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.

[GuitarG]

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.

[Zeht]

Hey, sorry for such a late response. So, I've been using the laptop for the past year, aside from the thermal issues due to the stock heatsink it works well.  I had to "limit" the card by flashing a crappier vbios, which limits the clock to 1240mhz, that way it always stays under 80ºc.

 

I tried enabling the dgpu only mode in bios but it unfortunately doesn't work, in fact I ended up bricking the bios since the screen went fully black, I had to reflash a stock bios  with a ch341a programmer to get the image back. So for now it works in hybrid mode, also the display port which normally outputs from the dgpu doesn't work. The only way to output image is from the vga port, which is linked to the igpu.

 

Fan control works well, if the gpu temps starts increasing it will spin faster, no need for additional software.

[loopster]

Apparently I had this crappier Bios version (1240 MHz) of the Quadro P3000 on my card which I've been using in my Zbook 17 G2 (replaced K3100).
Stumbling on this thread, out of curiousity I tried this 86.04.70.00.1B Dell version from your post, and loo and behold, now my card is utilizing the full 100W the slot can deliver.

However, it is now boosting to a whopping 1746 MHz, and not only to 1493, as indicated in the GPU-Z readout.
I don't mind that at all, temps with max. 75°C are well within sound range, but I was wondering why the huge boost difference?

Is that a false readout, or can anyone explain a bit further?

[Zeht]

On 3/23/2024 at 10:16 AM, loopster said:

Apparently I had this crappier Bios version (1240 MHz) of the Quadro P3000 on my card which I've been using in my Zbook 17 G2 (replaced K3100).
Stumbling on this thread, out of curiousity I tried this 86.04.70.00.1B Dell version from your post, and loo and behold, now my card is utilizing the full 100W the slot can deliver.

However, it is now boosting to a whopping 1746 MHz, and not only to 1493, as indicated in the GPU-Z readout.
I don't mind that at all, temps with max. 75°C are well within sound range, but I was wondering why the huge boost difference?

Is that a false readout, or can anyone explain a bit further?

From what I've seen it depends on the vbios, on some the boost clock is way higher than whats advertised.  On this zbook my card would normally boost to 1500-1550mhz in order to match 75W. Now I'm using a quadro rtx 3000 on a dell precision 7540 and I've seen it boost up to 1700mhz, despite the boost clock being 1380mhz.

[GuitarG]

5 hours ago, Zeht said:

From what I've seen it depends on the vbios, on some the boost clock is way higher than whats advertised.  On this zbook my card would normally boost to 1500-1550mhz in order to match 75W. Now I'm using a quadro rtx 3000 on a dell precision 7540 and I've seen it boost up to 1700mhz, despite the boost clock being 1380mhz.

Same situation with RTX 5000, I think it may be Dynamic Boost 2.0, making GPU go little higher than advertised.

[loopster]

Thanks guys for your answers. I only had little time in the past few days, upon testing a little further I found the card is boosting even beyond 1800,
and it indeed performs way better in unigine superpostition than before. In 1080p medium it went from 6000ish to 7500ish.
Annotation, I had to use nvflashk for flashng 86.04.70.00.1B Dell Bios, as stock nvflash wouldn't let me override the board ID.

[loopster]

Oh btw., Zeht, your thermal problems may have had to do more with the fact that the Die of the Quadro P3000 is just a bit flatter than

say K3100M, and the heatsink didn't make proper contact with the card.
On my zbook 17 I used a maybe 0.5 mm copper shim between P3000 DIe and the heatsink right away when I replaced my K3100M
to have the heatsink exert good pressure on the chip.
I noticed this problem (heatsink not making optimal contact with the die) first when I replaced K3000M on Elitebook 8770W for a M4000M,
but in this instance it was the threads of the M4000M MXM-bracket just being a teeny bit taller than of K3000M.
In that case, I simply swapped the MXM brackets around and the thermals got to where they are supposed to be.
I knew the max temps from the same mod I had done earlier on 8760w (replace Q3000 with M4000M).
The first M4000M came with no bracket, therefore I had to take the bracket from the q3000.