p150sm repair and upgrade woes?

Hello everyone,

This is a bit of a silly story, mostly my stupidity. Hang me later but give me a few minutes first.
I live in Europe but I have purchased a Sager 8265-S (p150sm) in march2014 in the US right after the release of the gtx8xx series with a gtx870 built in.
I then suffered from bad depression for years and waning ability to be sensible (i.e. I couldn't read for 1.5 years). I'm back in action now so no need to worry. In the end, however, the power connector on the mainboard failed (the soldering for the central pin contact was oxidized), I resoldered a few times and ended up fiddling with wires and on a particularly bad day connected the board with reversed polarity and thus bricked it.
I got lucky enough to purchase a used p150sm (apparently from a Schenker W503) mainboard which I installed and it works beautifully. Most components still function with the exception of the gtx870 which posts in bios but is not recognized under windows. gpu-z recognizes it but shows it with 0ram. I cannot see physical indications of damage. (To be safe, I do not know whether the mxm slot on the new board actually works as I have no spare card to test it.) The new mainboard also comes with a slightly different connector layout than the original (the one I have now is revision 3.3A, the previous one was 2.1). It has the eDP connector (top12) which the old one didn't have. However, also the audio connector (top10) is of a different type as the original one (and the original is different from the reference image below). Same goes for the connector ccd camera+mic connector which I can't seem to find on the new board (it is next to top11 on the old board). Also the connector to the m2sata slot is of a different kind (it's a 15wire connector that I don't know as opposed to the 20wire clip on plug on in the original system).


Reference Top

New Board Top


Old Board Top


msata2 connector


Audio and CCD/Mic connectors


I'm aware I'm a shotgunning for help a bit and quite above my experience grade but I have the following questions:

I'm attaching pictures of the new mainboard. I will add images of the old mobo tomorrow as I'm currently not at home.

- Is there any way to test that the gtx870 is, in fact, bricked?
- Can I upgrade this board to a pascal 1060?
- Does the eDP connector on this board actually work and if so would I need to upgrade to an eDP panel for a pascal gpu to function?
- What connector would I need to get the m2 sata slot to work again?
- What are the connector types to the audio and camera/mic cables and how would I replace them?


Thank you kindly

 

Sounds like some driver issues if nothing else, What windows version do you have and can you post the hardware ID of your card?

Yes you can.

eDP works normally, however, it's only a 30pin eDP port, meaning no 120hz monitors or 4k. Pascal works without any issues on LVDS provided you're running though intel graphics (optimus). Have myself a P157SM which is basicially the same as urs only with more ports.

It's an Msata port, the board doesn't have m2.sata to my knowledge.

Don't you have your stuff on the old board? Should be compatible?

 

Thank you for the reply. It's already quite helpful.

GPU-Z DeviceID:
10DE 1199 - 1558 5106
It is a 6gb gtx870.

I did just boot the laptop with the old win8.1 which works. I then removed with original nvidia driver with Display Driver Uninstaller and tried to reinstall both, the most recent nvidia driver and the original driver from the sager homepage, always the same result.

Thanks, good news, indeed.

True, sorry, misread msata2 as m2sata, eh.

No, as I wrote in the initial post they are different connectors,

specifically,
the audio cable connectors and plugs are 22pin as opposed to a 20pin connector on the new board,
the ccd/mic cable is an 8pin cable as opposed to a 6pin plug on the new board,
and the msata connector is a flat 15contact plug as opposed to a 20pin push on connector.

I'm adding new images to the original post to elaborate. As it is I cannot any of the audio connectors right now, camera/mic doesn't work and the second msata slot is not useable. I'd appreciate if anyone has further information on this, even the technical term for each of these connectors would be great as I can probably do the work once I have purchased new connectors.

 

Alright thanks to the new photos a lot of things make sense now.

To give you the list you need:
- Audio cable (6-43-X5100-032)
- Msata Cable (6-77-P15SM-D02)
I think you probably need a new Audio board as well.
- Audio Board (6-71-P15SM-D02)

If you can't find SM models audio, then look for 6-71-P15E8-D02 instead, I think it should be compatible, do research on this!

Now the reason why your graphicscard doesn't work is because of the mainboard you have. Do this to make the card work:
- Uninstall all Nvidia drivers with DDU.
- Boot into driver signature enforcement turned off.
- Download the Nvidia drivers.
- When it tries to install, cancel the installation.
- Goto: C:/Nvidia/DisplayDriver/388.31/Win8_Win7_64/International/Display.Driver
- Replace the file with the one I attached
- Start setup, it will ask you if you are sure that u want to install the driver, you say yes.
- complete installation, restart, you done.

The whole issue here is caused by you mistaking your broken board which was a P150SM-A for a P150SM, you basicially just got an older version of the board which is slighlty different. It uses a different BIOS and has slightly different cables as it seems.

 

Thanks a ton.

So the old board was, in fact, an sm-a? That's odd as it was an 8265-S that I bought in march 2014. Looking at prices now I still got a very good deal on it. I guess I can now try to find another sm-a board or buy and fiddle with the cables. Or just leave the laptop as it is, it still works for the most part.

Or see if I can revive the old board somehow. Any pointer where I might start looking for more info on how to approach this?
Actually I found that U3 (whatever that may be?) is definitely gone. It is placed to the left of the msata2 connector (left of top7) Can I replace this? Does anyone know what the actual part number is and where would I try to purchase a replacement? I'm confident I can solder this thing still. Smaller will be trouble. Of course, I can't say if that's the only broken part.

 

Can't really make out what that chip is, but normally buying those parts for cheap on aliexpress or ebay, desolder the old chip, throw it in the bin, solder the new chip onto the board and it would work if nothing else broke.

Can u show me the area of the chip with something more clear? That way I might figure out what chip that is.

 

Sure,
it's below and a little to the right of the touch pad connector (top 6) and left of the msata2 connector (top 7).

 

Can you try and figure out what the chipsnumber is?

 

I'm going to need daylight for that. I'll try again tomorrow. I can open the laptop and look at the new board hoping they are identical.

 

It's the power relay switch that is the very first IC that gets triggered after hitting the power button. Voltage-in is pin #2, which is the badly scorched one in the photo. With a bit of luck the reversed polarity has killed only this chip, saving the rest of the board. Replacement is $2 on ebay, so that isn't too bad.

 

It's worth a shot for $2.

 

Jep, just go for it I'd say.

 

Thank you all, especially Danish and T456, I'm ordering this IC and I'll let you know what happened, once I soldered it on. To be safe I should probably order two, just in case.

 

Shipping is probably more than a single one so yeah, probably best for a small project