M6800 Precision - Tesla M6 & Firepro 6100M - Working/updated/switchable graphics

okay cool. my budget is like 250ish? Depending on the setup though as I don't know how much ram, graphics, and cpu you got going on with the m6800 heh

 

I've had the M6700 since launch and it's getting long in the tooth. I'm going to replace it with a Precision 7770 as soon as they are available (I've been waiting for Intel's hybrid architecture which is arriving in Alder Lake). Given the choices I would probably go with M6800, I think having the 4th-gen CPU would have a few benefits that I'm not able to take advantage of (i.e. FMA3 instruction set would help with yuzu performance). I'm partial to Dell over HP just because of the work that I've put in figuring out the thermal/fan situation... and I think the build is just really good in general.

Regarding the bracket, if you can't find one, you can sometimes find them standalone on eBay, or maybe you can find a cheap GPU to purchase which comes with it attached (i.e. Quadro 3000M or K3000M).

 

Thanks so much for the info man. Do I need to change the gpu thermal pads at all to something thicker ? And did I read somewhere that you have to slightly modify the heat sink to fit the 980m in the m6800? I can’t remember lol

 

I think stock thermal pads should be fine (if you are replacing a system with a NVIDIA GPU anyway). Maxwell GPUs will not fit in the M6800 without a heatsink mod. The position of the VMRs ("R22" things at the top) is slightly different than Kepler. There is a protrusion on the bottom of the heatsink that hits one of them and must be cut off somehow. This might be a benefit for M6700 which does not require a heatsink mod for Maxwell GPUs.

 

That is definitely something to take into consideration. Is there any tutorials or pictures or some kind of guide regarding doing that modification to the heat sink ? I’m pretty crafty and I could prob pull it off but I’d like to make sure I know what I’m doing lol

 

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/6lMAAOSwNJ1gfhKr/s-l1600.jpg
At the top you can see that the copper piece covered by blue thermal pads is somewhat broken into three sections. The middle section is "lower" than the two outside sections. Part of this will hit a VRM on the Maxwell GPU so it will need to be cut or otherwise "sanded down". I don't know exactly what part of it has the issue but you shouldn't have to cut off the whole thing, just part of one of the edges. I know that other people have had success with a Dremel tool.

There is a different version of the NVIDIA heatsink which is all flat along that part and if you had that one you wouldn't have to perform a mod. Unfortunately, it's less common and the part number is the same so it would probably be difficult to find one for sale.

 

Looks like the mod wouldn’t be too difficult. I suppose if I’m gonna get a laptop might as well get the most recent to have a socketed cpu. I sure miss those days. I don’t like that everything is soldered to the board these days.

if I understand it correctly , the m6800 was one of the last few laptops that still allowed for swapping cpus correct ? From what I can tell about half way through the life of Haswell they started soldering them to the board.

 

Intel started selling only BGA mobile CPUs starting with 6th gen. (Maybe 5th gen? That one never really got off the ground.) The only way to get a socketed CPU after that is to get a laptop that accepts a "desktop CPU". I'm not sure if there are any of those around anymore but even Dell was doing it not that long ago with Alienware Area 51m.

Anyway, you are right, Precision M6800 is the last Precision with a socketed CPU. Precision 7710 has 6th gen so it has a BGA CPU.

I get the annoyance of BGA but it didn't end up bothering me as much as I thought it would. Normally, cross-generation upgrades aren't possible even with a socketed CPU anyway. I just make sure that new systems have a CPU at/near the top of its generation and then don't have to wish that I could upgrade it.

 

Yeah in reality its prob not a big deal I just like using my hands and used to always get excited to be able to upgrade things like a cpu or gpu etc. I feel like there's also something to be said about todays build quality and cost of current laptops. If I have specd things correctly, it would appear as though, a m6800 with a high end i7, 32gb of ram , and a 980m will run laps around most new laptops under the 1000$ price mark. I even run somewhere that apparently someone claimed to have 64gb of ram working in a m6800 lol

 

No, this started with 4th gen. Full swing in 5th gen.