toastofman

Hello all! Just asking what people have done to their newer G5s, if anyone has modded anything. These are 17" workstations with up to a P5200 GPU and mobile Xeon, so they can pack a heck of a wallop even nowadays. One thing offhand I can think of is an upgraded panel, because the 1080p screen installed is only 60hz and cannot be overclocked (to my knowledge) without extreme visual glitches. Even manual OC to a new profile at 62hz causes severe distortion. But I think the panel is a weird 30pin eDP panel, and there are virtually no 30pin high refresh rate 1080p panels that I could find.

The full test came out 174 ms but I didn't save it. Just this because it was the lowest I managed! Hahaha!

Per the HP Zbook G1 repair and service manual, there are 6 models of motherboards for the system. 3 are for Quadcore only, and 3 are for Dualcore only. 1 of each is reserved for Quadcore and Dualcore systems running Linux. Also, the i7 is 10 watts TDP higher than the i5, but I don't think that would cause any significant cooling problems. They do expressly say, "For use only on computer models equipped with an Intel ______ Core processor" in the repair manual, so it's really anyone's guess if it would ACTUALLY work. Like you said, it's probably to do with the extra DIMM slots, because the i7s handle up to 4 DIMMS and the i5 only 2. In theory it makes sense that it WOULD work, as long as HP didn't do like, a bios whitelist on installing i7s in i5 motherboards and vice versa (they have been known to do this in the pro-grade laptops). I would look out for one with a return policy and just try it, so you have the insurance of getting your money back if it doesn't work! But the official word is that Dualcore motherboards are incompatible with Quadcore CPUs, sadly.

Lord a mercy, that laptop would have to be 50% heatsink and fan.

I don't think that's right. Like, at all. Starting with the 900 series Nvidia, there have been enormous generational leaps in laptop graphical horsepower. Like, each successive generation is a very big improvement, and while there will be a ceiling hit eventually (maybe even the current gen is the ceiling), for the moment laptop power is in a good spot. The performance is scaling up well from gen to gen. The issue is that manufacturers don't want to build MXM standard stuff anymore. They want their stuff to be usable with their own OTHER parts, and thats it. 2 examples: Dell and HP. The Precision 7710 and 7720 were MXM board systems, and starting witht eh 7730 they went to DGFF. So its dead. HP's Zbook G5 (2018) and G6 (2019) are MXM boards, and starting with the G7 they are an HP-proprietary board with a "beam connector," a throwaway part that needs to be replaced with every disassembly. Thicker laptops are better at cooling because the builders use the extra thickness to build out adequate cooling. Ironically, the thin and light laptops hit 100c right away until they throttle back, and the thicker laptops have an easier time handling the thermal load. With card-to-card comparisons you might be right, but the issue is that on thicker MXM laptops you have the OPTION of the upgrade so in that respect there isn't a point in comparing. I know for my part, I saw slight thermal issues on my HP Zbook 17 G5 on the CPU. I shimmed the CPU (.03mm) and saw a 29% increase (across 3 runs before and after) in 3dMark Firestrike physics score, so yes. Adequate cooling has the power to really perk up a system. It's only one result but imagine the same thing on a GPU. It would very easily trim 20-30% off the power of the GPU to restrict it to a lower power state because of throttling. Not saying the thin and light laptops don't have a place. They do, and are very great systems. Heavy laptops have a lot of value to the market as well, and they are being pushed out: Not because they are inferior, but because a 10-year old product that has been upgraded several times doesn't provide any additional revenue.

Agreed. With all of it, but especially the planned obsolescence... I bought a dishwasher recently and found out the one I was replacing was about 6 years old. It was having electronic control board failure issues, and not wanting to just ditch it I called a repair service to see if they could diagnose why it was failing, and if it was fixable. The technician told me they used to pull the boards out, test the relays and caps on em, and switch em out. They said it was a quick process and most times, a relay and a few caps would get most of them back running for <100 USD. About 8-10 years prior there was a manufacturing shift, and they began dipping the control boards in an epoxy resin compound. They said that the thick layer of resin made the boards more water-resistant, and I certainly wouldn't argue that it was true. One thing it DID do according to the tech is make it to where they were no longer repairable (EDIT: to be clear, the tech also told me that water-compromised control boards weren't a real issue or problem from the cheapest to the most expensive manufacturers in his over 15 years on the job). To remove the resin safely the tech explained that a laser-etching machine had to be used to burn it off at a perfect level to where the board wasn't overheated and the resin vaporizes completely. He explained since his company was so big, the extra resource wasn't worth the time. So my only option was a "new" control board that would take 2 weeks to get, and would cost 500 dollars along with 90 bucks for the diagnosis. I went to Lowes and bought a new dishwasher for 800, and sold the old one at a recycler for 25 bucks. Different tech/hardware, but same concept. It's made to be not repairable, or if it IS "repairable" the cost is ~50% or more of a new replacement.

Seems like both have their place in the market: more "ultrabook" style laptops for slim configurations and heavier customizable laptops with more robust modularity. The problem is, the market trend is pushing customizable laptops out for the sake of the thin BGA laptops. Look at this very forum. There are people waiting for an MXM gpu to release (A4500), and eyeballing an install in a 10-year old laptop. That is a lot better than just building barely-not-yet-obsolete eWaste and spending an enormous amount of advertising time and money convincing people that this is "better for them." For many, it just isn't, but I get that it's better for company's financial statements. Part of the problem is that manufacturers have left the MXM standard behind, and most of the ones we have of the "modern " GPUs are non-standard with funky shaped boards or core offsets and turned ram modules. Now yes, I'm sure there is a great reason for these things, like increased power requirements or what have you, but deviation from the standard is yet another sign of the takeover of BGA stuff.

I heard they added FSR support along with the existing DLSS for 2k and 3k Nvidia cards. From reviews, it needs some sort of upscaler so hopefully this helps it out.

Same username, but I wasn't a frequent poster. I registered to get some questions resolved about my old M6400 way back in 2014 I think, maybe later. There was just too much to read through, I found that if I searched correctly the site could answer almost any question I had.

Wow. That was unexpected, but to be fair I don't know WHAT I was expecting. That was my jam on shift last night. I used to only buy music if it hits my 2-song radio rule: I hear 2 songs from an album on the radio and like them, simple. SSPU met the rule with Panic Switch and The Royal We, so I bought Swoon one day. Still have it, still sounds good to me including this one.

I use Ceramique 2. Non-conductive, inexpensive, easy to spread, easy to clean up. There might be pastes that outperform it by a few celsius but for the price and ease of use, I'll stick with it. It performs in the ballpark of AS-5 but is a lot cheaper. I got 2 25g tubes for I think 12 bucks on a holiday deal many years ago at MicroCenter, and neither is dried out. I put it in a laptop that basically saw daily use for 3-4 years, and it was in great shape when I pulled the thing apart recently. My HTPC also was running C2 paste, and it was a near-decade-old build of an AMD A10-5800k with an Antec Kuhler 620 closed-loop all-in-one. I tore that system down in mid 2021 and sent it to my brother, and the paste was still in workable shape. So much use under a 100 watt APU had darkened it a little bit, as it was no longer bright white, but it was still fully spreadable and workable. After 9 friggin' years. Impressed the hell out of me, it did, so it'll be my go-to (plus I have about 35 grams total left of it)! As far as patterns, I do similar to @Papusan and @solidus1983's suggestion and spread a layer out. Never had a problem with temps ('cept when fans crap out and I don't catch it in time).

Personalization, customization, and the like (related to configuring the usable part of the OS) are a big part of what can make an OS feel great, to a lot of users. It definitely matters to me! I'm betting that it matters to a lot of other people as well. We can't really see or appreciate any advanced security stuff that is programmed into the OS, or appreciate a more optimized bit of code that makes Windows Update run a bit smoother while downloading in the background. What matters (to me, at least) is if I can set it up to feel familiar and functional, not the Thread Director designed for Intel's Alder Lake P/E core setup. The measurable performance regression on some systems are another reason. Sure, it might not be a big hit, but if a user upgrades and spends 7-8 days doing stuff to see that their OS feels less snappy than it did with a years-old install of Windows 10, it's gonna feel like a mistake to have upgraded and they are more than likely downgrade if inside the window. Just my thoughts!

Naaaaah. Got a ding on my laptop that my Win 11 was ready for download and upgrade, and I thought about it. Still might do it to just check it out, but honestly Windows 10 isn't broken. I know Microsoft needs more money, but I just don't see switching as necessary right now. My guess is that they will trim the 2025 Win 10 support date back to 2023 or 2024 due to slow adoption, because many people don't really care about switching to an OS with (what seems to be) more intrusive ads and less user control. But that's just my anti-corporate mindset being negative, probably not true!

Ah, I was going off of a visual approximation of rough Fire Strike scores for graphics and thought the 1070 was a bit faster. I'm pretty happy with it so I hope it holds up a while!

My current is an HP Zbook 17 G5. I got a good deal on it because the seller said there was a problem with the keyboard, and it just needed to be cleaned. I dropped a 1 TB nvme on top of the .5 TB boot nvme it already had, and another 16 GB 2667 MHz RAM module to round it out to 32 GB. and it came with a p5200 so ive been pretty happy except for when bios updates screw the driver up and i have to reinstall all the Nvidia drivers to keep the thread_exception_not_handled errors at bay when gaming. It's a BGA cpu, I'd upgrade it if I could but there isn't a lot of room to upgrade so I'm happy with the 8750h it has. It IS mxm, so potentially room to toss something else in it, a 1070 if I could get it cheap, or something else if possible down the line but around 100-120 watt is about as far as it could go because the PSU is 200 watt. But for now it's great! Before that, I got RMSMajestic's Alienware M17x R4 as a barebones with the eDP 120hz screen and was super-pumped after years of Dell Precisions to have a laptop more suited to tinkering. It has been no end of trouble and hardware failures. It had the Alienware keyboard blight, so I swapped out the keyboard. I put a decent CPU in it, a 3720QM I think. I put my W7170m in it, 8GB RAM, a 512GB mSATA SSD, and a 1TB 2.5" SSD. It immediately fried the motherboard, and the keyboard stopped responding too. I had to buy a new motherboard. I luckily was able to return the keyboard, and the vendor tested it and said it isn't damaged. He sent it back, I replaced the keyboard ribbon, and the keyboard still didn't work. The vendor was really nice and agreed to refund me the money I paid (insanely overpriced, $110 USD). I bought a M18x R1 keyboard, and even with the different color ribbon it worked so I thought I was in business. Loading as fast as I could to get HWinfo64 for AMD GPU fan control, it burned up not only the GPU, but now what I suspect is the other replacement motherboard because the system doesn't respond to a known-functioning M3000m I got off eBay for 30 dollars. It still just 8-beeps and displays nothing even after a full CMOS clear. I tried to sell it on eBay and it sold for 150 dollars, but the buyer wanted me to send it to a different address than eBay and PayPal had listed so I cancelled the purchase... And in my house it sits.

Note 10+ for the time being running whatever version of Android. Might switch to the Motorola Razr 3 if and when it launches, but we'll have to see. The first Razr flip wasn't too impressive, the Razr 5g (basically Razr 2) is a great improvement but if the leaks about the hardware are to be believed, the Razr 3 might be Motorola hitting its stride with this device.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus! Been doing my own playthrough and watching my 2 daughters play through as well. I have a few gripes with some things, but it is such a stark departure from Pokemon games of old that I'm willing to forgive what I perceive as "problems." In short, I am enjoying the heck out of it.