What to upgrade in HP EliteBook 8760w; any tips?

Hello, I was wondering if there are any viable (financially also) options for upgrading my old HP EliteBook 8760w.

Hardware upgrades
I've researched upgrading to a better graphics card (e.g. GTX 980M) on this forum extensively. It just costs too much to be worth the hassle. My main area of interest is storage — currently, I've got 2 HDD drives in my EliteBook: 300GB HDD for Windows and 1TB HDD for Kali GNU/Linux. I want a faster write and read speeds, therefore I'm interested in buying an SSD. Since my laptop requires a special "cage" I'm not sure if an SSD would even fit. Well, at this point, you come into play. Please give me advice on this topic (advice from experience is most highly appreciated, of course). Second thing: RAM. Currently, I've got 8GB of RAM installed. Is it worth going higher if my main activity on the machine is gaming and PDF compilation via LaTeX? I'd like to know that too. Thirdly, my AC adapter broke and now I'm using one from a third-party company (I haven't noticed any difference in performance after this transition). Is the original (NOCCI 19V 7.9A 150W) worth re-buying? If so, can you please list benefits I'd get from such an investment? What about CPU upgrades? Do modern models fit into my old (2012) socket?

Firmware upgrades
As you may know, HP BIOSes can be pretty abominable. Mine especially gets on my nerves: it is pretty much the definition of 'handicapped': no boosting, proprietary security nonsense, limited configuration options no option for BIOS password (I mean, just infuriating) etc. I've been thinking of flashing a BIOS for quite some time now, but I fear bricking my device too much to actually take action. I've seen some people claiming that they successfully flashed a @Prema CLEVO BIOS on my particular model, but I find that hard to believe. So, more than anything on this thread I need an answer to whether a customised BIOS exists for HP EliteBook machines. If it does, then I can finally begin to uncover my puppy's true potential.

Thank you for your suggestions in advance.

 

well you can fit practically every gpu in it (normal shaped mxm 3.0b) so you have quite a bit options and do you have two ram slots, that's the duel core motherboard. But i think you can still installed up to a 2920xm but the 2760qm would probably be a better deal. But an ssd is the same size as the hdd so you shouldn't have any issues installing it. You can also put msata ssd and 2 tb hdds, and your dvd drive can be a hdd slot too.

The thing with ram is 8gb should be enough considering you only have a duel core and a quadro 3000m meaning you not playing the newest demanding games anyway, and you haven't listed any other thing ram dependent. But get a hw monitor, and do your normal things you would do, if your ram usage goes above 7gb then yes i would get some more ram if you have the space, and it fits your budget.

Regarding charger, personally i wouldn't get the oem cause they usually cost the most, but generic or other brands might not get recognize by the laptop bios or os but you been using it without any issues, you should be ok, the only real difference is reliability, and the percentage of wattage you can actually use of the rated power output.

I personally have no clue on prema bios on hp products, and i agree with skepticism on that point, but you also take a look in the 8760w thread someone might have more info

 

RAM is the first thing I would (and do) upgrade on any system I'm involved with. 16GB RAM has been my recommendation for many years now; even for simple/mundane things like office work and (multitab) browsing. PDF compilation should be greatly enhanced with more RAM (sorry; don't know the program you're using for that...).

The 'cage' your HDD use should be a standard 2.5" cage - easy enough to check...

Any 2.5" SSD should be a simple remove and replace operation then.

I would recommend the biggest(which=fastest) SSD you can afford of a known brand with 512GB being the smallest I would consider (remember to OP the SSD by ~33% or more for the fastest, sustained performance over time). In 2018; I would be leaning towards at least a 1TB SSD (you'll be using this in more than just this system over it's lifetime).

With an O/S + Program SSD settled on; make sure you do a clean install of your O/S of choice (I highly recommend Win10x64Pro) for the most performance benefits from your hardware.

CPU + GPU upgrades usually indicate to me a need for a new(er) platform. Such upgrades are rarely worth it when all is said and done.


Edit: an SSD plus maxed out RAM on a given platform will greatly help with your PDF workflows. Additionally; RAM equal to or greater than 16GB allows the SSD to live up to it's hype of being much faster than an HDD - because the O/S needs to 'touch' the storage much less than in a memory restricted system. While the total 'performance' of the platform won't increase - what will become apparent is that the total 'productivity' of the system will increase significantly - especially as it is used more and more in multitasking scenarios.

RAM + SSD (along with a clean install of the O/S) are the greatest bang for the buck you can hope for on your older platform. The other upgrades are more of a sideways move and not a true upgrade, imo, considering the cost and potential of bricking the working system you now have.

 

Read my signature. Thats pretty much the best you can do on a reasonable budget. The 2940xm was priced too high ($100+) vs the 2920 ($60) when I bought a couple months back. The GTX 970 will certainly work however the GTX 780m has more CUDA cores for the tradeoff of less video memory. But it is cheaper... IMO a 9 series GPU in this laptop isnt worth it because it will be bottlenecked by the CPU in many applications so you won't get the card's full potential.

 

Sorry for reviving this thread but I also want to upgrade my lovely 8760w. A newer GPU would be sick. Currently I got the Quadro 3000M and the i7-2820QM installed... a bit antique for modern graphic-intense applications for my taste.

@bassman5066 Your build is pretty much perfect, I kinda envy you. xD The thing is, GTX 780m cards are friggin' pricy here, in good old Germany. (~230€ used. ) Also, do you need like a separate heatsink for this card? Are there any cheaper but still good options?^^ Thank you! <3

 

I managed to buy GTX 780M for 115€ in Germany, so you have to catch the right moment for your luck on eBay...
Regarding the heatsink, I have one additional, specially for nVidia GPU‘s of 8760w, so if you live in Germany and you are interested in, please pm me.

 

Thank you anyway, I actually ended up buying another 8760w with Nvidia Quadro. I took the heatsink and quad core mobo from that one and installed it in my laptop (would have just built up that one but it had a nice dent in the side of the screen and case). I ended up selling the dented one for $200 with the dual core mobo, FirePro card, 8GB RAM, and i7 and also managed to pull in $40 on the old Quadro card so it ended up working out well for me in the end haha.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Thank you for your answer! So well, since I got a Quadro 3000M I already have a heatsink for Nvidia GPUs, haven't I? Thank you for the suggestion though! Ima look into it. It's a decent card after all and affordable. ^^

 

Thanks! Yeah as far as you have Quadro, you are using the right version of the heatsink for nVidia GPUs.
I am using right now GTX 780m in my 8760w and I am completely satisfied with it - ~8k on 3d Mark 11, now I am waiting for my 230W PSU and eventually I will sell my i7 2920XM for 2860QM because of the heat problems..

 

Roflcopter, got the 230W PSU with the workstation.. and here I thought: "Why the **** am I still carrying this damn brick around?" But I'll put it to good use now... moar power! Got some tips on the upgrading process? Like dealing with drivers and ****. Not rly, right? Just DDU the heck outta the machine and then install the new drivers?

 

So far I'm very happy as well. Over the weekend finally got some play time after fiddling with a lot of mod setup for my game of choice, Kerbal Space Program. Installed Real Solar System and all the associated visual mods and it looks and runs amazingly. Haven't been watching FPS but it's good enough for me. I've not gone over 60% of the 4GB graphics memory on the 780m and have not seemed to hit thermal throttling on either the 780m or the 2920xm and I'm usually sitting on my bed when playing so it always has a chance to get hot when I'm not looking. The game gobbles up 9GB ram just to get to the menu screen and when in flight it uses quite a bit more but it's running very well. Takes 12+ min to load into the game from SSD but it is huge and that's a well known issue with this particular game so it is what it is.

Thermally it seems very stable. Gets hot but cools quick. I also have not seen much in the way of spikes. When I tore it apart I found there was NO thermal paste on the CPU or GPU, which explains why I was seeing spikes up to 190F+ but the computer or heatsink itself was not getting warm at all. Had to be like that from the factory because both CPU and GPU we're clean as if someone had wiped with alcohol. My thinking is why would someone tear apart a laptop and go to the trouble of cleaning the thermal paste but NOT applying new? All sorted now but an interesting find nonetheless...

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I have a 130w and 230w one for my setup. I use the 130w one when downstairs in the living room or kitchen and leave my 230w by my bed where I use the system the most. I upgraded when my "Kill-A-Watt" device was showing me I was pulling 140w out of a 130w adapter. With the 230w one the system seems to pull around 150-160w max so it has a lot more headroom and that shows me I needed the upgrade to cover the power consumption of my CPU (35w to 55w upgrade) and GPU (35w to 122w upgrade when comparing FirePro 5959 to my GTX780m) upgrades.

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Hey! I just grabbed a GTX 965M for 120 bucks... I think that's quite a good deal considering that I've been looking for a GPU for like a whole month now. It will arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday... I'm pretty hyped! Let's hope that everything goes as smooth as planned.

 

Given your current specs:

1. Upgrade HDD to SSD (512GB Crucial MX for example for replacement of your 300Gb hdd, and you can also replace the second drive with another Crucial MX of 1TB if you want - installation should be fairly simple given the size).
500GB off Amazon = £74
1T off Amazon = £144

2. CPU upgrade to i7-2760qm or i7-2820qm - depens on the seller you choose, they can cost roughly the same (strange as it sounds)... about £70 to £85 (in USA the 2760qm seems cheaper though).

3. RAM upgrade to 16GB (depending on your current configuration, either get 2x 8GB sticks of same speed, or 1x 8GB of same or comparable speed)... costs about £100 for 2x8GB from ebay (about half if you just get 1x8Gb stick)

4. GPU upgrade - depends on what your laptop supports. I don't think a Quad core would limit the 970m, but given how much money you have to work with, I suggest you pick between the following:
GTX 960m, 965m, 780m or 970m.
970m if ordered from China costs about £218.

So, UK price wise, all of it would come out to roughly £621
If you're in the USA, its possible you can get the components cheaper.... well, same/similar number, with $ value.
So, that would be $621 (roughly) for the whole upgrade.

Now, obviously, that depends on which components you go for and whether you actually want to upgrade everything, and of course if your laptop would accept the hardware and be able to cope with it.

If you just opt to upgrade the main HDD for Windows with other components and not the secondary HDD, then you end up spending about $144/£144 less.

Personally, I'd do it if its cheaper than buying a new laptop, plus I like the prospect/challenge of giving the laptop such a good upgrade... but, there's a potential issue with whether your BIOS might accept a new GPU and CPU. RAM and SSD's would definitely work as RAM support is controlled though the CPU and SSD's usually work anyway, but CPU and GPU are obviously different and that depends on the OEM bios.
So you'd need to verify if the laptop's BIOS would take a quad core CPU and better GPU.

Another option would be to try and sell off this laptop and get yourself a completely new one - but you are coming up against the question of cost of the new technology.
Been doing a quick search on Newegg and depending on what you're looking for (say 16GB, 8th gen i7, and GTX 1060), you end up with a price of close to $1800... which definitely seems more expensive than just upgrading (about $1200 more vs the full upgrade).

And many laptops seem to come with Intel's U cpu's (low power ones) - and if you're looking at those, might as well look for AMD's Ryzen 2500u/2700u laptops which will decisively be cheaper (albeit without a dGPU).

In all honesty, I find these prices of new laptops atrocious... $600 a decade ago was nearly enough to buy a decent mid-range laptop with a mid-range GPU... today, you'd need to shell out a double to get a more efficient quad core CPU at say higher frequencies, and maybe a dGPU that doesn't suck (1050 or 1050ti would still be better than what you have, but go with 16GB RAM and the price shoots up).

EDIT: it seem the same unit IS sold with 2820q, and can also come with GPU's rated at 100W and some kits exist on ebay to upgrade the GPU to 970/980m.
So, it seem that you'd be good to go as far as 2720QM and 970m are concerned.

If the total price of components seem steep...what you can focus on for now is 512GB SSD (to replace the 300GB HDD), CPU and GPU upgrade.
And if you have 8GB RAM stick already in the laptop, then just buy 1x 8GB sodimm dd3 stick.
That should be cheaper than spending money on 2x 8GB sticks (obviously).

You can upgrade the secondary HDD later and save yourself a bit of money, but if I was in your shoes, I'd likely go for upgrading everything.

That should give you a sizeable boost in CPU, GPU, overall system efficiency and speed/snappiness in comparison to the baseline model.

Its great when you have such an upgrade path.

It would be even better if you can put GTX 1060 mxm into the laptop, but not sure if it would work... or if it does, how much it would cost vs 970m.

 

Just wanted to get back at you guys - the 965m is working! It had a Clevo Bios and I'm using the clevo driver package and modded the inf myself. <3

 

Is your screen DreamColor or normal TN Full HD?

 

It's the standard TN panel, sorry dude. But since I'm running both Linux and Windows I've experienced weird color banding and color noise in Linux with the Nvidia Driver. Can't remember the name of the setting I changed but when I put it from auto to dynamic the color banding and noise was gone. Maybe you could try booting linux and getting those drivers running. Could help you troubleshoot further. But that's just a thought. I hope you can get your 980m running fine! ^^

 

I got it working, it’s just this color banding in grayscale which is driving me crazy (MS Windows). Did you manage to resolve it under Windows?

 

In windows it was working fine bx default here. I'm using the non-dreamcolor panel. Just linux was behaving a bit odd.

I would suggest you to boot a live linux os and check if there is still the color banding. It comes with a default driver.

If there is no color banding you can be sure that there is some incompatibility with the driver and your panel. And if there is no color banding, go and grab the nvidia driver for linux. If that's working fine, it's gotta be achievable in windows too.