and they're very expensive (You can also get them on Ebay). Especially if you're in the states. Plus, i have an RTX 3080 in my rig, so I kind of needed that to be able to OC to this extent while also having that power hungry GPU. Not sure how stable it would be with just that 330w adapter though.
• Doing the following also boosted it a little bit for me anyway (Also optional):

 

1. Open Registry Editor as Administrator and navigate to:
   \HKey_Local_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82bein should be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\be337238-0d82-4146-a960-4f3749d470c7
2. Find the DWord "Attribute" and change the value from 0 to 2. Setting should be in the "Power Options" menu in "Advanced Power Settings" under "Processor Power Management". Its automatically set as "Aggressive" but you can change that if you want. That Aggressive option works for me. Its not MUCH of a boost but it helps.
    

These settings are mostly stable for me. The only issue I take note of is that sometimes Youtube does the "Aw Snap" error, though its uncommon. But that might just be a Brave browser issue. Also sometimes i get BSOD when installing the GPU updates but, again, that could just be the GPU itself having random issues since this GPU isn't exactly officially "compatible" with this machine. Sometimes it crashes during install it and sometimes it doesn't. As for my temps with these settings and with all of the requirements, they rarely go up passed 75c (mostly during Windows updates), mostly hitting highs of about 65c and averages temps of 30c-45c. Though, im not stress testing my machine so idk how it would go nor do i want to find out lol...