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

still trying to confirm if the K5100M with the Dell (MSI) Vbios will work without any alteration on the 8740 W.

 

Here's a list I found a long time ago, K5100m is there, probably the DELL one, or at least with a DELL vBIOS.

 

looks good, but I wish he was an English! (Just so I can understand everything)


I'm just trying to ascertain whether I should look for a K5100M with a Dell Vbios, and whether the HP Vbios, ironically, does not work.

No one has trod this path yet?

 

Given all of the advantages of the KX100 series of cards, I'm surprised there has been no activity in terms of upgrade on this forum.

 

You can use k1000m and k1100m, but you need a processor with a video core.

 

Hi all,

Pretty happy to report that a HP M2000M works out of the box! No black screen, didnt need to fiddle around with VBIOS versions (82.07.9C.00.01), the card fitted moderately well in the MXM slot. The cooling block is not properly shaped for this (little) card but I stress tested it with GTA V and it doesnt get that hot and the heat drops pretty quickly when the load drops to zero so I am pretty sure it has decent contact with the GPU core. Its definitely an improvement compared to the FirePro M7820.

I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste for the CPU/GPU cores and Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8 8 W/M for the GPU memory chips. Which is 2mm thick, this is actually a little too thick, I recommend to use 0.5mm instead. Because this is an I5 model, I replaced the CPU single heat pipe radiator for the double heat pipe version.

I am satisfied with results. Could probably do it a little bit better if I had to do the whole operation again (esp. with thinner pads) but as its quite a big operation which costs a lot of time I am not going to do it again if its not really necessary. I noticed in the benchmark thread that this laptop model by default is a little bit hotter compared to the later generations (8760W, 8770W which I also own). Apparently the first Intel generations are a bit more of a hothead and more difficult to cool down.

Needed to modify the driver ini file ofcourse but after that it was having the correct resolution (1680x1050 screen)

As its not my own laptop I cannot perform a lot of benchmarks and share many real world experience but by the looks of it, it performs an awful lot better then it used to do.

 

thanks for the reply

I have the Q 840. Does that have a video core?

are you saying that the higher versions of the KXIXXM (K5100M) won't work?

 

What about higher iterations of the M-series, e.g. M4000M, M5000M?

 

Slight threadjack, so you were able to get the W7170M to work over LVDS only (no optimus/enduro)? Asking for M17x experimentation.

 

might be possible but because this laptop has a cooling problem I didnt want to go higher up in TDP/Watt usage. A M2000M has a TDP of 55 Watt, the M3000M is rated at 75 Watt which is considerably higher. I have a M3000M in my own Zbook 17 G3 now, it stays pretty cool but.. Thats mainly because HP finally decided in this generation of laptops to split the cooling and use two fans / cooling blocks instead of stacking the radiators and use one fan. It's bad design if you would ask me.

So yes, it's probably possible but due to some possible cooling problems I didnt want to go that far. Oh and before I forget, M3000M is a different price class also. The M2000M costed me 70E+20E shipping. The M3000M/M4000M/M5000M are harder to find and most of the time considerably higher priced or.. I can say.. Overpriced.

 

My 8740w is eDP. But I think it will work with LVDS. I'd stay away form optimus and enduro if possible

 

might be possible but because this laptop has a cooling problem I didnt want to go higher up in TDP/Watt usage. A M2000M has a TDP of 55 Watt, the M3000M is rated at 75 Watt which is considerably higher. I have a M3000M in my own Zbook 17 G3 now, it stays pretty cool but.. Thats mainly because HP finally decided in this generation of laptops to split the cooling and use two fans / cooling blocks instead of stacking the radiators and use one fan. It's bad design if you would ask me.

So yes, it's probably possible but due to some possible cooling problems I didnt want to go that far. Oh and before I forget, M3000M is a different price class also. The M2000M costed me 70E+20E shipping. The M3000M/M4000M/M5000M are harder to find and most of the time considerably higher priced or.. I can say.. Overpriced.

I have used a GTX 980m in these machines with no issue ---- the only overheating issue I saw was with a K3000m. The K5100m works with no problem. It was, in fact so good I now use it in my 8770w machine --- It performs nearly as well as the 980m and OS X (all the way up to Catalina) native support as a bonus. I think these machines are damn near bulletproof and since optimus is a complete non-issue I think so long as you use a non HP vbios (i.e Dell, Clevo ) Hp made a machine that is totally future proof far beyond their intentions.

 

Confirmed not working with LVDS on M15x and M17x R2

 

I made an external Sound Processing Unit (eSPU) using eGPU hardware, you can find it here.

 

Still in development but passed the testing - 12V fans. Using a buck converter and a 12V PWM fan controller got Acer AeroBlade fans running.

It looks like this at the moment and the schematics are something like this:

 

I upgraded to an M3000M according to this Russian tutorial on YouTube and it seems to work fine, haven't really stress tested it yet though.

Until now, my only problem is fan speed, it's locked at 100%. In terms of fan control HWinfo didn't work for me, it sais "unsupported operation attempted" when clicking on the fan icon in the sensors window.
The only program able to detect and control my fan speed I found is SpeedFan. But here, too, I have an issue, and any help would be greatly appreciated :

SpeedFan generally seems to be able to perfectly work as intended with my setup, BUT. It only finds the chip controlling the fan (mainboard?) SOMETIMES when searching through the computer's components after startup. Otherwise, the fan and it's speed are not shown. Only after I had the notebook running for some time and have restarded SpeedFan couple of times, it's able to find the chip again and I can modify it to manually control fan speed.
How is this possible? Is something temporarily blocking SpeedFan's access to the chip? I have no clue what causes the program to work after some time, the chip just randomly appears. Only thing I can be sure of is that it won't appear in the list right after I reboot the PC.

 

Can someone confirm if a Quadro m5000m taken from a HP Zbook17 G3 has the potential to work with my 8740w with a dream colour display?

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HP-Zboo...m23c06f6fab:g:8f4AAOSwaOZdHW-l&frcectupt=true

 

I just installed in a gtx780m and can't modified the .inf files since it isn't getting recognized. Microsoft Basic Display Renderer don't show gtx780m. This is the guide I followed.

https://null-src.com/posts/nvidia-notebook-driver-inf-mod/post.php

Is the a vbios i can install?

 

I have the DC display and swapped out to a gtx780m which works great. The only issue is I can't get the HP mobile display assistant app to install. It's telling me I require ie6 or later to install this app. I've installing the newest version 2.11 C but no luck. I know internet 6 is now replaced with Microsoft edge so I emulated ie6 by changing the user agent to ie7 (ie6 wasn't available) but still comes with with the same error.

I know for a fact the app works cos I got it running when I changed the Quadro to the GTX GPU probably because the app was already installed with the original Quadro card. It's only when I reformatted windows can I longer install the app.

Also I can't change the the display to 10bit within the NVIDIA panel, switches back to 8bit automatically.

 

Hi everyone!

This old thread gave me a wee idea, since I had some old stock HP parts on hand, and was not willing to mod my G6 HD display to FHD. Mostly because the FHD panel is a NOS Elite, with.... drum roll... Map Light! Ha! It's an odd duck, you either love it or hate it. Also it came with a NOS light up keyboard with point stick, and a NOS palm rest.

This stuff was intended for maintenance work for satellite locations, that needed replacements pronto. Been stored for ages, and a bit surprised to find the box set asside, when it should have been scrapped long ago with the old Elitebooks.

Anywho, now that I got the bug, from this old thread, a Frankin Pro Elite book 8570PB will be made from what I can find and hack together. As they are all from various models, not just the 8570W.

Will be making a thread, since I don't want to hijack this wonderful thread. Thanks for the excellent read, and great work!

 

Surely someone knows of a solution to my problems I'm facing or is the 8740w really dead?

 

.
I was able to upgrade from an AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5870 to a 6GB VRAM Clevo Nvidia Geforce GTX 970M using Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 2H21 with GeForce Game Ready Driver Version 353.54 (05/09/2018) drivers. At first I had problems installing it, since I did not install the drivers before installing the new card and 1 minute after starting Windows, the screen went black. Fortunately, I managed to get the black screen ants drivers to download and rebooted the laptop 1 hour after starting the download, which made it run smoothly. It should also be noted that I had to remove the screws to the graphics card heatsink, as they did not fit on the GTX 970M. Place electrical tape between the heatsink and keyboard to press down on the GTX 970M and make contact, and also place new thermal pads and Artic MX-4 thermal paste.

Below you will see images link of the specifications.

https://imgur.com/a/mdfMGwb

It should be noted that I did not suffer from skipping issues as a person who previously upgraded to the same GTX 970M. My Hp Elitebook 8740w is a 1680x1050 No DreamColor.

 

If the video driver is later than 399, then 10 bit may not work.