Upgrade Clevo P170EM with a P150SM motherboard

Hi,

I have the opportunity to upgrade my Clevo P170EM with a P150SM motherboard and I have a few questions:
1) will the P150SM motherboard fit on the Clevo P170EM chassis without too many modifications?
2) is there any advantage to do so? I've noticed that I can use more recent CPUs (normally easier to find second hand than the 3XXX series CPUs...) and faster RAM, but is it worth it?
3) Is there any significant difference between the two?
4) besides the motherboard, there are other components that I might be able to use, is there any that might be worth considering?

You can look at my status for the description of my P170EM

Cheers
Jorge

 

Even if that is possible, I'd say there is no point doing it. You'd be better off spending the money on a 3920/3940XM. Generally it is argued that the 3000XM CPUs are better overclockers than the 4000 series counterparts. There is pretty much no IPC gain either as they are both 22nm CPUs. The only reason you'd want a 4940MX over a 3940XM is for running AVX2 tasks.

You should also consider upgrading your GPU at some point, the 1060 is probably the best option for that machine. Maybe some faster RAM too eventually but I wouldn't worry about that for now.

 

The 4000 series CPUs do average out to be 8% faster IPC, but they vary much more in terms of overclocking ability. A 4000 series will do between 4 and 5 GHz, while a 3000 series will do between 4.3 and 4.9 GHz. A good 3920xm will outperform a poor 4930mx.

Your main issue with the SM board will be powering it. Since it's a 150 series board it will have a power button directly on the board instead of having a connector for the 170 series power board.

Your power supply will also not match. A 150 series board will have a smaller power connector.

Both problems can be solved with soldering as the SM board will have the solder mount points you want, but why bother for just a small potential CPU upgrade.

In my opinion it's just not worth it. Both systems support 10 series GPUs, and that's what matters most.

 

Hi @Khenglish ,

Thanks. Just out of curiosity: why a P150EM motherboard on a P157SM frame? I imagine it took some drilling and DIYing?

cheers
Jorge

 

My P150EM frame had accumulated a lot of damage over time. Many broken screw mount points. The P157SM frame is more robust, making it better suited for cutting to fit Clevo 10 series GPUs.

With that said, I regret not looking more into making ZM or DM series frame work. Mounting an eDP screen into an SM series is very janky, but the motherboard format did change a lot from SM to ZM, so maybe it could not have worked at all.

 

ZM series has eDP afaik