*HP Zbook 17 Owner's Lounge*

Hihi, I come with info about ZBOOK G1 and G2

15 G1 uses Thunderbolt G1
15 G2 v1 (Sys board 1909) uses thunderbolt G2
15 G2 v2 (sys board 2253) uses thunderbolt G3

I think it is same for zbook 17

G2 uses Thunderbolt2 controller and shares his EC port using PCIe bridge with other peripherals. G1 is better system for ExpressCard, he has a PCIe port to himself but he has Thunderbolt1 controller.

 

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Noteb...-non-functional-expresscard-slot/td-p/4962544
A bit late, but welcome none the less

 

It works fine for me. I currently have USB3 expansion card in slot, in both 15 G2 and 17 G2.

 

Hi, anyone tried Pascal GPU?

I try MXM 1050 Ti from geological survey drone, CAPS and NUM LOCK flash 4, indicate board failure. But other MXM cards work.

 

No eDP support, you need to enable the iGPU which afaik is impossible or boot to a external displayport source

 

ZBook 17 G2 has Hybrid Graphics option in BIOS, silly man. Same with ZBook 15 G2. Currently enabled on both.

I try MXM 1050 Ti in ZBook 15, because he has eDP, same result. No boot and CAPS LOCK and NUM LOCK flash four. He has a 120Hz screen, works fine after BIOS update.

Do you actually know about this topic of which you speak? ZBooks are not EliteBooks, much different.

 

I don't own a Zbook, I tried it out and hated the keyboard, and the inability to boot to a NVME drive annoyed me. Bought a much newer, and much faster laptop that blows away anything the Zbook has to offer, for close to what it would've cost me to upgrade it

 

My ZBook 17 G2 cost only $875 total. Yes, keyboard is bad, yes, no boot from NVME. But, get cheap SD card, install bootloader to SD card. Point bootloader to NVME drive. Problem solved.

With M4000M overclock, he performs faster than 1050 Ti, almost match with 1060 3GB. But M4000M has 4GB

Yes, for $875, you can get good laptop, but sacrifice upgradbility.

For $600, I have bought Eluktronics Mech-15HS, used with bad screen. Only problem, brightness do not work. Fix, unplug and plug in eDP connector XD. It has i7-7700HQ, GTX 1070. But! Only upgrade 1x 2.5 inch, only has 2 RAM slot, only has 1x NVME and 1x M.2 SATA. CPU and GPU are soldered! Very bad for such thick notebook.

I also have ROG Zephyrus GX701, it has i7-8750H, RTX 2080 MaxQ, 144Hz display. Only ONE RAM slot! 8GB RAM is soldered onto his motherboard! Only ONE NVME slot! Very bad!!!

Power comes at great cost.

Benefits of ZBook are expansion. Comes at size, weight, and power. Benefits of other notebooks is power and sometimes weight, but comes at cost of low to none upgrades.

 

Parts list, and convert price from RUB, give or take.

ZBook 17 G2 Base Unit - $295

DELL Quadro M4000M - $150

32GB DDR3 1600S - $140

2TB Seagate HDD - $55

240GB SATA3 SSD - $40

1TB Samsung PM981 - $140

54mm Expresscard USB - $20

HP 230W charger - $20

Total - $860

Some people don't need 2TB HDD or 1TB SSD, can be as little as $600 if 32GB RAM not needed.

 

Hello, after much test and frustration, I have new bios for M4000M!

More stable, less hot.

Testing appreciated. Works in ZBook 17 G2, but not ZBook 15 G2. He may work in other notebook too!

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/234315/234315

 

No point in upgradability if you simply cannot upgrade to faster parts without extreme efforts

 

For some, effort is worth more than money.

Going price for his configuration on ebay excess of $1000US, and I only spend $860 on him. Plus, i know how to do. So not much effort.

I can sell for $1400+, and buy ZBook 17 G6 without GPU, and spend $250 on P4000M.

 

AMD R9 M280X works in ZBOOK 15 G2

Samsung PM981a 256GB works in ZBOOK 15 G2 (2.0 x4)

 

Is the fan control there for that card? Or does it just run at full speed?

 

What do you mean? Card has no fans. It is MXM. Fan is controlled automatically by notebook. You can also download Notebook Fan Control and use 8770W profile, it work fine on ZBook G1/G2.

It is M280X, not 280X.

You can put BIG MXM card in small MXM slot, card will be limit to 75W.

If you remove CD/RW DATA/POWER connector, you can install Quadro M3000M in your notebook, and use full power, since he is 75W card. Much faster than M2000M.

1050 Ti MXM do not work, even with eDP in ZBOOK 15 G2, I think BIOS is problem.

 

Quadro P4000 work in ZBOok 15 G2 and ZBook 17 G2

 

Hi, where would you find a 17 G6 without a GPU ? I am trying to find good offers for 17 G4, maybe G5 if Microsoft don't lower their f****** stupid requirements to 7th gen processors. I live in France btw, but any marketplace in EU should be fine, please share if you know a few... Thanks !

 

deleted

 

oho, I buy from United States, and import. European market is garbage.

 

How do you import with low charges ?

 

Hi @TGoodwin518,

Thanks so much for this post. I have a ZBook 17 G2 with Dreamcolor screen and Nvidia K5100M, and for the longest time I was annoyed by severe color banding with this screen. It is most noticeable when I watch videos with dark scenes - the dark scenes look very pixelated with ugly gradations.

First of all, but not really related to your concerns, but I always wondered if the ZBook G2 Dreamcolor screen is the exact same as the G1 Dreamcolor screen. I believe that HP considers them to be the same. When I first got my ZBook 17 G2, the Dreamcolor screen had a dead pixel, so I had an HP tech come over and replace the screen. I don't know if they replaced it with a G2 or G1 screen, but what I do know is that my screen emits a high-pitched noise, a problem that I saw other G1 Dreamcolor owners reported on this forum. I'm not sure if anyone has reported the high-pitched noise for the G2 Dreamcolor screen. I can't remember if my G2 Dreamcolor screen emitted a high-pitched noise before I got it replaced.

Second of all, you say you're going to replace the K610M with K5100M? How would you do that? I thought GPUs are non-replaceable since they are soldered onto the motherboard.

Third of all, I wonder if the ATI GPU option (I know it was much cheaper than the Nvidia K5100M) for the ZBook G1/G2 suffered from the same color banding problem. My guess is that it does not. I have a ThinkPad laptop with ATI GPU from 2006 that doesn't suffer from any color banding when I play videos with dark scenes.

Fourth of all, I downloaded different versions of the Nvidia driver, because I couldn't find the exact 385.73 version you mentioned. I found that versions 385.69, 386.01, 388.16, and 391.33 allowed me to change the "Output color depth" to 10 bpc. Version 392.37 introduces the problem where I can try to set it to 10 bpc, but after I hit Apply, the screen turns black for a split second, and it changes back to 8 bpc. HOWEVER, version 391.33 has a problem where it lets me change it to 10 bpc, but then I noticed that certain web sites will cause the screen to start flickering like crazy. I have to immediately change it back to 8 bpc or I think it might damage the screen.

So I'm using version 388.16 of the drivers. Enabling 10 bpc color depth definitely reduces by a fair amount the amount of color banding/pixelation/gradations that I see in dark scenes in videos, but it doesn't eliminate it completely. It's disappointing that I paid so much for the Dreamcolor screen and Nvidia K5100M and I get this poor video quality. When I play the exact same video file on my Thinkpad laptop with ATI GPU that I mentioned earlier, that is 10 years older than my ZBook G2, there is absolutely no banding/pixelation/gradations. I guess I should have gotten the ATI GPU with the ZBook instead of the Nvidia.

Then again, one strange thing is that when I plug an external monitor into my ZBook G2's VGA port, there is no banding/pixelation/gradations. So it seems the Nvidia can output fine to an external monitor, but has these banding/pixelation/gradation problems when outputting to the Dreamcolor screen.

Fifth of all, I cannot speak to your sleep/hibernation problem. I'm running Windows 10 and every time I tried to put the ZBook G2 to sleep/hibernation, Windows would never wake up and I'd have to do a hard reboot. So I avoid sleep/hibernation.

Sixth of all, my Dreamcolor screen seems plenty bright. I see that I do have the HP Mobile Display Assistant installed, but it is not running. The program is dthtml.exe, and I do not have dthtml.exe in my process list.

 

I have friend in customs

 

The 15/17 G1 to G4 I think have MXM. The Studio models don't iirc, and the last MXM was used in a 17 G5 as the 15 G5 had it soldered. The other thing to note is that you'll need a different heatsink since the K610M is MXM type A, and a K5100M is type B (which is bigger).

 

Oh, if it's easy to swap out GPUs, I'd be tempted to try to find an AMD FirePro M6100 GPU (which was the other option when I bought the ZBook G2) to see if this color banding problem still happens. Do you have any idea what kind of heatsink that would require? Can I use the heatsink for my K5100M?

Edit: I just did some searching, and I see some M6100 GPUs that are "Dell" and have a red board, and some that are "HP" and have a blue board. Does it matter which one I get?

 

786686-001 is the part number for the heatsink for your K5100M. For the AMD it's 786687-001.

I feel it does matter which one you get, due to the Vbios and for simplicitys sake. If you get the HP blue card, it'll work without problems. The maintenance manual for your laptop will definitely assist.

 

Thanks for the info. I found the maintenance manual for the ZBook 17 G2: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04775335.pdf. Strangely it doesn't mention the AMD Firepro 6100M - it only mentions the Firepro W6170M. It also says the heatsink for the K5100M is part number 735373-001, while part number 786686-001 is for the MXM-N15P-15, and 786687-001 is for the MXM-Emerald.

Also, I found this post on the HP forum: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Noteb...-Upgrade-Options-for-zBook-15-G2/td-p/7499056

So apparently another option for me is to try the Nvidia M5000M in the ZBook G2. I don't know if it fixes the color banding problems, though. I see from your signature that you have a G2 and a M2000M. Have you noticed any color banding problems with it? I see it often in dark scenes in videos. For example, here is a comparison of my ZBook G2 with K5100M (top) and a ThinkPad laptop from 2006 with ATI GPU (bottom):

 

Been a few days since I successfully installed Windows 11 on Zbook 17. So far, so smooth. No bugs or anything. This is a dreamcolor machine, with 10bits LG02FC panel, so I had to use 388.16 nvidia drivers to avoid color banding which @sinotebook referred above. Kudos to 51nb and those here who found this bug. The only good windows 10 that works with latest drivers is probably LTSB.

Download link for drivers: https://us.download.nvidia.com/Wind...p-notebook-win10-64bit-international-whql.exe

You have to switch the bpc to 10 in nvidia control panel to remove banding:



For those curious, I used uudump for windows 11 iso and removed the tpm and other checks using Win 11 Boot And Upgrade FiX KiT v2.0: https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/win-11-boot-and-upgrade-fix-kit-v2-0.83724/

After vanilla windows 11 install, I had to use snappy driver installer origins for fresh drivers (Excluding nvidia drivers of course). So far after a week of usage, no blue screen of death yet. I am using this for multimedia consumption.

I just wish there was a way to downgrade its bios to pre-Spectre / meltdown update, so that it can work with more power. So far every downgrade attempt has failed.

One weird thing is, I have to replace it thermal paste every 02-03 months. I really wish I dont have to open it up that often.

Can someone please suggest me a good thermal paste that has good longevity and keeps the temperature below 80 degrees Celsius? My CPU temperature hovers around 99 after few weeks of thermal paste installation, which keeps me anxious. I am currently using GD900 chinese thermal paste, which is supposed to be good.

I am also trying to find a good thermal pads since frequent opening and closing of this laptop, they have been totally exhausted (almost feel powder like)

 

Even with the 388.16 driver, I still notice some color banding at 10 bpc - not as much as before, but it's not completely eliminated.

What do you mean by "work with more power"?

 

The bios updates reduced the power (read output) efficiency of CPU.

I think you can downgrade OS to Windows LTSB 2016 to minimize banding. Some banding you would see then would be due to inferior source.

 

Hello, I'm considering stepping up from ZBook 15 G5 to ZBook 17 Fury G8.
I have 2x M.2 2280 SSD's + SATA 2.5" drive.
Question for ZBook Fury G7/G8 owners please: what are the max. combinations of storage available? This is not clear at all studying service manual. It seems like, if SATA drive is present it block another 2x M.2 ports and vice versa. That means, I can put max. what I have now, 2x M.2 + SATA or 4x M.2 and NO SATA. Is that correct?
Thank you.

 

Do you have experience with zbook 17 G5&G6 and quadro p4000/p5000? Should one do something except drivers mod, like videoBIOS flashing etc?
Gonna buy p4000 for current G3 upgrade and then move it to further G5/G6

 

Hi everyone,
I've got a Zbook 17 G6, and in trying to configure it safely, I set both a PW and a fingerprint in the "Sure Run" BIOS tool, before Windows startup.
I was quite sure about the PW, but apparently I remember it wrong, or I mistyped it. Maybe a different keyboard layout was selected next to the PW field. Quite disappointing that the BIOS doesn't know which layout is installed, and that there is no option to make the PW readable upon entry, to be sure what you're actually typing.
Anyway, I can still boot up using fingerprint, although this makes me constantly nervous, just a little injury on that finger and I can't boot anymore - And apparently, after logging in by fingerprint and entering BIOS, I'm on restricted access and can't change the PW anywhere. Of course, HP documentation on such issues is nonexistent.
Have I overlooked sth? Is there any way out of this dead end, short of exchanging the mainboard?
Posts #414 - #416 mention this topic very briefly, not sure if and how that's applicable to G6.
Thanks!