What Laptop DIY Upgrade for First time

Greetings all.
I am reading this good forum for some time now and i found it very interesting and useful.

I am not an electirician of any kind atcually I am seaman.

Long months on board req. some hoby

Last few months i am thinking of Upgrading an Older laptop with MXM gpu by my self.

I gain some experiance with my Alienware 18 r3 whille repastting Gpus Cpus cleaning and stuffs...

I own several gaming laptops thru time mostly for playing on board things like Fallout NV Fallout 4 Diablo 2 and so on...

Curently i have an Razer Blade 14 I7 7700hq with gtx1060 and an HP Omen I7 9750h with rtx2060.

Now my question is:
Which laptop should i buy for little practicing with upgrading and as well drivers moding and stuff since my AW18 died?

I prefer 17" one.

I was thinking about:

*Hp 8770w (does it matther is it 2 or 4 slot ram on mobo?)

*Dell m6700
*Dell m6800

*Alienware 17 r1

And similar?

Which one of those will be easiest to gain,upgrade,buy spares,worth to upgrade to keep?

Thank you very much all on super useful posts i read through months.

Best regards

 

Aw17 R1 has the most real estate of the bunch to play, and can overclock both GPU and CPU. DMC mods, 15TB+ internal storage, N173HHE-G32 panel and more Im sure lol

 

@Papusan Show him The Way.

 

Looks like there is no single AW 17 r1 on market, especially no in Croatia

 

What about alienware m15x i7 920mx no hdd no gpu for 320£?

Max gpu possible is gtx980?

 

That notebook (Alienware M15x) is very old at this point. The first generation Core processors are terribly outdated.

HP EliteBook 8770w is a decent pick. It is user upgradeable including the GPU. There are a few threads on this forum about upgrading the graphics cards in it.

Charles

 

Thank you on your good reply.

What about HP 8760w i have found one really cheap with few cosmetic issues (dont care) for abbout 150$?
Specs:
Processor: Intel Core i5-2450M (2.50Ghz, Turbo Boost 3.10Ghz, 3MB L2 SmartCache)
Memory: 2x4GB DDR3 1333Mhz
GPU: nVIDIA Quadro 4000M 2GB
HDD: 500GB WD Black 7200RPM
Screen: 17,3", 1600x900 LCD

What are my optuons for GPU and Processor?

Gtx 980m and 29xxXM?

Thank you guys.

 

AFAIK you can't OC unlocked CPU's in the HP, locked BIOS/EC.

 

What about this one?
Dell Precision 7510
Is it 3.0a and what is my maximum gpu i can install?

Thanks guys.

 

Yes, MXM 3.0a is the form factor for that platform.

Would prefer the 7710/7720 as it has much greater potential.

 

All right now i get it.
Thanks one more time

 

So this is what i get so far...

HP 8770w
I can upgrade to quad core i7 3xxx series and bump it to 4x8 GB ram and without Dream Color panel max i can go with Gpu is gtx 980m without any grinding and so..
Right?

Cheers

 

8770W can overclock with coreboot afaik

 

All right
So i bought HP 8560w beacuse i get it in good shape for very low price.

Specs are:

i7-2670QM
8GB RAM
Nvidia quadro 1000M
Full HD Screen

What are my best options for upgrade?

Thank you guys

 

3940XM (coreboot required)
2960XM w/ stock BIOS

32GB RAM, and a GTX 965 MXM A

 

Coreboot?

Gtx 965m 4gb is almost same as m2000m?
Looks like m2000m is more affordable on ebay?...

 

This gtx 965m 4gb is like 400USD whic is waaaay to much.
What is my next best GPU for less money?

Thanks guys

 

M2000M, M1000M, M2200M, K2200M if you think you can stomach it
for AMD, M5100 or M4000 are your best options

 

M2000m seems to not work according to this soundoflenses guy video on youtube...

Aby advice how to make it working?

 

I am planning to buy hp 8760w now coz my hp 8560w fall of wardrobe and broken

What is beat gpu i can install in hp 8760w?

Thx

 

GTX 980M, 1070 might work with the dream color display.

 

All right...
Look like i am getting AW m17x r4 and HP8560w with DC panel...

AW we all know what to do but what are my options with hp 8560w DC?

My wife will kill me.... Hehehehe

Edit:
Aw m17x r4 is almost perfect condition only missing B from keyboard.
Is it 550usd good deal?

 

No

 

There isn't many current upgradable laptops on the market, and each one will be different, so "practising" on upgrading laptops doesn't seem like a need/must..

Driver modding might be "fun" for varying levels of fun a couple times, but when Nvidia screws you a couple times and your system just becomes more un-stable due to running modded non signed drivers because Win10 will eventually become unstable if you keep messing with it. So, I would say you will get feed up when you want to fire up a movie player and keep getting BSOD's because Win10 updated and your modded drivers dont play well with the latest update..

Also, I would say that you are sinking money in old hardware..

Those laptops are from 2011(HP)-2012(AW), you dont know how they where treated during their life, they are to be totally realistic obsolete hardware.

There is only so much you can do with such hardware, but you will be lacking a lot of more recent features/capabilities.

Both of those systems only support 4th gen CPU's, with some/a lot of time and work you might put an i7-4890HQ repackaged CPU into one of those laptops, but thats it, on the memory side, anything above 2133Mhz DDR3L will need days/weeks playing around with RAM timings.(if at all, @TheReciever never got the i7-4890 or near CPU working on his AW, even with micro-code added on the BIOS), the HP is even worse, it will only run 3rd gen CPU with another BIOS(coreboot), no idea about OC capabilities, but expect to gain some headaches using the open source BIOS, because not everything will be 100% ported, and the EC interface is reverse engineered, so there might(will?) be bugs lurking around when you want to push your system.

A 1070 is the best GPU you can expect to run reliably, and that will involve modded drivers, not so stellar support on the BIOS/EC side(mainly on the AW).

No NVMe support at all, at most mSATA, but thats just SATA in a different form factor, you can RAID0 a couple SATA SSD's, but even a cheapo NVMe runs circles around it.

Its just that you should realize that you will easily spend 2k $ in a system that will perform worse than any 700-750$ laptop.

And realize that any broken sub-board or cable will be expensive, because they are becoming rare/scarce.

If you want something upgradable, grab an MSI MS16L3, they are going for 1000€ with a cheapo i3 + 1060, grab the modded BIOS, mount an i7-8700K, grab a 1070, flash a vBIOS with 150-160Watts TDP, OC to your heart desire, and you have a pretty powerfull laptop in a small package, at least you get a lot more bang for buck.

This isn't some ominous warning, I still kinda want to upgrade my MSI GT72(i7-4720HQ + 980m) and I could slap a 1070 in it and call it a day, but then I would be CPU limited, I could swap the motherboard from a GT72S with an i7-5700HQ, or pay 700$ for a mobo with a i7-4980HQ, all to still end in a quad-core system, I change my display to the now common N173HHE (120Hz) and it involved a full tear-down plus eDP cable swap, its better than the stock display, but besides LoL or CS:GO, be it using my 980m or a 1070, not many games will run at 120Hz, much less AAA games, BF1 took a lot of tweaking to run stable-ish at 120Hz at medium settings, because my CPU is always pegged at 100% usage(and that is with a different IA slope, so it stays at 3.5Ghz sustained).

I'm running a pair of MX500 SSD's in RAID0, and I modded my BIOS to run a much newer iRST oROM that gave me a decent performance boost out of my two HDD's, but 4k random will always be crappy compared to any NVMe.
Upgrading can be worthwhile in more recent systems, due to a lack or reduced CPU bottleneck, but in such old laptops, I think that its no worthwhile.

But, if all you need from them is to have fun, sure, have fun messing around with them, any question we are here to try and help you.

 

Wow

This is the best answer i get in my life anywhere.
Yes i realize some of your points at begining of idea of upgrading old laptops and also i realise that hp 8560w with gtx 965m will cost me like my omen with rtx gpu but long days at sea and having a lot free time being officer forced me to have some hoby

I ll start cheap with minor upgrading and moding then i ll see.

Thank you very much on your ex0erience sharing

 

Hi again
I have quick question beacuse i have good offer on HP 17 g2 zbook...
What is best gpu compatibile with this unit?
Thanks