Upgrade P770DM to GTX980!(it's also compatible with P570WM and 16L1)

As we know,GTX980 is used on CLEVO's P870DM(-G) and P775MD1(-G) with 220W tdp and 180W TDP,respectively.Meanwhile,both of them are designed with a power supply port for GTX980.So they might need some extra juice through the power connector.Unfortunately,we can't find a power supply port likes that on other models such as P770DM.

Is it possible for a GTX980 to work on those model without the extra power connector?The answer is affirmative.
YES!GTX980(180W TDP edition) is completely compatible with P770DM!




Released by 无炮可射,a Chinese reseller.

As we can see,the GTX980 is completely recognised in the BIOS.3Dmark score is a little bit low.Perhaps because of insufficient power supply.But it's ok.the real problem may be with the heatsink.it's fit to the card,but might not strong enough.

 

it also can be used on MSI's 16L1.

Released by 叔叔左左,a Chinese reseller.

 

there's also a MSI edition GTX980.and it is also compatible to P570WM and MSI's 16L1,too.

 

Sadly,GTX980 is temporarily unable to work on the P7XXZM series.

 

As interesting as this is, I cant say I see any point in risking damage to the aforementioned notebooks for a 980(obviously doesnt get enough power) when you could just oc a 980m instead.

 

I agree but hey we get sager/clevo so we can try things like this, I wonder if the GTX 980 would work in my np9377sm-a/P377sm-a?

 

VERY interesting read indeed! i wonder if the ZM series would just need a little bit of @Prema´s love in order to be functional with the 980

 

Looks like someone wants to sell more of those cards...

None of those systems would be able to cool (and fuel) the cards properly in a RL scenario, except for the P570WM and it sadly can't fit a second 980 for SLI unless heavily modded with a Dremel...

 

That was to be expected.... But what about the "Different SLI hack"? It should be possible to get at least a GTX 980 working alongside a 980m, right?

 

Nice. Now where can i get a desktop class 980 for my 770dmg?

 

we can only get it by removing it from P775DM1 for the moment.But maybe you can find it on the Ebay after a while.i dont think the price will be low.At least $1000 i guess.

 

Where can we buy these cards?! I've been trying to get my hands on a pair of 180watt GTX 980's for ages with absolutely no luck.

Definitely want to have a go at them in my P377sm-a. Have already engineered a way to make them fit and deliver the power they need.

 

Due to the cost and limited number of units with these cards we may not see them out in the wild much.

 

lol. might as well sell the 770dm i have and lose a couple of hundred dollars.

any idea if we can get them directly from a reseller? if only eurocoms prices werent that pricey i would have gotten this system instead.

 

here you go guys: http://www.ceg-hardcorecustom.com/product/clevo-kapok-nvidia-gtx-980-990m-sli-n16e-gxx

funnily, both the 180W and the 200W variants sport the same price tag...

Sent from my Huawei Mate 8 NXT-AL10 using Tapatalk

 

Woah and these prices are in euros. Very pricey. Any us distrubutors? I bet if any us distributors have them theyll sell it cheaper

 

Eurocom US might have it, if you talk to your re-seller really nice and send them some flowers, they MIGHT be able to get you one.

 

They get the additional power through on-board power phases, just sending some voltage through them would kill it.

 

Eurocom is pretty expensive compared to the likes of xotic and lpc. Dunno why. From the company name i guess they are based in europe?lol.

 

Yep, which is why I'm working on building two extra phases into a daughter-board I'll install in my laptop. I'm basically using the core of the design for the extra phases in the 870dm.

But again, all this is pointless if I can't get my hands on 180w 980's =P

 

There is no point of that. It would the same performance as 980M SLI.

 

You might have to mess around with some stuff if you want it to work properly. The voltage controller sometimes doesnt play nice with extra added VRMs. Unless you are making the daughter board to support the extra power port.

 

That's the idea. Basically I'm duplicating this circuit twice.



It looks to me like the extra power connectors are tapping directly into the pwr_src and pwr_src2 rails. These are the same rails that provide power to the power pins on the MXM connector. Interestingly, the p377sm-a has a very similar circuit for generating pwr_src and pwr_src2 and surprisingly the power transistors are a bit beefier.

From what the schematics are telling me, the circuitry generating pwr_src and pwr_src2 in BOTH the p377sm-a and p870dm are capable of handling up to 18 amps which is more than enough to power the cards. I think the issue here is the MXM connector physically can't handle that much current/power so Clevo had to deliver half of it by way of the 4-pin connector.

I'm going to be maybe a little hasty, but I can't find any evidence of "extra rails/phases" on the motherboard. There are extra phases on the MXM module, but not on the motherboard. And based on the schematics, I see no reason to need extra rails or phases on the motherboard.

(The one thing that doesn't make sense to me are the big inductors placed on the 870dm motherboard near these circuits. I can't find them in the schematics. Before I finish this mod, I'm gonna poke around a friend's 870dm to see exactly what's up with that.)

Going off of this, I think I could just simply tap into the pwr_src and pwr_src2 rails on my p377sm-a for the 4-pin power connectors and be perfectly fine. However, duplicating the circuits isn't a huge deal and it would actually give me even more potential power to work with.

 

Never trust a Clevo Service Manual. The actual board is always different...

 

Then whats the point of even releasing a service manual?

 

They don't release Service Manuals to public...all the ones out there are leaked...
It's only for the technicians to get a rough idea about the board and then make their own assessments...
e.g. the BIOS/EC/ME chips in the manual are almost never the ones actually used on the actual boards.

 

Ahh I thought they did release them. Hmm, I'll have to look at the actual board and see how it compares.

 

So I managed to take a look at a 870dm motherboard today and pin out the circuitry tied to the two onboard power connectors. Turns out the circuits laid out are exactly as they are shown in the service manual. The power ports are connected directly to pwr_src and pwr_src2 and both of those rails are being generated via circuits laid out exactly as shown in the manual.

The two big inductors, labeled on the motherboard to be PL12 and PL13 are used in the circuit responsible for generating VDD3 and VDD5. After pining out that circuitry, I found it also to be identical to what is listed in the service manual schematic.

There are no extra power phases on the motherboard. The extra power connectors are only present to deliver additional current beyond what the mxm slot can handle on the pwr_src and pwr_src2 rails. It seems like it would literally be as simple as tapping into these rails on the p377sm-a and feeding them into the additional connector on the mxm module.

As I said before, the circuitry generating these rails in the p377sm-a is actually slightly more robust than the circuitry in the p870dm.

I'd love to look more in depth at a desktop 980 mxm module to see if the mxm power pins and the power port on the card are directly tied to each other. Since some people have been reporting that the cards under-perform when installed in laptops without the power port, I wonder if the power port on the mxm module actually goes to a separate rail and the current drawn through the mxm connector is monitored.

 

It would be similar to the desktop where the different cables are used for the different areas of the card. However if that were true it would not work at all without the connector, so just a couple of the phases? An interesting idea.