M18x R2 - Advice on GTX 1070 compatibility

[GMP]

Hi all, I was hoping to get some advice on this.

I've been going back and forth between upgrading to an RTX 3000 or an GTX 1070.

Since I have the chance to buy a GTX 1070 for very cheap right now, I decided to do that and maybe upgrade to an RTX 5000 at a later stage.

The GTX 1070 in question is this one, I think it's an MSI one:

 

 

I have a couple of questions:

1) I know it's a bit larger than MXM 3.0b standard but with cutting the MXM slot in the corners and modding the (Nvidia 100W) heatsink a little bit, should I be able to fit it? I can't seem to find any example online of someone using this specific card it seems.

2) Will the 120W power draw be fine in the 100W MXM slot? Or will I experience throttling because of this? And if it's a problem, will I be able to fix this? (with altered vbios for example).

 

If anyone has an answer to either of these questions, that would be awesome.

Thanks!

[nudge]

What is the price difference between the RTX 3000 and GTX 1070?

Also, I would do a simple risk/benefit analysis on all the factors involved.

[GMP]

17 minutes ago, nudge said:

What is the price difference between the RTX 3000 and GTX 1070?

Also, I would do a simple risk/benefit analysis on all the factors involved.

The difference is not that big, but it's really hard to find RTX 3000 cards from PNY/Aetina/Adlink which require no mods.

But I can get my hands on this specific GTX 1070 for like half the going price.

Also, I'd rather try to find some answers first in stead of doing a risk/benefit analysis. I'll take a gamble when I don't find any answers.

[Tenoroon]

2 hours ago, GMP said:

I have a couple of questions:

1) I know it's a bit larger than MXM 3.0b standard but with cutting the MXM slot in the corners and modding the (Nvidia 100W) heatsink a little bit, should I be able to fit it? I can't seem to find any example online of someone using this specific card it seems.

2) Will the 120W power draw be fine in the 100W MXM slot? Or will I experience throttling because of this? And if it's a problem, will I be able to fix this? (with altered vbios for example).

1) Yeah, it should be able to fit. It's just juts out on the left side and has that weird tab at the top right.
2) You should be fine. Worst case scenario the card will throttle, and you can lower the clocks and voltage to prevent it from doing that.

There was a guide on the old forums that you can find in the archive.

[razor0601]

Here you go. It’s the AW18 but similar to M18X R2.

 

https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/alienware-18-and-m18x.1092/[SUCCESSFUL] Alienware 18 + MSI GTX 1070 MXM/

[GMP]

1 hour ago, razor0601 said:

Here you go. It’s the AW18 but similar to M18X R2.

 

https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/alienware-18-and-m18x.1092/[SUCCESSFUL] Alienware 18 + MSI GTX 1070 MXM/

 

Thx, that looks indeed to something similar that should work on the M18xR2.

 

Also, I found this on ebay, which makes sure I don't need to modify any heatsink.

Think I'll purchase it.

It's made to fit the MSI cards with the piece sticking out:

 

 

 

By the way, does it matter if it's a g-sync card or not in this case with the M18x R2?

 

 

[razor0601]

I also saw this Heatsink. Try this one. 
 

A non GSync card would be better. But not easy to find. 

 

[GMP]

1 hour ago, razor0601 said:

I also saw this Heatsink. Try this one. 
 

A non GSync card would be better. But not easy to find. 

 

Yeah, think I'll order it.

The thing is, the 1070 I got my eye on happens to be with ID "1BE1", so it is a g-sync one.

Does it actually matter in the end? I'll have to use Optimus to make this card work as far as I understood. Doesn't that just mean the g-sync feature will just not be used and there is no other downside? Or is there something else I'm missing here...

[razor0601]

Gsync will never work in the M18X R2. But in the past I had issues with one Alienware 18 and a GSync MSI 1070.  That’s the reason why you better go for a non GSync card. But you can try it with your cheap GSync 1070. Could be that it will work without issues.

[ssj92]

Once you mod corners and heatsink it will fit.

 

M18xR2 can handle 220W GPU and M17x can handle 180W GPU in MXM slot. They are not limited like newer Aw18 & Aw17. 

 

Personally we have seen 150w 1080 work in M18xR2 so up to 150w should work fine without aux power. 

 

 

[GMP]

3 hours ago, ssj92 said:

Once you mod corners and heatsink it will fit.

 

M18xR2 can handle 220W GPU and M17x can handle 180W GPU in MXM slot. They are not limited like newer Aw18 & Aw17. 

 

Personally we have seen 150w 1080 work in M18xR2 so up to 150w should work fine without aux power. 

 

 

I've heard rumors about gtx 1080's being used, but couldn't really find any detailed threads on any forum.

I presume since these have an auxilary power connector that you can run the card up to a certain point without providing the extra power?

I've read about 1080's without the auxilary power connector also, but finding one online, even a picture of it, that I was unable to do.

[ssj92]

3 hours ago, GMP said:

I've heard rumors about gtx 1080's being used, but couldn't really find any detailed threads on any forum.

I presume since these have an auxilary power connector that you can run the card up to a certain point without providing the extra power?

I've read about 1080's without the auxilary power connector also, but finding one online, even a picture of it, that I was unable to do.

We had GTX 1080 working in M18xR2 and AW18. No aux power needed even though connector was there. It throttled a lot in AW18. M18xR2 did a much better job with stock 150w vBIOS. It was the Aetina GTX 1080 and required heatsink mod. 

[razor0601]

So I installed the next MSI GTX 1070 1BE1 in an Alienware 18. without any problem in Hard- and Software modding. Card works fine. The only thing is left is an 100w AMD heatsink. But here in Europe hard to find.

[GMP]

16 hours ago, razor0601 said:

So I installed the next MSI GTX 1070 1BE1 in an Alienware 18. without any problem in Hard- and Software modding. Card works fine. The only thing is left is an 100w AMD heatsink. But here in Europe hard to find.

Yeah I know, I ordered a custom 1070 MSI heatsink for the M18xR2 on ebay from China yesterday.

And I did find a "1BA1" MSI GX 1070, so the non g-sync version. It's on its way here now. Got it for 300€ and it's brand new so I can live with that price.

[GMP]

Just a question, should I run the A11 unlocked BIOS in UEFI mode?

[GMP]

I'm kind of running into an issue I think. I ordered the custom MSI gtx 1070 heatsink and I noticed that the (I think) mosfets are not cooled by the block.

See below highlighted zones:

 

 

 

Will this be a problem? Or is it normal that these (whatever they are) are not cooled...

[jaybee83]

2 hours ago, GMP said:

I'm kind of running into an issue I think. I ordered the custom MSI gtx 1070 heatsink and I noticed that the (I think) mosfets are not cooled by the block.

See below highlighted zones:

 

 

 

Will this be a problem? Or is it normal that these (whatever they are) are not cooled...

those are probably the mosfets for the vRAM VRMs. u can just use an extra thick thermal pad to connect them to the heatsink (or stack several thinner ones), definitely better than nothing!

[GMP]

Man I'm really struggling with modding the INF file.

Driver Signature enforcement is disabled.

I downloaded the latest driver from the nvidia website (516.94 for Geforce 10 series which includes the gtx 1070).

I extracted it with 7zip for ease.

When running the setup (as admin) I got the incompatibility message as expected, so I went looking for the INF file to mod.

So far so good.

I wasn't really sure which file it was as in the latest drivers the filename is different than what I saw in most guides.

I presumed the correct file was nvdmig.inf

Altered it (following the video from ssj92 on youtube) and I did get past the compatibility check. I start the installation and everything looks fine but while installing the graphics driver after a minute or so it stops and gives me an error that something went wrong and it can't install. I have no idea why.

Anyone who has encountered this before and has a solution?

 

FYI this is my hardware ID:

DEV_1BA1&SUBSYS_05501028

And I added the original unaltered file in attachment to this post.

Anyone willing to give it a go? 🙂

I'm pretty sure I did nothing wrong. Or I'm altering the wrong file.

There's also a nv_dispig.inf file, which I also altered, but didn't work either.

I added that file to this post also (unaltered).

I get passed the compatibility check but it fails after a while when installing the driver itself.

There are no previous nvidia drivers as this is a clean windows 10 installation. I can see the Microsoft Basic Display adapter in my hardware as expected.

Windows is also not updating anything on the background.

Not sure what to do now or what is causing this issue...

nvdmig.inf

nv_dispig.inf

[jaybee83]

34 minutes ago, GMP said:

Man I'm really struggling with modding the INF file.

Driver Signature enforcement is disabled.

I downloaded the latest driver from the nvidia website (516.94 for Geforce 10 series which includes the gtx 1070).

I extracted it with 7zip for ease.

When running the setup (as admin) I got the incompatibility message as expected, so I went looking for the INF file to mod.

So far so good.

I wasn't really sure which file it was as in the latest drivers the filename is different than what I saw in most guides.

I presumed the correct file was nvdmig.inf

Altered it (following the video from ssj92 on youtube) and I did get passed the compatibility check. I start the installation and everything looks fine but while installing the graphics driver after a minute or so it stops and gives me an error that something went wrong and it can't install. I have no idea why.

Anyone who has encountered this before and has a solution?

 

FYI this is my hardware ID:

DEV_1BA1&SUBSYS_05501028

And I added the original unaltered file in attachment to this post.

Anyone willing to give it a go? 🙂

I'm pretty sure I did nothing wrong. Or I'm altering the wrong file.

There's also a nv_dispig.inf file, which I also altered, but didn't work either.

I added that file to this post also (unaltered).

I get passed the compatibility check but it fails after a while when installing the driver itself.

There are no previous nvidia drivers as this is a clean windows 10 installation. I can see the Microsoft Basic Display adapter in my hardware as expected.

Windows is also not updating anything on the background.

Not sure what to do now or what is causing this issue...

nvdmig.inf 3.83 MB · 0 downloads

nv_dispig.inf 602.52 kB · 0 downloads

i have encountered something similar before. one thing that might lead to an error like this is if you placed the driver files too deep into the file system.

 

try and copy the driver install folder to the root directory on C : so that the path length if minimally long. placing it on the desktop does not count, since the path length is still like 3-5 levels deep. maybe this helps!

[GMP]

4 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

i have encountered something similar before. one thing that might lead to an error like this is if you placed the driver files too deep into the file system.

 

try and copy the driver install folder to the root directory on C : so that the path length if minimally long. placing it on the desktop does not count, since the path length is still like 3-5 levels deep. maybe this helps!

It already was in the root C directory. I made the path as short as possible just to be sure, but the problem remains 😕

I tried an older driver (472.12) and it's the same thing.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I got it to work in the end. It's actually a really stupid thing. While disabling Driver Signature Enforcement, I pressed 7 on my keyboard and not F7. The weird thing is that after pressing 7 the laptop rebooted so I thought it was OK. Guess not...

Now all is well! My m18x R2 is now running a 3940XM and a MSI GTX 1070 non g-sync. Can't wait to start playing around with it and see what it can do.