EliteBook 8740w Ultimate Upgrade Guide (mSATA mod, GPU upgrade, cooling and etc)

My 8740w is eDP. But I think it will work with LVDS. I'd stay away form optimus and enduro if possible

 

might be possible but because this laptop has a cooling problem I didnt want to go higher up in TDP/Watt usage. A M2000M has a TDP of 55 Watt, the M3000M is rated at 75 Watt which is considerably higher. I have a M3000M in my own Zbook 17 G3 now, it stays pretty cool but.. Thats mainly because HP finally decided in this generation of laptops to split the cooling and use two fans / cooling blocks instead of stacking the radiators and use one fan. It's bad design if you would ask me.

So yes, it's probably possible but due to some possible cooling problems I didnt want to go that far. Oh and before I forget, M3000M is a different price class also. The M2000M costed me 70E+20E shipping. The M3000M/M4000M/M5000M are harder to find and most of the time considerably higher priced or.. I can say.. Overpriced.

I have used a GTX 980m in these machines with no issue ---- the only overheating issue I saw was with a K3000m. The K5100m works with no problem. It was, in fact so good I now use it in my 8770w machine --- It performs nearly as well as the 980m and OS X (all the way up to Catalina) native support as a bonus. I think these machines are damn near bulletproof and since optimus is a complete non-issue I think so long as you use a non HP vbios (i.e Dell, Clevo ) Hp made a machine that is totally future proof far beyond their intentions.

 

Confirmed not working with LVDS on M15x and M17x R2

 

I made an external Sound Processing Unit (eSPU) using eGPU hardware, you can find it here.

 

Still in development but passed the testing - 12V fans. Using a buck converter and a 12V PWM fan controller got Acer AeroBlade fans running.

It looks like this at the moment and the schematics are something like this: