nforce4max

I have to wonder if anyone has given one of those rare converted i7 4980HQ a try with this machine and how were the thermals like. Also is there is a reliable source as I am interested in at least collecting one.

That is very strange, I've used this in both the M6700 and M6800 without that issue however the driver acts up once in a while beyond that it is well behaved. I got a another in an 7710 as well and no issue there. For the m6800 and 7710 I do have it where the IGP is active for non gaming tasks. If your M6800 has an edp screen you can disable the IGP if needed as for thermals you can use hwinfo 64 and manually set the fans if needed.

Dell WX7100 mxm as it is drop in and just works without much of a fuss.

If anyone is wondering Starfield is playable on the M6800 with fairly reasonable settings at 1080p with 100% up scaling using FSR2.

Just finish the mod and it worked well thus far but fair warning it is a tight fit as the adapter adds some height. I strongly recommend doing a full disassembly as magnesium makes a lot of dust as I just learned while grinding away also wear an n95 dust mask. At least the bottom panel doubles as a heatsink. Will take another look at my other Precision laptops but pretty sure they're limited to just 30 and 42mm drives and to get an 80mm drive in the M6800 I had to grind away at the bottom pan close to the dock connector leaving an small hole but otherwise it works. Did have to shorten the adapter as it wouldn't fit otherwise. Edit: I got out an M4800 and all you'll get is a single 30mm nvme drive, to get it installed you'll be left with a small hole but beyond that any metal work should only be done with the board along with everything else removed as magnesium dust will cause shorts. The other slot is the usual msata wwan slot and haven't bothered with the slot used for the wifi card.

The mini pcie slots are good for 2230 and 2242 nvme drives as extra storage but yea the lack of usb comes no surprise because it is pcie after all. Going to mod an m6800 sometime next week to accept an 2280 drive though I have to do a fair bit of metal work. For the M4800 you get a 42mm slot with ease while there is another slot however there isn't much room to work with

I am not likely to give coreboot a try at least not for a long while but anyway the gpu not only works well it is well behaved and is essentially a RX580 with 8gb of downclocked vram. Going on vacation next week (thank God) and going to see if I can mod the body so I can use an 80mm nvme drive via an adapter.

I used the nvidia heatsink with my M5000M and had to perform the mod, you'll grind a fair bit of that off otherwise it won't seat correctly due to one of the inductors being blocked by that bit of copper. I had to grind all the way into the aluminum.

When I installed my M5000M into my spare M6800 I had to grind part of the heatsink with a dremel due to one of the inductors being blocked beyond that it fitted fine afterwards. As for the drivers admittedly have taken care of partly due to having a six day work week and mental fatigue.

If you go with AMD then you'll need the heatsink as I've already tried that and the nvidia heatsink doesn't seat correctly on AMD cards.

For my daily I've been using the WX7100 and it holds up very well but I haven't kept up with the latest titles with the exception to Hogwarts legacy. I'd say the wx7100 which is a good part of two thirds faster than the M5000M and likewise the W7170m/SX7100 so it would be around the performance if I had to guess that of a P4000 mobile give or take 5-10%. I did go looking through my bookmarks for a link to a google drive where someone had some fixed roms for the Pascal generation but it was deleted.

That is fairly cheap these days compared to what they were during covid where I payed around $160 or so each and they are just drop in. Went and looked up the Tesla M6's specs and yes it would be faster by a perceivable margin though not greatly but I have no experience getting one of those working.

Yea its just me some neurodivertant who likes modding old laptops that normal people think are too old and too heavy for fun. The oldest I've had was a Compaq 286 SLT that was complete then later sold and had other vintage laptops of various vintage including two Thinkpad Transnotes. My daily is an M6800 with an 4940mx, 32gb of 1866 cl10, WX7100, and more storage than most have on their desktops. Current project is an 7510 that I will be installing an 144hz panel into.

Got two w7170m installed in two M6700s and they're noticeably faster than my Kepler cards and comparable to my M5000M. Even played Hogwarts legacy despite the lack of driver updates. The main reason why I like AMD mxm cards in most instances is that they are so easy to install and can just happy click without ever needing to mod the drivers never mind the vbios with only a single exception that I am aware of with the S7100X needing a custom vbios to drive a display.

There is a type A RTX 3000 that became available on eBay a couple months back and gotten one myself with some expectation of having to mod however for the M4800 there is more work than expected. Some metal work for both the heatsink which may be inadequate to begin with and the removal of the estata + usb combo port at the back as the pcb is blocked by this port is required. For those with a 7510 or 7520 will have an slightly easier time installing this card but still has to mod the heatsink as before due to the position of the mounts for the x bracket being offset though the two holes at the top are normal so will install as normal after some other modifications. To the left of the mxm there is a small black connector to be removed that is blocking the pcb. To the top right corner the ethernet port would have to be removed (huge ass nope for most) and lastly the retaining bracket for the edp connector has to be taken off so as the pcb extends so much farther to the left. For both machines, one will need to cool the mosfets so I recommend using fairly thick thermal pads on the backside and then for the top side using tiny stick on copper heatsinks which should do the job. By this point some are wondering what the final results are well sorry to disappoint I've not completed this as I've not fully decided which laptop I am going to mod and not too fond of having to desoder ports to make room for this card to fully mount. There is an possible issue on the backside where the caps could be blocked by other components on the motherboard for example.

If you have the option of getting the AMD heatsink the WX 7100 is a great option and much faster for the most part. Have been daily using mine for almost the past two years and is well behaved.