8560w GPU upgrade - use empty DVD slot to fit MXM 3.0b (higher spec) video cards

if you were using a dell precision which has integrated gpu enabled, it would be a lot easier to work on flashing in case something goes wrong. however, it is still pretty much not harmful if you do it right even on hp's in which they have no iGPU (since disabled). let's try a flash of the vBIOS of the card and check with it. cuz, if people were able to do it with 960m, 970m and 980m successfully; i can't see why it can't be done with yours.

 

@surfinkin There isn't appropriate VBIOS to flash that I could find. The ones available in techpowerup site are either for MXM-B (different chip - GM204) or for 2 GB of RAM. Those would surely brick the card, I don't see the point in trying unless it is for the same chip (GM206), same amount of RAM and same form factor (Type A).

 

this means something. try a reflash of hp vbios or even dell's 965m.

for my laptop, both hp and dell laptop vbios for precision n 8770w series are intercompatible. yes i have both series

 

@surfinkin I don't see the point of doing this. The card itself is working fine when placed in my 8560w laptop, so nothing wrong with it!

 

to begin with, there are other people that have installed a 965m in a zbook, so you can contact them for a vbios and flash.
if you happen to have a better idea please do post in case you figure it out then.

 

@surfinkin You forgot the one main difference between my Zbook and the other people who got it working. Mine is eDP display with no hybrid graphics options in bios, while those who got it running are LVDS displays with hybrid graphics. My VBIOS version is the same as those people who got it running. So no, no other ideas, can't figure it out.

 

Slight change to thread topic, has anyone looked at pulling voltage off the DVD/SATA header for higher power cards that need external power as well as the socket, ie - MXM-b? (yes, I know it might need step down voltage, nbd.)

Also, I read in this thread reference to some sort of eDP/LVDS adapter in the mix...is this a component, chip, on-board circuit? can we swap these in/out?

I've got the old 8560w (not sure on the screen; seriously doubt its a DP though) that i swapped the MB out on when the orig owner poured soda on it a few years ago and we picked up a second bank of RAM slots in the process . Now that she's permanently passed it off to me, I'm not in a hurry to swap out the MB again (to an 8570w), but I'm not very opposed either. From that swap, I've got the AMD Fire-whatever Pro card and the 2GB Nvidia card...neither is in front of me atm so I'm just generalizing the models; they're the ones it was offered with from HP.

Now that its mine though, I'd like to get the system up to snuff for basic gaming, so the VC is my first point of focus, which brings me to this thread. Good stuff and I'm leaning towards the M5000M discussed earlier. I'm an old PC hardware guy that builds robots with high school kids for fun, so attacking the physical stuff with grinders and soldering irons is more my bailiwick than most peoples and I'd like to see about getting around this MXM-b limitation we seem to be having if for no other reason than to do it. And if i roast a MB, lets roast this one so I have to upgrade!

At the moment, everything works....or did a couple weeks ago when i broke it all down to clean it.

 

Found some reference to voltages here (part of a thread referred to earlier... good stuff in here!):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ctor-an-external-pci-e-x16-box.407071/page-40

 

Those headers will have 3.3v, usually the cards get just the "raw" 19v from the AC-adapter or from the 12v internal rail from the battery, the 3.3v is way too low and cant supply the current an MXM GPU will pull.

 

* To some degree I'm thinking 'out loud' here for the benefit of readers, and so I don't forget things later*

I assume that it supplies power as soon as the power button is hit (else we would never see a POST screen), so it would run off the main bus signal then if not directly from it, like the SATA ports do. That's why the DVD spins up at power-on and why we get an OS...it signals the HDs or they are pulling directly. I pulled the DVD drive out and its listed at [email protected], not 3.3v. Stepped down to 3.3v that would supply around 7W minimum. I'm sure the rail is rated for more than that or it would burn out pretty easily as people expanded to use other ports, the DVD motor started to wear out, someone's kid put a bologna disk in it (it happened ONCE), etc, so I wonder what max current draw is? A highly efficient motor draws 1.2x running draw at spin up, so at minimum I'd guess its actually a 2A circuit. I wouldn't be surprised to find its actually 5A or 10A across the board....which would give us an additional 50W@5v.

I would find it very unusual to see the card run on both "raw" 19v AND 12v. That's quite a bit of a variance and would blow out most circuits. 20% is usually considered a massively generous allowance (most 'bulk power' circuits - including your car for example - are closer to 10% or less). 12v-19v is 63%.....if that was your home circuit your house would be on fire! And that's not even considering the phase(s), which is critical for DC circuits (go look at an aftermarket MB and you'll generally see a lot of noise about power 'phases', 'noise', and 'chokes'). Running the card off "raw" 19v would introduce a lot of noise into the circuit as those power supplies have very little power conditioning; they rely on the MB to smooth it out to an acceptable level once they've brute forced it to a manageable rough DC.

My follow up to the question was going to be, has anyone considered drawing directly off the 12v rail with a step down converter? something like:

https://www.amazon.com/Voltage-Converter-Regulator-Module-DCCON-C5/dp/B00BN11LUI
or
https://www.amazon.com/Converter-Step-down-Power-Supply/dp/B00T96BH30

but better yet maybe smaller and custom built like out of a bunch of these:

https://www.amazon.com/Regulator-DR...=B0758ZTS61&psc=1&refRID=BBRWAQD2SMGJE7S267X5

or even just from scratch....DIY.

I'm going to go through all 46 pages on that other thread. There might be some of the info in there that I need to get hard numbers.

I don't suppose anyone has gotten their hands on the internal HP tech papers on these MBs have they? Blueprints/diagrams/schematics? I've gotten lucky on a few in the past (Gateway and Dell), but they have to get 'leaked' generally.

 

As far as I know there are no 8560w/8570w schematics, but their bigger brothers 8760w/8770w can be found (Inventec Aerosmith/Aladdin). I'm not an engineer or anything, but as far as I can tell it pulls 19V directly. Also batteries, at least of the 17" ones, are 14.4V/14.8V. Still quite the gap, but then they (GPUs) do run at reduced performance, while on battery.

 

I am sorry I couldn't be of much help. I would like to add that mine is eDP too and I am on a DreamColor display panel and my 8770W doesn't have hybrid graphics at all. It runs just on the dGPU.

 

Hello there,
after two years - before I had 8560w, I had to buy this laptop again, but in 17" version. So 8760w.
I have i7 2630QM
8Gb ram - to be upgraded
7k2 rpm 700Gb HDD - tomorrow I will swap it for my 250 Gb Samsung SSD
FirePRO M5950
Win 10 PRO
Docking station

I am glad I can work with this machine again. I got it from a guy - who was the first owner and owned it 7yrs and did only some accounting staff on it. So it is really really like a new one. However - I launched the Photoshop and it is so slow. And I am really scared right now. If it is the graphics or it was the running Photoshop and on the background I was copying files from one connected ssd to another connected hdd WHILE DOINT IT ALL ON THIS SUPER SLOW 7K2 RPM SYSTEM HDD I do not know - but I got really scared. Because before on my previous 8560w I had inside two SSD drives(I think I had Quadro 1000M or 1100M) and it worked like charm.. Well Well.. I hope it get better after swap.
Because I do a little bit of video editing - AE and a lot of LR and PS.

Today I read all 27 pages of this thread and I think I too will upgrade to gtx 965m. But first it needs some ram and ssd drive.

// udpate - I wont swap disks, I just found out that 17" version can have 2 internal drive bays, muhehe - I thought it could have only one drive and then optional upgradebay(dvd currently)

 

Hope this helps someone:

For anyone w/ 8560w/K2100M, and no Function Key Brightness Control or power plan settings brightness control, the following fix:

Add a key in the following registry: "RmBrightnessControlFlags"=dword:00000400
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]

ONLY worked for me w/ nvidia driver version 354.56. I'm on Windows7/64. The Function Key Brightness Control and power plan setting are working. Also, that driver version increased the Windows Experience Graphic scores from 6.0 to 7.1. vs driver version 377.11. Go figure.

 

@ForestCat What is the vbios version you're using on the K2100m and have you tried any other vbios-es?

 

Hello Silverchairbg.....the only "confirmed" installation of the above that you've listed that I've been able to find are for the Firepro m4000. You can find that here:

1. 
   
2. https://forum.51nb.com/thread-1385378-1-1.html

Any luck with the firepro M5100 or M6100? Soundoflenses M5100 upgrade failed and the M6100 seems to be MXM3.0 Type B and not the smaller Type A that we need. Seems to me that the only real upgrade options are 1) The GTX 965 for $400 or 2) The M4000 for about $25. Your thoughts?

 

@AlleyKat Any luck with that M5100? Per my post above, it looks like the only working options are the GTX 965 or the M4000. Your thoughts?

 

Edit: Read this only if interested in the B type cards. The gpu VBIOS can be tweaked to operate at lower than stock volts to manage the heat output.
Tried putting up an M5000M in an 8570w and it worked(almost). However I had to modify the heatsink a bit by welding extra aluminium metal to make up for the bigger 'B' type card.
The problem is that there is this small component (marked as C582) on the motherboard hitting the graphic card's right-upper memory module; stopping the card from being fully parallel to the motherboard i.e., it stayed a bit inclined. I didn't feel safe keeping it that way and I reverted back to the K2100 M. My workaround for testing then was to bend the copper line a bit so it would stay aligned with the GPU

***Interesting enough there is this GTX870M that is a bigger B card with two memory chips not present on the upper-right corner. So, there is a 99% chance that it will be seated properly and you might get this card at a lower price
Good luck with your upgrade.

 

@surfinkin thanks for the idea....I might try the GTX870M some day if somebody else can prove it works first. They are cheaper than the GTX 965...

 

Happy to know that you are interested in this. Here is the thing, physically it won't have any obstruction with the boards embedded components like I experienced. The only thing you have to make sure that the vbios is compatible with your laptop. I bought an M5000M that came in with Dell's vbios and it woked on Dell M6700, M6800; HP 8760W, 8570W, 8770W under both UEFI and Legacy boots. I have read that GTX 980M works on 8770W and 8760W. I don't see th reason why an 870M might not work if you get it from a reliable source with proper bios flashing function. Also, I also own a Zbook 15 G2 that came in with K1100M and I can't for the life of me save the VBIOS or flash one onto the card. I have modded vbios of k3000, k4000, k4100m, k4100m, m5000m (all the cards have been from the Dells, they work on HP laptops too). Trying to give you info that could give you a picture of what you are diving into
You can still wait till someone confirms that is having similar interests like you. Let's see..!

 

Hello there,


I have been following this thread for a while, but now I decided to make a post.


Some time ago I successfully managed to replace my Quadro 1000M with Quadro K2100M from Dell.


Now I am thinking about placing MXM B card into my 8560w.


I saw that one guy placed 970M in, but had some problems with temperatures.


An idea was born in my head: “Why not use old GPU blower cooler? Something like 1070 Katana”.





The idea is to find cooler that possibly will fill whole DVD bay. I marked the length of MXM B card and add extra 5mm to avoid any collisions. The result is about 10x10-11cm rectangle.




I did the research and found ATI X1800: pretty wide radiator made of copper + heatpipe; all that in a single slot. Radiator need some adjustments to fit. [Alternatives are: Quadro FX580 and FX1800 and Quadro 2000]

Quadro 2000:




ATI X1800


and disassembled:



I want to drill a hole in magnesium case + stick small grid.
Cooler upside down (fan facing down).
Extra heatpipes from existing heatsink --> new heatsink, stick it with themalconductive glue.





I want to power the fan from inside part of USB (5V) if possible.


Didn’t think a lot about maintenance and how the hell I am going to attach it to the bottom of the case.

Want to know your opinion. Maybe someone already tried that.

Extra question:
Does heatsink from 8760w fit in 8560w?

Cheers