*HP EliteBook 8560w Owners Lounge*

That machine is very similar to mine, which I have enjoyed thoroughly. I know what you mean when you mention the Inspiron, as I made the switch to my 8560w from an N5110. The 8560w is light years ahead in every area. There's a couple things you might want to consider. The first is that the same seller offers the 8560w equipped with an i7 2820qm for $150 less.

Link: HP EliteBook 8560w 15 6 Core i7 2820QM Quadcore 2 3GHz 8GB 500GB Gaming Laptop | eBay

That's quite a price difference for 200 MHz and both CPUs have the 8 MB L3 cache. The difference in the cost of buying each CPU used on ebay is roughly $30-50 and you could always buy the cheaper 8560w and upgrade the CPU in the future should you choose to do so. Also, I would verify that the Windows 7 Pro installation comes with the appropriate COA sticker under the battery. You might also inquire as to the model and prior usage of the SSD they will be including. I hope I have contributed something of use to you and whichever way you go, you will really enjoy the 8560w. They're great machines.

 

Hi Txsouthpaw,

Thanks for the response. I'm glad you have made the same observations that I have. I'm moving toward the light!

I think you have also confirmed the direction my mind was thinking. I think you are right, the lesser powerful processor is the better way to go. Anyone else see why not? Bad experiences manufacturing flaws etc?

Regarding the Windows 7 Pro COA sticker; that is what the seller will include with the deal, a COA sticker. And it says that he is a registered Microsoft Windows Refurbisher.

Come to think of it, I did ask the seller what brand the SSD was and he just responded that it was an "almost new" SSD. Thinking perhaps I should just ask him to leave the out HDD, which saves me $35 and then use the saved money to put in a 256GB Crucial M500 SSD when it lands here. Peace of mind at $140. The only problem with this is that the seller does not include the battery with the sale. I will ask him if he can and how much for.

Thanks for the input so far, keep it coming...

Dylan

 

There's really no difference in the 2860qm and 2820qm other than 200 MHz clock speed and that the 2820 was released in 1/11 whereas the 2860qm was released in 9/11. I have a 2860qm that I replaced a 2720qm with. There is very little difference between the two of those during everyday usage and any difference would really only be seen in benchmarks, video transcoding, and other computationally intensive applications. The disparity is even more minute between the 2820 and the 2860 and you still get the larger L3 cache. The money you will save can easily buy a nice 256gb SSD, which will yield undeniable performance gains. You can also go ahead with the HDD included and move it to the optical bay using an adapter. They run $10-15 USD. That machine would fly.

 

That sounds really good! I am glad I have made this choice as I have now bitten the bullet!

I have chosen not to take the HDD as I have a spare WD 640GB that will go into the optical bay.

Really excited to receive it, can't wait!

 

Awesome! I'm glad you got a new machine and I know you'll thoroughly enjoy it. If you don't mind me asking, what is the cost and shipping time to have a notebook shipped from Austin, TX to Cape Town, SA? I was in South Africa in 2011 (Durban) and really enjoyed my visit. What a beautiful country.

 

Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting it. Just some stupid delays with PayPal. They thought I had been hacked because the transaction took place on the interim PC I have rebuilt and they did not recognize the IP address that I do my usual transactions on. That was the Dell that was stolen. So the transaction was reversed and I have to wait for the funds to reflect in my account again in order for me to complete the transaction. I can't complain too much though - at least they are monitoring this for me a trying to maintain a safe transactional environment for us.

Not a problem, it cost $132 for UPS expedited shipping which will take 3-6 working days to deliver. And it is guaranteed. I don't think this is too bad a cost for shipping.

I'm glad you enjoyed SA, I love home! A large part of my teenage years was spent in Natal and I often think back on very fond memories from that time! Most of my family is based there. I would love to visit the States at some point, it is definitely on the bucket list!

 

The Quadro 2000m and heat sink came in today. I installed them and voila, everything works well. Thanks for your help.

 

Any noticeable gains?

 

I actually spoke too soon. The computer booted fine and the card was recognized both in the BIOS as well as within Windows. I was even able to install the newest Quadro Performance Driver, but upon presenting the GPU with any kind of load, the machine restarted. Upon examining the MXM card, it looked as though one of the chokes was jarred loose during shipping. I am leaving shortly to exchange it with the ebay seller for another. I'm lucky in that the seller is only 20 miles away. One thing I found interesting is that the HP heat sink intended for use with the 2000m seemed to perform much better than the one that shipped with my Quadro 1000m equipped machine. This was despite the fact that the original heat sink was very clean, the same thermal paste was used, and that they both share the same physical dimensions (heat pipes, fan, and the plate portion that attaches to the CPU and GPU).

 

Quadro k2100m just came in, unfortunatelly it doesn't give any video signal, too bad

I'm leaving a video showing what it does:




I tried also connected to an external screen using the vga cable and the display port, and nothing. It's like it's not going thorugh the bios, since whenever i simply touched the power button while it was one it was turned off inmediatelly.

 

I'm sorry it didn't work for you, but I appreciate you reporting your findings.

In other news, I procured my replacement 2000m and it works beautifully. I'm also replacing my factory 150 watt brick with the 200 watt, though I haven't encountered any problems with the smaller one yet. Does anyone know which brick shipped with Q 2000M / 2xx0QM equipped machines from the factory?

 

I'm pretty sure mine came with 200W slim adapter.

Just pretty sure, because I bought my laptop used and that's what came with it.

 

Hi guys, do you know if the 8560w can handle 16gb ram modules??

 

there are no 16gb laptop modules, you can use multiple 8gb to get 16gb or more.

 

Bios update to F50 is available for 8650w too.

I haven't had much issues but I updated anyways today.

I have two 4TB external drives, no problems with them (boot problems on 8770w) but since I recently got couple cheap USB3 hubs the computer won't cold boot if they are connected. With drives alone worked just fine.

They look like this:
http://ebayimg.cndirect.com/newcdn/SV/0/SV001877-1-zealdora.jpg

Hubs themselves work well, I get pretty much same speed transferring files thru them than directly connected. For 7e / piece I wasn't expecting much tho.

 

Hello fellas,
I just got my self a 8560w that was broken.
Was given to me and I decided to repair it, BIOS chip died. Upon opening the chip was soldered once already, I ordered a new one with a correct flash and got that one in place.
Everything works fine now but I have a couple of errors regarding S/N and Intel ME being in recovery state. I was told I'll need a tool called DMIFIT to get the correct S/N inserted. But I can't find anything on the Intel Management Engine being in recovery.
My bios is F.22, is it worth upgrading to the most recent? Will I gain anything? I would rather not do a Bios flash

Its a model equipped with i7-2670QM, AMD FirePro and a Full HD panel.
Got 16Gb of RAM on it, and a 500HDD. Will it take mSATA SSD's?
Kind Regards

 

I'm not being able to download the latest bios from HP page, can you please upload it somewhere else?

 

Hi guys, it's me again, i just got an used amd M5950 to replace my quadro 1000m, installed it and booted just fine, the problem is when i connected it to my docking station or charging cable. It enters to the "maxixum performance" state, and then gives me a BSOD stating that the ATIKMPAG.sys is the problem. I've tried several drivers, including the ones provided by HP.

Any clues? Could it be a defective video card?

Thanks in advance.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9311368/sp68041.exe
Straight from my download folder.

Could be. Or it could be crappy drivers. Then again I tend to have serious personal issues with AMD/ATI vga drivers, every time I have their card somewhere I will have driver issues at some point. First time was in the mid 90's. Great hardware... not that good support

Did you change gpu heatsink too?

 

Hi, thanks! No, i didn't change the heatsink, since according to the service manual the q1000m and the m5950 shares the same heatsink, I did change the thermal paste though. I use a driver sweeper and installed something like 6 or 7 different driver versions always having the same result. I've just put the 1000m back, and sent a message to the ebay seller, so wish me luck. I'm pretty sure it's something bad with the card, since today, after using it a little bit with the "maximize battery life" powerplay profile, i started getting the infamous message of "driver stopped respondind and had to be restablished" (or something like that).

A video is being upload here:




Thanks again!

 

Hi Guys,

So I've had my computer for a few weeks now and I can't say it has been plain sailing. I wonder if you guys could help me out?

My biggest issue is a BSOD when I shut down the computer. I have a feeling it is a USB 3.0 driver issue but I am not sure how to sort it out? I can post a dump file if that will help?

My system is also saying that I have only got 3GB of RAM available for use when the system has 8GB. What is up with that?

Then my computer won't boot up when a USB 3.0 device is connected.

Has anyone else experienced these issues? Any help would be much appreciated.

Another observation I made was that the two RAM modules are not the same speed, one is 10600s and the other 12800s. Would this be causing issues?

Thanks in advance,

Dylan

 

I'm running Windows 8.1 Pro and I didn't need to install any USB 3.0 driver to get the ports working, if you did install you should consider reverting back the driver supplied by microsoft (generic) might not give full speed but they are stable.
Only 3Gb of ram detected happens when you install a x86/32 bits operative system. You'll need a x64/64bits operative system to use the full ammount of RAM you have available.
RAM modules not being the same speed does not matter, the motherboard will look up a table of speeds they can be ran at, that is stored in each RAM stick and find a common speed and increase the timings in order to maintain stability.
I'm running temporarily 8Gb of Samsung 1600Mhz CL11 plus 4Gb of Kingston 1333Mhz CL9.
My 12Gb of RAM are running at 1333Mhz CL9 meaning that the Samsung RAM is running below their rated speed, having no influence in stability.
Only stability issue that might arise from RAM is if the stick is faulty.

To answer myself on the previous post, I ended up updating the BIOS, ME in Recovery mode message is still there.
I used DMIFIT to clear the error on boot and it is now working as it should.
6770M drivers installed, ordered an HDD Caddy, gonna put a 250Gb SSD on it plus a 2Tb HDD on the HDD bay, I'm gonna finish it with changing changing the two 2Gb sticks with 4Gb sticks each summing up at 16Gb of RAM.

Gonna see if I can clock the GPU and the CPU. Got a 220W PSU so I got power headroom.
Thank you all for your answers, or lack of. The prime reason I frequent this forum so often is how helpful you fellas are.

 

Just lost a long reply, so here is a shortened version.

I also recently upgraded from quadro K1000 to K2000 and it was fairly cheap, except for customs import chargers. Needed larger power brick and heat pipe assy.

It games Crysis 3 great, detects machine as medium spec. When I upgraded I was able to run Crysis 2 max settings. Crysis 3 is the most recent demanding game I have, and it runs great.

A good tip I have for all owners is to (in windows 7) go to power options, high performace, plan settings, advanced and change the default max processor state (max cpu power management) to 99% instead of 100%. I was getting video stuttering during cut scenes in games, and it was due to the CPU hitting the thermal limiter (not the GPU) - found solution on google

Laptop runs about 85deg C max on CP and 72deg C on the GPU (after hours gaming)

I would like to add a SSD as a third drive, is this possible somehow? I already have 2nd drive in DVD bay but need to use the DVD drive ocassionally. Not sure if there is room or connectivity for a third drive? (thinking of running that for OS only, permanent install)

 

I use the HP 230W Advanced Docking Station NZ223AA), which has a eSATA port. Doesn´t run with SATA III though, only with SATA II.
inside the 8560w there are as far as I know no cables or SATA ports for a third drive.

 

oh, and btw: Win 10 on the 8560w, put it in a seperate thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-elitebook-8560w-windows-10-tech-preview.html

 

Hi everyone,

I have a 8560w at the moment and I would like to upgrade the gpu.
What are the possibilities besides the 2000m? I would really like to upgrade it with a k2000m.

Looking forward to hear from you.

 

As far as I know, only downgrades for you. 1000m or 5950 amd are the other two options, gpu from newer machines do not work.

 

I bought one of these laptops used for my father. However it came with a 3rd party 90w power adapter. So far it's working, but shouldn't it have a 120w power adapter?

It's an i7 2820qm with the AMD video card.

 

Hi,

New to the forum and looking to pick up a well spec'd HP 8560W laptop over the weekend.

Just wanted to get some feedback from current owners, what do you think of them, are they still capable machines.

I am not too fussed about looks I just want a good solid dependable workstation that doesn't have the noise of a desktop workstation ;-)

Edit:

Forgot to mention the spec:

Intel i7 2820QM Processor
32GB Memory
256GB OCZ SSD drive
500 GB SATA drive
1920x1080p resolution
Nvidia Quadro 2000M Graphics
External DVD drive
Windows 8.1 Pro installed

----

I think the spec is great but wanted to know if there is room for improvement i.e. can I upgrade the CPU and graphics further?

Thanks,

T

 

Graphics is already best you can get for that model. Memory is topped also...
Service manual is good to read. CPU options are listed on page 1, apparently my machine has the slowest quad i7 there is... (i7-2630QM) yet it has not given me any reason to upgrade yet.

I actually replaced my i5-2500 desktop with this laptop. I'm running it lid closed with an advanced docking station and two 24" monitors. So most of the time I'm missing the wonderful (dreamcolor) display and great keyboard. Altough the keyboard is in german, so this external one works better when I need to visually find one lost key

Fan does make some noise, not much but still some. Definitely more noisy than my desktop gaming pc that's watercooled now And noisier than the i5 desktop it replaced, that one is still next to me now running windows server 24/7.

There is one significant downside though. The looks, that feel. It will make your life much more expensive later on when you just cannot stand having any plasticky squeaky piece of laptop anymore...

 

Hey thanks for the reply, sounds like you pretty much got the setup I am after...its the flexibility it offers over say a micro PC base unit.

As for look and feel I thought they had metal bodies are is that only partially and its mostly plastic? I won't be upgrading for a while to be honest anyway so this will do for my needs (development).

Thanks,

T

 

I think you got previous poster wrong. Due to superb quality of elitebooks 8x60 and 8x70 you wont be able to look into anything else in the future except proper workstation/business class which wilo make your next choice costly

 

Haha I get you, okay that is relief actually as I switched over to an HP workstation PC's over 2 years ago due to the build quality and rock solid performance in everything I did (I mostly code and play the odd round of CS:Source).

I used the athletic Z600 at work and now have an EliteDesk in my current role, seems I can't get away from HP machines ;-)

Yes I have been considering the fact the 8560w is several years old however as you said they are built so well and thankfully the one I have purchased is already upgraded its pretty much future proof for me at least for several years if not more.

I have been looking at current and upcoming mobile workstations and while the i7 has moved to another generation the reference design and spec has stayed the same which is some comfort apart from some of the price tags (which put me off the Zbook G2) and I just need to wait as by the time I need to replace my 8560w those ZBook's should drop in price hehe.

 

Couple question, how do you folks find the operating temp of the 8560w's in day to day use such as idle, medium work and heavy load e.g. rendering or gaming?

Second question regarding gaming, are they capable of playing games several years old? I only really play CS:Source, World of Warcraft (vanilla on a private server) and the odd lap in rFactor (racing sim) however I am more concerned that playing games could speed up the death of the GPU and/or laptop.

I had that problem with the old school Thinkpad T61p - great laptop but was plagued with hot spots and failures.

 

I don't have temp monitoring software installed right now but I can tell this thing outputs a lot of hot air... Which is a good thing.

Diablo 3 and WoW are the only games I have installed right now on this laptop. They run well enough, pretty much compared to my old desktop (C2Q with GTX660, low on cpu but good on gpu), say 25-80fps depending on situation but mostly near 30. That's while running them windowed, usually full screen video playing on second monitor

 

I picked my 8560w on Friday night and bloody hell I am impressed - phenomenal engineering quality build, these really re the Rolls Royce of mobile workstations!

I think the 15.6" Dreamcolor Panel is a bit small for a 1920x1080 display and I think I need to scale up the fonts a bit as it seems the panel doesn't really work well with any lower resolutions which is a shame.

I found a fix for the heat issue as it was getting hot all the time which got me worried...

1. Go into your Screen Saver options
2. Change power settings
3. Select the power plan you are using (I have High Performance when plugged in and balanced on battery)
4. Select Advanced Options
5. Scroll down the features and find the "Processor power management"
6. Set the "Minimum processor state" to 5% battery and 95% or 75% power
7. Set the "Maximum processor state" to 75% battery and 99% power

Hit okay and exit.


The above ensures you never cook your processor and I found it keeps temps at optimum levels as well ensuring your fan lasts a bit longer.

 

Noticed one thing the Windows 8.1 Dreamcolor driver is for the Dreamcolor 3 panel and not 2 lol so not sure if I need it as the nVidia control panel has the required settings or I should try to find a previous version and try that.

 

Guys I can't seem to find a panel driver for Windows 8.1, any ideas?

 

Told ya Really hard to even consider a plastic acer or similar anymore...

I have no drivers either on my panel, since it isn't currently in use (dual HP LP2475w). I haven't ever calibrated it either, so someone else has to help here

 

Yes know what you mean my friend, looking at other notebooks under a different light now and then you take into account all the thought that went into designing the 8560w, they really took their time and made it a power users dream!

Already updated the secondary HDD to a 1TB model and the best bit? Boot time from cold to Windows 8.1 desktop in 8 seconds!

 

Guys,

After some searching and "re-searching" I think I found a solution to the Dreamcolor panel drivers and colour profile.

I found this PDF document which alluded to the fact that the Dreamcolor 2 panel was the same as found in some Dreamcolor desktop LCD:

Looking at the specs it's virtually identical in features and performance aka the much desired 30-bit color display that is accessible in applications like Adobe Photoshop CS6 & CC for example so I decided I would download the driver and give it a go:

HP LP2480zx drivers

*note you will need to change your OS to suit (I opted for the Windows 8 64-bit drivers)

Windows would not recognise the drivers so I had to manually select the right ones and after doing so found the panel driver had installed successfully without any issues and Windows was now recognising the panel and presenting the new colour profiles in the Colour Management configuration found in the Screen Resolution > Advanced Settings > Colour Management tab.

Adobe also recognised the panel correctly and loaded up the 30-bit colour profile without any issues and from what I can tell everything looks great so a result!

 

I just got my replacement m5950 and it's working as expected, i have just one doubt though, how do i install radeon drivers on it so it perform better in games?

Thanks!

 

I posted this in response to someone else on 8760w forum who successfully upgraded their GPU. I think 8560w owner's might also be able to upgrade the GPU if they can go without the dvd drive. what do you think?

 

While you are at it, throw a fan, couple of pipes and a radiator <- Don't be confused by this, I'm serious. You'll need all the cooling you can get, M8900 is a hot piece of silicon. Also the SlimlineSATA (the DVD connector) is soldered, so you'll have to not only unscrew it, but either desolder it, or cut it with a box opener or something really sharp (carefull not to damage the motherboard). It would require a lot of work, but I see no reason to not work... Unless your GPU lacks BIOS chip, which means that it gets it from the system BIOS, which means that it might be set to read only the already included vBIOSes and not to search for external. And we know that if touch those BIOSes they can't be flashed without terrible consequences. I've modified the system BIOS of my 5920G and included a vBIOS of 4650 (BIOSless), worked fine, then plugged back my 4670 (has its BIOS) and everything was fine. I'm just giving you example how another machine work. Again, I don't know how your notebook is set-up. In any case, good luck!

Oh and you'll definitely need at least 180W PSU. Thankfully HP has them - 200W slim and 230W either thick or slim.

 

I created a new thread here, to continue this discussion on GPU MX3.0b upgrades for the 8560w. Thanks for all of your input!

 

My 8560w is still going strong! I am loving this machine.

However, recently the (cpu?) fan on the left side of the laptop started making a noise, as if the ball bearings have gone bad. Does anyone of you have experience replacing the fan? I assume it would be wise to replace the thermal paste of the CPU while I'm at it. Would love to hear about any experiences, especially of acquiring the part and replacing the fan.

 

Is anyone currently using the laptop with eGPU? I have read about the PE4L being a suitable adapter.
But I was wondering if this one would work? http://www.banggood.com/EXP-GDC-Laptop-External-PCI-E-Graphics-Card-p-934367.html
Is there a difference between using expresscard or using the internal mini PCIe?

 

I just came across this one, maybe someone is interested
http://www.ebay.de/itm/221733347622

Only i5 but Dreamcolor display (at least in the ad). This is the first one I remember seeing for ages.

edit: oh crap, delivery only to germany? missed that one...

 

Hi everyone,

Has anyone tried overclocking the 2920xm/2960xm CPU using Throttlestop or Intel XTU on the 8560w/8760w?

Does HP lock the Turbo limits in the BIOS or can they be freely modified?

Thanks!

 

Hello,
I recently bought a 8560w, and wow it looks nice and is FAST compared to 8530p. But I have a small problem, it was overheating badly so I opened it up and replaced the thermal paste. After disassembling the laptop, the fingerprint reader wouldn't work anymore and windows (8.1) showed error reading fingerprint. It worked fine before, any ideas as to what might be wrong? (It shows up in device manager, even tried different drivers and I double-checked all cables)

EDIT: Nevermind. The Windows 8 drivers decided to goof up just after I had reassembled the laptop. I removed all drivers, software and guid file from WinBioDatabase(in System32) and it decided to work again yay!