You won't believe this... I got a DV9000 for $300!

I just let my friend borrow my DV5 as he needs it for a few days, and the job he needs it for will bring both of us some $$$ so i agreed to leave him my laptop till Saturday.

Now, i had $350 that i was still debating what to spend it on. Then, a post in my local hardware trades forum caught my eye. Some guy was selling a faulty DV9000 for $320. He said that the laptop runs for about 20 minutes then shuts down due to overheating. Everybody told him that it's likely the 8400GT fault again and it's not worth fixing (he was out of warranty). He was getting ready to take it apart and sell it part by part.

That's when i came in. I like to gamble on "faulty" hardware sometimes. And 80% of the time my gambles turn out good for me, so i phoned him and told him i know someone who can repair the motherboard for me, and that my offer is $300. Obviously i was lying, if the mobo was broken i wanted to try the "baking" method on it. He said, "alright, but if you want it for $300 come get it tonight". So i went to check it out.

He had just backed up his data and restored the system from the recovery partition, so in terms of software it was clean, besides the usual junk HP installs of course. Sure enough, within about 15 minutes the thing started getting hot. I installed Everest and CPU temps were at 77C, GPU over 80. He said "Well that's what it does, and then it just shuts down. The fan is running". I put my ear besides the fan vents and i couldn't hear anything. But i kept my mouth shut. "Yes, the fan is running." I gave him the $300 and left with my new toy.

So what's wrong with it after all? A faulty fan of course. I'll be taking it apart now to clean it, and i hope it'll get going. If not, i still have the stock cooler of my Sapphire HD3870. Its fan looks exactly like a laptop fan, and i have this feeling that it'll fit.

Okay now the specs, and some pics of this thing. It's got a 17" display at 1440x900, Turion x2 2GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 250 gig, and 8400GT with 256MB. Oh and it's got a 12-cell battery. That makes pretty much on par with my DV5 in hardware specs, and it wins in screen and battery. Also i have to say it's much more elegant. The DV5 is just too flashy.

And look at it - it's almost mint!

 

I remember reading about this lappy, i was going to buy one on ebay last week for 250 pounds, but looked on the net and it said the problem was unfixable and needed new motherboard.

I did not buy it, maybe you got lucky.

 

Well, i know for a fact that the fan is dead, so i hope that's the only failure. The guy said he bought the laptop from a friend half an year ago, and that this issue has only been going on for a week.

The heatsinks seem to be pretty well designed, as it takes quite a while till the thing heats up bad. If the fan on my DV5 would fail, i bet it would shut down within 5 minutes at most.

Edit: Alright boys, naked pics round one. Kudos to HP for free service manuals.


quality assurance inspector checking the job


um, you sure that's all the screws???? uh, no.

that's better.

 

yep good find.

 

So, we're you able for fix it? That's an awesome find. Nice little secondary computer...would have gone lower to $200 just to give it a shot! Haha.

 

Still working on it, but i believe all i have to do now is clean it a bit and put it back together. Btw, i tried $250, he didn't accept it as he had found someone that would buy (only) the LCD for $180.

See naked pics round two:

if a screwdriver won't work, a knife will.


lo and behold the mobo in all her naked glory.


finally got to flip 'er over, nice heatpipes there


the fan removed. not too much dust really, but it's FRIED DUST.


the fan. soon to be cleaned a little.


wait a little. I SWEAR I DID NOT UNPLUG THE FAN. so why is the fan cable down here, and the connector up there? now don't tell me i had to take the whole damn thing apart because the fan cable got loose. DAMN.


Edit: I plugged the fan in, ghetto-rigged whatever ribbon cables were needed for the board to get power, and plugged 'er in. Sure enough, the fan started... Now i just have to get the laptop back in one piece. And glue the fan cable to the connector.

 

I'm glad you got that fan working again! Just button her up and she's good to go!

A loose cable... who would've thought?

 

Sometimes big problems may have trivial solutions. And you have come across one of them...

Sorry for the poor dude who sold his lappy for $300.


--

 

LOL OMG sold laptop for 300 because of a loose fan connector what a joke.
Lucky for you bad for him.
The heat sink must be pretty good for it to last a while without fan.

 

LOL, now all you need is a lottery ticket, ya lucky SOB! Great find there, btw!

 

Yeah those heatpipes do a nice job. And honestly, i don't think i need a lottery ticket right now.

Had to get some sleep so i thought i'd keep you under suspense and post the results after i wake up.

So here it is back in one piece. First pic is idle temps, second is load. After 6 minutes of Everest System Stability Test the temps had already stabilized, and i have to say it's quite a bit cooler and quieter than my DV5. This thing stock is 10C cooler than my DV5 undervolted. That's something. But it probably is so simply due to the fact that it is bigger.



Btw, i was a bit wrong on the GPU, it's not the 8400GT it's the 8400GS 256MB, with 1GB turbocache. With this it seems that the laptop would benefit from 4GB RAM... Guess i'll go buy some in the near future.

 

You should have done a screenshot instead of straining our eyes.
And try to use HWMonitor at least it has component labels

 

i bought my dv2000 for $80

 

Well if i only posted a screenie some people wouldn't believe me. But don't worry, plenty of screenies coming soon. Just finished installing drivers for Windows 7, and this baby runs smooth. There is a little problem in that the Conexant audio drivers aren't signed properly and require F8 at bootup to disable signature inforcement, but apart from that everything is running extra smooth. About to do some gaming right now.

I like how it sounds. Although it has the same Altec Lansing speakers as the DV5, it is louder and has a bit of bass, which the DV5 really lacks. It probably has a better amplifier driving the speakers.

 

odd you sure its not the 8600M GS? anyway good buy.

 

Well, it says 8400M. Thanks.



Edit: Here's some tests. 3dmark06 on battery, power profile - balanced:

Same, but on AC power. Yeah, what a huge difference.

FurMark. I am impressed with the cooling system. The fan kept VERY quiet all the time but managed to keep the temps in check. Btw the dip in the temperature graph was because of the display timeout, and on this laptop it also turns off the GPU to save power. Hmm. This looks so good i'm tempted to overclock it.

Maximum temps reached during IntelBurnTest. Fan has ramped up but still wasn't running at full throttle. The thing is still relatively quiet. Consider that the CPU is not undervolted yet, and that my DV5 can only run this cool with undervolting... At stock the DV5 goes up to 94C.

 

Sure all this is nice but how much did the kitty help?:tongue:

 

By keeping me awake i guess. At one point when the laptop was completely apart he thought the best place to rest would be the LCD screen which was face-up...

Needless to say i had to carefully lift him so he doesn't leave claw marks on my beautiful shiny display.

Edit: Here's the last batch of screenshots for now. Shaved 10C off the already decent temps, and IntelBurnTest stable.

 

Your one lucky bugger!!

 

Congrats, thats a good buy.

Always keep the GPU cool and that machine will last you a long time.

 

I'm doing my best. When it's running on mains power i remove the battery. If i leave it on my bed i put the battery under the left side of the laptop so the cooler has clearance.

I really hope it'll last me a long time, because i have no intention to sell it. I could easily get more than double what i bought it for, but i'm not giving away my luck. Heh, when my old Toshiba Portege 4010 finally got in a FUBARed state (keyboard broke and i couldn't find a replacement), i doubted i would get a new laptop too soon. And about half an year later i have not one, but two fast and shiny HPs.

 

I hope it lasts for a long time too bad my bros DV9500 with the same specs as died the same way as my old DV6000 did damn NVIDIA. My bro took it to a local computer store and they said the motherboard, and GPU was fried the same way my DV6000 did. He didnt plays games on it and it was always on a notebook cooler. You are one lucky dude to get a DV9500 for only 300

 

It's a 9700, more specifically a 9750ed. The one with the Turion. But yes it does have the worrysome 8400 series GPU. However the temps on it look really good, it is so much cooler than my DV5 - with 32C ambient here i really didn't feel comfortable with the DV5 in my lap, while on this one i can barely feel any heat.

I believe the 8400M started to go out if ran over 85C, correct? Mine hit a maximum of 74C under FurMark with 72C average, i think i have the screenie posted earlier in this topic. Judging by those temps, they really did a nice job mounting that heatsink.

 

Keep it under 80c and it will last you at least 2 years,

Mine is still alive and i used to overclock it like crazy.

 

Thanks. I'm downloading Dox's drivers from laptopvideo2go to see if they make any difference in performance. Now i currently have laptopvideo2go drivers but the regular nvidia ones, just the modded INF for mobile chips support. Also RivaTuner doesn't seem to work with my current drivers so i hope the modded ones will.

I want to bump the memory clock on this GPU a little, it's having a really hard time playing GTAIV. Well, probably i'd better try it on my DV5 as it has 512MB of video memory, and we all know GTAIV is a video memory hog. If all else fails i'm gonna run it on my desktop. C2D E6550 @ 3.67GHz, 8GB Corsair 1066, vmodded HD3870. Should do nicely.

Edit: New 06 result using Dox's 185.85 instead of nVidia 186.30 that i had. There is a slight improvement that was noticeable in the first graphics test (Return to Proxycon).



Not enough for me though. Let's see if RivaTuner works now.

Edit 2: RivaTuner still does not recognize the drivers, however now GTAIV is playable at 960x600. I then decided to install the nVidia Performance utility. I had a HUGE surprise. Not only is it able to overclock my 8400, it can overclock my CPU. No wai.


Not only that, it can change memory timings. I'm starting to love this thing more and more each day.

 

Im using Dox optimized 182.05, one of the very few overclockable drivers for the 8400 and 8600gs cards

 

Thanks for the tip, but look above you a bit, i edited that post.

 

Wow overclock the CPU and ram timings, thats awesome. Wont work for Intel cpus though

 

If it had a nVidia chipset it would work. But afaik all Intel CPU laptops have Intel chipsets, so it's not gonna work indeed.

It seems i managed to breathe some serious life in this little 8400M GS. I left the CPU at stock. I do not want to mess with it because it is undervolted and currently 100% stable. I don't want to break that. The GPU on the other hand... Take a look:



A 400+ point boost. Not bad, not bad. The shaders would probably go higher, but i'm already hitting 80C under FurMark so i won't push them further. Might try a bit more on the memory though. As you can see, i did not touch the core clock. For those who don't understand why, i will explain.

Low-end nVidia cards have a low shader count. All current games depend on shader processing heavily. Thus the highest performance increase is gained by helping those few shaders run faster.

Also, the 8400M has a 64-bit memory bus. The wider the bus, the more data it can transfer at once. Midrange cards have a 128 or 192-bit bus, high-end have a 256-bit, 384-bit, 448-bit and even 512-bit bus. ATi has made a few cards with a 512-bit bus but they weren't cost-effective so they dropped them. "Weird" bus widths like 448-bit are nVidia's speciality, while ATi keeps using 256-bit but pairing it with extremely fast DDR5 memory. nVidia still uses DDR3.

Now back to our 8400M GS. Not only does it have a small 64-bit bus, it is also coupled with slow DDR2 memory. The GPU is very crippled by the slow memory, thus the fastest way to gain performance is to overclock the memory. Also, overclocking the memory brings the least temperature increase, so one more reason to do it. Also i need to type something in bold: Overclocking the core on a graphics card with a 64-bit bus will not do anything except produce more heat. Don't do it.

Hmm. Maybe i should turn this into a 8400M/8600M overclocking guide?

Edit 3: That's it, maxed it out. Look at the shader clocks. Temps are still only edging 80C, so i believe i can make those my permanent settings.

 

Would you mind sharing where you got the windows 7 drivers for your dv9000? I can't seem to find them anywhere.

 

I simply installed the Vista drivers. For the Conexant audio check my signature and install my modified driver, it no longer requires the F8 thing at startup.

 

You took a seemingly busted DV9000 and turned it into an impressive laptop that's better than it was when it was new. I bow to your greatness. I hope that bad boy lasts you a long time.

 

Thank you. It's better than new indeed - it took 2 months for me to narrow down the source of the audio stutters, which was the nVidia PowerMizer. I countered that with creating profiles in nVidia Performance, so it auto overclocks when gaming, and goes back down when the power of the 8400M is not needed.

With the other minor improvements like tweaked memory timings, modified sound driver with microphone boost, and my QuickPlay Remapper program, she truly impresses.

Here she is in all her glory.

 

Yeah I thought it was similar to the one I was working on this weekend for a friend of mine. Thanks again for help BTW.

You should make this into a overclocking guide for the DV9000. It would give me a reason to look for a used one and "fix" it lol

 

Maybe. Mine being overclocked, undervolted, and driver modded it was triple the fun. Just finished a few more GTAIV missions, no signs of stress. This thing is gold.

 

So thats where your from this thread hehehe (refering to your reply to my posts in the mini 311 threads) Anyhow I recently acquired a DV4-2040US laptop. Specs are:
AMD turion 2 X2 RM500 processor clocked at 2.2ghz bus speed 200 x 11 and ht link of 1800x2

ddr2800 4 gigs of ram

amd ati 4200hd

out of the box it doesnt feel like its running warm at idle yet the cpu temps at idle range from 45-48c in coretemp latest version in win7 64 bit that came installed. after running prime95 latest version on both cores for 12 minutes temps got up to 89C!!!!! with fan full blast (either fan is weak or the vent sucks because although you feel warm air it sure is not coming out much)

So my question how do you undervolt this thing ? I noticed in your screen shots of your system in this thread once u lowered the voltages u got better temps... right now my idle voltage is 0.8625 with cpu downclocked to 200mhz x 4 at idle.

at full load i have a voltage of 1.2500

this system aint even on hps site for sale yet its brand new system that was released with windows 7 64 bit home premium and no temp program will show temps for IGP GPU.. strange and I dont know if I got a bad model but its runnin hot when full load cpu..

thanks

 

Considering the size of your laptop those temps are to be expected, there's not much room inside a 14.1" chassis, and HP's cooling systems are generally known to be weak. My DV9700 is an exception, but i think it only has to do with its size. I also have a DV5 which is 15.1" and it used to be hotter than yours.

RMClock won't work for your processor, so download this program here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=373878 and if you get lost in it, the last 3 pages should get you started.

Use IntelBurnTest for testing stability after undervolting, the Standard level is enough.

 

I am willing to sell mine. The dv9700 of course (which has one year extended warranty starting November), not the Sony