A lot of questions about the HP Elitebook 8770W

Would a Intel PRO/Wireless 4965 (Or 3945) fit in the laptop?

If I upgrade to a Pascal Nvidia GPU, could I grab a display board for the internal LVDS display that converts it to eDP or normal DP, and either use eDP inside the laptop or have a cable coming out of the laptop plugged into the side DP port?

Are there any eDP displays that work with the laptop that aren't DreamColor?

If I have the laptop docked, do the DVI ports work with a newer GPU?

How many spots are there for drives in the laptop? (Including DVD drive)

How are temperatures with each CPU and GPU?

Does the laptop support 4x16GB DDR3?

Does this laptop support expresscard or smartcard, or both? (I don't have any smartcards, just am curious)

Does the laptop play well with Linux?

Would a 980m or a 1070 work well with a non-UEFI OS?

I might have more questions later, but this is all I can think of for now

 

Hi, nice post and nice machine. Do you own one of this?
As far as I know, like most notebooks, GPU is soldered on the motherboard and the manufacturers implements custom designs on them.
I don't know how you're going to fit a new graphic card on it.
We have also to consider it's a 7 years old machine.
The max amount of ram is 32GB for the quad core version and 16GB on dual core.

More info:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-EliteBook-8770w-DreamColor-Notebook.88367.0.html

edit:just checked now and I saw it has a replaceable GPU, but I don't know if there are any MXM Pascal GPU to be honest and any compatibility.
Sorry for not being helpful.


Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

 

@triturbo I think you'd be able to answer some of the questions.
Also, what are some of the best, but also cheap WiFi cards for the laptop?

 

I just received today my HP EliteBook 8770W and did extensive research before I purchased it.
- GTX 1070 will run fine in non-UEFI OS
- the laptop can support 4x16GB DDR3 (if you can find where to purchase them from, I couldn't find anywhere)
- Linux runs like a charm. The HP EliteBooks are made for Linux, and even though we got NVidia cards, still all run fine.
- two hard drive bays + DVD/Blur Ray

The rest I haven't tried it.

 

The Elitebook 8770W handles up to 32GB with 4 + 8GB DDR3 modules. But be aware of the dual core motherboard that has only 2, allowing only 16GB.

For storage, you can opt for a hard drive in a optical drive caddy to have 3 hard drives and an MSATA drive as your boot drive.

I don't think there is a WiFi whitelist, but to be clear that the Elitebook does not use the full height WLAN cards, just half height mini PCIe.

 

I've seen reports of people with DDR4 boards and CPUs that officially state that they go up to 64GB being able to run 4x32GB configs, was wondering if the same applied here.

Why have the MSATA be the boot drive? Is that SATA 2 or am I just confused?

There appears to be a full height mPCIe slot from pictures I've seen online, does nothing work in it?

 

That's good, have you confirmed with a 16GB stick yourself, or is there some source you found the info?
Was mainly asking about Linux because I didn't know if MXM upgrading would break anything, and I didn't want to limit my future OS choices.

 

I have a friend who owns a business trading off-lease laptops and he told me he had seen models with single 16Gb memory sticks.
HP Elitebooks and Zbooks are rock solid for Linux. My Linux machine is 8560W and I love it. Never had a single issue with incompatible hardware.
I'm just mad that HP didn't keep the body of the W-series and just keep adding newer hardware. Shame.

 

I'm wrong about the MSata drive, as it was for a 24GB cache for Smart Response Technology to speed up mechanical drives. So, disregard that, this just means 3 HDDs. 1 in main bay and the second in the secondary bay. And replacing the ODD for a caddy will give you 3 hard disk drives.

The full height is for WWAN, if it's the one with unused antennas in there.

And again this isn't a DDR4 laptop, it's DDR3. There have never been SODIMMs with single 16GB DDR3. Only ever seen DDR3 with 8GB at maximum.

 

What if the antennas from the half height are put on a full height card?

Also, 2x16GB DDR3 exists, it's just kinda rare https://www.ebay.com/itm/201547773783

 

If the antennas are used on a full height card, it'll accept a signal if you're using WWAN. I don't think the WLAN card will work in the WWAN slot, though. Might make the 8770W flip. Also that's fascinating... There's a Crucial branded one here but I wouldn't risk spending that much to test it. The other thing to note is chipset limitation, having more than 32gb might make the laptop flip out as well. Emphasis on might...

 

I just got 4x 16GB RAM memory modules but can't get them to work.
Once I insert the memory modules and I get a black screen on boot with CAPS lock flashing...

 

Try running with 2 x 16GB?

 

That's what I'm trying, even installing one by one the modules but still a black screen on boot.
Didn't remove the memory modules under the keyboards. Shall I do that?

 

Worth a try but can't guarantee if it'll help.

 

-GTX 1070 won't run on non-UEFI OS with internal screen (must be DreamColor eDP in anyway)
-8770W support max 4x8GB with the 4-slots MoBo version
-2 HDD bays, DVD/BR and mSATA SSD

 

Does the VBIOS have anything to do with this?

 

No, Pascal based GPUs need eDP signal or Optimus enabled (the second is not supported by 8770W, eDP panel is the DreamColor only)

 

I meant it not working on non-UEFI

 

For eDP panel, UEFI is a must for 8770W, because of the lack of Optimus - for LVDS ordinary 1080p screen - Pascal GPU is a no go.

 

Have you tried this yet?

Have you tried a legacy OS?
Also, how is DDR3 at 1866 working out?

 

Yes, I’ve tried it, won’t work.
1866 DDR3 is working perfectly. Even 2133 is working , but not fully stable.

 

Should I go for an Alienware 980M or a MSI 980M? The Alienware is about $30 cheaper, but I don't know if there's anything I need to be aware of with this.

 

Both will work without problems on 8770W, just get the cheaper one.

 

Does anyone know what the first BIOS version with Spectre and Meltdown patches is?

I'd like to have maximum performance, and I'd like to know what versions I should avoid

Edit: F.66 Rev.A appears to be the last BIOS before January 2018, when Spectre was discovered.
Leaving a link, and a .html that you can use to confirm the MD5 of the file

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp81001-81500/sp81416.exe

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp81001-81500/sp81416.html

Also, if these links ever die, I've archived the BIOS using archive.org. The site hates ftp://, so I was unable to archive the .html file

Edit 2: I've archived every BIOS update on archive.org