The Upgrade Process: A Journey of Trial and Error
As I began to upgrade my Alienware laptop, I had high hopes that everything would go smoothly. The new GPU cards, specifically the two GTX 880m units, were installed with relative ease, aside from a minor issue with one of them having a different mounting bracket than the other three MXM boards. This required me to violently pry off the first one in order to use it as a replacement. I was relieved that this process wasn't too traumatic.
However, my excitement was short-lived, as I soon realized that I had forgotten the SLI Bridge, which meant that I would have to take everything apart again to put it back on. The laptop successfully booted for the first time, but I couldn't shake off the feeling that something was amiss. As I powered up the system, I made a terrible realization - I forgot the SLI Bridge once again.
Embarking on the Six-Year Teardown Process Again
I took a deep breath and decided to start the six-year teardown process again. I had grown accustomed to this ritual over the years, but it never got any easier. The reassembly process was just as grueling as before, with every screw feeling like a battle. But finally, after what felt like an eternity, I was done.
Assessing Performance and Temperatures
After downloading the drivers and running some benchmarks, I was pleased to see that the system was performing better than expected. The temperatures were fine, and it wasn't much noisier either. One of the benefits of upgrading with a new CPU was that the temperatures weren't increasing significantly over the previous configuration. This was a welcome relief.
However, my excitement was tempered by the realization that the performance gains weren't as dramatic as I had hoped for. The frame rate in GTA 5 wasn't doubling as I had expected, and the system didn't seem to like quad-core processors very much. On the other hand, running Battlefield 5 showed promise, with a significant increase in frame rate and a more playable experience.
Unstable System - A Mixed Bag
While the upgrade was successful, the system was also quite unstable. GTA 5 crashed multiple times during my testing, and this had already crashed twice as well. I couldn't help but wonder if I had made a terrible financial decision by spending over $600 on two graphics cards and a CPU that would only yield an extra 10 frames per second in certain games.
A Lesson Learned
As I sat back and reflected on the experience, I realized that I had learned a valuable lesson. Upgrading a system can be challenging, but it's not just about the technical aspects - there are also emotional and financial implications to consider. The experience was a reminder to always approach these projects with caution and patience.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, upgrading my Alienware laptop was a journey of trial and error, filled with twists and turns along the way. While the system is now performing better than expected, there were still some surprises along the way. I hope that this experience will serve as a warning to others who are considering similar upgrades - be prepared for anything!
WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis colossal old Alienware laptop has upgrade ability that humiliates modern laptops and in today's video I'm gonna push that upgrade ability to the Limitin these boxes that look like they may contain a black market kidney or the kind of upgrades for this Alienware laptop that are unheard of in a modern laptop but before we drop them in there we need to get some baseline performance readings for some good old context so now we get to see if the laptop still works after the first time I tore it down oh it's quite a complex thing to break down so I may have just broken it let's see let's see how it works lighting UPS happening okay there we go that's a good sign but the good sign was short-lived oh that's not ideal and after a couple more blue screens of death combined with the BIOS still reading the boot Drive I just assumed that the windows install corrupted which turned out to be the case reinstalling Windows fixed everything hey that's fixed so let me just install the drivers and then we can get to our Baseline testsum I feel like they're supposed to be like game happening right now is isn't there what was that for some reason GTA 5's canned Benchmark would just pretend to run without showing us any of the gameplay which feels a little selfish so I decided to Instead try the single player to see if maybe that was any better okay well at least with the normal game we see game happening and funnily enough despite the game not actually showing during the canned benchmarks it looks like we're getting very similar performance yeah I'm with 1080p High settings GTA 5 with both the graphics cards running we're averaging between 60 and 70 frames per second1080p low settings in Battlefield 5 we're averaging mid 30s to 40 frames per second it's not a great experience quite frankly and as you can tell that the second GPU is basically not doing anything although temperature and noise wise the system is doing very well for a laptop and when we've got a big view going we're in the low 30s so this is our Benchmark hopefully we can overcome this pretty pedestrian loser performance with our upgrade especially considering the hilarious cyberpunk results now when it comes to things like storage and RAM the previous owner already upgraded this laptop quite significantly so we're going to be focusing on the CPU and the graphics cardsI am very excited to be replacing the two GTX 765ms that are currently in the laptop with GTX 880myou it's some gross glue and there is our beautiful GTX 880m now there are significantly more powerful mxm gpus available than this in fact you can even find RTX 2080 mxm boards floating around on AliExpress but I didn't want to risk any compatibility issues so I decided to go with the highest end Kepler mxm boards either way this should be a pretty big upgrade and as you can tell by this little connector they do still support SLI so we should be able to get both of them running together in our laptop you've probably also noticed that this board doesn't come with the cooler so we're gonna have to hope that a the cooler that's on the card in the laptop already fits on this and that it can handle this board because it has almost doubled the TDP um yeah this may potentially not go very well unfortunately the CPU is a lot less exciting it's just another quad core that's slightly higher clock than may have a little bit more cash maybe so now that we've got our upgrades ready it's time to tear down our big ass Alienware laptop and inject the steroids straight into its heart thank you so now that I've done several lifetimes worth of screwing I have to turn the laptop over and spelunk through the other side this kind of feels like using show dolphins in an aquarium you're just doing so much damage to something that means you no harm but eventually the dolphin abuse paid off oh yes oh yes there we go the damage is done I think oh these laptop guards are a thing of beauty now I'm really hoping that these two heat pipe coolers can handle the 880m's I'm also hoping that all of the kind of stuff that contacts power delivery and whatever is just the same on the different mxm card fingers crossed fingers crossed I just noticed that it says 75 watt on the heatsink I'm sure that's just a suggestion you know it's kind of like best before but for graphics card googlers right in terms of the CPU I think it's going to be a much easier just straight drop in replacement but let's start with the graphics cards I remember this being quite a traumatic process but hopefully this time it isn't oh no it is it is still traumatic oh oops and then this is our pathetic little GTX 765 and that we're replacing which we have to harvest the definitely adequate cooler offI think it's just pops off right like oh yeah there we go now in terms of things like memory and power delivery contact this actually does look basically identical to the 880m card and if you look at the two cards side by side they do look essentially identical except for they're being a lot more stuff on here and the die is significantly chunkier but that's a good sign I think this is going to work really welland just like that I think we're good it looks like everything's making solid contact and the only thing that concerns me is that all of the other memory has stopped contacting it except for this bro but I'm guessing that's fine I don't know now unfortunately replacing the cooler on the second GTX 880m wasn't as straightforward because it had a different mounting bracket on it to these three other mxm boards for some reason so I had to violently pry the one off of the GTX 765m so that I could use that as a replacement that didn't suck at all the second one may have been significantly more traumatic than the first one but at least we're done foreignsuccessfully dropping in the new CPU I just had to do the three years of screwing it takes to reassemble this big ass Alienware laptop and just like that six years later our upgrades done so now let's see if it's worked but as I powered up the laptop for the first time I made a terrible realization I forgot the SLI Bridge oh that really sucks I'm gonna have to completely tear it down again to put this back on so after the laptop successfully booted at a whole bunch of shouting I decided to embark on the six-year teardown process again one eternity later okay I'm finally done with the reassembly process again I'm sure it's going to be worth the three percent performance scaling we're gonna get from it but either way the upgrade's been successful so now I can download the drivers and see how much more performance we get and if the laptop explodes thank you oh no the canned Benchmark still isn't sharing its gameplay but it has crashed several times so that's new as was the case with the previous gpus at least the normal game runs and we are getting a reasonable amount more frame rate it's about double oh yeah it's it's not it's not really double anymore is it in fact the performances very similar uh it is a bit higher but yeah it's not the jump I was expecting I I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that GTA 5 doesn't seem to like quad core is very much and our CPU upgrade may not have helped a whole lot one of the benefits of that though is that the temperatures are fine we're not seeing massive temperature increases over the previous uh configuration and it isn't much noisier either so at least we've got that going for uswould you look at that with Battlefield 5 we're actually getting gameplay showing and it's running a lot better we're getting about double the frame rate we did before and it's much more playable like it actually feels like a usable Battlefield 5 gaming experience and in terms of temperatures I mean it's higher but it's still really good for a laptop and so is the noise yeah that's 75 watt cooler apparently is enough oh that guy is definitely not hacking very nice this system's handling the upgrade better than I was expecting although it is quite unstable GTA 5 crashed like four times and this has crashed twice already instability aside cyberpunk a 1080p low settings also saw huge gains although that does seem a whole lot less exciting when you realize I paid over six hundred dollars for the two graphics cards in the CPU which feels like a lot for an extra 10 frames per second in cyberpunk and on that terrible financial decision thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video consider watching another one a suggestion will pop up in a second and until the next video bye-byethank you
