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For Haswell and newer Dell laptops I strictly recommend using only original, genuine Dell batteries. Do not purchase those from Ebay or Aliexpress, they are not original even if they look like. Compare the battery that was in the laptop with the chinese "genuine" ebay one, and you will see that the markings and font used are different. Dell is probably the most sensitive about batteries out of all laptops.

Hello, M2200 is Maxwell generation (GTX9xx) but due to its different chip and transistor count it is way above M2000, hitting the performance level of GTX 1050 (+-3%). Plus, you can modify the BIOS and overclock. I did not measure the results with the original K2100M that i had prior to upgrade to M2000, but I will certainly measure the difference between M2000 and M2200.

Yes, they used to be, in the times when maximum CPU power output was about 45 to 65W tops, along with 100W dGPU. You have to account basic thermodynamics in the equation. Laptop cooling has advanced exactly nowhere in the last two decades (apart from the high blade count fans). To cool down 165W GPU + 157W CPU and sustain those values, you would need a laptop heatsink with a total heat dissipation surface area similar to something like NH-U12A cooler from Noctua. Would you buy a 5-6 kilogram laptop with a thickness of 5+ centimeters? I know that they are users who would, but the market for such devices is irrelevant for major players like Dell, Lenovo or HP. Laptop manufacturers are only half the problem. Intel with their 157W "mobile" CPUs is the other half. There is no true DTR in the current world. Never was. My opinion is that if a laptop of sane dimensions like 7670 or Fury G9 can sustain even 200W of continuous power output without throttling, it is a success BUT there is no point in putting top end components inside, when they will perform exactly like the lesser parts due to power limitations.

Would you mind adding your observations / more info on Fury 16 G9 to its general thread here on NTBTalk, so we can concentrate info? I would also like to know if you tested out the actual GPU power draw.

Do you have some list of modifications / tweaks that you do to make the OS lighter and more suitable for professional / administrator user? I have my own tweaks but I am curious what others do.

Thank you! Even though some of laptops shortcomings listed in my post are sad news for me, it is not a deal breaker like you said. I have finally decided to skip this generation and say goodbye to Haswell ZBook when Raptor + Ada ZBook (G10?) will be available (if the feedback on G9 will be good). As for the GPU, I am looking at A3000 level from Ada Lovelace generation (L3000?) which should be on par with current A4500, so I somehow can accept the 80W TGP, but it would be great to have dynamic distribution and go beyond 100W. I may try to pull some strings and get a sample for review.

As I have said earlier, laptop repair is part of my living, so I know many of them inside out. I can tell you with great confidence that HP (remember we are talking about business or workstation class laptops, not Pavilion or other consumer toys), on average, have actually the best PCB designs out there. Solid CPU and battery related circuitry, basically everything is repairable, no epoxy-underlined BGA nonsense like Lenovo or Apple does, you can find manuals or schematics for every board, no problem getting spare parts. Very good QC. They have their downsides - prices of both system and spare parts / accessories are noticeably higher than Dell, customer support is worse (but I have no experience with their NBD support). Also, you wont get benefits of a fanbase that Dell does have (and the many pro users willing to share info / tweaks). I actually started a thread here regarding the Fury G9, but shipping of those systems on a larger scale is delayed until mid december, so we will have to wait for feedback. I am hunting high and low for any info. You will find everything there, but talking about the cooling, it seems to be better, it has Vapor chamber for systems with A3000 and upper GPUs. Regarding the MSI, well, because the support for MSI products is simply a nightmare, both in-warranty and out-of-warranty / aftermarket. Their service is horrible, incompetent, wothless, almost unqualified. When the warranty ends, spare parts are either extremely expensive (the better case) or unavailable (which is pretty often) - anything from fans, hinges, keyboards, you name it. Hard time finding manuals or schematics for board repair. Anything made of plastics on their laptops will broke off, its just a matter of time. Lenovo is a bit better (parts are available, better build quality than MSI, schematics can be found) but many important parts are glued to the motherboard with epoxy adhesive (the whole BGA) so the chances of repair are slim, should any large fault arise during your ownership. I know that you probably wont think of this as an issue, the laptops are consumables these days, but if you are like me and tend to use one system for 6-10 years, it is important to know where to look for. I am typing this on a ZBook 15 G1 (2014 Haswell) which one and only fault during its lifetime was a worn out keyboard (I wrote ALOT on it).

Found !

Well yes but actually no. Depends what exactly you mean by "always" and "as far as i remember". Because the golden era of Dell engineering basically ended with M4800/M6800 leaving the market and even those machines had their compromises. If there was a laptop manufacturer with top notch engineering, it was Sony, but that was almost 2 decades ago. Since 2015 Dell has basically no QC at all. Yes, they have a great NBD service, but you will need it. And I am not saying that they are the bad guys, almost everyone else is even worse regarding the internal design. Dont. If you want to keep it for more than 3 years, just dont. Take a look at ZBook Fury G9.

Hello, Will I find a good soul that could extract vBIOS from his or hers ZBook 15 G4 equipped with Quadro M2200 ? Thanks in advance! BIOS found, brand new HP M2200 arrived today (NOS), lets do it!

Hello, I see that, compared to Dell, HP section on this forum is defacto dead, so I will try to at least "keep the heat and the lights on" here (its a weird saying in my country). I will appreciate any valuable input to this thread, feel free to correct me if I am wrong & I hope that this thread helps at least one person choosing his/hers new work machine. This year we saw HP merging their 17 & 15 Workstation laptop into one 16" 16:10 device, same as Lenovo. The new ZBook Fury G9 sports all-new chassis both design and structure-wise, of course equipped with mobile Alder Lake HX processors and standalone Intel WM690 PCH solution. As of October 2022, there is almost zero feedback from actual users For the specifications, we can start at ZBook_Fury_G9.pdf product sheet that seems to cover almost all the necessary information. There is also a very nice YouTube video from official HP channel, basically a step-by-step service manual: Compared to Dell Precision 7670 and P16 as its main competitors (and the previous G8): The Good: 4x M.2 PCI-E slots (3x on 7670, 2x on P16) 4x Easily accessible DDR5 SO-DIMM slots WLAN adapter in mPCI-E slot (soldered on P16) Everything is made out of metal Classic touchpad with hardware buttons (YAY!) Beefy heatsink with Vapor Chamber and 2 additional heatpipes Choice between Per-Key RGB keyboard or Spill-Resistant Quiet DuraKey keyboard 8-Cell battery (6 cell on both 7670 and P16) Weight starts at 2.39kg which is less that 7670 with Slim chassis 5MP Webcam with shutter The Bad: According to provided document, there is an "Average Operating Power" of 55W for CPU and <80W for GPU. At the same time, there is a 230W provided power brick & 280W docking station available. It is unclear if it will be 55W for CPU (with variable spikes up to 157W) and strictly 80W for GPU, or there will be a dynamic distribution of power between the two. If you own the Z with a GPU >A3000, please test this and provide results. On the Fury G8, even A5000 was restricted to 80W. No GeForce option No QHD 120+Hz display option Fans blow hot air directly against the hinge cover, similar to MacBooks PointStick / Trackpoint has been officially dropped, along with its proprietary buttons Keyboard is an integral part of palmrest => Expensive and complicated replacement PRICE of both the actual system & available options, especially GPUs, compared to Dell The Rest: From a quick glance at the service video, CPU VRM looks solid & better than both competitors, this is purely a speculation as I cannot see the exact used components. In previous generations (2014+) HP had almost always the better VRM solution compared to Dell and Lenovo Workstations, but also more restricted power delivery to CPU and GPU. If you watch the video closely, you will notice that there are in fact 2 different models disassembled. There are two heatsinks, one with Vapor Chamber and thicker Delta fans (until around 28:00 in video), after that there is basic model without Vapor chamber and with thinner fans, then the Vapor chamber heatsink again. Summary: Typing this on a first generation ZBook 15 with maxed out specifications, I am quite excited to see that a worthy sucessor is here, at last. Cooling looks promising. If the TDP/TGP limits are dynamic and the GPU will actually go above 80W, I will actually purchase it, or the Rocket Lake & Ada Lovelace refresh of this chassis (7670 still in the game though). With some tweaking like a proper thermal pads and liquid metal application or at least a good paste, this will be one beast of a laptop for productivity. I would also swap the display for 2560x1600 144-165Hz IPS if not available directly when ordering via sales rep. HP, if you are reading this, it seems that you have done good. Looking forward to actual reviews to confirm this. REVIEWS (Updated 22/11/2022): Laptopmedia: https://laptopmedia.com/review/hp-zbook-fury-16-g9

Oi! Eagles per hamburgers, thats the correct unit. I have done a few Blades in the past (i7-8750H/9750H, Mercury Edition or what is called, not sure TBH. Actually surprised by how good it was designed internally. Conductonaut was a great improvement, like 20-25°C, machine almost noiseless, raw performance also went quite up. Watch out for proper insulation, PM me for more details if interested.

CZ/SK according to name? 🙂 My words exactly. 12=>14=>16=>18 is the way to go, all of them with 16:10 displays and without noticeable bezels. That would be nice. The one that you have linked is the GME variant, mine is JME. Anyways, these are probably just some pre-production samples or first tryout of serial production, I think that we have a good year or two ahead of us till we see them available in laptops. Maybe in new gaming machines powered by Raptor Lake + Ada Lovelace. This would mean that even 18" WS laptops will be possible and oh boy aint that a wonderful dream.

Oh guys, and I know that one swallow does not make a summer, but I would say that these are some kind of pioneers to the new 18" class that I have mentioned earlier. Take this with a grain of salt. https://www.panelook.com/N180JME-GAA_Innolux_18_LCM_overview_55484.html

Hey guys, Thinking about getting one of these to have it ready for upgrade when the time comes, IMHO these machines should have option like this in configurator, its 2022 FFS, 60Hz should die already. This is basically the best 16" screen available at the moment, if we are talking about IPS: https://www.panelook.com/NE160QDM-NY3_BOE_16_LCM_overview_51262.html As for this issue regarding CPU performance that basically all of you are experiencing with 7770/7670 laptops, it makes me both sad and angry. If mobile WS laptops will continue to be like this, it will be better to just buy a higher end gaming laptop and trash it out every two years (and saving half the cost in the process). What is the point of paying 5 grand for a machine when it behaves like this. I just hope that they will eventually manage to iron out all the kinks, so when the next year model 7780/7680 comes, it will be a pleasant facelift of these, with Raptor Lake & Ada Lovelace combo.

Two of my clients have purchased 7670 in the slim chassis with i7 and A2000 GPU, combined with 83Wh battery, but both are still awaiting delivery. I will have the opportunity to measure.

So Phobya NanoGrease Extreme on CPU+GPU and 12.8W/mK pads on other components, correct? This looks promising. I wonder what 17W Alphacool / Fujipoly Sarcon would do, those are the best that I have ever worked with. There are also new Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad Extreme which should have around 28,8 W/mK but I seriously doubt that. Heck, I would even try custom made copper shim + paste mod on VRM and VRAMs, but going all frankenstein on straight-outta-box 4 grand laptop is...disturbing.

I know that I will eventually have to settle with options that will be available, but it just makes me sad. One way or another, switching to liquid metal, changing thermal pads to Fujipoly or TG Extreme and adjusting voltage / power limits will be done ASAP, that is after I will be sure the machine runs with 100% stability under my workload. I do not want to whine again, but there is literally no competition ATM in the whole MWS segment. HP seems to have abandoned 15&17.3" variants completely, going somehow jack-of-all-trades way with ZBook Fury 16 G9 (which namescheme is almost OCD triggering and flawed from the start as its actually 1st gen of 16" ZBook) with its limited display options, underpowered GPU and not very competitive price. Then there is Lenovo ThinkPad P16, which is only appealing to me because of its keyboard and colour scheme, otherwise has nonsense price tag, its service support cannot be even remotely compared to Dell (at least in my region) and the service options are limited by both expensive parts (as all modern Lenovo laptops) or plain inability to perform BGA or other solder work due to the crucial parts being underlaid with black epoxide that you often cannot dissolve without damaging the PCB. Compared to Lenovo, Dell is quite cheap and easy to maintain even after 5+ years. Next, MSI, which I am not even putting in the same class b/c from service standpoint they are just nightmare to work on. Support is either unwilling or non existent, basic parts are often unavailable after 3 years. So here we are, literally stuck with Dell because it is lesser evil. This reminds me of something... Somebody at Fujitsu should wake them up from their catatonic state to actually produce something newer that 10th Gen.i7 H7510, their Celsius line was quite good (!!!still bottom docked!!!), brick looking, had NBD support, nothing glued, bolts everywhere, easy to repair, just old school. Bad thing was proprietary parts like EC controllers that only they used and nobody else. Then there is that no brand is even remotely interested in the large MWS segment, because there is very small profit. Asus, Acer or small players like Dynabook or Vaio could not cover products like this with their service network similar to the way Dell does. Speaking of Vaio, back in Sony days and XP / Vista era they could make a god tier laptop. Nostalgia strikes again. Back to relevant topic, I personally think (and also heard insider rumours) that the 15.6" and 17.3" form factors will eventually cease to exist, with 16" replacing them both, and we might just see a new 18-19" 16:10 form factor emerging which, due to the thin screen borders and aspect ratio, will be similar in outline dimensions to older 17.3". I was talking about whole laptop market, not just MWS which (on general) are built with better parts. For example, on consumer gaming / creative machines from Asus or Acer the lifetime of fans is about two years (talking about 8th generation Core and newer) when in daily usage. Also depends on actual OEM, Delta and Sunon are the better ones, FCN / Forcecon are not. I am 100% with you on this. MWS is a niche market and should be treated as such, not back down on quality and service accessibility just because mainstream machines are like this nowadays. I mean, it should not have been ditched in the first place, it was clearly the better option. Status LEDs were there for a reason, another cost cutting nonsense, it was great to see if the WLAN/WWAN/HDD etc. is working just by looking at the laptop without any further action. If they can place infantile RGB lights around whole machines today, why not a few subtle LEDs. As for the 2.5" drives, well, I tend to swap them alot using external dock, but even without this, lets just say that you can place A LOT more NAND chips on a 2.5" drive (just imagine how many M2 2280 units would fit into that 2.5" 7mm metal box) than on the M.2 unit, it has its own body as passive cooler and shielding, thus the manipulation is easier, more safe and convenient when you need to swap between two devices for some reason. For a large drive that you only need as a storage (8TB+) where SATA speeds are enough, this is ideal solution. I think that MWS should have some "accessory" bay that could either be configured with a hot swap unit, an optical drive for those who need it, a PCIE M.2 expansion module, USB-C or other port expansion module, or even a 2nd battery unit. They had it like this in the past. Now we are going all external for no apparent reason.

Hello guys, I am a first time poster, but I do laptop repair and modification service for a living, and I have always preferred Mobile Workstations for my daily drivers. I have worked with or repaired a quite number of them, so I (kind of) know their weaknesses and strenghts even on the electrical level, and I have the ability to compare between each generation since 2007. Back in 2014 I have purchased Dell Precision M4800. It was a good laptop with great cooling and internal access, I still love its industrial brick design. Unfortunately, after year or half or two years of usage everything started to break down in almost all aspects (keyboard delays, fingeprint recognition, PCH malfunction, multiple times replaced motherboard within ProSupport etc.). I have replaced it with ZBook 15 G1 that I have modified to same specification, this is what I use to this day. I saw no point in upgrading from Haswell to Skylake or its latter recycled variants, so I have decided to skip DDR4 era completely and wait out for new generation with DDR5 support and new architecture. I was hoping that it will be similar to transition from Core2 Duo Penryn era laptops to Sandy Bridge, that the performance and effectivity will be in a different league. Well, here we are with Alder Lake, a downsized & spliced Skylake pseudo-next gen mashup with ridiculous thermals, bad memory controller and manufacturing variable so high, that the worst i7-12700K chips differ from the best ones by about 80-100W top load consumption and 25-30° Celsius on same cooler and conditions. Even Noctua NH-U12A is struggling to cool these down, and now they throw them in laptops. Again, ridiculous. I knew where this was going since day 1 of Intel mentioning mobile Alder Lake chips. What we are going to end up with is that lets say, my (non existent) Dell 7770 will surpass your indentical machine just because I got lucky with a better, less leaking chip from factory. I mean, silicon lottery was always a thing in desktop OC & XOC circles, I respect that, but I have a serious problem when I buy a machine based on benchmark / review results and end up with something that is operating 30% below my expectations just because a CPU manufacturer cannot guarantee any consistency or QC. Not even speaking about durability of these things. I had to send several 12700K & 12900K´s to RMA because of faulty cores - not a great deal on desktop where you can switch out CPU within minutes, but in our world it sadly means motherboard replacement, which, if you want to keep the device for a longer time (after the warranty ends) like me, is worrying. I was dead set on buying Precision 7670. I really was. I like 16:10 ratio and all the new features, but now, seeing this, I really had to rethink my situation, considering I still can squeeze one more year from my trusty old Haswell ZBook before retiring, even though its performance has become limiting to me. Who knows, maybe with the Raptor Lake it will be better and more consistent (though I seriously doubt that), otherwise I am screwed. At least there should be new GPUs available (with same ridiculous power draw increase). R&D of laptop cooling has not really evolved anywhere in the last 10 years, only thing that we have now is high speed fans with high blade count (and a lifespan of 2 years before the bearing gives up). ================================== About replacing screens, yes, this is the way that all modern (2021+) laptops are build, with screen attached to lid via double sided adhesive. Good thing is that many of these adhesives return to their shape after pullout and are, in fact, reusable for a couple of times. Bad thing is that they (the original ones) are not available separately, only included in larger part such as replacement lid itself. You can use acrylic or butylene tape, but you lose the ability to remove screen without damaging it. I also hope that in the next generation we will be able to choose 16:10 FHD IPS with high refresh rate, otherwise I will have to swap it out by myself. I do not want 4K in laptop, 2560x1600 is maximum for me. ================================== About liquid metal - this is definitely a way to go, I lost count of laptops that I have modified this way, but on most machines you get a whole new level of thermals, silence and performance. On my ThinkPad X1 Extreme (i7-9750H) the result was that the CPU could draw 88W of power without throttling basically for an unlimited time. ================================== PS: Is there anybody else that would celebrate the return of bottom sided docking port, just like M4800? I know I would. My ideal workstation would be a 16:10, 16-18" with ThinkPad design, M4800-like internal layout, IBM keyboard with hardware buttons for both trackpoint and trackpad, dedicated status LEDs and buttons (like T61p or older Compaq), 2.5" hotswap bay (M4800 had one), lid lock, desktop-like UEFI and bottom dock. I mean, these things are heavy beasts designed for workflow, why do they still pursue some unreachable idea of everything being thin & sexy like ultrabooks. Nonsense, at least for me. End of daydreaming, sorry.