Quadro P3000 (mxm type B) on HP Zbook 15 G2

[Zeht]

I successfully managed to mod the zbook 15 g2, which comes with a mxm type A slot, to make it fit type B gpus.

The slot width is blocked by the dvd reader sata connector, so the plan was to remove it. In the picture it shows the connector, and to the right there is a lot of free space occupied by the dvd reader.

 

First I tried desoldering it but the crappy soldering iron that was available in the place I was staying didn't work, so I ended up sawing it off.

After that I reassembled the whole machine and installed the a quadro p3000 that I managed to get for around $90 new. The cooler in this notebook was designed for type A gpus, so it didn't cover two vram modules, so I glued some small heatsinks to them.

After that the machine booted up fine but when I tried to install the latest drivers it didn't recognized the card. I tried to install them with the "have disk" trick in the device manager and it worked well without modding the .inf file.

Here are some screenshots from gpuz and hwinfo, I can't show pictures of the hardware itself right now since I'm travelling back to my place.

 

 

I haven't tested the gpu too much, just ran heaven benchmark for around 30 mins. The mxm slot can deliver up to 75w in this machine, which is the maximum this gpu can take, in this particular benchmark the clock hovers around 1500mhz, similarly to a gtx 1060 maxq.  The temperatures are quite high, creeping into the 90ºc's, which is to be expected since the cooling wasn't designed for this kind of gpu.

[Mashcar]

That's fascinating work ! I wondered about using Zbook 15 G2, but I find aesthetics somewhat ugly because of that lid design - half plastic half aluminium. However, that model is especially interesting because of LCD - it doesn't have dreamcolor option and LCD is pure 30 pin EDP. That means you should be able to use Pascal and newer GPU without problem.
Does it work on hybrid or dGPU only mode ? I tested non dreamcolor zbook 17 g2 and it worked only in hybrid mode. HP states 17 G2 DC screen works in only dGPU mode.

And what about fan control, there is no problem with that ? For GTX 980 fan control was as from factory, but with Quadro P5200 I have to use Notebook Fan Control program to control fan.

 

I'm thinking about combining elitebook 8570w case with zbook 15 g2 internals. Advantages ? I can undervolt 4th gen Intel CPU, 3 USB 3.0 instead of only 2, thunderbolt connector.