Upgrade a G73-jh to 6970?

Alright, impressive feedback. Here's a spot of trouble: I had to get up for 10 minutes, (I worked quickly to see that it would boot) and when I came back it was off. Power button turns on lights for roughly 2 seconds, then nothing. I heard the fans when it booted, working now on getting it back to where I was. Plus side: it boots. Downside: I'm not sure exactly what is up right now.

 

Well someone in the xm CPU thread for the G73 seems to think the mainboard can deliver at least 175W If that's the case, it is good news.

EDIT: Do you see the Asus logo at POST?

 

I still refuse to accept that I am hanging around at home on a Friday night waiting for a man to send me a message. My morals are being tested here

EDIT: Ohhhh dear lets hope that isn't bricked Did you manage to check the temps? stability? in those 10 mins?

 

I think you know what to do now... battery out ac out, wait a few seconds... cross fingers and hope it turns back on.

Hopefully it didn't just eat your mobo.

 

What does this exactly mean? You're sitting in front of your G73JH at the moment and Windows has booted? Or doesn't it boot anymore?

Do you have a kill-o-watt or similar to measure the approximate power draw? Though this shouldn't be an issue as long as you haven't installed the drivers.

 

I saw the ASUS logo, I saw windows starting, I saw my laptop log-in screen. Kb prevented me from actually logging in. Still working on this, bear with me.

 

Don't worry, we're with you. The fact that you see the Asus logo at post is actually very encouraging .

 

'Cracks open a beverage' We are with you to the very end.

 

That's very good news. Hope it works out well.

 

Right now, though, I believe I am the proud owner of a paving slab. A pretty one, but a dead one. No POST since first start. Going to eventually put 5870 back in in a bit if there is a continued lack of progress, and hope it works then.

 

Try to run it without battery only on AC.

 

This is sorry news and if you have tried most things to get it going it might be your only choice, lets hope it is a connection or safety measure and not a fried 6970 or mobo.

 

Hope you had seated the heatsink well on the 6970m.

 

Thats how I've been going about it. Is there a CMOS reset button somewhere? I doubt the card would have pulled as much idling as a 5870 furmarking, so I doubt it could have been a power draw issue. I'm inclined to think it's a hardware issue on my end that only manifested itself after a few minutes, but somehow persisted after that. What bugs me most is the trouble of changing the heatsink back and forth XD

Definitely. Though it's possible the GPU fan wasn't running, i didn't hav a hance to check. I heard whirring, but it might have Only been the CPU fan.

 

Power issue is very unlikely, especially without having drivers installed.

If it's the same as with the JW then there's a CMOS battery on the mobo, but you would need to take the whole thing apart again.
Also check all the cables and connectors.

Temperatures won't cause this... a thermal shutdown doesn't ksimply kill a card, so even with a not perfectly applied heatsink it should be fine while booting. You modified your heatsink I guess?

 

The reset button may not work. The CMOS battery is to the left of the GPU in this pic:

Spoiler

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...475907-asus-g73-series-disassembly-guide.html

 

Thinking about it further, especially with the keyboard issue this sounds like some funny business with the mobo. I wish I could be of more help than that, but try pulling the CMOS battery if you haven't already. :/

 

Heatsink didn't need modding. VRAM and GPU all covered well.

 

Really? I had to do some cutting to make it fit properly... otherwise there was a pretty big gap between die and heatsink. Would love to see some photos of the heatsink and the card sometime.

 

Check your power brick with multimeter if it's work properly.

 

Why not disconnect the keyboard all-together and see what happens. By-the-way, isn't there a reset hole on the bottom right corner of the laptop?

 

Power brick fine, and I tried the CMOS reset on the mobo. This was a 5870 heatsink, the 6970 didn't have and dc-dc converters that sticks as high- with backplate, it was flush to the card.

Also, I've been taking pics, just don't have an easy way of posting right now.

 

Yeah, I used a JH heatsink as well... good for you if it worked without modding.

Did you already put back the 5870m to see whether it's the mobo?

 

If you live anywhere near Toronto then you're welcome to use some of my resources to test. I always have a external monitor, keyboard and mouse hooked up to my machine.

 

Doing so now

 

Umbeleovable sigh of releif. It works again. With the 5870.

 

The mobo is ok then but what about the 6970m?

Tricky choice whether to try again or not.

 

hmm, the card should be fine if it booted the first time, so if you did any drilling that isnt the culprit...

Obviously the mobo and everything is working now, so that leaves us where?!
There is enough power for the card to idle easily, so.....

 

Sadly the results are not enough for me to justify splashing out twice the amount of a 920xm I think I will stick with my 720 and 5870.

Still there is still hope for a second attempt

 

Now that your laptop's working and I'm sure it isn't bricked, i can finally say this.. What were you doing going away from the laptop when it booted the first time, what in the world could have been more important than this...??!! :-\

That said, did you try reseating the 6970 before switching back to the 5870..??
And are you sure that the heatsink made proper contact and the fans were on? Coz since this was without drivers its likely that the idling clocks were the high performance state ones which could have easily caused it to overheat in the time you were away even at idle if the cooling wasn't working..

Anyway + million rep to you for daring to try even if it doesn't work eventually..
But + 10 million if you get it working..

 

Hmm, do you know someone with an Alienware or Clevo (or Clevo reseller) system? Would be good to know whether the card is still alive.

Anyway, I'd say the card is still ok... did you check all the cables when disassembling it again? Might have been a bad contact somewhere.

 

It is with great relief that I again address you from Morpheus. Here are my findings:

The 6970 booted, once, in a low-resolution typical of a graphics card before it has proper drivers. I was unable to login on account of my keyboard (now fully functioning again) and it shortly shut down. For a harrowing hour or so, it would only run the lights for a few seconds if i pushed the power button. Upon returning the 5870, it booted up and ran fine.

While booting, I did get the option to boot to safe mode because it didn't shut down properly. (indicating the shutdown had been motherboard-caused and not a windows error)

I might again in the next few days attempt another swap, who knows, maybe it'll work. I'll have a USB keyboard handy so I can login and maybe install drivers before it shuts down, (if I can replicate the original conditions)

Thank you all for your support and suggestions, I couldn't have (And wouldn't have) attempted this without you. I now hold a 6970 that may or may not be bricked (I highly doubt it).

The best theory I can offer is that some sort of late-implemented hardware check kicked in and shut down the laptop, or perhaps the card qued a request for too much power after succeeding in the initial phases of booting up. I cannot explain the subsequent, brick-like activities until I returned the original.

 

I'm glad you tried this! It needs people like you, who don't just talk, but also act!

Looking forward to see some pics, and I hope your card is still alive, my guess is that some cable wasn't attached properly... Hope you try it again. I wasn't successful at the second try, maybe you will be, good luck!

 

Looking forward to the second attempt Be sure to monitor the temps and fans, as that was a likely cause of the shutdown.

 

Before swap:
(Sorry about low quality; was using iTouch w/bad lighting =/ )

[img=http://s1.postimage.org/tbaueouc/photo_1.jpg]

5870 removed:
[img=http://s1.postimage.org/tbhgk2tg/photo_2.jpg]

6970 in place:
[img=http://s1.postimage.org/tbkrmrt0/photo_3.jpg]

Detail of the boring on the 6970: (they used to both be the size of the smaller hole)
[img=http://s1.postimage.org/tbmf64as/photo_4.jpg]

I had to remove the 6970 and hold the backplate on while attaching the heatsink: difficult, took a second set of hands to accomplish.

[img=http://s1.postimage.org/tbo2pgsk/photo_5.jpg]

I am definitely going to try this again, probably early-ish tomorrow.

 

Before your next attempt, I would get an upgraded power brick for your system. You may be over-stressing your 150w OEM brick.

You could try booting from battery only so it boots with lower clocks.

 

Good idea; I may wait a bit on the second attempt in that case. If anyone in the DC area is willing to spot me a bigger PSU for a bit, let me know =D

 

Targus APA05US Home/Office 180W Universal AC/DC Adapter

 

I don't think an idle GPU could have overstressed the PSU. Especially when it's running without drivers.

 

Graz on the first bootup but sry to hear it did not bootup again.

I do not think its the PSU as clevo can run the card with a 120w PSU.


THe symptoms do not mach exatctly but it could be a overheat protection kicking in as the stock JH heatsink does not cover a few parts needed on the card.

Here is a link to MXM-upgrade who had problemss getting it to work at first. Might help and might not.....best of luck

Clevo W870CU

 

Heat is in my opinion the most likely culprit. However, I gave the card a good, long time to cool before my subsequent attempts - unless each attempt suddenly brought it to a cutoff point, which wouldn't make sense since the first one made it a good 30 seconds or longer.

I had a perfect die-print on the heatsink of the thermal paste, indicating a good "smush" - meaning one of the other chips might be my problem, so I'm working on figuring out a solution for that. Probably some copper slabs and a bit of hand-tooling to have them "dump" into my heatsink.

Final theory: some of the thermal past is hanging off the die onto some of the surface-mount components. this is ICD, which shouldn't be conductive, but might have warmed up enough to flow during the first bootup that it then messed with them enough to stop it every time. (???)
It feels like that's the only explanation that could account for first-try success, failure, then failure every time after.

 

Do not give up! I'm sure you can get better results

 

Not after burning $450 on this

The MXM-Upgrade link is actually very reassuring - it indicates the need for some cooling on parts I didn't include, I'm optimistic ^_^

 

Where did you purchase the 6970 btw? And I'm rooting for you as well!!!

 

upgradeyourlaptop on ebay.
They replied quickly to my questions, most importantly that I got a card without soldered-on mounting posts. If you're considering joining my attempt, see if you can get a backplate, too - I had to bore out the holes on mine a bit, (barely, stayed well within the metal circles that surrounded them (avoiding any delicate traces) ) to get it to fit the 5870 backplate's pegs.

 

the overheatlock could be a fault and stored on a mem on the card and it keeps it in mem until it ise removed from the socket as it should draw some voltages from the rig. Like a standby mode.

Might help to remove AC and battery to reset the card. The hardreset i think is only for the bios and not the card itself.


IC7 should not be a problem it ou added to much or it is spilling.

Well the good news it that it booted in to windows so it has to be heat related.
Dont think the bios at the last moment figured out that it not a 5870

 

That is brilliant. I now only have to wait on some thermal pads >_<
It also matches exactly what mxm-upgrade has on the subject.
I hope you are right. If you are, then I'm set. Now we get to play the waiting game with those therm. pads >_<
I threw some away about a year ago from a trashed laptop

 

Did the fans speed up to 100% to when it booted for the first time ?

If you look at the link i sent then the last pic is of the cards back......strange that they added thermal pads there. Might be the same problem. As that is a clevo the reaction to the heat problem might be diferent. The G73JH when detecting a problem will shut down and will not reboot until problem has been solved and error reset. Its just a theory.

 

I'd be interested to hear if the fans spun up to full or if the memory modules were the problem. Clearly you're looking at thermal pads, so that is a start. However, I think we all know that fans running to max isn't necessarily indicative of heat problems.

 

No i do not mean 100% fan speed as heat related. THe MSI 5870 booted but the fans were constant 100% speed.

If something other then the elements near a temp diode heats up then the fans will not kick in to cool down the card but ususaly new card should have build in heatlocks if the card detect something it will shut down.....well at least it should lol