HP Pavilion m6 1035dx (AMD A10 Trinity) First impressions, teardown pics, schematic request

By request, I'm making a thread for this discussion:
Meet the HP m6 1035dx, available at Best Buy for $649 (was on sale for $599)
AMD A10-4600M with Radeon 7660M Graphics, 6 GB RAM, some hard drive (640 GB? I sat it aside and dropped in one of my Mushkin Chronos SSDs the day I got it) and a backlit keyboard.
This unit does NOT have the Radeon 7670 in addition to the on-board 7660 like some m6 specs that people have found lingering around the internet.

Initial impressions are that trinity is a good balance of performance and battery life for someone who is not a heavy gamer. This laptop is definitely a secondary machine to my desktop for me. The price was right so I snagged it for a fun/modding machine.
I primarily play Portal 2 and it runs as smooth as butter. I have V-sync/Frame Buffering on and it rarely dips below 60 FPS. To say the least, I'm impressed with Trinity as an embedded graphics solution, but I haven't tried to run Crysis on it... because I don't have Crysis!
3dMark11:


WEI score (with SSD):

The laptop is great for a secondary machine / remote workstation, except the screen SUCKS! (I guess it's all relative... pretty much every laptop screen I've seen in my local best buy sucks. 1366x768... are we in the stone age here?)

Before I bought it I did a significant amount of research about the dv6 1080p upgrades and what it took. I opened the laptop to see if it would be possible. Some questions were answered, some new questions were introduced.
Please chip in on the 1080p upgrade possibility if you have anything to add.
Edit: Looks like 1080p is not going to happen on this model. The connector on the motherboard is only a 30 pin connector and it hosts the LVDS to display, microphone, and webcam signals... see update posts around number 38 in this thread.
First, the display connector is not far from where it is on the dv6 on the motherboard (as seen above) it also appears to be the same connector, although I could not tell if the dv6 uses a 30-pin connector on the motherboard (the m6 does).
The connector location on the monitor is on the bottom left as you're looking at the display side (bottom-right of back side). The display panel itself is quite different, it's one that has its electronics below the display. It looks like the same connector, but the cable definitely isn't long enough to reach to the other side of the display.

Regarding the cable, does the dv6 cable have the webcam and mic signals going through it or are those on a seperate cable. They go through the same cable on the m6.
By the way... do not take the LCD assembly apart unless you are serious... this assembly has NO SCREWS and is held together by dozens of clips and a small piece of tape between the bezel and the screen below the camera/mics and another strip of tape between the bezel and the screen along the entire bottom edge. Yes, the bezel is GLUED to the screen. It was very difficult to remove without damaging the sensitive electronics below the screen under the bezel.
Also, if anyone has schematics for this machine or the most recent dv6 they would really help me in figuring out if this is really possible before I order a panel. I'm an engineer so I do know how to read schematics and (hopefully) find a compatible panel even if it's not one of the known units that was used on the dv6 (since it looks like they won't even fit in the m6).
Thank you.

 

so you broke something?

How about removing the hsf and seeing if the cpu is soldered onto the mobo or not ?

someone posted a pdf stating that the amd cpu's were soldered.

since you can't overclock it, you can just plop the hsf back on without affecting temps much or at all.

 

No, I didn't break it, but I sure was worried that I would and I've torn a lot of things apart. I should have used a gentle blast from the heat gun or hair drier to loosen the adhesive, but I decided to just take it slow. An amateur would almost certainly bend their bezel or break their display unless they were very careful.
As for the socket... it's a socket. This is the best picture that I had uploaded, but you can see that it's clearly a socket beneath the heatsink:

I examined the socket myself and I thought I got a close-up picture of the text on the socket, but I can't find it.
I thought about removing the HSF and replacing the thermal interface material with some arctic silver. I couldn't tell if it was a thermal pad like I've seen on some laptops or the dried up gray gunk. Probably the gray gunk because I didn't see a thick space between the cpu and heatsink. It was getting late, so I didn't bother with that. I recalled reading your posts about not being able to overclock and the thermals were pretty good so I didn't bother with AS5.
I assume that the version with a dedicated GPU would have it right under the bend in the heatpipe and have a different HSF combo to go with it. If I keep the machine I'll probably swap in a mobo+HSF for the 7670 GPU in a year or two when they are cheaper on ebay or something.

 

Just added 3dMark11 score per request. I'm not sure why it's saying generic VGA, but it is...
1135 isn't bad for an IGP, but it certainly gets curb-stomped by my two-year-old desktop. I really do wish AMD would break away with something sweet, like the old Athlon days.
I'm a hardcore Intel/Nvidia fanboy normally, I just wanted to pick up a piece of AMD kit to fiddle around with. I was sold on the "Fusion" idea six years ago when it was first introduced. Now that it's here and in my hands... well... link626 your avatar says it all. To be honest though, it feels like the main thing holding them back is the CPU. If they had a higher performance CPU I could see them fitting in a few more graphics cores and creating a truly formidable chip (with a truly formidable TDP to match).
That said, it serves its purpose well as a secondary machine for me and the price was right.

 

that surely doesn't suggest a soldered cpu.

so that means people who buy a lowly A4 will likely be able to upgrade in the future.


$600 for that though.... is a rip.

 

Ianas;

Nice review, good to see in pieces the new M6. Have you find any slot to add internal Bluetooth adapter and mSata SSD? I could not recognize anything like that on your pictures and the lack of these missing parts and 1366X screen holding me back to purchase one. However could not wish all the goods for only $600...

All the 35W parts are use FS1r2 socket, therefore not soldered. But the 17W and 25W parts are soldered BGA.

 

Thank you for this thread.

 

There is a spot in the chassis for another miniPCI-e card slot at a right angle to the current one, however, the connector is obviously not there on the AMD board (the space is taken up by a big inductor and other parts) I would guess that hole in the chassis is for an mSATA funkyboost (or whatever Intel's marketing team calls it) in the Intel machines. I believe that there was a connector underneath the palm rest for the mSATA SSD on the dv6 and there is not room for it in the m6. They shaved 20% off the thickness of this laptop from the dv6. Looks like they did it by bringing the mobo closer to the keyboard deck, thinner keyboard deck (so no room for mSATA below palm rest), and thinner screen assembly (with screen electronics below screen instead of behind it).
As far as adding bluetooth, the other m6 models that are on HP's international websites have Atheros and Broadcom wifi drivers and a Broadcom bluetooth driver so I would presume that the models with bluetooth are using the Broadcom 2-in-1 solution here and the ones without (like this one) get an Atheros wifi module. I don't see any connectors for USB or anything like that on the motherboard... not that that's stopped me in the future. I wish I could find schemtics to tell me if a USB pair comes out to test points on the mobo before I go soldering wires to the USB pair on the mini-pci express slot (or buy a bluetooth+wifi combo card). Overall, I do like how thin the laptop is.
I just noticed that it's up to 649 now on Best Buy's website (it was on the front page of their ad last week). At that price, just get a dv6, unless you really need something a quarter-inch thinner... I do think the m6 looks nicer, though. A little bit sharper.

 

Broadcom 2-in-1 solution sounds good to have blouetooth option, and actually if there is no available mSata, I still can use the DVD bay area for 2nd HDD. I'm looking forward to see your 1080p screen upgrade, but already sounds too difficult if it is glued... Might just need to wait a customizable model at HP site.

 

Yes, actually I was looking into putting a second drive in the optical drive bay as well. It probably won't happen for a couple of months, since the display is first and my funny money is just a few tens of bucks per paycheck. They use a slim optical drive in this machine and the SSD I had is just the same thickness as the optical drive. The ODD to HDD/SSD trays I was looking at did come in that thickness, you just have to make sure to get the slim one if you do end up going that route (the slim ones don't have a top cover over the HDD/SSD). I figure I'll just put the 640GB drive back in the optical drive slot when I get an adapter. Priorities for this machine (in my mind):
Display upgrade.
Optical drive bay or 16 GB RAM (watch for sales on RAM).
Bluetooth + 2.4GHz/5GHz WiFi module (if we can remove the PCI whitelist, I'm assuming there is one on this model). I'm trying to migrate my devices to 5GHz wifi because we have a lot of other devices that hog the 2.4GHz spectrum in the house.

That being said, I'm also seriously contemplating returning it and just getting a dv6z base configuration and upgrading that. It seems to be more upgradable, and there are too many unknowns still with the display upgrade on this machine. Best Buy always talks about their "30-day no hassle returns", and I've never had a chance to take them up on that offer. I didn't see any "warranty void" stickers in my removing panels...
I may also go back to Intel/nVidia during HP's 4th of July sale. AMD does have good bang-for-your-buck IMO, but I'm having trouble fighting my nVidia fanboy urges while I'm relatively unimpressed by Trinity. A 1080p display upgrade would definitely make this a keeper for me, though.

 

This thing gets hot I was playing crysis 2 and cpu hit 98c gpu hit 87c. I wonder if there is a way to make the fan run 100% when gaming?

 

What were your framerates during Crysis 2? I just tried SpeedFan to see if it could see any fans, and it could not see any fans that it could control. MSI Afterburner couldn't see any GPU fans either (not that I would really expect it to, but you never know, I already had it installed).
98 is hot, but if you haven't had a shutdown I wouldn't be returning it because of that alone. The CPU should start self-throttling at 100 to keep itself below that line (if it's anything like the Intel and nVidia chips I've worked with in the past). If anyone can confirm that feel free to. It could be hovering around 98 because it would overheat if it weren't throttling. Do you have it on a notebook cooler or desk or on your lap? With my good old zd7000 I had to keep the back propped up when gaming or the keyboard heat would burn my hands eventually. Sounds pretty typical for a laptop. The dells at work hover in the 70s just sitting on the bench- I'd never game on those pieces of work.

 

It's sitting on a laptop holder but no fans guess Ill try one of those cooling pads.It crashed the game when it got that hot not sure about fps no way to get them without using another program.

 

98c is definitely on the edge.
this thing's max is 100c. That's hot.
If it really runs that hot, good thing overclocking doesn't work. It looks like it doesn't have much headroom.



I checked out the i5 version of the m6 at BB today. The lid is definitely thinner.
I looked at the specs, and it has a cheap chimei lcd.

Intel has come a long way in the graphics front though. It seems HD4000 performs between a 6520g and 6620g.

that's "discrete class" yo!

I forgot to test openGL on the A8 7640g when I had it.

Intel still killing on the cpu front.

 

Hooray for the 7660G. Intel has come a long way in graphics since the "Intel EXTREME graphics", but not far enough.



If I didn't have the desktop too I certainly would be with an i5 or i7 machine because I do occasionally do CPU-intensive things (build Android ROMs for myself, write apps, etc...). That's why I've got the i7 with 24GB of triple-channel RAM on the desk.

Oh, and yes, it is a cheap ChiMei LCD, how did you find that out without opening the lid?



Looking at what I can find about the display I'd be surprised if HP spent more than 20 or 30 bucks on the thing. The dithering is KILLING me. Even if I can't go up to a 1080p display, I may still upgrade to something with better color/contrast/angles. All three of those are horrible on this cheap monitor. Unfortunately all of the m6 models I can pull up on the HP website use the same HP part number for the display, so I don't have any leads yet on a compatible replacement display. I have yet to find a real datasheet on the display.

 

the lcd model number is in windows device manager. it was CMNb... something.


you're not going to find a quality 1366x lcd. they're all the same. Dithering is just something you'll get used to... or not.

color contrast angles are nonexistant in the 1366x class.

 

Those temperatures are crazy hot, my overclocked 45W A8-3550MX never goes further than 85C. The cause of this extreme heat, Trinity is based on Bulldozer CPU + Cayman GPU core. Both architecture were heating significantly more than previous generations. Seeing the different 3DMark 11 scores; 1100, 1150 indicate Turbo Core 3.0 technology overclock as long as core temperatures do not prevent it. Meanwhile winter time you can see higher score, summer time lower.
Have you tried Undervolt your CPU with PsCheck and Repaste your CPU? If you can manage temperature down somehow, you might can get higher TurboCores...

 

Just played another session of crysis 2 and the fps was in the low 30's I updated to the 12.7 beta took awhile to get it to install. I'm thinking about returning this laptop and get a dv6-7000 with dedicated gpu not sure yet. I'm trying to find some good benchmarks for the diff gpu combinations. I'd keep this laptop but the temps really bug me,and there is no way to adjust fan speed.

 

yeah, try that.

it's the least invasive, and trinity can handle some undervolting.

but damn, I never expected it to be this hot, and I wonder if this is how the whole lineup is.

when i had my trinity a8, i did not do long term stress tests, so i never tested to see how hot it would get.

 

We need more information about this. This could be just an isolated incident. You might just have gotten a "bad sample." Maybe they forgot to put enough thermal paste or thermal pads at the factory. Its very strange that a brand new laptop would reach those kinds of temperatures while playing a game. I'd expect that out of a very old laptop with dust and crap inside the heatsink and case but certainly not a new laptop. I'd return it, possibly exchange it or like you said go for a different model altogether.


How long were you playing Crysis 2?

Where were you using the laptop (bed, couch, carpet, desk, lap, etc.)?

Was the rear of the laptop propped up as to allow more airflow into the intake?

Was anything restricting airflow near or around the laptop?

What are your idle temperatures?

 

Can't the overheating issues be faulted on HP?
Weren't there a lot of issues with overheating HP cases?

 

My laptop sits on a laptop holder it sits about 1/4 above the surface on raised strips.Nothing is restricting the airflow far as i can see.Idle temps are cpu:40c gpu:38.I was playing crysis 2 for about 2 hrs and it crashed.

 

I figure its poor assembly over in china. Someone making $2 an hr isnt going to make a high quality item.

 

Hopefully more manufacturers will follow Google's example and in near future we can see made in USA laptops .

 

you see, that 40c idle temp suggests that your laptop was assembled just fine.

that is perfectly normal !

it's the loaded cpu/gpu temps that are scary.

trinity is one hot mother

 

Well idle temps may be fine,but even if the trinity is one hot mother it shouldnt get that hot. Maybe the fan is crap or perhaps no thermal pad. You can barely feel air coming out of the vent. If it was possible to monitor the fans then it would be easy to figure out.

 

I see a single heat pipe on the CPU, and it looks fairly small at that. I also see a space on the CPU heat sink for another heat pipe, this would run over the top of the dGPU if there was one.

Just say for instance this extra heat pipe was there. I could bet that the cooling with running just the A10 GPU alone would be much better.

 

re apply thermal paste...im sure it would drop a few C

 

I just ran Kombustor (FurMark) in stress test mode for 1 hour. At about 10 or 15 minutes in it hit 70 C and stayed there for the rest of the time. I am beginning to wonder if the high temps might be something specific to your setup. I had it just sitting on the coffee table in the middle of the living room during that time. Kombustor/FurMark aren't too CPU-intense (I checked task manager and it showed 75% load from Kombustor), but probably no less intense than any game we'd play and Kombustor did report a continuous 100% GPU load.
My nVidia GPUs in the desktop often max out at 100C in Kombustor, but I think there's more that I could do to get them fresh air (they're in SLI with no blank slots between them). It's interesting to me to see a GPU that doesn't hit 100C in Kombustor.

 

uninstall the coolsense.

i did that, and the fan seemed to run more often. it wasn't noisy at low speeds anyway.

 

FWIW (and it's worth something) I do not have coolsense installed and did not during the test two posts above. I'm using my clean install. So it would be worth a try.

 

Well I did a clean install of win7 only and the temps are much better now only got to 69c in kombustor.

 

see, coolsense sucks.

 

Any news on the 1080p display? I'm looking for something sleek, light-ish and great battery life and capable of some gaming that would supplement a desktop workhorse. This looks like it might fit the bill at a low $650.

Atm I'm thinking about grabbing an Edge 430, Sony E premium or this thing. If it's possible to upgrade this to a 1080p display some time in the future then I'll probably buy it at BestBuy. The Edge 430 looks great but HD4000 and no option for discrete graphics is a turnoff. The Sony E 14p model has 1600x900 resolution but with a 7670m (pretty much equal with Trinity's 7660G as far as gaming goes) it comes out to $800 with the standard i3 Ivy. I'd rather have that $150 to spend on an SSD and optical bay converter than a 1600x900 screen if it's possible to replace the one on the m6 with a viable 1080p aftermarket option.

I haven't been able to find much info on these laptops so if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions

What's the battery life like? This says it's a 6-cell 62 W/hr so it must be pretty good.

What's the RAM inside? voltage, latency and speed?

What's the general build quality like? From what I'm reading the casing is apparently aluminum unlike the dv# models.

edit - from reading around and watching some videos it looks to be a slightly thinner and slimmer dv6z. It's also somewhere between the envy sleekbook 6z and the dv6z as far as size goes as well. Essentially, it's seems it's supposed to be a dv6 style laptop with better portability. That's exactly what I'm looking for actually

Now whether get one of these or the sony e14p, Acer TimelineU m5, envy 6z or the upcoming Thinkpad Edge 435.

 

I've got the E425 and unfortunately it was only offered with a 6470M. In the Hardware Mainenance Manual it even listed several APUs up to the A8-3500M but when I actually purchased it, it was only offered with an A4-3300M. ThinkPad Edge laptops are very sturdy, come with excellent keyboards and touchpad, matte displays, and a few other similarities to the more expensive ThinkPads.

It seems as if the new E435 will have 2 discrete GPUs to choose from. Lenovo has been updating the Support page with drivers, software and manuals so it must be getting ready for its official release soon.

Here are the GPUs the E435 will support:

AMD Radeon HD 7520G
AMD Radeon HD 7640G
AMD Radeon HD 7660G
AMD Radeon HD 7470M (1GB but no mention of DDR3 or GDDR5)
AMD Radeon HD 7520G + 7470M Dual Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 7640G + 7470M Dual Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 7660G + 7470M Dual Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 7670M (No mention of it in the FRU list, or how many GB, DDR3, or GDDR5 either)
AMD Radeon HD 7520G + 7670M Dual Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 7640G + 7670M Dual Graphics
AMD Radeon HD 7660G + 7670M Dual Graphics

Here are the Trinity APUs that'll be supported:

A10-4600M
A8-4500M
A6-4400M
A4-4300M (First time I hear about this Trinity APU. I found this E535 with it available for purchase here!)

Looks like HD (1366x768) will be the only available display resolution too but it will be offered in Glare and AntiGlare options. There seems to be quite a few display suppliers; AUO, LGD, CMI, & SEC.

 

Great info

Sometimes AMD/Intel release some awkward chips that don't ever see the light of day (outside of embedded solutions) but I've never heard of the A4-4300m. Considering it lacks the A6 moniker it could potentially be an even more slimmed down GPU? Who knows. Either way, you really don't want to buy a single module Trinity chip.

If Lenovo releases an e435 at great prices with an A10 then I'll probably just buy that, but I'm tired of waiting I have a very pretty white dv4 in my cart with an i5 + gt630m, 7.2k RPM drive and it's only $560. Considering the prices of the current E430's equipped with IB i5's (they were actually under $500 a week ago...), I have a feeling that the A10 Trinity chips will likely cost even less.

I guess I may wait if the E435's will be up for sale soon. Small form factor + battery life + gaming performance for a ~$600 price tag sounds incredibly appealing. It kinda sucks North America will never see the S435's and S430's, though.

Err, do you know when these will be released? I suppose that's the most pertinent question of all.

 

Not to mention great build quality and business-class warranty/support to back it all up in case something goes wrong. Heatsinks/heat pipes, and cooling systems on ThinkPads are generally very good. The E435's bottom cover reveals the entire cooling system so it makes for swapping APUs/repasting extremely easy, quick and painless procedure. Reminds me of some gaming notebooks. I just hope they included an mSATA port this time (E425 did not have mSATA). I don't know if you care much, but the ExpressCard slot is now gone (E425 had it).

 

I don't care for neither the mSATA nor the expresscard slot. The mSATA cards are expensive and poor performers and you're not able to use Intel's SRT cache system so the lack of mSATA wouldn't bother me. Furthermore, there almost only available in older SF controllers which I sure as hell want to stay away from (as well as cheap quality NAND). I'd probably replace both the hard drive and the optical bay with two SSDs and maybe RAID 0 it for some awesome performance

Of all the laptops I've been considering, the E430/435 has been at the top of my list for the durability, ease of user upgrades and price. I could care less for the additional options the manufacturers offer as I'm more than willing drop some coin on quality aftermarket stuff.

Now if only Lenovo would give us a date for availability I'd be a happy boy.

 

Sorry for the delayed update. I spent some more time under the hood and I didn't come back with good news, regarding the 1080p update a least. It looks like these models were designed to only allow 1 lvds channel. The motherboard connector is only 30 pins and it hosts the LVDS, microphones, and webcam. I poked and prodded the cable on both sides and it looks like all of those lines but just a couple are used. There is no room for a second lvds channel (required for 1080p) on the motherboard connector. That means there is no way unless the signals come out to a different location on the motherboard and you can solder them on or something. Schematics would enable us to find those type of signals. Either way, it's not just a cable swap and display swap. It's possible that other versions of the m6 could use a different motherboard and have 1080p support, but I haven't seen a 1080p configuration of the m6 in the US or international sites, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Battery life is decent to good for the power under the hood. That's one way that I've been impressed with Trinity. I got around 5 hours just browsing without having to deal with an extended battery.

The RAM inside is DDR3-1600. 11-11-11... etc... I am impressed that they threw in the 1600 RAM.

I felt like the build quality was fairly solid for a budget machine. More solid than many of the ThinkPads I've used.
The aluminum is just the back of the display and the keyboard deck/palm rest. It's a bit of a fingerprint magnet, though not as bad as the shiny plastic that many of their other models have. It looks good.

Portability, I felt, was good for a 15.6" model. I really liked the way it fit in my hand when it was closed. The weight is good for a laptop of that size too. Not heavy.

Overall, it was a good machine and I would have kept it were it not for the display. I do a lot of coding in my spare time and the more lines of code on my display the better. My brother just bought the laptop from me. He fell in love with the back lit keyboard and snatched it up before I returned it to Best Buy because I gave it it him for the sale price that I paid for it.
I also kept getting frustrated by catalyst and the AMD/ATI way of doing things. I've ben an intel/nvidia fanboy for a long time, I wanted to give AMD a chance and I wasn't impressed enough to make up for the crummy display.

Anyone know of any good vendors that will sell bare bones systems? I think I'll try the build-it-yourself route this time. It seems like people only sell pre-built laptops anymore...

 

How about grabbing a dv6z with A10-4600 and spec it with a 1080 panel. There wouldn't be that much difference in size between the m6 and the dv6 as they are both 15"?

 

In case anyone is interested in 15,6'' alternatives to this HP notebook Asus is going to release the N56DP with a Full HD matte screen with AMD Trinity APUs.

This seems to be one of the first non-budget notebooks where the Trinity APUs are used.

 

The m6 is noticeably slimmer and lighter, but that's about the only difference.

In my mind, I would, if I weren't looking so hard into building my own machine right now. I'll probably still end up with a dv6 or dv7 in the end, we'll see. There are a few new Clevo models coming in the next month or so with GeForce GTX 660 and the HM77 chipset which would allow RAID. I'll take a good look at those when reviews start dropping (I've already got everything else I'd need to build up a barebones system except the CPU) before I decide between DIY and a DV6/7.

LSB from laptopscreen.com was very helpful in determining compatibility of a new display and helped me find out that the second LVDS channel was necessary and missing on the m6, but there on the dv6. Thanks to him.

 

Hi everyone! I am looking forward to getting this laptop as a replacement for my old setup at home. However, I would like to swap out the optical drive of the M6 to fit a SSD. Does anyone know the specification of the optical drive height (9.5mm?) or the connector (Sata or IDE?). Been trying to find online but I can't find any info and I do not have the laptop on hand check it. Would like to purchase it together with the laptop. Thanks in advance.

 

It is a slim sata drive. Barely thicker than my SSD, which is a standard height (9.5mm?) 2.5" drive.

 

Did anyone see this YouTube video review of the m6-1035dx?

HP m6 1035dx Laptop Review - YouTube

 

glad reviews are popping up, but i almost fell asleep during that video...:SLEEP:

 

Hi there! thanks for the reply. Just to enquire is it easy to reach the optical disc caddy via the back of the laptop or must a complete stripping (like what you did) be done?

 

yea sorry its not the best one but im sure someone will make a more entertaining one soon

 

Like all of the HPs that I've worked with recently, you pop off the cover for the RAM/Hard disk, then there is a single screw to the left of the RAM if i recall correctly, or just below that, that secures the optical drive in place. There are keyboard screws in that area too, but those are marked with a keyboard icon by them. I believe there is some sort of disc icon by the screw that holds the optical drive in place. The drive is a standard slim drive with a small, HP-specific right-angle bracket screwed onto the end. That is what the screw goes in to. Remove that one screw and you can slide the optical drive + bracket out.
The bottom panel is a little tricky on this model (and possibly other recent models). You loosen the screw until it pops up (it's a spring-loaded captive screw), and then you have to slide the battery removal slider like you're removing the battery while you slide the panel down, toward the front of the laptop. The battery locking slider also locks the panel into place. I didn't notice that when I first removed the panel and I could have broken it removing it (luckily I didn't).

 

Just a heads up for those of you that want to add 5ghz wifi and bluetooth, the Bigfoot Killer Wireless N 1202 2x2 half mini-card With Bluetooth 4.0 works great, i just bought one off ebay, here is the link.

Bigfoot Killer Wireless N 1202 2x2 half mini-card With Bluetooth 4.0 | eBay