Upgrading my primary rigs' PSU and GPU! Wish me luck on this endeavor!

[Busta Bloodnut]

Got this, https://www.ebay.com/itm/134146959388, beastly 780w adapter for my Alienware m18x r2. Anyone here have any experience with this adapter for this machine? Or any machines from this generation? Luckily, for me I found a slightly cheaper one that wasn't being sold from Canada with those insane shipping and import fees...BUUUT i did have to buy the Alienware cord from that seller in the link since the adapter i bought came with a Clevo one :( . 67$ and 55$ shipping and import fee respectively (OOUUCH lol). I actually spent more on that wire than the box itself lol. Also upgrading my GPU from a Quadro P5000 to an RTX 3080 from X-Vsion. And...oh man...I gotta tell y'all....that was the most bizarre purchase experience to say the least lol. Also had to buy the custom heatsink and X-bracket since it doesnt come with a bracket. Seller who sold me the adapter said he got one from that seller from the link and it got lost in customs for a month and half and just bought another one and then got the delayed one a week after buying the other adapter lol. Man, I hope that doesn't happen with my cord lol. Anyway, posting this to give updates during this process and MAY come into road blocks so I might ask you wizards here for help if needed. Wish me luck y'all!

[Durabat]

Looking forward to hearing how it goes. I took got the RTX 3080 from them and yes, weird purchase process but I did it through PayPal. Got my heatsink off ebay and it actually went very smoothly. Quick modded driver and it's been running for months with not a single issue yet. I wish the 4080 and 4090 weren't so expensive, I have more M18x's laying around aswell as a M17x R4 with 120hz screen waiting for a gpu upgrade. I can't justify the cost for them right now though.

[Busta Bloodnut]

Yeah, i wish the 4090 was cheaper, but apparently there's thermal throttling and other issues, but i just seen some of the wizards on here make improvements with that and other newer cards, so theres still hope for that yet. So when you got your 3080 did you have to get an X-bracket and VBIOS? I messaged XVsion and they said that the card doesn't come with either.

[Durabat]

I think I ordered my x bracket off ebay. I needed one with just the "X", the factory one has an extra piece that will hit components in the card. I didn't touch the vbios, just used nvcleanstall to modify the latest driver at the time and it works perfect. I don't notice any throttling, though I don't gsme on it all that much either. Just for the fun of it. 

[Durabat]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254297767533

 

I'm not sure if it's against policy, but here's the x bracket I used. It worked fine for me.

[Busta Bloodnut]

 

On 6/1/2026 at 2:53 PM, Durabat said:

I think I ordered my x bracket off ebay. I needed one with just the "X", the factory one has an extra piece that will hit components in the card. 

 

I ordered the mounting bracket from Amazon. The only very cheap one i can find anyway. The same seller who sold me the adapter has a bracket as well, but i refuse to pay that insane amount just for that. Speak of the devil, i just got it today, the adapter, and so far so good. Was able to OC a bit more to 4.79 ghz. Tried to get it to 4.8 but it kept getting BSOD, it did hit 4.84 before it did though lol. Im not that much of a wizard, so im not equipped to figure that out lol. I hope i still will be able to keep it the same speed when i get that card seeing as the PSU is 780w, though i doubt this machine even with that card would be able to get close to that amount of power draw lol.

 

On 6/1/2026 at 2:53 PM, Durabat said:

I didn't touch the vbios, just used nvcleanstall to modify the latest driver at the time and it works perfect. I don't notice any throttling, though I don't gsme on it all that much either. Just for the fun of it. 

 

Thats good to know then. Idky XVsion says it doesn't come with VBios. Maybe things have changed since? i guess ill find out. No big deal if it doesn't. Thats easy to do. I also ordered more PTM 7950 so that'll help with cooling not to mention i also have a Llano cooling device and that thing works wonders lol. Well worth the money, imo lol.

[Jerryzago]

I still have my dual PSU mod laying around. I made this back when I had my dual 980m in SLI and cpu maxed to 4,4GHz. After doing the throttle fix process, I saw 645watts at peak! 

 

Keep up the good work.

[Busta Bloodnut]

So i put my new GPU in and so far so good! The card itself was very nice looking. Way better than most "Frankenstein" cards ive seen. Didnt even have to put Vbios on it. Only tested slightly but I'll test it more though when i get more ptm 7950 since I didn't have enough of it to put on the card. At this point its just generic thermal paste that i dont want to use. that and I didnt want to wait for the x-bracket to get here, so i put in one from another card. Seems to fit okay. After gaming for a bit, it seems to run very good with it not going any higher than 42c, but i was playing dead Island from 2011. Even on its highest settings its not the best game to truly test it out, but like Durabat, im not that much of a gamer either. It will be tested more with Blender though since i do more of that than anything else and that should be a good test.