Zbook 15 G2 Electrical Engineer Programmer Question

VIEWERS,

I am inquiring regarding the possibility of increasing power output of the mxm 3.1 A port on the mainboard. At least 100w is to be achieved. The cooling limitations have been overcome. Is this possible with hardware software or firmware modification? A power supply of 230w is to be used.

Jacob Eli Goodson

 

Do you know what the current G2 MXM power limitation is? What about the G1?

It looks like the G1 has a system overall power limitation, cause @ChanceJackson 's CPU started throttling when the GPU load became too high: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...a-g1-zbook-15-but-its-not-perfect-yet.803964/ At least I believe he mentioned something like this somehwere.

You could quite possibly bypass the power limitation by directly supplying power to the MXM card. But this would require your own DC/DC converter on top of a better cooling solution for the >100 Watt card.

 

I wonder btw if @ChanceJackson ever looked closely to the power supply on the G1's motherboard, not getting too hot for example.

 

Viewers,

The orientation of the mxm slot lends room for a larger mxm b card with a heatsink venting out of the cd rom slot and a sata to 3 pin adapter blower fan as the cooling solution. I have not found the maximum power limitation of the device in the user manual.

Jacob Eli Goodson

 

Yes, modding a heatsink into the CD-ROM slot has been done before. The 'official' power rating for MXM A-cards is 55 Watt, so I don't think you will find something else in an offical manual.

What we know thanks to @ChanceJackson is that a 1070 operating at ~90 Watt seems no problem for the slot/motherboard. And 90 Watt of heat is already challenge enough to transfer outside this 15" laptop. Even if 150 Watt would be OK for the charger/motherboard, I don't think it is realistic that a cooling solution would fit inside. Thankfully we get a lot of computation for 90 Watt these days. As long as high-end MXM cards are being released, the Zbook 15 can keep up for some time

 

Viewers,

I have noticed the zbook 15 g2 has a very limited number of mxm a cards that are compatible. I have attempted to use a m1000m from a g3 and a w5170m neither function. If I am unable to find more information on the compatibility of mxm b or a cards with modification to the bios or vbios then I will most likely not attempt mxm b in the g2 model. Thank you for referencing the ChanceJackson mod of the g1 series.

Jacob Eli Goodson

 

No problem, myself I wonder if the 1050Ti (MXM A) works without trouble in the Zbook 15 G2. At least a 980m or 1070 (different brands) MXM-B should be no problem, as long the (extra) power and cooling provided is sufficient.

Somebody has to be the first btw, the honor can be yours Jacob

 

Btw, I think compatibility can be improved as well if we bypass the eDP & eDP mux logic on the motherboard. In theory it should be possible to tap the eDP signals from the MXM-card I/O pins and send them directly to the internal screen for example. Because what often happens is that the internal screen doesn't work with an unoffical MXM, whereas the external ports do function (wich are directy attached to the MXM card).