EliteBook 8740w Ultimate Upgrade Guide (mSATA mod, GPU upgrade, cooling and etc)

Yeah, that's the idea, but I don't have time lately and the project is pretty much on hold

As far as I know it should work no matter the vBIOS/vendor. The ones that have been tested and work for sure are Alienware and MSi, while Clevo is under question, but it should work as well.

 

will i need to do a grind down of the heatsink?

I think i still have my 5000M's heatsinklying around somewhere

 

just curious on which one to use,

2800M or 5000M

 

If you still use your 2800m, keep it and the heat-sink as well as a spare and grind the 5000m one. Both require grinding anyway, just on different places.

 

I know im new here but i just figured everyone would like to know that i have a 7970m in my 8740w and i have solved the battery issue with a vbios mod and a windows hack this will only work on windows 7 and you have to flash the vbios i modded and then go into device manager and go under batteries and disable microsoft ac adapter driver and then you can use the laptop all you want on battery (NOTICE EVEN THOUGH I EXTENSIVELY TESTED IT I TAKE NO RESPOSIBILITY FOR BRICKED GPUS AND NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS AND ZOMBIES EATING YOUR FIRST BORN) this will only work on the clevo version of the card sadly goodnight everyone

 

Thank you very much for your contribution! Which Clevo version? I know for three (v1.0, v1.1 and v1.2), there might be more. Too bad that I sold my v1.1 7970m quite a while ago.

 

its the v1.1 version but i assume it would work with all clevo versions but it doesn't work with the dell version because it shuts down when the temperature reaches 83'c and it artifacts on battery but is stable on ac

 

Thank you once again! Tomorrow will edit the first post. Care to share what changes you did? It might apply to other AMDs as well. Also I guess the fan has still to be controlled manually, since you didn't mentioned it.

 

Added link to @hawk jarrett 's fix.

New mod in the Power adapter section. Now you can run whatever adapter you like (as long as the connector is the same of course).

 

FX3800 to K3100M 4GB exchange - all works OK (backlight, fan, etc.)
Card claimed by auctioner as MSI-compatible.
vBIOS 80.04.E8.00.1C - brand: unknown, maybe stock or HP? backuped size is 170k.
Not overclocked.
DreamColor - not installed.
Drivers 372.95 for Quadro branch.

Heat-sink needs little Dremel work.
Used 3 layers of 20x120mm thermopads - I try 3 different brands: AAB 6W/mK, GELID 7W/mK and GELID 12W/mK.
And Zalman STG2 on GPU and RAM chips on top side + 12W thermopads on rest of top-side chips.

Because this card have RAM chips on bottom side too, so additionally I attach 2 layers of 1mm 6/7W thermopads on bottom RAM chips. But there is not any metal under MXM card - only green motherboard PCB! But I decide that this would be better than nothing (only air gap) - maybe wrong maybe not, I don't know - the risk is that RAM chips can heats-up this part of motherboard. We'll see.

In FurMark 1.18.1.0 burn-in test - @30 minutes max GPU temp. 73 C, no glitches or artifacts.

FurMark 1.18.1 Benchmarks:
Preset 1080: score 1074
Preset 720: score 1749

 

Thank you for your contribution! Enjoy your new GPU The bottom RAM is fine, it's actually better to leave it bare. There are backplates (mostly for Celvo and msi), but they are rather expensive for the thin sheet of copper they are.

How do you feel the 7 and 12W/mK pads? Are they easy to work? Do they compress or stay more or less the same?

 

Original (old FX3800) thermopads (light-blue) was extremely elastic.
7W (medium-blue) was very jello-elastic (can't be broken), and sticky.
12W (navy-blue) was more stiff, less sticky and onetime it broke a little in a corner, so is more fragile.
I read somewhere that 17W are much harder and didn't compress well, so I was afraid that 12W can be similar, but IMO 7&12 compress very well.
Of course 7W was more compresable than 12W, at the cost of heat transmission.
I didn't have any problems with application of thermopads.
More tricky was application of very dense STG2.

I my judgment 7W can easily compress over 50%*) even to 65%, and 12W can compress 40-50% without problems and excessive force, but over 50% needs more force.
I don't feel, that MXM card have any over-tension after assembly.

*) compression 50%=0,5 mm, 65%=0,35 mm thickness

 

Thank you for that. I red the same as well, but no one compared it to anything meaningful, so I couldn't draw any judgement. So, the 12W/mK are the golden mean

 

I disabled enduro in the bios and set the 3d voltage to 0.975 if set higher it will crash on battery and as for fan control im in the proccess of developing a fix for that havent been on here for awhile because i had to replace the motherboard in my 8740w because of a liquid spill but thats sorted out now using external keyboard and mouse until the new ones arrive in the mail (and completely unrelated news borrowed a friends 8970m and m290x and couldnt get either one of them to display on the internal screen no matter what i did but they both displayed on external just fine tried every vbios i could find but cards were stable at 87 'c max furmark so i guess you could get one of them and use it as a small desktop) and does anyone have the schematics for the 8740w because my next project is going to break the rsa signed bios encryption so we wont have to worry about incompatible gpus again sorry for the wall of text got a little carried away goodnight everybody

 

Sorry about your misfortune, I hope all is fine soon Yeah the system BIOS is the one that messes-up everything, so if you are about to fix it - more kudos and power to you! The vBIOS editing is just a work-around, but helpful none the less. So neither of the newer AMDs work (AW or Clevo)? Probably more editing required, specifically the output part (I heard that it varies from one vendor to another)? BTW Remove the crappy whitelist while you are at it, I have found the best mPCIe WiFi for us - AW-CB160H - 3x3 AC + BT 4.0. Well the later (BT) would require slot mod, since our doesn't has USB lanes. Also that would open the possibility for newer WWAN modules for the ones who use them, or TV tuners and etc.

 

some additional info:
vBIOS loaded into KeplerBiosTweaker shows DELL


FireStrike v 1.1 benchmark (940 XM, no ThrottleStop, no K3100M overclocking, SSD, 6 GB RAM in various chips, Win 7 x64):
2544
(graphics 2796, physics 4666, combined 1079)

For me didn't seems to be spectacular.

 

Well, it's a ~GTX 765m after all, so I don't know what you have expected. I'll add the correct GPU/BIOS vendor.

 

Hi ppl (hello world!)

exist any update in somewhere about the list of GPU compatibles with this laptop?

greetings

 

There's quite the list. What are you interested in running, that's not in there?

 

i have a 8540w laptop (now with fx1800m, a quadro 2000m and firepro m5950 is in transit, for test what is better), but i'm not sure if worth the effort to update to 8740w model or witch directly to alienware m15x (as i can see, have a lots of more GPU support). (no , i'n not want to switch to a newer model of laptop. i hate the optimus/discrete GPUs)

greetings

 

You can put better GPU in your 8540w, but still MXM-A. As far as compatibility goes, nothing beats M15x. It's up to you whether or not you need the extra bells and whistles of the 8740w, but it comes on the expense of being less compatible and requires quite some work to unlock the full potential of this machine. M15x would get you faster to the upgrade-and-get-going.

 

@triturbo

yea. only Quadro 2000M or ATI Firepro M5690. other newer models failed (no post/powerup or problems with the lit)

 

If you tried the HP ones - yes, since they've removed the on-board vBIOS. Have you tried DELL modules?

 

me no, but @ soundoflenses on youtube yes

 

Just made a quick browse. Can you use the iGPU on this machine? I saw that he has i5 in there, maybe it could be different with i7 (since it doesn't have iGPU). Of course the 8740w has i5 models as well, but the iGPU is nowhere to be seen in the BIOS, so they might have been designed differently. Anyway, sorry to hear it. In this regard 8740w is A LOT more compatible.

 

my laptop is a quad core (i7-840qm) with quad core motherboard. don't have iGPU (the mobo for 2 core models (for i5-520m, i5-540m and i7-620m) is different, is iGPU capable)

yes. fot that i ask is the list of the first post is updated, for exist another GPU not listed compatible with 8740w

greetings

 

ops

 

Well we haven't tested all of the GPUs out there, but you can count on the ones in the list. As it seems, the 8740w was designed differently than 8540w. Even with i5, it wont work on iGPU. It hurts battery life, but improves compatibility... to an extent - with recent GPUs, that lack LVDS, the iGPU helps to get picture on LVDS display (DP is not affected (DC panels are DP, but no one has tested yet whether or not they work)).

 

got a little bit of news thanks to the schematics triturbo sent me i was able to get the 8970m to work on internal display with the correct performance i will upload the vbios i modified to work with the 8740w tomorrow so far after stress testing it works good (but no auto fan control) but the battery fix i used for my 7970m works with the 8970m so no worrys there but for some reason with my 7970m the temperatures stay below 80C but with the 8970m it slowly climbs to 100c and shuts off and despite multiple repaste attempts the 7970m runs much cooler but that should be the final hurddle to get it working

 

Great news! That's odd if anything, the 8970m should run cooler.

 

Could you please upload it?
I tried the HD8970m from Clevo without success..... :/
Also could you please explain a bit in how you edited the vBIOS? I assume you edited it for LVDS output?

 

Tonight I have tested 3 cards on 8740w DC2, HD 8970m 4GB (Clevo non-CF version), FirePro W7170m (Dell Version), and GTX 1060 6GB(MSI).
It has been quite another disappointment after I got stuck on upgrading the GPU on my W701.
Quick answer is NO to all three cards on 8740w DC2.

FYI there is not a single chance to get any of the 3 cards to work on a Dell M6700 as well

1. HD 8970m 4GB (Clevo)
Black screen with backlit on, no HP logo, fan at maximum, can enter system but there's just nothing on the display
07/01/17
Working now. Will explain later and upload the working BIOS. FYI brightness control also works.
I think I will be able to figure out the W7170m upgrade soon. GTX 1060 need a while due to the lack of tools

2. FirePro W7170m (Dell)
Probably the most powerful AMD MXM3.0 card at the moment, same disappointment as well.
This is the card from Dell Precision 7710, which only comes with FHD or UHD displays. And I would assume that both displays are eDP interface. Maybe Dell just killed the LVDS output. (I know that DC2 panel is LVDS converted from eDP)
And not really surprising, black screen as usual, only good news is that fan control works.
08/01/17
Working now it really is a charm. fan control seems to work. There's absolutely no battery problem.

P.S. fan control doesn't work at all on M6700


3. GTX 1060 6GB (MSI)
This is probably the most powerful standard MXM3.0 card on the market ATM. I bought this card hoping to turn one of my laptops into a mobile VR set. However it has been an utterly disappointment.
On 8740w, it turned out to be awesome at the beginning, the HP logo show up, and I can enter the system.
And I modified the drivers and installed it.
After a restart, bam! Black screen right after system started, backlit on, no picture
So I was thinking of force load EDID, modified driver again to get the nVIDIA control panel. Like what I did to my W701ds:

connected to an external display and I realised that the internal display is not recongised at all.

One might be able to get it running on a non-DC 8740w, but what's the point of 8740w then? :/

P.S. There's no way to run it on a M6700, mechanically doesn't fit at all. The inductor at the middle is right underneath the heatpipe, a big NO.


I'm gonna experiment a bit more tomorrow..... But after $1k wasted and hours of Dremel-ling, I'm left with a 8740w and M6700 which has pathetic M7820 and M6000m, and three powerful GPUs lying around. I just hope I get more luck in other matters :/

And I have to say, that HP 8740w's drivers sucks harder than it's cooling..... As a die-hard fan of thinkpad the trackpoint is something I cannot live without, and there's still no working driver for it on 8740w..... Yeah and also the cooling is pathetic given the noise level. sounds louder to me than my bitcoin miner! But DC2 .... *sigh*

 

First of all thank you VERY much for your time and testing. I'm really sad that none of these GPUs worked for you.

Second, let's analyze and see what can be done... if anything:

1. 8970m - I hope that @hawk jarrett would chime-in and everything would work fine for you.
2. W7170m - Terrible news! I was hoping that this would be my go-to GPU if we don't see a proper RX 480/E9550 MXM-B, but it seems that it's not the case. Shouldn't stop us from trying though. There is another iteration of this chip, it's the Zentrica's R9-M295X. You might want to contact them and ask for the vBIOS.
3. 1060 - Do you have the MDA (Mobile Display Assistant) installed? If no - install it. If yes - uninstall it, but the safer bet would be a fresh Windows install, just to be 100% certain that there are no drivers for the display. The down side would be - no color space selection as well as off-colors. Yes, the DC panel is LVDS, but it goes through the decoder board and I think this is where our problem lies. Something is breaking compatibility there. LVDS displays wont work, since neither Polaris (RX 480), nor Pascal (1060) support it. I was hoping that, since the DC signal goes through the decoder board, which takes DP, newer GPUs would feed the board with DP and it would handle the conversion just fine... It used to be the case up until now.

The system BIOS might be the one to be blamed, after all it is notorious for causing issues with AMD GPUs. In any case, I think that it is high time to reach for @Prema 's help.

Yeah, still nice system, but it loses A TON of its charm and pretty much its entire uniqueness. You still have pretty powerful machine in nice and slim package with a few added bonuses (and some drawbacks of course).

Me too and this is my first machine with pointstick. I guess it's good that I haven't been spoiled with the ThinkPad's one I agree though, there's a lot of room for improvement.

The cooling is pathetic all by itself, but I find it rather quiet, for a single-fan-cooling-about-150W-CPU-and-GPU that is. I find single fan msi systems with same configuration louder than that. Of course it can be WAY better, that's why I'm working on improving it in both departments - cooling capacity, which would bring the noise down to whisper for the same performance (hopefully) or sound like a jet engine with impressive performance (which should be achievable with the improved cooling)

 

quick notice: HD8970m now works will elaborate later

01/08
W7170m Works!!!!!!! though some modifications shall be made. I might post the vBIOS after a few more tests.

For the 15 mins I have used it, it's a charm, really. Brightness control works, fan seems to be self controllable, and battery works!!!!!!

If there's no more unseen problems, this card is 100% perfect fit for 8740w

I'm gonna do more further testing in the next few days and meanwhile try the GTX 1060!!!!

Finally some luck!!!!

 

GREAT NEWS!!! Do you have an LVDS panel? I (and quite likely other people as well) would love to know if they work with standard panels Can't wait for more information

 

Nope.... mine's DC2..... As I've said, If it's no the DC2, screw 8740w. Thinkpad W701 is way better than 8740w in almost every other aspect (apart from size and screen) (IMO).

For the normal LVDS panel will be a difficult choice, Quad core or better graphics card, or give up the DP port and go for further BIOS mod and soldering. You can not have your cake and eat it
But since DC2 is eDP, yes, quadcore + 28nm GPU + The DreamColor. You can have your cake and eat it and enjoy it and show off.

There's one bad news however. If no one is able to get GTX 1060 working, there will be slim chance that any card better than W7170m or 980m will work on 8740w. I will explain further in details. But let me enjoy the W7170m for a few days first lol XD. Yeah, as a Thinkpad T61p (FX570m) owner I am very AMD biased lol.

P.S. The above might not be true. According to MXM specs, it is *REQUIRED* to have LVDS output. It needs to be confirmed whether the LVDS is still there or not on the new cards.

P.P.S. Anyone wanna take over my HD 8970m?

 

Yeah, I know, just to be sure, since I don't know if you got 8740w and the DC assembly afterwards, or you got the DC machine from the get-go.

It was one of the machines I was considering (along with M6500 and M17x-R2), but with no GPU upgrade path (for now), it was off the list for me (not mention how rare and expensive these machines are). The DC alone was enough for me to go with 8740w. It's far from perfect, but with quite some tweaking most of the drawbacks can be resolved and it would remain pretty slim for the power and display it packs

You can show-off indeed and it's not like I'm not (guilty ), but it is also awesome to use. I can't imagine having anything less than what I have now, even though I'm eying some external displays (LG's 38UC99-W - only sRGB, but would use it for multitasking and gaming), I'll have to see them in person in order to decide, where the DC was a no-brainer.

As for the W701, here are some thoughts. First, you need to test if non-lenovo GPU can output to the DP. Then, since you have them both, you can try and see if it would drive the DC, but you'll need the whole setup (color board -> CB to LVDS cable -> display) as well as custom cable to the CB. When you prove that it works fine, you can go the extra mile and solder extra DP lane if there's an unused one (I'm not sure if all of the DP outputs are used on the W701, if you have the schematics, that's easy to check). Needles to say it would be quite the soldering and pretty risky. Hopefully you wont fry anything, but you'll end-up with the most kick@$$ setup out there I just hope that you wont forget about us, 8740w users

I think that it's one of the BIOSes, or both (the system and video). I think that the CB is not to be blamed (it just converts DP to LVDS, don't know what can cause issues), although we have to keep it in mind just because. It's something about port configuration, or among these lines.

You do that Just confirmation - you already confirmed the backlight control, what about fan and battery? Same for the 8970m.

I guess we can make a club (I have my reasons)

Well it is, but nGREEDIA dropped MXM couple of years ago (they own MXM Sig) and all of the recent "MXM" boards are "thanks" to this i.e. no specs, just free and whatever one needs interpretations. That's why all the odd shapes, LVDS missing and etc. As I said, LVDS is not there on Polaris and Pascal. Well there's some hope for E9550, but since it's geared towards the embedded market, I seriously doubt that it would have LVDS.

I hope for RX 480/E9550, but if the price is right, I'll definitely give a rest to my M8900 earlier

BTW Nice sig, especially the last sentence

 

How much are the 1060's going for? I haven't seen one for sale yet.
nGreedia doesnt make it easier by naming the desktop and laptop versions the same...

 

There are a couple on eBay, one of which is sold by @woodzstack You can get a discount if you are an NBR member (which you obviously are). Would it work for you is another story.

 

Some benchmarks, not using the latest driver.
Gonna try a bit overclocking and fun

systeminfo and drives and etc

3dm11, no CPU OC

3dm11, CPU OC 25x/25x/25x/25x 95W. I am pretty sure that the CPU throttled due to heat.


New 3dmark, CPU OC 25x/25x/25x/25x 95W. The newer CPU such as i7 6820HQ would score 50% higher than a OCed 920xm for physics score.


And..... What a joke!!!! It is "capable" xDDDD


I'm gonna try things a bit more after my thermal pads arrive. And I will explain things in detail later.
What do I think?



P.S. If pictures don't load properly, refresh page

 

Looks good! A fresh breath for the 8740w DC. Now if only the cooling can handle a really high clocked XM, I'm sure that we'll close that gap

Upload the images to imgur, or abload.de, since the forum is known for its issues with attachments.

What do you have here, since it's missing:

Do you have the FirePro/Radeon Pro Advanced settings?

It looks like the tractor you posted - unassuming at first and pretty awesome when you drive it.

 

That's something I'm trying to avoid.......

Steam VR performance test says my 8740w is "capable" of VR

I haven't tried the fire pro driver yet. I downloaded the Radeon driver for gaming as AMD might still not have a stable driver for W7170m yet

 

It doesn't matter. I've installed the latest available Radeon driver (a legacy one, Crimson beta 16.2.1), both the M7820 and the M8900 are recognized as their Radeon equivalents, but it installs these additional settings anyway. I guess it depends on the BIOS version.

BTW The new Precision 7720 would have "Radeon Pro WX 7100 w/ 8GB GDDR5" i.e. RX 480

 

You can take mine for $600 + shipping if you want. Since I don't think I will be able to get it working
And besides, search "GTX 1060 mxm" and you will have more luck

 

unlikely you will have luck in RX 480, I will explain later

 

ill upload it later but first i disabled enduro then i edited the vender id and subvendor id and it seems that i didnt have to edit for lvds because the card is similar to the 7970m 1.1 but im in the process of modifying the actual rsa signed bios of the computer i have so far bypassed the mini pcie whitelist and have ran the machine with a bigfoot killer ar5bhb112 wireless card if im successful lets just say it will be like the alienware any gpu goes

 

Keep-up the GREAT work and keep us posted! A fixed system BIOS, that's a dream come true! That was a rather entertaining week. First the W7170m, now fixed system BIOS (well, removed whitelist for now, but that's a small victory!), I can't be more happier! There are still modders around, there's hope for humanity

As for the WiFi card, I'd suggest AzureWave AW-CB160. It's mPCIe 3x3 AC and BT 4.0, it's the only one to has all of these features in a single mPCIe package. The "drawback" is that it useses smaller connectors. There are two ways to resolve it - one solder proper ones, two use adapters. The one I've linked comes with adapters and this way it would be easier for disassembly, since you wont have to flip the laptop over and fiddle with cables - just leave the adapters and disconnect them from under the keyboard. As for the traffic prioritizing, I use cFosSpeed and I get the same result. The whole Killer thing is just that - a WiFi card and traffic prioritizing software.

EDIT: Links added.

Still have some hope

 

Thanks but I will wait until I buy the Zbook 17 G3, at that time the prices for the gpu's will hopefully have dropped as well.

 

Unlikely, since this is the only new and widely available MXM-B. I hope that this would change and there would be more (AMDs), but for now it's pretty much it.

 

When you use your 330W PSU, were you able to draw more than 216W from it?
Today I tried to over clock my 8740w with W7170m, unlocked CPU to 95W and the power consumption reached ~160W.
And while I was gaming, the power consumption reached 215W max (from socket).
Just curious, if there is a total power limit implemented in the EC module?
Similar things happens when I upgarde my T61 to QX9300, the computer just won't draw more than 90W regardless of what's going on