D630 Motherboard Replacement

Hi everyone,

I'm more familiar with the Asus side of these forums but I wanted to post here to doublecheck something. Can anyone help?

My friend has a Latitude D630 and the Quadro he has on it crapped out: artifacts all across the screen from cold boot, sometimes goes away temporarily when CPU is under load and heats up, multiple smaller screens on the internal display, external display picks it up at 43Hz (?!?!), idles at 96C, etc etc. I know a dead GPU when I see one.

Anyways, we want to replace the GPU and of course it's soldered to the motherboard. He doesn't do any intensive stuff and I'd like to avoid the 8600 series nvidia cards again because they might crap out later, so I'm turning to the Intel graphics.

I know mobos starting with a D are Intel-based (DX686, DT781) while R872J is nvidia based.

tl;dr: Can I physically and electrically replace an nvidia motherboard with an Intel one?
Also, is there a better source than eBay?

Thanks in advance!

 

Ebay is your best bet. Yes you can swap in the D630 Intel board but you will need to buy the Intel heatsink.

 

Nvidia heatsink can be used on intel heatsink no need to change. From intel board move to nvidia board only need to change.

Most of the boards on ebay are intel based, the description will tell.

 

Ok sweet! I didn't think of the heatsink changes. Is there anything else I should be aware of before I start purchasing parts for surgery?

Thanks so much!

 

Well you can use Nvidia on Intel but you can't do vice versa or your Nvidia chip will die even faster...and your Intel chipset will get uber cooling.

Documentation

This is Dell's Service Manual for the D630.

You are going to also need a Phillips, flathead (or a spudger), thermal paste, at least 99% anhydrous cleaning alcohol, a old credit card/business card and alot of patience. Have fun

 

Thanks so much Tsnuade and iieean. I'll order an Intel board and dig around for my thermal paste again. That documentation will be handy, too.

 

Clean the fan completely if you can. D630 internal design is very non-ergonomic. Imagine to clean the fan you have to dismantle everything including heatsink & motherboard just to get the fan out. I did some minor modification so that I do not need to dismantle motherboard to take out the fan.

1 thing good worth mention for D630 is that the LAN module is independent. If it is boomed by lightning just replace the module and no need to change the whole mainboard like current new models. So, remember to keep the LAN module from your old board

I am using D630 only to do mild work like playing solitaire, downloading movies without clothes with nvidia graphic and X9000 Extreme CPU. It is hot, really hot with light duty and unable to imagine if under load. Yet it never failed me so far running 24/7.

 

I have a can of compressed air and I'll be sure to clean everything of course. Good to know about the LAN module, mine's hardwired to the motherboard (on my Asus).

He has a T7500 which runs quite cool... It was only the nvidia card that was idling at >90C all the time. I hope the Intel card runs cooler. I think the most intensive thing my friend will be doing is watching HD movies. Beyond that it's just linux applications.

I ordered the motherboard and it should be here early next week. Thanks again guys, I'm sure you'll hear me whining if something goes awry.

 

If you want, you can swap in a T8x00 series Penryn 800 FSB Core 2 Duo, it will run cooler and has that extra instruction set for encoding.

 

It's a thought but I'm not sure $40 is worth 10% more clockspeed when the mobo is already $75... We'll see how the T7500 and Intel GMA handles HD video and work from there. I didn't know Merom/Penryn 800MHz parts were interchangeable. In theory he could step up to a T9500, correct?