HP ZBook 15 Mobile Workstation Screen Upgrade

I purchased this system maybe a year ago as a basic notebook. Overall, I have been pretty satisfied with it other than the screen.

The original screen on this system was a pretty crappy TN, with poor colors, lousy viewing angles and all around kind of miserable. I was getting ready to buy an IPS replacement on eBay and remembered I had an original IPS off a Eurocom Tornado F5 (MSI 16L13) laptop that had been upgraded to a 120HZ screen. Out of curiosity, I checked the dimensions, eDP connector and the connector location. It was a 100% hassle-free drop-in upgrade. Totally plug and play, including the bracket placements. No modding whatsoever. This was a significant upgrade in specs that ultimately cost me nothing and took less than 10 minutes.

I thought I would share this information for those that own one of these nice old laptops and are not ready to part with it, but are fed up with the crappy screen.

Here is a link comparing the replacement and original panel specs:

http://www.panelook.com/modelcompare.php?ids=24180,20169

In spite of its humble 60Hz refresh rate, the replacement panel has much better clarity, nicer colors and really good viewing angles. And, I see zero back light bleed.

For me to notice, it has to be significant because this is something I am generally not too particular about. (So, you know the original screen had to be pretty bad for me to notice, LOL.)
https://imgur.com/a/lAPOCQd

 

Really nice machine you got! Hopefully this dosent have BGA

 

No

LOL. Thank you. No it is socketed CPU and MXM. The 4800MQ is a really nice workstation CPU with a fair amount of muscle. It is more potent than most current mobile CPUs even though it is like 5 years old. The only thing I don't like is the GPU is MXM 3.0a and that limits my options. But, I did not buy it for gaming or benching and the Quadro K1100M is better than Intel graphics.

Before I bought this as a refurb for under $350 From Office Depot, I tried going the turdbook route. It ended up being so disappointing I returned it to Best Buy for a refund within a week.

 

I don’t like BGA but all my toughbooks have BGA of some kind so it’s fine. I don’t upgrade CPUs often so yea

 

Nice upgrade!

What about making use of these 120Hz

 

Thanks, bro. Yes, those would probably work just great. The thing I like about the upgrade that I did is I did not have to pay anything. Just used a part that I had sitting around collecting dust.

 

Nice upgrade, is the difference very noticeable?

 

Thanks.

Yes sir, it is remarkably better. Brighter and more vivid, colors are not washed out like the crappy original screen.

 

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-8550U+@+1.80GHz&id=3064
~8.2K Passmark average.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4800MQ+@+2.70GHz&id=1927
~8.4K Passmark average.

Within 2% at nearly half the stock TDP, iGPU as good as the K1100M, better battery life, etc....
Modern CPU's aren't without benefits, you know

I won't argue that a 15 G2 is of better quality than anything you can get for ~$350 refurbished, I used a 17 G2 and loved it but limitations such as the way it handled NVME made me return it.

 

But, the point was you can't get that level of performance for $350 or less. That is all I wanted to spend when I purchased the ZBook 15, and it was an excellent value at that price. And, the build quality of the newer rubbish is generally hideous in comparison to the ZBook 15. If you don't need NVMe, you don't need it. I didn't. I have 3 1TB NVMe SSDs and 2 512GB NVMe SSDs and they don't really provide a remarkable value to me compared to SATA SSD. In most things I find it totally impossible to "feel" a difference. Measurable difference, yes... indeed. Very much so. But, for most of the things I do with a PC, the increased speed of NVMe is not particularly meaningful.

 

You can certainly get better performance for $350, refurbished, I'd say probably not, Newer Zbooks definitely have improved in their past counterparts.

As well the 15 G2 actually does have NVME, and while tying in NVME into needing something is quite silly.
It just annoyed me that I had to waste a SATA slot with a 512GB SSD instead of a 2TB HDD as the NVME slot was functionally useless for booting.

 

Все още можете да надстроите вашата видеокарта!
Обичам тази машина, трябва да взема 17 инча!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...thout-major-alterations.831595/#post-10990286