(Possible) Final upgrade for my p170EM questions

Some of you may remember that I have posted quite a few times that my 7970m GPU died and I been researching into upgrading it to an NVIDIA 980m. Unfortunately times have been hard and I had other responsibilities to take care of, so I never got a chance to buy it.

Today I found out that for my bday I will be able to buy the so missed GPU (1.5 yrs without a proper GPU have been killing me, but at least life has kept me busy).

So while researching for my bday present, I found out also today that some people have been installing GTX 1060 into their p150/170em models. Now I tried to google the info but the information is sketchy (unlike all the posts available to upgrade to 980m).

So my questions are:

1) Is it worthy to upgrade to a GTX 1060 on my p170em instead of a 980m?

If so:

2) What type of GTX 1060 should I look for? (For example I know that if I buy a 980m, it should be for an SM model).
3) What is the upgrade process?

I thank you all for the help, as I have spent the last hour googling but with little results XD

 

1) with power consumption / heat and slight performance advantage (GTX1060 over 980m), worthy or not, solely depends on the price of the two card. e.g. I live in Hong Kong and have access to Chinese sites, they are selling MSI's GTX1060 MXM for 3000RMB and GTX980m MXM(they said it's new...) for ~2500RMB, ~500 more for better tech, right?

2) the only compatible GTX1060 MXM as of now, is the MSI one. There's another "reference design" from GeCube that's due to release end of April, but it's not tested on P1X0EM / P1X0SM yet.

3. get your card, use some trick installing the heatsink, driver .ini mod, have fun

Ah, let's have some photos here, my P170EM + MSI GTX1060 MXM and modded heatsinks





Staggering 63C unigene full load when GPU is properly cooled.
That hesitate myself buying a new machine this year.

 

So the 1060 is plug and play?
What do you mean with "use some trick installing the heatsink"? (I can't see the mods)

Thanks for the reply

PS: Where exactly did you buy the card? Those are killer prices .-.

 

Link updated, please check the photos again.
It's kind of plug and play, but there are components soldered next to the GPU die, which obstruct a perfect contact with the heatsink. You need some care when installing it. Also driver .ini mod is needed for proper driver installation.


I've added a 0.5mm copper shim to the heatsink for better contact.

Taobao FYI

 

Have you used thermal glue or thermal paste for the shim-sink contact?

 

I used Cool laboratory liquid pro (liquid metal) for better conduction and hence transparent glue to prevent leakage

 

How much for the gpu?

 

If the screen uses a digital eDP connection and not a LVDS one, then you can use Pascal cards. There are rare and expensive 1070NN/NNN cards coming that will fit that and then there is the usual MSI 1060N

 

Are you looking for one ?

 

was just going to say add a shim....

 

I do not advise that on GPU's, they do not have the same QA as the setup for CPU's do, so you might have contact issues.

 

Thanks for your advice. It's applied in between the shim and the sink, not onto the GPU directly, as shown in this little drawing:

 

3000RMB

 

I am!

Enviado desde mi Nexus 5 mediante Tapatalk

 

I understand that the connection goes through the iGPU and that's why people are now installing these in the P170EM.

Question is, will the new ones be also compatible?

Enviado desde mi Nexus 5 mediante Tapatalk

 

Just roll with the GTX 980m. I was in the same boat as you and there are a lot of reasons to go for the GTX 980M.

it's cheaper, easier to get, better compatibility, less work on modding your heatsink and so on. The GTX 1060 is only around 10% faster, not worth the effort and price imo. Also we never know what AMD will be doing. I've read rumors about a vega chip in a lenovo that did spit out very interesting resulsts. So the "final" upgrade might be way further in the future than u think.

 

I would generally agree, but now I'm seeing that the providers I asked last year no longer carry the 980m...

Also the heatsink modifications don't look daunting.

Enviado desde mi Nexus 5 mediante Tapatalk

 

Just go on ebay. You will literally get cards for around half the price u'd get them by buying them on websites.

 

The 1060 is a fair bit less power hungry and will get longer support from Nvidia.

 

I don't think he really benefits from the less power hungry architechture. There is literally no advantage for him, it's just a couple of numbers really, since he uses Intel HD for normal use and won't be doing gaming on a battery.

Support from Nvidia?
Let's be honest, noone ever gets support from Nvidia.They don't care about their customers in any way, shape or form.

Oh people with GTX 880M get ****ed by new drivers? Welp, never gets fixed.
People with some GTX 970 (desktop) crash all the time because of some drivers? Never gets fixed.
People have issues with windows mouse + DSR? Never gets fixed.
Hairworks is still an unoptimized mess is far inferior to AMD's ress FX.
Your GPU is throttling like mad and you can't overclock because drivers prevent you from doing it.

So saying that they should get a newer card from Nvidia because of support is the same as saying get a newer macbook because of support. Both are useless, both don't care, both will always try to screw u over by making you pay for newer hardware because of pure lazyness.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gtx-1080-evga-catches-fire-video/
I'm aware that EVGA is also to blame on this, but really? Nvidia doesn't give enough ****s to build a sensor to the vram and prevent the card from literally catching fire? Imagine a stock Nvidia card that is being used for a couple of years where the cooling pads aren't as good anymore and the heatsink is full of dust. The average gamer doens't know how to clean a GFXcard or rather doesn't know this is needed and suddenly the GFXcards catches fire.

EVGA simply displayed what will happen once the cooling gets worse. If the fan stops working or the Pads gets bad, your PC is at risk literally burning.

So that's why I think saying getting support from companies like Nvidia or apple as an argument is ridiculous.

 

Either way though, its not like hes upgrading his laptop often, so the upgrade that he does receive, would likely desire to be "in rotation" at the very least.

Though merely from a lazy standpoint I'd likely just grab the 980m because I would feel like it would be more PnP. Though thats not always the case. Had a M6600 that was supposed to work with 7970m and had nothing but black screens lol.