Clevo P180HM GPU upgrade

[poprostujakub]

Hi all.

I recently bought Clevo P180HM w. GTX680M. I have heard that this is already the best GPU that will work in this laptop, but since I have a bunch of MXM cards lying around I decided to give them a try.

First, Dell Quadro M3000M I use in M980NU - hang at the boot screen with beeps from time to time.

Then MSI GTX970M - after boot screen it stops at black screen with blinking cursor.

 

I have still Dell 765M after failed mod (I don't remember what I've done to it, but it shows as 780M in GPU-Z) and Dell HD8970M to try.

 

I have also tried different thing - 680M in master slot and the other card in slave slot.

Windows 7 displays GPU renderer error but suprisingly such a configuration works under W10.

With basic MS driver for 680M and Nvidia driver for the second card I was able to use the latter as the 3D renderer. Both 765M and 970M works in this configuration (M3000M does not - hang), althrough performance is very disappointing - GPU utilization reaches about 70%, but FPS in games is around 15% of what it should be.

 

Is there anything else I could try? Maybe Pascal? There are P106M and Quadro P1000M that I can buy and I also spotted Radeon RX580M or something along those lines on Aliexpress, but I don't want to waste money if they are not going to work.

[Reciever]

You could try Linux, some limitations on other machines were overcome via OS as opposed to specifically BIOS to GPU issues

 

At the very least wont cost you anything but some time before making more investments,

 

Welcome to the Forum!

[Csupati]

On 8/21/2023 at 11:57 PM, poprostujakub said:

Hi all.

I recently bought Clevo P180HM w. GTX680M. I have heard that this is already the best GPU that will work in this laptop, but since I have a bunch of MXM cards lying around I decided to give them a try.

First, Dell Quadro M3000M I use in M980NU - hang at the boot screen with beeps from time to time.

Then MSI GTX970M - after boot screen it stops at black screen with blinking cursor.

 

I have still Dell 765M after failed mod (I don't remember what I've done to it, but it shows as 780M in GPU-Z) and Dell HD8970M to try.

 

I have also tried different thing - 680M in master slot and the other card in slave slot.

Windows 7 displays GPU renderer error but suprisingly such a configuration works under W10.

With basic MS driver for 680M and Nvidia driver for the second card I was able to use the latter as the 3D renderer. Both 765M and 970M works in this configuration (M3000M does not - hang), althrough performance is very disappointing - GPU utilization reaches about 70%, but FPS in games is around 15% of what it should be.

 

Is there anything else I could try? Maybe Pascal? There are P106M and Quadro P1000M that I can buy and I also spotted Radeon RX580M or something along those lines on Aliexpress, but I don't want to waste money if they are not going to work.

Maybe a bios flash would help for you, p180 and p370 series dont have igpu.

[jaybee83]

wow still rocking the HM series, thats awesome! so happy to see the legend live on 😁

[poprostujakub]

On 8/22/2023 at 3:06 AM, Reciever said:

You could try Linux, some limitations on other machines were overcome via OS as opposed to specifically BIOS to GPU issues

 

At the very least wont cost you anything but some time before making more investments,

 

Welcome to the Forum!

Well, as far as it won't need a lot of work with terminal I can try it.

 

I'm a refugee from NBR but thanks 🙂

 

@Csupati

There is no BIOS that supports newer cards, I checked this first...

 

@jaybee83

P180HM is the prettiest laptop I've ever seen, so I had to have it 😉

 

 

Well, another update - with HD8970M it doesn't even light up the screen and after one minute it shuts off, so no commmunication to KBC. It's sad, because W7170M's are very cheap...

[Reciever]

41 minutes ago, poprostujakub said:

Well, as far as it won't need a lot of work with terminal I can try it.

 

I'm a refugee from NBR but thanks 🙂

 

@Csupati

There is no BIOS that supports newer cards, I checked this first...

 

@jaybee83

P180HM is the prettiest laptop I've ever seen, so I had to have it 😉

 

 

Well, another update - with HD8970M it doesn't even light up the screen and after one minute it shuts off, so no commmunication to KBC. It's sad, because W7170M's are very cheap...

Yeah it has to be able to read the sensors it wants or it turns off the system. Obviously Clevo cards have better chance of working but MSI is usually the next best option in terms of at least posting and letting you boot up.

 

When another member on NBR (cant remember username) tried to get some newer cards working for the M4600 they were only able to get some cards working under Linux as Windows would crash or lock up. Same drill for a couple of the other Dell Precision systems, no idea if that will hold any water for the P180HM though. Worth a try 

[jaybee83]

21 hours ago, poprostujakub said:

Well, as far as it won't need a lot of work with terminal I can try it.

 

I'm a refugee from NBR but thanks 🙂

 

@Csupati

There is no BIOS that supports newer cards, I checked this first...

 

@jaybee83

P180HM is the prettiest laptop I've ever seen, so I had to have it 😉

 

 

Well, another update - with HD8970M it doesn't even light up the screen and after one minute it shuts off, so no commmunication to KBC. It's sad, because W7170M's are very cheap...

 

its pretty for sure, i used to rock a P150HM myself back in the day 🙂 yeah, that was one of the HM series annoying disadvantages, its lack of GPU support...the subsequent EM and SM series were way more forgiving in terms of unofficial GPU upgrades! latest I heard was 980M being made compatible after heavy bios modding....but that was a one of a kind mod and destroyed the mobo in the end haha.

[Csupati]

On 8/30/2023 at 7:29 PM, Reciever said:

Yeah it has to be able to read the sensors it wants or it turns off the system. Obviously Clevo cards have better chance of working but MSI is usually the next best option in terms of at least posting and letting you boot up.

 

When another member on NBR (cant remember username) tried to get some newer cards working for the M4600 they were only able to get some cards working under Linux as Windows would crash or lock up. Same drill for a couple of the other Dell Precision systems, no idea if that will hold any water for the P180HM though. Worth a try 

Ive done the same with a M6700 and M6800 +P3000(1060), you have to flash an early vbios to the card otherwise windows will keep crashing at booting.

[SuperMG]

@poprostujakubhello, did you try and remove the GOP/UEFI partition of the Maxwell GPUs? Maybe that'll fix?

[momo25]

On 3/31/2026 at 12:13 PM, SuperMG said:

@poprostujakubhello, did you try and remove the GOP/UEFI partition of the Maxwell GPUs? Maybe that'll fix?

Dud you try that yourself? I wanna get a gtx 980m to work in my clevo d900f, but it also seems to be hardlocked at the gtx 680m... 😪

[SuperMG]

45 minutes ago, momo25 said:

Dud you try that yourself? I wanna get a gtx 980m to work in my clevo d900f, but it also seems to be hardlocked at the gtx 680m... 😪

You can't D900F and X7200 have issues with their bios. There's no EC problem and no whitelist. Just a weird Phoenix SecureCore BIOS... I gave up and I'm selling the X7200.

 

The best way is to do AMD HD 7970M 1.2 blue PCB in master + GTX 980M in slave.

 

Even the Alienware M17X R3/R4 can use Nvidia Quadro T1000, Pascal P4000/P5000 in the master slot with an eDP screen.

Edited 9 hours ago by SuperMG

[momo25]

37 minutes ago, SuperMG said:

You can't D900F and X7200 have issues with their bios. There's no EC problem and no whitelist. Just a weird Phoenix SecureCore BIOS... I gave up and I'm selling the X7200.

 

The best way is to do AMD HD 7970M 1.2 blue PCB in master + GTX 980M in slave.

 

Even the Alienware M17X R3/R4 can use Nvidia Quadro T1000, Pascal P4000/P5000 in the master slot with an eDP screen.

Yeah, wanted to get my d900f to work with it tho. Only has one mxm slot so is there noting I can do?

[SuperMG]

35 minutes ago, momo25 said:

Yeah, wanted to get my d900f to work with it tho. Only has one mxm slot so is there noting I can do?

No you can't do anything. I asked for modders to find the solution for that for the X7200 but no one answers, it's a lost cause. I was able to do HD 7970M (green PCB, no audio) + RTX 3000 and it worked. I was losing a bit of performance maybe because my CPU wasn't Overclocked.

[momo25]

2 minutes ago, SuperMG said:

No you can't do anything. I asked for modders to find the solution for that for the X7200 but no one answers, it's a lost cause. I was able to do HD 7970M (green PCB, no audio) + RTX 3000 and it worked. I was losing a bit of performance maybe because my CPU wasn't Overclocked.

Hmm... what about one of those weird mxm to pcie egpu adapters? 

[momo25]

2 minutes ago, momo25 said:

Hmm... what about one of those weird mxm to pcie egpu adapters? 

Cuz I wanna have a reason to keep it, its a great machine ^^

[SuperMG]

7 minutes ago, momo25 said:

Hmm... what about one of those weird mxm to pcie egpu adapters? 

Anything newer that's plugged in the master MXM slot of the LVDS laptop won't work.

 

GTX 770M, 780M, K3100M, K5100M, 880M aren't working too! 

 

Yes you can use eGPU from the ExpressSlot but the speed is at PCIE 2.0 x2, it's worse than the slave MXM slot which runs at x8.

 

For some reasons, the X8100 accepts GTX 980M, M5000M, 780M, etc...

[momo25]

11 minutes ago, SuperMG said:

Anything newer that's plugged in the master MXM slot of the LVDS laptop won't work.

 

GTX 770M, 780M, K3100M, K5100M, 880M aren't working too! 

 

Yes you can use eGPU from the ExpressSlot but the speed is at PCIE 2.0 x2, it's worse than the slave MXM slot which runs at x8.

 

For some reasons, the X8100 accepts GTX 980M, M5000M, 780M, etc...

I heard from another user its x16 2.0?

[SuperMG]

7 minutes ago, momo25 said:

I heard from another user its x16 2.0?

ExpressSlot uses less bandwidth than the MXM slot. I do not recommend any eGPU configuration as you need an external power and your desktop GPU will get severely bottlenecked by the bandwidth. mPCIe is faster than ExpressSlot by not a lot too.

 

MXM slot = 2.0 x16

SLi in use = 2.0 x8 

Just get a Clevo X8100 instead.

[momo25]

12 minutes ago, SuperMG said:

ExpressSlot uses less bandwidth than the MXM slot. I do not recommend any eGPU configuration as you need an external power and your desktop GPU will get severely bottlenecked by the bandwidth. mPCIe is faster than ExpressSlot by not a lot too.

 

MXM slot = 2.0 x16

SLi in use = 2.0 x8 

Just get a Clevo X8100 instead.

Nah, wanna keep my d900f. The x8100 has a mobile cpu. This adapter claims to use full x16 bandwidth 

[momo25]

1 minute ago, momo25 said:

Nah, wanna keep my d900f. The x8100 has a mobile cpu. This adapter claims to use full x16 bandwidth 

I mean, sure its bottlenecked but it will be anyway by the first gen i7 even the 990x so wouldnt mean that much.

[SuperMG]

2 hours ago, momo25 said:

I mean, sure its bottlenecked but it will be anyway by the first gen i7 even the 990x so wouldnt mean that much.

I already told this won't work. The BIOS is so wacky and strange, it'll accept max GTX 680M or HD 7970M in the master slot. Clevo made the worse bios ever for X7200, D900F and P170HM...

 

Anything new won't work. I already tried on the X7200.

 

For some reasons the Maxwell cards in master slot work for Clevo M980 and X8100.

Edited 6 hours ago by SuperMG

[momo25]

I've seen an old post of rainer124 claiming, that he got a 980m to work in a p150hm/p170hm, already dm'ed him about it, very curious about his response