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Dell XPS M1730: SLI, Penryn, and Overclocking

 by Jarred Walton on February 28, 2008 10:00 AM EST
32 Comments | Add A Comment
32 Comments

Cover Me - I'm Goin' In!

If you want to get at the motherboard/internals, start by lifting up the plastic access panel above the keyboard. Four screws hold the keyboard in place, and once you remove those carefully lift up the keyboard and then disconnect the ribbon cable underneath. Under the keyboard, you will find three mini-PCI slots; on the test system, an Intel 4965AGN wireless adapter occupies one of these slots.

That's as far as most users will need to go, but if you actually want to get down to the motherboard you'll have two remove the four screws holding the main LCD panel in place, and you will also need to remove the two screws and the mini LCD panel above the keyboard. You'll also need to disconnect the power and display cables for the LCD, plus the wireless networking antenna. Take your time and move slowly.


At this point, in order to remove the plastic shell that's home to the touchpad you will need to remove a whole bunch of screws. There are 14 screws on the bottom, one of which hides underneath the hard drive cover. Nine more screws secure the panel from the top - five of these are under the keyboard area, and two more are along the top of the notebook underneath the main LCD panel. When you've removed all of the screws, the plastic cover should pull off without requiring an excessive amount of force. Again, make sure to disconnect the various cables/ribbon cables before you pry things apart.



At the top left of the motherboard we find the GPU (GPUs) module, which is easy to remove. It can presumably be upgraded should Dell decide to provide such an option in the future. The top right is home to the Northbridge and CPU, covered by a heatsink/fan and secured with several more screws. While we didn't fully dismantle the chassis, the PhysX 100M sits up in the top-right between the CPU and Northbridge according to Dell.

Dismantling the whole system to get at the CPU isn't particularly difficult, but it does require a bit of time. During testing, we were on a conference call with Dell and NVIDIA at one point, and one of the NVIDIA people asked if there was an easier way to swap CPUs. The answer: no, not really. If you plan on swapping CPUs back and forth repeatedly over a short period of time, about the only shortcut you can take is to not put all of the screws back in place. Luckily, for most people upgrading laptop CPUs is a rare occurrence. Give yourself 30 to 60 minutes and you should be able to do it without difficulty. The only thing you really need is a small Phillips head screwdriver, preferably one with a magnetic tip to help extract the screws. (Yes, we know that magnets are supposed to be dangerous around electronics... we haven't killed anything yet, and we hate losing screws.)

On the outside Looking In Benchmark Setup
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  • mark3450 - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link

    This is a near perfect computer for me. I'm always near a plug at a friends house or traveling for work, and in those places I want my machine to be as powerfule as possible. I bought and still use one of the original XPS laptops, and I've been happy with it. It is however getting near time to upgrade.

    One drawback I see however is that dell won't supply it with Vista64, which is disappointing as I'd defiantely get this beast with 4Gb and want to make full use of it. I've been using Vista64 on my gaming desktop for several months and have been very pleased with it. I'm sure Dell just doesn't want to deal with 2 sets of drivers, but Vista64 is the future and they should support it on a machine like this.

  • JarredWalton - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link

    Dell did ship me 2x2GB of RAM for additional testing, but I didn't get time to look at that (yet). 32-bit is still better for a lot of people, and I think the real inflection point is going to be when we start moving to 8GB systems. 64-bit can address all 4GB of memory without the need to split things into application and OS memory spaces, but usually it doesn't *need* it.

    I know Dell is starting to offer 64-bit as an option on some other systems, and I'd imagine down the road they'll have 64-bit for the M1730 (or perhaps the successor). Drivers are just so critical and notebooks don't get updated quite as often, so you really are living on the bleeding edge with SLI and Vista-64 right now. It's possible, of course, and in fact I'm sure you could install Vista-64 on the system on your own; Dell just isn't ready to support that yet.

  • mark3450 - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link

    The problem with installing my own Vista64 OS, aside from the cost, is that it's likely impossible to get NVIDIA drivers for it. I currently own an XPS/inspiron Gen2 and anything but the blessed drivers from Dell crash the machine, and it doesn't even have SLI.

  • JarredWalton - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link

    Have you checked with NVIDIA? My understanding is that they now have quarterly driver updates that apply to various gaming notebooks, so even if Dell (or someone else) has abandoned an older model laptop, you might not be totally out of luck. If that does work, let me know as well - I'm certainly curious about it. The last driver release was supposedly just a couple months ago, and it should cover up through 8700M notebooks. (Dell XPS is supposed to be one of the participating vendors, so it's still voluntary, but most of the gaming notebook companies hopefully understand the importance of drivers and agreed to allow "reference" drivers from NVIDIA to work for certain systems.)

    Regarding Vista-64, again the above may offer a solution.

  • strafejumper - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link

    this is what i mean
    i only use desktops my whole life so i don't know much about laptops but - for $3500 i would want to be able to watch a 120 minute dvd, and this thing can only make it through 60 mins... also can only browse the web for 60 mins, justdon't get this.

    maybe i had the idea that the appeal of the laptop was you are free from outlets and wires and etc. but with these even for $3500 you still have to be near a plug to watch a dvd

  • 7Enigma - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link

    The purpose is to have the power of a desktop with the portability of a laptop. NOT that you can have a 5 (heck 2) hour portable laptop. As the author mentioned, it really is a niche product. You want to be able to take your screaming desktop pc from home to work or to a friends house, not on the plane/train/automobile that a typical notebook computer is used for. If I had oodles of cash and went to lan parties frequently, this would be the perfect computer. And forget the loud fans, if you are gaming on it and need the overclocked performance, I'd be playing the games with headphones!

    Put simply, this is the 10lb desktop computer.

  • IvanAndreevich - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link

    Hey guys, you might want to blur out the serial number on that COA sticker on the bottom.

  • JarredWalton - Saturday, March 1, 2008 - link

    Ooops... yeah, forgot to do that. :|

  • legoman666 - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link

    Thanks OP, in for 3!

  • crimson117 - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link

    Jarred - here's some advice:

    Find a woman who thinks it'd be romantic to buy his and hers M1730's :)
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