HP EliteBook 8770W mods/customizations

curved surface of the cooling system. The M3000M is, in principle, well cooled by our laptop, in theory it should be up to 70 degrees and no more.

 

Turns out a third of the GPU cooler was obstructed by dust (so much of it I didn't see it at first). After cleaning that up and applying better thermal paste it barely reaches 70°C even in stress tests.

 

Hey, I installed it with Nvflash but nothing seems to have changed. From what I read it should overclock the M3000M to over 1200MHz but mine stays at 1050MHz. MSI afterburner won't let me go over 1185MHz. Is this normal ?

 

powerlimit?

 

Actually I found out the vbios had not been updated (the window closed way too fast for me to read) and I found a modified nvflash which could bypass the CERT check. Works extremely well. It even outperforms a stock M5000M/980M
Big love to RogueLizard

 

Has anyone been successful with a display resolution upgrade ?

 

And also, could the non-DC 8770w work with a Quadro RTX3000 ? TDP is 80W so should be Ok, but I don't know if the signal is the same as the monitor. And the mounting holes are also not on the same spot but this is supposedly possible to work around (I don't know how but someone did it on a 17 G3)

 

No, you'd need the DC to even make an attempt, everything newer than the 980m / m5000 is eDP and the non-DC has an LVDS connection for display. Only the DC has eDP output and, even then, RTX 3000 will probably be more trouble than it's worth. M5000M is an excellent card if you can find it for a reasonable price for the non-DC 8770w. Going to be 25% to 50% slower than the RTX 3000 depending on the task. I have a newer HP G6 with the RTX 3000 and it's probably 25% faster on average for productivity work (vs my M5000M) feels about neck and neck / equivalent in some tasks. For non-productivity/gaming though, it's a lot slower... the M5000M can handle 1080p fine but some things just chug on it. I remember trying RDR2 when it released and the M5000M couldn't break 45fps with medium settings at 1080p *shrug* maybe more to do with processor bottleneck in that case. So your mileage may vary, but the M5000M makes a great upgrade to keep the 8770w performing well for productivity software.

 

Oh ok so same issue as 1070. I am considering switching to 17 G3 because of the cooling system but does its non DC display also only supports lvds ?
I don't consider switching to M5000M on 8770w because of the cooling system... My overclocked M3000M probably has similar performance. The deal I found for RTX 3000 is 420€. If it is compatible with the non DC 17 G3, the total would be 950€. Does that sound like a good price ?
Also, thanks for your quick answer

 

The 17 G3 should support eDP even without DC display. The M5000M works fine for me with the stock cooling using liquid metal on the die and using Nvidia SMI console command at startup to adjust the TDP slightly lower to prevent throttling and keep everything reasonably cool. That might even be worth trying on your M3000M if you have heat issues (using normal thermal paste or otherwise).

That price is about what I would expect for the RTX 3000 card, I think you could do better than 950€ total if you shop around some more though. I have seen decent G4 17 models for around 600+ USD. At that point you might just spend the whole 950€ budget on a G4 that already has a P5000 since the performance would be about the same as a RTX 3000 anyway.

 

Luckily mine doesn't throttle with the stock cooling system, even after extended use. Awesome to hear that 17 G3 should support edp.
Where have you seen deals like these ? I am in France so the best I found yet was a 17 G3 on ebay that costs 500€ including import fees (except it has the M1000M cooling system so I count another 30€ for that). I might not have looked on the right marketplace for that.

 

Ah I wasn't thinking about the extra fees and shipping to EU, the deals I am thinking could be found on ebay for North America or on Reddit (post a WTB thread on R/hardwareswap or r/homelabsales), F/S thread here (though workstations don't seem to appear on notebookreview F/S section much), WTB thread on ServeTheHome (STH) forum or Hardforum [H]. Probably a few, similar EU-specific places I'm not aware of as well.

I would try a WTB thread on ServeTheHome or r/homelabsales first. Both of those places cater to business/enterprise tech gear and there's a large number of EU users in either place. Someone may have a workstation laptop deal for you that won't require crazy import fees and shipping.

 

I checked some of these places when I received your message. I don't see any EU sellers but I will post and see. Thanks a lot !
Regarding the GPU, 360€ for a P4000 seems a better deal than the RTX3000. Do you know how much room for overclock the cooling system offers ?

 

Good luck finding a deal! I can't say from experience on the P4000 - I completely skipped the Pascal generation on notebooks. I think @mirage_bg might be a good one to ask about this, iirc he worked with the 1070 which is roughly comparable to the P4000.

 

Thanks ! In the mean time I will go on with my 8770w.

 

P4000 slower than GTX 1070 ( 1070 equivalent this - P5000, overclock 1070 - this P5200 ).

 

I use the computer for games but also blender and solid works, does the 1070 perform well with these ? I have sticked to Quadro mainly because they are designed for it and can still game.

 

I heard that the latest versions of solidworks allow conventional GTX to reach the Quadro level. Although roughly speaking, the P4000 will be an interesting option. However, there are a lot of fakes among them, the GPU is indeed GP104, but the strapping, that is, the printed circuit board and its power supply are very weak for such GPUs.

 

How can you tell them appart and how would it affect performance ?

 

most likely does not affect performance, only the life of the video card. Loose power harness = poor service life. MSI has the best options in terms of power supply, then GeCube - not very good in terms of power supply, but quite possible. Then there are bad options.
Here's an example↓↓↓↓:

sometimes comes across a normal version but it is very rare.

MSI & GeCube↓↓↓↓:

the second photo - there is a dekstop chip - which is very good, it is also rare and expensive. Sometimes it is better to buy an entire laptop with a P4000 or 1070 installed ( since it is stupidly cheaper + eDP connector makes it easier to choose with display in the future. ). Also on the second photo you can see a strong power harness.

 

The second photo isn‘t MSi but Eurocom.
MSi looks like this:

 

So if I understand correctly, the power supply is the array of metallic blocks labelled R22, R33, etc ?
My M3000M looks like your bad example
The only card I have seen that ressembles your good examples is the Quadro RTX 3000 (haven't checked the rest of the RTX lineup)

 

M3000M is older generation , where the power supply is completely enough and the reference layout of the PCB is perfect for it.
But using the same layout for one generation later was really very bad idea, especially with GeForce cores.

 

Oh ok thanks. That's a little annoying then, that would mean the safest purchase is RTX3000 over P4000 ? The RTX is more expensive but if I keep it longer...

 

No, Quadros are completely ok with this layout. That‘s why I wrote „especially with GeForce cores“. The real problem with the weak power supply appears only with GTX 1070 resoldered cores on the black Quadro‘s PCBs, or as we call it - Chinese Frankensteins

 

Thanks ! Sorry, by especially I thought you meant mostly but not only. I probably won't be bothered by this since I don't think I will switch to GeForce.
Also, do you know if it is still possible to switch to DC panel for 8770w ? I can't seem to find it anywhere and I am not sure about all the requirements

 

It is possible, but not easy...
The parts you need are the panel itself, the colorboard behind it and the cables.
All of this stuff you can find either on AliExpress or on TaoBao, but for the second one you would need an agent who will communicate with the seller as most of the sellers there don‘t speak other than Chinese language..

 

Can you give me an estimate of the total price ? If it is over 300€ it's probably not worth it but I want to extend the laptop's life as much as possible

 

The colorboard is estimated around 100€, the cables would be around 50€, the panel is 100€ from TaoBao and around 150-180€ on eBay or AliExpress (but there are plenty of resembled ones, which I don‘t recommend) so the TaoBao remains the safest bet, but you need to pay the agent and shipping cost for all of this, so it would definitely go beyond 300€..

 

Thanks a lot. I guess I'll have to switch to 17 G3 then. Do you know the best marketplace for it ? Btw sorry for spamming, you're a gold mine for information

 

Personally I would try here on NBR forums first.
Especially if you live outside Europe.
Then I would try Kleinanzeige if you are located in Germany...
It is complicated for such an advise as it is strongly connected to where you are located.
I would try to look at the different marketplaces (Allegro.pl, Kleinanzeige, some stuff on eBay- but with carefulness there...)
Personally I have never bought entire laptop online.

 

I live in France so shipping from Germany is fairly cheap. I never bought a laptop on internet either but I think it's rather safe for workstations, maybe I am wrong. I'll check those marketplace asap !! Thanks a lot !

 

you can upgrade to DC2, but there are two problems - above 456 drivers, your video card will not work in the device manager (in fact, with maxwell I have a GTX 980M - I sit at 456 and cry), perhaps Pascal will solve this problem. This is a problem from nVidia's side, presumably in vbios, namely in the GOP block of the fragment that is inside the vbios, it needs to be updated. This is a little more complicated than just changing the vbios. Regarding the DC2 display - you need a decoder board and two loops - on taobao they cost about 10-50 dollars, do not look at aliexpress, there are very high prices (not acceptable), + the display - LP173WF3 SLB revision 2 or 3 - costs about $ 100, it's cheaper on taobao - but with delivery it will already align with the price with Aliexpress, so the display with Ali is simpler. Besides, 10 bpc won't work for you on drivers higher than 391-399 - a problem from nVidia. On AMD, 8 bpc look like real 8 bpc (tested on FirePro M4000, 10 bpc not available because the graphics card architecture does not support, only starting with FirePro W7170M, FirePro W5170M, FirePro W5130M and newer (Polaris GPU - WX 4150 / WX7100)) , and at the moment 8 bpc in nvidia are rendered as 6 bpc, which greatly affects the perception of the eyes. This is a very old problem, still not resolved at the nvidia driver level. Solved by flashing the EDID panel. It is very painstaking but doable.

 

I agree to take G3, there are definitely fewer problems.
( unless of course you consider that there is no way to change the processor)) )

 

Yeah, the cooling system should be enough for a few upgrades. I don't need to change the processor. Btw, which processor do you recommend ? The E3 1535M V5 seems the most powerful option but I don't know how much heat it outputs compared to 6700/6820

 

I think the situation is similar to GTX and Quadro (we are not talking about power supply, but about crystal), the type of GTX ASIC is 70%, for example, while Quadro has about 85% and as a result Quadro is better in endurance and heats less and overclocking is better. With processors, I think the same story! But this has not been proven and I do not have complete information on this matter. Take anyone with 8MB cache and go. Look better at what he had, whether he was loaded often or not) I think you better with this in the thread about the ZBook G3)

 

Thanks, I will do a little bit of research. From what I see it doesn't perform incredibly better than 6820HQ. You said I would not be able to change it. Is it soldered to the motherboard ?

 

All of the mobile processors from Skylake onward are soldered, for HP/Zbook that's everything from G3 onward.

The 6820hq something like 5-10% slower vs the Xeon, probably closer to that 5% mark.

 

Thanks, so no real big deal then. Very annoying regarding the soldered CPU.

 

Exactly, a perfect application of thermal paste vs sloppily using a cheap pad would have greater impact on overall clocks/throttling vs the between those two CPUs.

Yes, it is infuriating that mobile workstations are all BGA CPUs. Very few Clevo models these days with both a socketed Intel CPU and a replaceable / MXM GPU. If you're like me and prefer Intel's mobile chips and AMD's desktop chips, then you are completely out of luck. Mobile anything (Intel included) is all soldered/BGA with the occasional MXM GPUs. The only options for socketed AMD desktop CPU in laptops, monstrosities though they are, all have BGA GPU.

 

It's curious they decide to solder CPUs but keep mxm GPUs. Anyway I won't have any impact on their policy by complaining. Thanks for your informations !

 

Yes. cannot change the processor. From the g3 series to the present time, HP began the era of soldered processors to the motherboard

 

I finally had the money to buy the card, and since this is not hapening any time soon, I bougth the most recent one.

The wifi works well, I don´t have any problems with that, but I do have problems with the bluetooth: it simply doesn't exist. Only the wifi device appears on my windows install, but the bluetooth device doesn't, not even an unknown usb device that I can install drivers for, nothing. I tested the card on another computher and bluetooth does orsk there, but not on my computer. The seller told me to cover pin 20 and 51 but that didn't work.

Do you know what could be the problem? I suspect it may be related to the whitelist I applied earlier, I read on some site that a Lenovo thinkpad user was having a similar problem, and someone told him to just install a bios without a modified whitelist, and then his bluetooth started working.

 

WiFi/Bluetooth combo will never work on HP 8570/8770W - it is disabled and the PCI-e slot has missing rails for BT activity. The only option is the original separated BT module from HP, which is located in front of the chassis.

 

Wow, that's disappointing. Well, at least now I can stop looking for fixes.Thank you.

 

Hey, what would be a recommendation for my situation?
My CPU doesn't overheat in Firestrike, however my GPU does, the fan goes to 100% and after the 2 minute mark my GPU temperature is 85C.
It has fresh paste and is in a fairly cool room on a table.
I've been thinking about copying mirage_bg and adding 2 additional heat pipes, however i dont know what the length or thickness of pipes should be, plus how difficult it is to bend them.

If anyone has anything i can try it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/high-temps-p5000m-8770w.836791/#post-11118922

 

Thats my post lol, thought i'd ask here since there's a collection of 8770w experts

 

I know it's your post. Cross-posting isn't allowed. (I thought).

 

Is it possible to update the TPM module on this laptop? Or is there a way to add a new tpm module?