8770W non dreamcolor to dreamcolor upgrade

I'd like to preface this with I am extremely new to monitor tech, and especially the communications standards (just learned about LVDS and eDP today, 11/24/18)

Update: Unfortunately, I stepped on and broke the screen in my laptop. It was a non-dreamcolor, so I will work to find a replacement.

Purchased a 970m from dell to upgrade the GPU in my 8770w (C6Y81UT, recent motherboard replacement with HP Part 688746-001) from an AMD M4000 to a GTX 970M 6G from Dell (hopefully no vBIOS flash needed)

Goal 1: Locate a 17.3 10bit QHD 120hz LVDS panel to replace the17.3 6bit FHD 60hz LVDS panel in my 8770w : FAILED - QM77 Express chipset (2012 release date) only supports eDP v 1.1. Therefor, it is not possible to have greater than 1920x1200@60 in this laptop.

INTEL QM77 Express datasheet:
https://www.mouser.com/pdfdocs/7serieschipsetpchdatasheet.pdf

Best panel discovered: http://www.panelook.com/B173QTN01.2_AUO_17.3_LCM_overview_31905.html - unfortunately, this panel is eDP only, does not accept LVDS signals.

Stats: 8bit QHD 120hz eDP 93% sRGB Alienware 17 R4 uses this or a variant of it, and I believe the Aorus X7 does as well.

Ok, so here is what I've discovered:

There are no LVDS panels that are QHD, period. They just don't exist.

There are no 10bit IPS 17.3 inch QHD 100+hz refresh rate panels out there. Best I found was 8bit QHD 17.3 120hz TN panel, with 93% sRGB coverage here: http://www.panelook.com/B173QTN01.2_AUO_17.3_LCM_overview_31905.html

According to some research I found here: https://www.usmicroproducts.com/blog/understanding-display-interfaces LVDS supports a max of 3.125GB/s. QHD@120 would be 13.27Gbps, or 1.65GB/s. Well within the capabilities of LVDS, but I am unable to find any monitor in existence that runs at that resolution/refresh and uses the LVDS standard.

There are chips out there, the STDP4028AB (lvds to eDP, supports WQXGA and QSXGA 10bit @ 60) and the STDP8028AB (eDP to LVDS, WUXGA 10bit @ 60) for supporting conversions.



Goal 2: Get a dreamcolor panel

After doing much reading, I stumbled across several mentions that:

If the laptop was not originally dreamcolor, you'll need the specific colorboard(not sure what that is) for dreamcolor screens.
The DreamColor monitor also requires a 50pin cable
There were also several mentions of needing an entirely different motherboard alltogether, one that supports dreamcolor, which I've been unsuccessful in locating a part number for. This information seems conflicting with info that says you don't actually need a motherboard, just a decoder.


I found this part number (STDP8028) in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/hp-8770w-dreamcolor2-lcd-upgrade.822223/

A search on Ebay brought up:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1pcs-STDP-...h=item1caf0dfe0f:g:2bgAAOSwhT1bJgUJ:rk:2:pf:0

As a techie, sense is telling me this isn't everything I need to take care of connecting to the system. This just looks like the IC, and seems to be steering me into the direction of removing the old IC from the laptop's colorboard (I still don't know what that is) and replacing it with this. Seems drastic, and also doesn't cover the potential of the cable having more pins than the colorboard supports.

Question: is that *all* I need to be able to use a 10bit IPS monitor, or will I actually need an entire colorboard with the capable decoder already on it?

The cable needed to connect the monitor to the motherboard is apparently here: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...ZzU2g8&id=573433648489&ns=1&abbucket=3#detail -- Thank you to @oyasumi

Still missing the cable from the colorboard to the monitor.

Found more information here: http://forum.hpfocus.com/viewtopic.php?t=2656

Might be able to get remaining parts for dreamcolor stuff there

 

You are right, the one you found is just the IC, the board has it and gets the (DP) signal from the MoBo, converts it (to LVDS) (also stores color presets) and sends it to the display. Cables are the most difficult things to find (next to impossible, other than TaoBao), then colorboard (again next to impossible, other than TaoBao), while the display is relatively easy find (whether or not good quality is another story).

Nice story about the QHD as well.

In any case - Good luck and happy upgrading! Getting a better display is worth it!

 

I modified my 8770w to a DreamColor display in 2015. I bought all the parts mentionned on taobao thx to a taiwanese friend (as I am in switzerland). Everything went well.

 

Interesting, can you give us a link to which parts you ordered?

 

Yes! "Interesting, can you give us a link to which parts you ordered?"

 

Hey all. Ok, so I was on the path to upgrading my 8770w with a GTX 970M card, but then scored a deal on a GTX 1060 mobile MXM 3.0b card. Now, if I understand correctly from other posts, I will need to upgrade to a dreamcolor panel in order to use the card since pascal cards will only work with eDP.

So with that said I started seaching for a parts list and got this:

LCD Panel:

• LP173WF3-SLB3
  • Is it correct that anyone of these iterations will work?
    • SLB1, SLB2, SLB3, SLB4

Decoder:

• STDP8028 Decoder - linked in koniptn's post on the taobao site.

Decoder Cables: (only one set is needed)

• 6017B0308401 - Compatible with 8760W and 8770w or
• 6017B0352401 - Only compatible with 8770w

As far as the decoder board is concerned, was wondering if the following will be compatible with the 8770w:

https://www.pchub.com/hp-elitebook-8540w-series-sub-various-board-ls-495bp-decoder-board-p76085

It is for the 8540w series, but post #3308 in this thread says that it is the same decoder board that the 8740w uses, and I have seen other posts that state that the 8740w, 8760w, and the 8770w have the same connections for the panels. Appreciate any feedback on this