Alienware m17x r4 Extreme

Sadly no. I only think it works if you use switchable graphics or Windows 7.

 

@Henrik9979 Nice work! I'd love to see your take on my Extra fan for Vram mod. Also, what are the temperatures like with the all copper heatsinks? I've seen them around on ebay but haven't seen temp results.

 

I can say it is much much better than the original heatsink, but showing my temps without water-cooling will be misleading cause my gtx 1070 has a 215w vbios instead of 115w. Also my heatsink is not with 5 heat pipes, it is with 3 heatpipes and a water-cooling pipe.
But what I can tell you is, if I tried running my 215w gtx 1070 without water-cooling, without your fan mod, and without extra copper pieces, it would rise to 80c and the vram would overheat and give artifacts.
When it is running 115w it has no problem I think I remember the temperature to be between 60c and 70c.

Yesterday I finally finished you extra fan mod and made it run in sync with the gpu fan. I will post it later. Also I have changed the thermal pads with pads from artic.
I have also added extra copper heatsink pieces. With all those changes I can now run my 1070 with 2100mhz core clock and 520 MHz on memory clock without artifacts.

 

Okay here is my vram fan mod.
I got my inspiration from Johndill.
His original post can be found here.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-m17x-r4-gpu-vrm-cooling-solution.828994/

I started of changing all the thermal pads with some thinner ones from artic.

Arctic Thermal pad 6.0 W/mk 1mm
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/4vN6Fe0g

Next I bought some extra heatsink pieces.

Copper Heat Sink Back Cooler 13x13x2MM
https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/2Vm4vnde

I have some extra Alienware fans so I thought I could use one of them as an extra fan.
The only fan small enough was the Alienware m17x r4 CPU fan. But it was still too big.
I have done a lot of work to make it fit. A LOT!
I would not recommend to use that fan, even though I made it shorter and slimmer it is still too fat. I can just barely put the cover on. Also the blades starts to touch the housing so I needed to grind the metal part thinner on the inside.

But I made it!

The next part was connecting the wires from the gpu fan and vram fan so they run in sync.

It works amazing, the last finish I need to do is to cut a proper air intake.

With the extra fan I can run my gtx 1070 with 215w and high overclock on both core and memory without water-cooling and without overheating.

 

Also another mod I will add in the future is make some sort of FireWire 800 port. The m17x r4 has a pcie that is not in use and I want to use it for my FireWire mixer.
I just don't know how to approach it.
I would love to hear some ideas.

Also does anyone have an idea how to remove the TDP limit for the CPU?
Could there be some power management chip where cutting a pin will remove the limitation?
Something like the pin mod for overclocking the Alienware m11x r1.

 

Nice, thanks for the temps. I've only seen the water pipe heatsink once before on a 17 R1 Ranger on ebay. :-D

Nice, connecting to the GPU fan looks to be a good idea that another member also suggested. I would recommend insulating the exposed wireing with heatshrink or electrical tape to avoid shorting out the fan controller.

Sweet! That's great to hear it works well in an overclocked setup. :-D

 

Hehe the other member who suggested it was me.

 

Haha! lol, oops, I should have double checked. Good idea!

 

Thank you.

 

So I epoxied a thermal couple protection to the 1070M. Normally closed 85* thermal switch on the PWM signal. So worst case if HWInfo locks up (i.e. everyday) or in BIOS/non-OS the GPU has a mechanical safety.

Will run 100% when higher than 85*C since the 5 pipe copper cooler is nearly useless without the fan running.