MXM to NVMe Adapter upgrade

[Azther]

I was going to add this to my existing upgrade project thread but figured to separate it to make it easier to find for those looking to purchase one.

 

So ive finally joined the nvme club and upgraded my m18x r2. I got my adapter from alibaba and was cautious at first since the picture shown was of an older revision, luckily though it turned out to be the latest one (at time of writing):

 

Heres the link to purchase one: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/The-Adapter-New-original-MXM-to_1600069323445.html#

 

While i was at it i decided to upgrade the blu ray drive to a ssd since it was starting to act up. I also swapped my single pipe cpu heatsink for a dual pipe to better cool my semi OCed 3740qm.

 

Not sure if coincidence or not, but i love how it fits inside of the cutout of where the original GPU heatsink used to sit. Makes for swapping it out a lot easier, the screw for the nvme drive isnt magnetic tho so be wary of that when swapping SSDs.

 

As for speeds, im happy to report this adapter achieves close to full speeds like with @Maxware79 and @ssj92 Adapters. Thank you also maxware and ssj for helping me decide which NVMe drive to go with, ultimately i settled on the samsung 970 evo plus 2tb.

 

Also, the NVMe drive is bootable and im happily booting windows 10 off of it.

[aldarxt]

On 3/12/2022 at 8:05 PM, Azther said:

I was going to add this to my existing upgrade project thread but figured to separate it to make it easier to find for those looking to purchase one.

 

So ive finally joined the nvme club and upgraded my m18x r2. I got my adapter from alibaba and was cautious at first since the picture shown was of an older revision, luckily though it turned out to be the latest one:

 

Heres the link to purchase one: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/The-Adapter-New-original-MXM-to_1600069323445.html#

 

While i was at it i decided to upgrade the blu ray drive to a ssd since it was starting to act up. I also swapped my single pipe cpu heatsink for a dual pipe to better cool my semi OCed 3740qm.

 

Not sure if coincidence or not, but i love how it fits inside of the cutout of where the original GPU heatsink used to sit. Makes for swapping it out a lot easier, the screw for the nvme drive isnt magnetic tho so be wary of that when swapping SSDs.

 

As for speeds, im happy to report this adapter achieves close to full speeds like with @Maxware79 and @ssj92 Adapters. Thank you also maxware and ssj for helping me decide which NVMe drive to go with, ultimately i settled on the samsung 970 evo plus 2tb.

 

Also, the NVMe drive is bootable and im happily booting windows 10 off of it.

Thats great that its bootable so now it can run main operating system on fastest drive. Does it still draw power when it is shut down? That is the only reason I am not getting it, I would really like to put a NVME in as main drive in my m18xr2

[Maxware79]

Yeah I love how the cutout is perfect for the NVMe. I'm guessing that the maker of the adapter deliberately placed the NVMe port where the cutout was but for the cutout to be there in the first place and so perfect for the NVMe is amazing. 

[Azther]

4 hours ago, aldarxt said:

Thats great that its bootable so now it can run main operating system on fastest drive. Does it still draw power when it is shut down? That is the only reason I am not getting it, I would really like to put a NVME in as main drive in my m18xr2

I havent yet tested this since i have my laptop running 24/7 most of the time. However @ssj92 mentioned that the battery takes a few days to completely drain from full, at least with his adapter. But since the battery is removable i dont really see it being too much of an issue either way

[aldarxt]

4 hours ago, Azther said:

I havent yet tested this since i have my laptop running 24/7 most of the time. However @ssj92 mentioned that the battery takes a few days to completely drain from full, at least with his adapter. But since the battery is removable i dont really see it being too much of an issue either way

I leave mine running 24/7 too but sometimes I shut it down but it is plugged in all the time, so if it is shut down and plugged in will it be warm and no fans running, I guess it wouldn't drain the battery being plugged in, but it just bothers me, like if I go somewhere I would be thinking its heating up, maybe I should get one and experiment!!!

[Maxware79]

33 minutes ago, aldarxt said:

I leave mine running 24/7 too but sometimes I shut it down but it is plugged in all the time, so if it is shut down and plugged in will it be warm and no fans running, I guess it wouldn't drain the battery being plugged in, but it just bothers me, like if I go somewhere I would be thinking its heating up, maybe I should get one and experiment!!!

 

No it doesn't warm up to any major extent, it just slowly drains the battery if not plugged in and adds usage hours onto the NVMe drive. 

[Vqmp]

Obviously it's faster, but what's the difference with the adapter? Have mx 18 and wondering about upgrades etc (another thread probably go to gtx 1070 as one of the 880m died) 

[Azther]

Quote

Obviously it's faster, but what's the difference with the adapter? Have mx 18 and wondering about upgrades etc (another thread probably go to gtx 1070 as one of the 880m died) 

well it adds an extra bootable drive bay to the laptop (if using an r2 and modded bios) and since i have a quadro p4000 gpu which doesnt support SLI due to how optimus is needed to make it work, the 2nd MXM slot was going to waste. So it depends if u wanna stick with the 500mb/s speeds of the conventional SSDs or not, least with the adapter, your not limited in storage sizes or speed anymore since technically you could put a 8tb NVMe SSD in the adapter altho i havent seen anyone test it yet.

[Vqmp]

Thanks

[rocas]

New version V3, should not discharge the battery,

purchased 2.

 

 

 

[Maxware79]

2 hours ago, rocas said:

New version V3, should not discharge the battery,

purchased 2.

 

 

 

 

 Wow! I'm looking forward to seeing it tested

[Azther]

8 hours ago, rocas said:

New version V3, should not discharge the battery,

purchased 2.

 

 

 

 

sweet, will be interesting for sure especially for those who have laptops that dont have a removable battery

[Reciever]

Now I want someone to add more mass and expand the CPU heatsink into the empty GPU cooling slot 😄

[ssj92]

On 4/6/2022 at 11:43 AM, rocas said:

New version V3, should not discharge the battery,

purchased 2.

 

 

 

 

Where did you buy it from? 

[rocas]

On 4/15/2022 at 9:12 AM, ssj92 said:

Where did you buy it from? 

Purchased on Taobao. https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z09.2.0.0.67002e8dnWIDYG&id=607393772035&_u=i3ltmstte3c1

The boy is very helpful, you can chat in English., Using the Aliwangwang chat on the sales page.

 

 

[Maxware79]

Really interested to see if the power issues are completely fixed. Would also be interesting to see if the older ones can be modified

[Azther]

14 hours ago, Maxware79 said:

Really interested to see if the power issues are completely fixed. Would also be interesting to see if the older ones can be modified

would be nice if that were the case

[ssj92]

On 4/18/2022 at 12:01 AM, rocas said:

Purchased on Taobao. https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z09.2.0.0.67002e8dnWIDYG&id=607393772035&_u=i3ltmstte3c1

The boy is very helpful, you can chat in English., Using the Aliwangwang chat on the sales page.

 

 

Any updates on this? Should have had you order one for me too lol 

[rocas]

Hi guys, I haven't been able to test battery drain yet.

The speeds are good.

I was playing, laptop shut down with slight burning smell.

It had already happened to turn off in game. Now it doesn't turn on anymore.

Ordered the motherboards, vendors say they have it in their stock.

I execute the order and after 10 days they tell me to make a refund.

Success with 3 different sellers. A lot of wasted time.

Now I hope I have found a reliable seller.

These motherboards are running out and those who have them are selling them at exaggerated prices.

[jaybee83]

2 hours ago, rocas said:

Hi guys, I haven't been able to test battery drain yet.

The speeds are good.

I was playing, laptop shut down with slight burning smell.

It had already happened to turn off in game. Now it doesn't turn on anymore.

Ordered the motherboards, vendors say they have it in their stock.

I execute the order and after 10 days they tell me to make a refund.

Success with 3 different sellers. A lot of wasted time.

Now I hope I have found a reliable seller.

These motherboards are running out and those who have them are selling them at exaggerated prices.

yeah unfortunately thats usually the way it goes with aging tech: cpus are built like tanks and dont give out so easily, but motherboards are way more fragile, so while the cost of cpus goes steadily down, the cost of mobos actually increases due to rarity....

[ssj92]

On 6/14/2022 at 10:13 AM, rocas said:

Hi guys, I haven't been able to test battery drain yet.

The speeds are good.

I was playing, laptop shut down with slight burning smell.

It had already happened to turn off in game. Now it doesn't turn on anymore.

Ordered the motherboards, vendors say they have it in their stock.

I execute the order and after 10 days they tell me to make a refund.

Success with 3 different sellers. A lot of wasted time.

Now I hope I have found a reliable seller.

These motherboards are running out and those who have them are selling them at exaggerated prices.

Did you ever find out what caused motherboard to go? 

[Maxware79]

If anyone is looking for a V3 adapter, someone on the Dell Community Forum has these details for a contact. Was from Aliexpress, I believe. 

 

Shenzhen Jia Neng Electronics Technology Co., Ltd.Contact Name: Andy Zhan Registered company address: CN,Guangdong,Shenzhen,301, Building 16, Gangbian Fang, Fuxing Road, Futian Street, Futian Dist.Company Tel: 0086-0755-82711961Company Email: 13713864939@139.com

 

[Azther]

For anyone interested, i recently went on holiday and took the ole m18x with me. I had it turned off for 9 hours and the battery had drained by 11%, so for me its definitely a non issue and the battery wasnt warm either @aldarxt

 

Edit: This is for the V2 of the Adapter, cant speak for the new V3 revision

Edited July 12, 2022 by Azther

[ssj92]

So even newer card has battery drain. Maybe less than older card.

[Maxware79]

Yeah still seems like it's there but not nearly as bad. Better than 100% over 9 hours. You're probably still going to put hours onto the NVMe even when it's switched off, not sure how that will impact the drive over time though.