Has anyone heard of a g2 zbook being upgraded with an nVidia Pascal MXM?

I only ask because the G1 EC can't properly read the Pascal temp censor and the g2 mobos are cheap

 

I think it's a power thing that won't allow it

 

What do you mean? I have a gtx 1070 in my G1 and as long as I have a 230w power supply I can handle it, so a 200w should be able to handle a 1060 and below, and I imagine a 120 should be able to handle the mxm-a 1050ti and below

 

Hay. Did you find out if Pascal cards work okay with any of the Elitebook/zbook laptops? I won a Eurocom 1070 on ebay and am looking to buy a HP laptop to install it in. Seems the easiest known option is a 8770w with DreamColor but they are rare and expensive.

Saw your tread on building a headsink for the Zbook 15. Was gonna try hacking a heat sink from a MSI GS60 laptop. Seems with a bit of bending it may fit. The fan control issue is a problem though..

 

you can't use a 8770w or Other Elitebooks because they don't support eDP or Optimus(Afaik) so if you go HP you have to use a Zbook or above for all Pascal MXMs

I have been running 1070n in my heavily modified G1 Zbook the only negative is that the Bios and vBios can't negotiate temperatures of the MXM so the mobo runs fans on Max there are ways to mitigate this but makes sure you have over a 240w psu or you will damage the psu you might also need to customize the cooling system

 

So the 8770w can read the GPU temperatures okay? AFAIK the 8770w has eDP & LVDS outputs on the LCD connector, but the DP is only used with dreamcolor displays. Wondering if it would be easier to hack a eDP panel & cable in a 8770w or the fan control of a Zbook 17.
Also considering buying a zBook 17 G3 but I haven't see any reports of pascal cards being installed in one of these, and they are expensive.

I guess you've tried all the 1070 vBioses you can find right?

 

Kudos for getting a GPU before the laptop

They are, but it's one of the best machines built over the best notebook platform (IMO Ivy Bridge would remain the best for quite a while) to get a modern GPU into it, so it's well worth it. And that 10bit RGB LED IPS is still nowhere to be seen. Oh and looking at some of the HDR displays, it's HDR Ready too.

8770w DC handles it just fine.

 

I can't speak to that but I assume no

yup I was wrong there sorry about the confusion I incorrectly believed only Zbooks and up supported eDP

I can't speak to much of that but fan control is relatively easy

yes to no avail I'm currently back to running the default Zotac vBios

The more you know

 

Any particular reason behind this decision? I'm asking since I'm waiting a Zotac 1070 as we speak.

 

My reason was very specific to my setup Playing GTAV would cause so much power draw that my system would throttle the CPU regardless of thermal concerns so I went with a vBios that would pull down less power I also power limited my CPU I don't think you have to worry about it feel free to flash to the latest MSI vbios

 

Can you provide a pack of vBIOSes? Thank you!

 

I uploaded 2 in my original post http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...a-g1-zbook-15-but-its-not-perfect-yet.803964/

 

So I got a 8770w and the Eurocom 1070 card works with an Asus VBIOS. The original Eurocom VBIOS for the Alienware 17 r5 didn't give any output on the external DP connector. The internal non-dream colour LVDS screen doesn't work(as expected). Fan control works, although the fan is always spinning. Guess the card generates quite a bit of heat even when idle. I'm thinking of replacing the LDVS panel with an eDP panel like the N173HGE-E11. It would require wiring the display cable to use the eDP pins on the motherboard's display connector. All signals are there to do it.

 

Is your 1070n an MSI type or is a GeCube type that has been limited to 95w? If the later would you mind uploading your 1070's vBios?

 

GeCube I guess. It's the Eurocom card: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Euroc...-card-to-fit-into-older-laptops.257520.0.html The card has a 90W sticker on it, but I got it second hand so I don't know if it's had the original BIOS on it.

Unfortunately I had to use an external bios flasher to update the VBIOS and it auto-detected the chip as 1Mbit not 4Mbit so I only got a backup of the first 1/4 of the original VBIOS. The version number started 86.04.3d... which is not in techpowerup's database.
After setting the chip manually I flashed the VBIOS from an Asus GT62VR. I don't know what it's TDP limit is, probably too high for the 8770w. Need to learn about TDP BIOS limits.

Could you ask Eurocom for the BIOS images?

 

@ChanceJackson - BTW How do you flash your vBIOS?

 

I used a CH341 based flasher. It's got a clip that attaches directly to the eeprom. I would have used nvflash but as the card came with a VBIOS with the display ports disabled. It would have been tricky. The 8770w has the IGP disabled, so all video has to come from the MXM card.

With the 1070 in the ZBook 15. Do you think that the SMC can't read the temps for the GPU or that the card says it's a 100w card and the SMC freaks out? Wonder if the ZBook 15's fan control work okay with other MXM IIIb cards like the 980m.

 

I just used nvflash my system uses Optimus so it was entirely uncomplicated

there is hp utility you can use to glimpse all kinds of information about the system and it erroneously reports my card to be at like 87C at all times so I believe the laptop subsystem that deals with that stuff just misreads the sensors

 

Hay, I've been trying to install the Eurocom 1070 card I have in a Zbook 15 G2. Haven't managed to keep it cool enough to install the windows drivers yet or run HwInfo to check the GPU temps, but the laptops fan seems to behave as it should. Like it doesn't go to 100%.
One issue I need to resolve before building a cooling solution is that the card doesn't work with the internal display. With hybrid graphics disable the boot screen only shows on an external display. Did you have this issue with your G1? I've tried the VBIOS you posted in the first message of your "it's not perfect yet" thread, and the non-gsync vbios linked in the Stas.b85 thread. I assume this is VBios compatibility issue. Any ideas on how to fix it?

 

In the end I could only get it to work with hybrid graphics/Optimus even after installing the drivers the laptop screen still wouldn't come on with hybrid graphics off it's possible I screwed something up during installation

Btw how are you cooling the card now?

Did you backup your original vbios first?

 

Do you have a link to the Asus vbios? I feel like experimenting

 

Sorry, my mistake, it's actually an MSI vbios and the same as the one you have in your vBioses zip.

 

Cooling the card with the Zbook's heatsink that I modified to fit. I thought it would be sufficient to experiment with vbioses and drivers. Wanted to check it all worked before investing the time to make a custom heatsink. Unfortunately the FETs and coils get very hot after a about a minute, so I can't do much more than boot to windows for 30 seconds. For me, having the internal display working with the DGPU is important, so the project is over if I can't get that sorted out.

Unfortunately I only dumped half of the original VBIOS due to my EEPROM programmer not detecting the BIOS chip type correctly.

 

I'd recommend getting an nVidia style MXM-B heatsink like https://www.ebay.com/p/HP-EliteBook-8770w-GPU-Video-Card-Heatsink-696435-001/1738122216 and modifying it to fit Pascal cards while you experiment with Drivers and Vbioses

 

Rereading this earlier today caused a light to go off in my head regarding my own setup

When I first started using this card in my laptop for testing out games and stuff both the laptops DP and Thunderbolt/mDP ports worked without issue, but the regular DP port had been flakey. Lately neither port had worked leading me to think there was a hardware issue with the Mobo but that wasn't a deal breaking to me since the HP dock I have has a DP port that still worked.

What i never even thought to consider was that I was originally using the MSI vbios as soon as I could and had flashed back to the Zotac bios after moving I never considered the vBios might be limiting my DP connectivity I'm going to flash back to MSI and test this when I get home, thanks for sharing the quoted detail

 

can you link me your mod thread and/or album of pictures to install that 1070N mxm b to your mxm a laptop?

 

google "zbook 1070n" it's the first option that comes up all pictures are after the 1st page

while it works for games and everything it is not complete yet as in the top cover and laptop keyboard are not attached so it's like a desktop with a built in screen right now lol

 

That's interesting.

Definitely a hackjob for sure.

 

I wish the pipes were more tidy in it.

 

yup lol

the next step is to get some wide heatpipes to navigate around the elevated part of the mounting plate

 

That sounds great! Have you planned any design tweaks too

 

yes I have some Skivved fin heatsinks that I will need to shave the base down on to get it to the right height and that will replace the heatsink fin stack I am currently using

 

So I have given up on installing the 1070 in a Zbook 15 G2.. While it would work fine with Optimus(including the fan), I was planning on installing OSX which would be best done if the 1070 could drive the internal display. I suspect HP's BIOS tests for a supported video card and only switches the eDP mux to MXM if it recognises the card. I was tempted to try physically modding the motherboard but I only have the schematic for the G1, the G2 seems to use a different mux chip. Well anyway the next step is put the 1070 back in the 8770w and try hacking an eDP display into that... The parts are on order from China..

 

The problem i also had was being able to find the schematic. Its a though break. Sorry about you to find up.

 

I guess you could try a g1 mobo in your g2 chassis I believe they have the same dimensions

 

I upgraded my Zbook G2 with GTX 965m which is a Type A card, so no hardware modifications. Unfortunately the laptop screen never worked, I can only use the laptop if it is hooked up to an external monitor via VGA or docked to a dock station. So did you guys manage to get the laptop screen ever working with the G2? 965 is not a Pascal card, it should support lvds as well and in fact it has been working fine for an year now on my old and faithful 8560w.

 

Did you try with Optimus enabled in the BIOS? I'm not 100% but from trying to install a 1070m I assumed their may be something in the BIOS that only lets the dedicated GPU drive the display directly if it's a whitelisted graphics card. I could be wrong, but what you are saying sounds similar to the issue I had with the 1070m in a G2.

 

@DengueTim Thanks for your reply. I thoroughly checked BIOS, but this variation Zbook does not appear to have Hybrid graphics option in it. I found various posts on forums that comment Zbooks with DreamColor or non lvds screens (mine is LED-backlit QHD+ UWVA IPS eDP anti-glare display, manufacturer is SHARP), do not support Optimus. So, I don't have the option to use the integrated Intel HD card unfortunately. Otherwise I would have been happy even with this solution.

 

You wont get optimus but you can switch between discreet and internal.

 

@Padraig O Cuinn At this point I would be happy to switch. But as I said, there is no option to enable the integrated graphics on this laptop. Similarly to the old Elitebook Workstation laptops, this Zbook does not make use of the Intel HD graphics. I can provide screenshots if you think I might be wrong ..

 

Sure i coukd help you out. Ive had all zbooks bat the new g5

 

Does the Zbook 15 G2 even have an LVDS display option? It could well be that Optimus is disabled for your display type yes. The only thing I can think of that may work is flashing a different VBIOS. (It's risky as without IG support, if it goes wrong it would be difficult to flash the old VBIOS back again.) My thinking is that if the card is connected directly to the internal display it could well be that the VBIOS has that eDP port disabled.

 

I get different advices all over the forums .. not sure which ones to believe. Those that discourage me do not offer any solution obviously (e.g. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/gtx-965m-not-working-on-laptop-display.249905/), others offer very shady suggestions, but at least it is something I can try .. even though I doubt it could be the problem ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-3-0b-higher-spec-video-cards.768347/page-25)

 

Could you ask the guy who has the 965m working in their ZBook 15 G2 to post a dump of their VBIOS? Or at least the version number. You may be able to find the image on techpowerup. There is no reason that your card shouldn't be able to drive that display. It's either the laptop's BIOS or the VBIOS that's stopping it. You can't do much about the laptop's BIOS, but the VBIOS you can flash with whatever 965m VBIOS you can find. The trick is to find a VBIOS with a port config that works for your laptop. If you use linux I think there are tools to decode the port configurations from VBIOS images(There are for AMD at least). So you could see how the k2100m is configured and then find a 965m VBIOS that is similar.

 

@DengueTim The guy from the youtube video has a Zbook with Full HD TN display (lvds) that supports hybrid graphics (Optimus). I have a 3k display (eDP) with no support for hybrid graphics. The VBIOS of his video card is the exact same as mine - I verified this from the video, the firmware version is seen in the bios, same as mine). So this path is a no go.

Still, thanks for the suggestions!

 

A quick follow up, as I've forgotten: I was able to get the Quadro M2200 (which is counterpart to the GTX 965m) working in the Zbook G2. It did require flashing the vbios from Zbook G4 and running the BIOS in UEFI hybrid (not native) mode. Getting the vbios was the hard part as nobody was kind enough to provide it, but after reading and trying many things, I was able to source it out of the system bios update file from HP site.

So as summary: it doesn't appear Zbook has a whitelist, but it is quite possible it requires specific instructions from the vbios in order to run as some people here have suggested. This is huge, as it probably means that as long as HP have produced a laptop with an MXM video card you want to upgrade to, your chances are you most likely would be successful, as long as you can get your hands on its vbios. If it is stripped directly from an HP laptop, it should run out of the box.

 

Hello,

I hope someone can help me with my problem, because I am running out of ideas how to solve it.

I have a HP Zbook 17 G1 with Nvidia K4100m. I want to upgrade to M4000m.
They do fit together.

The hardware ID from the M4000M is DEV_13F9&SUBSYS_190A103C and from the Vbios is 84.04.8D.00.05.

My problem is the bios and the driver. The m4000m is sometimes visible in the bios.
I have checked the vbios from techpower 84.04.6D.00.07 and 84.04.3D.00.06. Not 100% compatible.
The driver from Nvidia, HP and Dell has no positive results when tried with both versions of vbios by techpower. I have also tried several bios boot modes, native/hybrid.
No positive results.

I have no idea what to do. Does anyone have an idea for me?

Thank you very much an best regards.