The Mighty Clevo P870DM-G "Phoenix" Gets an 8700K and GTX 1080 Upgrade

It seems like only yesterday that I was assisting @Prema with the firmware mods and review of the EUROCOM SKY X9 (P870DM-G). What an amazing machine that was. It totally transformed my opinion of Clevo and I fell in love with the multi-generation product model that I now regard as the best high performance laptop ever made. The P870XX, including the latest P870TM, has no match.

It was with great excitement that I bought my own P870DM-G from @tanzmeister. That beast was truly amazing by every measurement.

Along came GTX 1080, and with it great disappointment for me and all other P870DM-G owners to learn that a simple and affordable GPU upgrade was out of the question. With mixed emotions, my Alienkiller found a new home with @Rage Set and it is now in the loving care of @Mr. Spock.

With equal excitement, I purchased Alienkiller II (EVOC P870DM3) from our friends at HIDevolution and the eager firmware development with Brother @Prema that made that an even better product than its older brother. But, the fact that I could not simply upgrade the P870DM-G with GTX 1080 continued to be a sore subject that gnawed at my soul. Sure, it can use MSI 1070, but a machine as amazing as the P870DM-G deserved far better than a second-fiddle gamer-boy GPU upgrade.

Fast-forward to 2018... the curse has been broken. The mighty Phoenix rises from the ashes to wreak the havoc it was born to inflict upon the pathetic and cursed world of crippled BGA turdbooks! I know some of you have been patiently waiting to see results for the GTX 1080 upgrade for the P870DM-G. Sorry it took so long to get this done.

This is definitely not an upgrade for the faint of heart. Unfortunately, the good old days when we had MXM standards and many upgrades were a simple bolt-on affair seem to be over. The day of long-lasting, easily upgradable, properly serviceable, truly uncompromising high-performance laptops that perform extremely well has essentially passed.

For those with the determination to get it done and the desire to give a nasty-finger salute to the retarded clowns (the ODMs) that have ruined everything with BGA and proprietary crap, this thread is for you.

First off, this absolutely never would have happened without the following individuals that contributed time and money to the project. I am but the humble grunt here. Big shout out and mega-kudos to:

@tanzmeister – for providing a special price on the system and for the donor GTX 1080

@Jon Webb – for purchasing this system from Tanzmeister and donating it to the cause

@Prema – for the hours of labor that went into the BIOS mods that made the 7700K and GTX 1080 work

@Khenglish – for the steady hand and superior soldering skills that rewired the MXM slot to power the GPU

@Ted@HIDevolution and @Donald@HIDevolution - for the donated 1080 GPU "T" heat sink and for ordering the power cables that were needed

I lacked the courage and self-confidence to do the do the MXM wiring mod. Khenglish knocked it out in a few days and also beefed up the CPU power delivery circuit while he had it. Hopefully, we will see the 8700K upgrade in place soon. The BIOS is ready, but there are some other mods we did not expect that will have to take place at the hardware level before that can happen.

But, this thread is all about the GPU, and I know most of the highly intelligent and discriminating folks that purchased a P870DM-G did so for gaming. That is the one thing that most of you care about, and nothing (at the moment) games better in a laptop than the wicked Clevo GTX 1080. So, without further ado, let’s have a look at the hardware mods.

CHASSIS MODS

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The front frame has to be trimmed due to the massive Clevo GTX 1080 form factor. One of the stand-offs for the retainer screws has to be removed from the metal bracket. A stand-off underneath the GPU (attached to the palm rest) has to be chopped off so the GPU can lay flat in the chassis.

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Photos

Below are some photos of the finished chassis mods with the GPU in place.

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Photos

POWER CABLE MOD

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I obtained GTX 980 and GTX 1080 power cables from HIDevolution, consulted the Clevo Service Manuals for the P870DM-G and P870DM3 and built a power cable that tapped into both of the motherboard's auxiliary power jacks for the GTX 980.

The color-coding of the GTX 980 power cables is obvious. Red for positive, black for ground. That is not the case for the color-coding on the GTX 1080 power cable.

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Photos

The color-coding of the power cable for the GTX 1080 is not as obvious.

MXM CIRCUIT MOD

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Other than the heat sink, the most intimidating part of the mod is supplying power to typically reserved (unused) pins in the MXM slot that Clevo utilized to make their version of the GTX 1080 incompatible with a standard MXM slot. The mod is pretty straight-forward, but simply counting off the pins and worrying I might accidentally solder wires to the wrong pins and burn up the motherboard or GPU was too intimidating for me. I was going cross-eyed trying to count off and mark the pins. @Khenglish was gracious enough to do this part. He had already validated the proof of concept and paved the way to this by modding the MXM slot on his P170EM to install a GTX 1080 in that old beast.

Below is an image from his P170EM MXM wiring mod. @Khenglish had to find a place for the GPU auxilary power for his P170EM, so that part is not necessary for the P870DM-G since we have connections on the motherboard.

Side note: The modded MXM slot still works with normal MXM. The GTX 980M still worked exactly the same in the MXM slot after it had the power mod for the Clevo GTX 1080.

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Photo

Below is how the finished MXM wiring mod looks on the P870DM-G. Rather than tapping into pins 278 and 280 for the 3.3V power, he found an adjacent junction point on the motherboard.

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Photo

With the proper power mods for the GPU and MXM slot in place, the GTX 1080 booted like it was made for the P870DM-G. Even the driver installed itself automatically (no INF mod required) and G-SYNC works perfectly.

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CUSTOM GTX 1080 HEAT SINK

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This was a new venture for me. I had never disassembled, tweaked and reassembled a heat sink before. I ruined a couple of them learning what not to do, but once I had figured out what doesn't work it was not too bad. The key is using lots of clamps to keep things from falling apart once the solder begins to flow, using low melting point solder and being very careful to not kink and ruin the heat pipes. The end product is not as pretty as a factory built heat sink, but it works pretty decent, especially considering it was done by a noob like me.

My hot air station did not heat enough surface area for this task. What ultimately ended up working best was using a 1500W heat gun, getting the GPU side of the copper heat plate hot enough to melt the solder (138°C) on the opposite side while the pipes were clamped in place with solder paste.

I tried using Cold Shield Thermal Gel, but that was not effective for heat pipes. Because they are made to conduct heat, the Cold Shield was not able to stop the heat from migrating as it would for normal copper pipes (like household water pipes). I ended up putting the radiator end of the heat sink in a deep stew pot filled with cold water to help keep the heat concentrated to the GPU end of the heat sink while soldering.

Below are a few photos of the custom heat sink.

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Photos

Below is the finished product.

As I was trial fitting the heat pipes prior to soldering, I found one last chassis mod was required. There is a post on the aluminum motherboard frame that needs to be broken off to allow clearance for one of the heat pipes.

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Photo

So, you are all probably wondering how it works. I will share some preliminary results in the next post.

Spoiler: Tags

I apologize in advance to anyone I accidentally forgot to tag. Some of you are on the @hmscott ignore list.
In no particular order of importance...
@Papusan @bloodhawk @Johnksss @ssj92 @XMG @sicily428 @GTVEVO @TBoneSan @Dr. AMK @ole!!! @Phoenix @t456 @bennyg @jaybee83 @Mobius 1 @Falkentyne @thattechgirl_viv @Zoltan@HIDevolution @Ashtrix @saturnotaku @Cass-Olé @DreDre @Meaker@Sager @Eurocom Support @Prostar Computer @pat@XOTICPC @Larry@LPC-Digital @HTWingNut @Raiderman @KY_BULLET @D2 Ultima @Robbo99999 @Trafficante @makina69 @MUERTE 75 @Scerate @jclausius @senso @Vasudev @Vistar Shook @slimmolG @ahmadmud @TheDantee @thegh0sts @danyune @KKthebeast @Raidriar @Daniel1983@steberg @cj_miranda23

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03/30/2018 - Update
The upgrade to 2560*1440 120Hz panel is in place.
Manufacturer............. AUO
Plug and Play ID......... AUO1496
Data string.............. B173QTN01.4

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04/13/2018 - Update
8700K Upgrade Success

Just went you thought it was crazy... it got crazier. More to follow. There's a little more firmware tweaking left to do. But, IT WORKS!

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05/13/2018 - Update
8700K Firmware is essentially finished. Everything that was not working before works now. The impossible is merely an inconvenience. Team PremaMod breaks all the rules. Intel i7-8700K runs perfectly on Z170. Windows 7 runs flawlessly on Skylake, Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake. Laptops work great with desktop CPUs. Everything everyone has been told by the Intel and Micro$oft cartels is a bald-faced lie.

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CUSTOM CPU HEAT SINK

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5/19/2018 - Update
I have successfully modded a P870DM3 CPU heat sink by added two more heat pipes. It is not enough of an improvement to justify the effort. It takes a little bit longer to saturate the heat sink, but the TDP handling capacity seems more or less the same. It really needs a larger radiator and a stronger fan to see any meaningful gains in thermal management.

Next mod will be to obtain a P870TM1 CPU heat sink (made for 8700K) with direct contact between the heat pipes and CPU. If that brings as much improvement as expected, I will mod it as well, adding more heat pipes as I did with this mod.

Photos are in the spoiler.

Spoiler: CPU Heat Sink Mod - added 2 Heat Pipes (5 in total) to P870DM3 heat sink

 

The cooling on this is not really adequate for extreme overclocked benching unless I break out my portable AC unit. It would do fine on that, and I will get to it later on.

I suspect most of you are interested in how it games and whether it stays cool enough for gaming. So, how does it work? I will let you guys decide. Here are my preliminary tests with some demanding titles.

Nothing gets a GPU warmed up like a loop of Unigine Heaven with everything maxed out. Here are two full loops of Heaven followed by the benchmark results.

How hot did it get?


How about 2 back-to-back loops of 2 runs of Metro Last Light benchmark with everything maxed out?


Below are some screen shots showing the GPU temps...

Spoiler: Open Spoiler to View Screen Shots

And, here are a couple of screen shots showing framerate and temps at the end of 30 minutes of Crysis 3 gameplay with all the settings maxed out...

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https://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/12776087

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/15515656

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/3766000

 

Everything is looking good Mr Fox!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-T807A using Tapatalk

 

@Mr. Fox, Craziest mod ever

 

You gonna sell this thing in the future?

Looking good, hope 8700K goes well, good job everyone!

 

Looks like with all the mods and hard work the Gpu stays pretty cool with a decent overclock. 1800mhZ is a good overclock value. If it can stay in the 70s and low 80s temp wise this will be a success!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-T807A using Tapatalk

 

Great Job as always, I have to get a barebone quickly

 

w00t w000000t! this package contains so much awesomeness its close to bursting at the seams! hope itll be able to handle the 8700K, as well

once ure done u should do a public NBR auction of this unique machine. or maybe as a giveaway in a contest? oooor just keep it and put it on a pedestal at home

 

Can you actually post useful benchmarks? I mean if you rave about how superior clevo notebooks are but somehow cannot figure out how to make proper benchmarks then I have absolutely nothing to add here other than, how do you even know?.

Nobody uses Unigine heaven on high preset, so nothing to compare.
Crysis 3 usually does get benchmarked in Welcome to the Jungle at the part where you dodge the tower cannons, since it's by far the most demanding scene in the game.

Only correct benchmark was metro 2033, which sadly nobody uses so again, nothing to compare.

Here is how you benchmark:
- Heaven on highest preset and settings
- 3Dmark Firestrike would be nice
- Crysis 3, welcome to the jungle at cannons (would be mostly interested in this)
- Witcher 3 in Novigrad.
- Or even hardcore stresstest with furrmark + Prime

Just something to give people in any way shape or form any idea on how it performs. So far all I see is, it turns on and seems to work. How does it compare to other GTX 1080 notebooks? Nobody knows.

Nevertheless, nice work, Khenglish and Prema are beasts, well done my boys. Sadly I have no idea if it performs well or not.

 

This is a very difficult mod for me, almost impossible. I suggest if the price after modding will be reasonable, that our respected resellers can do it professionally and we buy from them.

 

Yeah I think you should let people like Khenglish do that for you instead =D

the question remains tho, is it worth it? We don't know the actual performance. For all we know it might be the same performance as a higher TDP GTX 1070.

 

Yes maybe, but for me I trust that Mr. Fox, Prema and the whole team will not waste their time for something not valuable. They were working on this for a long time with silence, but they will never annonce it and telling everyone without making sure that is a successful project.
You have to give it sometime, I know Mr. Fox so busy in many things, and he will update us with all remain information.
You have to see how much flexibility that Clevo has to allow all pioneers to add value to their laptops, something no one can do with any other current brands.

 

@Mr. Fox

 

Well since it looks like he didn't get finished until around 4am (EST) 1am (MST), he was probably fighting to stay awake. From seeing how much he benches his desktop, I would say that there will be plenty of benchmarks coming...Stay tuned...

 

It's never a waste, even if the GTX 1080 is underperforming,it's nice to know that it is indeed possible. Might be useful when we get weird form factor GTX 20xx cards for instance. Also I'm far more impressed that apparently AW R2 notebooks can run friggn maxwell at the moment.

 

The AK beast lives!!! Congrats brother. I think it is time we build a Hall of Fame for your special/unique one of a kind super beasts. I'll be keeping my eyes glued to this thread.

 

patience young grasshopper! They'll come.

First things when testing completely new hardware is you want to check a) drivers b) temps and c) can it safely draw its rated power. So far: yep, 76C max, yep. Then worry about relative performance.

 

grasshopper is impatient ;3

 

You aren't really telling @Mr.Fox how to benchmark are you? That would be silly on your part. I am sure there will be plenty of benchmarking when he has a chance.

Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

 

People that actually understand what they are doing do max out all of the settings in Heaven because the Extreme preset is messed up. The Extreme preset runs at 1600x900 in window mode, which is not the right way to run an extreme anything benchmark. My Heaven benchmark is 100% comparable to Heaven benchmarks run by people that actually know how to properly use the product and set their settings to match exactly what mine are. It's not comparable to the click-and-run presets run by noobs.

 

Then why is it that I see heaven ran on 1080p and ultra quality while yours is only on high?

Also, can you just do witcher 3 in novigrad and Crysis 3 welcome to the jungle? A video of 5-10min gameplay is sufficient. I want to see the temps, clocks etc. 1080p, maxed out settings on each game, hairworks on witcher 3 on obviously. and full AA on Crysis 3.

 

Ask @Papusan He'll tell you everything
I kid you not.
That's exactly what he claimed, He even took photoshopped pictures and refused to take a valid picture when asked by D2 Ultima and others.
And lying about making your own EC...that's really low. And claiming that it was stable at 5.2 ghz when you cant even stop a GT73VR from reaching prochot at 4.9 ghz at the vcore required for stability for all 8 threads loaded, IF you could avoid the Zener diode overcurrent "trip" (ask @BeastsForever.TheDragon about that).

 

I was really hoping this thread wouldn't get derailed as this is a really great mod for those that spent a heck of a lot of cash to get something with a future.

For an active DTR hater why is he even bothering with a thread like this to begin with?

 

I couldn't allow him to start bashing Mr Fox's hard work, not after what Frank Azor did to Mr Fox because they were losing nazi "control" of their laptop's usage envelope by the general public being aware of just how over-engineered they were for that time. Plus it's extremely disrespectful as well.

 

looks like the legends still outdid themselfes @Mr. Fox @Prema @Khenglish @Jon Webb @tanzmeister @Ted@HIDevolution @Donald@HIDevolution, absolutely stunning work you did again, i'm literally speechless cause how often do you see something like that a "dead" (in terms of upgradeable) NB got some really fresh air and while doing so kicks ass,

 

Probably because I made a mistake. Things get a little bit fuzzy around 2AM. I had it set to Ultra and maybe my mouse scroll wheel moved the setting. I did not pay attention to the score and that's too high for Ultra. Here is a corrected sample. Temps and clocks are basically the same, just the score corrected. Thank you for saying something about my mistake on that or I may never have noticed it. While we do not see eye-to-eye on many things, I will give you credit for being right when I am not.

I really hate Witcher franchise and other titles similar to it. I do not know the Novigrad chapter and if I have to play it long enough to reach that checkpoint, then I'm not going to do that simply because I do not have enough interest in the title to play it long enough to accomplish that. If I can load the chapter without having to progress through the game let me know and I will consider doing that. The reason you only see me showing videos of the tutorial is because I haven't played more than 10 to 15 minutes into the game before I lose all interest in playing it. I feel the same about Skyrim and most other open world RPG titles. They just bore me too much to bother with them.

Here is the Crysis 3 run... I use FXAA. Everything else is maxed out. FPS and temps are about the same as the other examples I showed. I could have used other settings had I seen it was something you thought was important, but I am not going to redo it since there is no need to do so to demonstrate the effectiveness of this mod.



Sometime in the next month or so maybe I will find time to break out my portable AC unit and get busy with some extreme overclocking benchmarks. My interest in playing games is pretty limited.

Please consider an attitude adjustment so we can all behave like civilized adults. One of the smartest things I have seen you post lately is that all laptops are garbage as they ship from the factory. If you keep the insults and condescending remarks limited to products (most of which are worthy of that) instead of people I think we can all get along just fine.

 

Hehe, something that happened to me playing dark souls.....



BTW gpu temps are Great... Verymuch better then current lineup..

 

Phoenix 870DM was never dead. Period. & now It will never be, Thank you very much @Mr. Fox , @Khenglish , @Prema , @tanzmeister , @Ted@HIDevolution , @Donald@HIDevolution , @Jon Webb

This is really one of the greatest achievements in recent times at NBR, Watching the 870DM shine brighter than ever is truly remarkable. The Z170 chipset with dual MXM slots with 266W/MXM itself with 780W PSU is enough to kill all the BGA crap and the damned stupid "fake i9" that's going to hit soon.

Fantastic work . Thanks for sharing this. This is going to leave a mark in time for eternity, all the industry on one side with filth. But we ride the real deal, firespitting beasts. The best always chose the best & show how things should be. What a time to live and have the best of us enjoy and live this moment !!

Azor and co, instead of recruiting guys like you or at-least get the good ideas, they hire the gimpster crowd and put forth robbing as first lines...

Also the best games are featured here. Crysis 3, Metro Redux !!
I'm also an avid FPS lover, DOOM would be awesome too, thank you again. I bet everyone was thrilled to see this since the debut of new Prema site with Khenglish page, now I hope the 8700K project should take this to next level Intel will cough blood soon..

All the best for the 8700K project !

 

Yeah, they'll make history if they mod 6core in z170..... When they've done it, I'm going to span and blood-shame intel everywhere!.... All the best people.we're counting on ya

 

Well (thread jacked), I'm considering modding my GTX 1070 to 230W on my GT73VR vomitbook but I need @Khenglish 's opinion on whether such an abortion is safe or not. The card can handle it. But I want to be a cool brave modder like Mr. Fox. Except I know less than 10% of what he knows. I can't even freaking modify a heatsink because I don't have any tools. Anyway this isn't the place to ask about this

 

Very inspiring work! This was a real team effort and just superb results. Thanks @Mr. Fox etal.

Did you ever consider piping in some removable liquid cooling?

 

A vertical radiator might be able to do it.......

 

Clevo P870DM-G GTX 1080 Upgrade - Crysis 3 Test

 

@Khenglish @Mr. Fox

Can you please tell me how many of the total pins are the null revision pins(which you stated are for power draw via slot). Also, which are they?(p170em has diffrent?)


Also, here


What did you used as a junction? Capacitoor? Or pulled a resistor?

@Mr. Fox , can you post the same pic vertically so that i can see the numbers hindered by the wires...

All this for sake of knowledge

 

I know I'm being a stupid asker here.... But so did you connected the 4+4 board connections as a series for the final 8 pin gpu connector? Or you just did a per-pin thingy?
@Khenglish

 

Normally you would max all settings including AA, however it still shows the performance with FXAA. It performs slitghly worse than a desktop GTX 1070 which is quite a drop, however it seems your unigine score is normal.

Also in case of witcher3, normally people download save files for that purpose. I mostly use that game to benchmark myself.

Temps are decent tho, peaked at 87c in crysis 3 but maintained a 4.7ghz clock, so it's not to shabby, for a notebook at least.
I don't know if it has something to do with power management or what the reason is, but so far when getting benchmarks from any P870DM with an 6700K/7700K the GPU really underperforms. That's why I wanted you to do a crysis 3 or Witcher 3 test, because the Clevo got destroyed whenever the GPU needed to work alongside the CPU. I was wondering if PremaMod would fix this funny glitch, apparently not as of today. (maybe you can find a solution? )

I don't know if you can figure out how to fix this, but I'm sure you will at least try. Maybe the new AC might fix this, we will see. So far, performance rather meh in crysis 3, but the fact that the GTX 1080 runs with a mod, is still pretty cool.

Can someone with a 1070 or modded 1070 run crysis 3? Maybe @bennyg ? I know you got GTX 1070 SLI but don't know if ou got crysis 3 and more importantly are willing to test it.

EDIT:
Also something to note here, you ask me to behave like an adult, yet all i did was ask for benchmarks. You claimed how the system was the best thing ever made, how it would crush every BGA notebook etc. However you don't seem to know how you even benchmark games properly, which shocked me considering that's the thing you do. You claim it's so much better than anything yet you apparently never checked the performance vs other notebooks, because as of now, the GT 73VR with a 1080 dumpsters your modded notebook, it's not even close. At least in Crysis 3.

Not to be mean, I really like the fact that you guys tried to upgrade it, and it was a success in the end, which is very cool, but your overhyped speech kinda ruined it for me. I would actually love it if you would change your attitude if anything, instead of taking a default position that your system is the best, maybe try a more adult approach, test it vs other systems. Find someone with an MSI GTX 1080 notebook, a guy with an ASUS GTX 1080 notebook, another with acer and whatnot and compare the performance. Test it vs actual competition in more practical usage (such as gaming), so that people can have an idea what they can expect. All you did so far (at least as far as I can tell) was synthethic benchmarks, which again have been proven to be rather inaccurate.

I like the work put in to it, I like that it's possible, I like that it runs, I even don't dislike that the performance is subpar as of now, because as I mentioned earlier, who knows if this mod will be really cool on the next gen, what I really dislike however was the amount of boasting without backup.

To be brutally honest, if anything, you prove that the notebook upgradability market is slowly dying if anything. I mean all this effort to get meh GTX 1080 performance simply isn't worth it. It's a shame really, considering we got old 1st gen I7 CPU's on Alienware which were upgradable without any issues up to maxwell and now people need to do this ridiculous yet interesting mod to get a GTX 1080 somwhat running is beyond me. I don't mind BGA CPU's since lets face it, once you got an ivy I7 you really won't see any bottlenecks, but the MXM market is rather dark.

 

When you say AC, do you mean a cheap phase change solution? Linus did something recently using an old portable ac unit in a cooler with a liquid loop running, and got below ambient at load. I think with a direct core contact using a cheap waterblock, you certainly should be able to chill the laptop down to negative temps.

Also, could you do a couple runs at 1080p high with final fantasy xv benchmark tool? It might help show the relevance of the card to modern titles. http://benchmark.finalfantasyxv.com/na/

Crysis 3, if I like it or not has become pretty antiquated in regards to modern gpu tech. If it's not too much to ask, could you also do some benches with rise of the tomb raider and wildlands?

 

hes talking about an actual portable AC unit he puts it beneath the laptop and blows ice cold air right into the lower vents, thus keeping the hardware at below ambient temps.

 

Are there any site or similair where you can compare the result of the FFXV benchmark?

 

After you finish the bench, it links you to a comparison page which contains all sorts of different cards including mobility.

 

That's pretty cool. Do you have some expected score for a notebook GTX 1080?

 

I suppose I'm used to crazier things coming from a desktop background. Back in the day, (when I was 15) I broke apart a mini-fridge and put the phase changer directly onto my CPU to overclock, and when I was 16 I did something similar to Linus with alcohol as coolant instead of antifreeze with the phase changer in a cooler with my radiator. Doesn't work 100% as effective as water, but I did get some crazy results, like -60c.

 

http://benchmark.finalfantasyxv.com/result/

I'd be expecting something close to 8-10k in results for a 1080, more if OCD.

 

yep, one has to do far less modding on desktops to realize such solutions due to basically no space restraints.

 

So I guess we do an 1080P high benchmark then. The only problem I have with the site is, that it doesn't make a difference between a notebook GTX 1080 and a desktop GTX 1080. Which is kinda meh. According to the site the GTX 1080 average is ~7500 points

however a desktop GTX 1080 gets around 8k


Still a nice and quick way of testing it. I don't know how demanding this is on the CPU tho.

 

On my p157sm it is a roughly 2 core intensive process.

 

Oh, sounds like a terrible port then :'D

Well it would be interesting to see the result anyways.

 

Fox made the cable, but the 8-pin is 4 power pins on the left and 4 GND on the right, so the 2 4-pin connectors need to be interleaved.

For my P150EM mod I only bothered to connect the power pins since the GND connection is already very low resistance through the slot. MXM power is not connected to the cable power through the card though, so connecting at least the power pins is required.

 

Actually I find it much better as a port than other games, mostly because it is so GPU dependent. A lot of games tend to get hung up on your CPU and give you a bottleneck. Not so much with ffxv, because of things like dx12 API overhead and other fixes streamlining the game for notebooks and weaker CPUs lol

 

You got it..... Also, which IC or capacitor you guys used as the junction?