GeForce RTX 4090M installed in HP Zbook 17 G5

[ichime]

I was able to install an nVidia GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile MXM card into a HP Zbook 17 G5 (which came originally with a Quadro P3200). I also upgraded this machine with a Quadro RTX 5000M pulled from a HP Zbook 17 G6, which I have since pulled out for the GeForce RTX.

 

The card is pulled out of a Morefine eGPU and it seems like the card itself was made by a chinese company called ZRT: https://en.zrt-tech.com/MXMgpucard.html with a power board limit of 150W (which is fine because I'm limited to a 200w adapter lol)

 

My laptop is a HP Zbook 17 G5 that came with an Intel Xeon E2176M with a 4k UHD touchscreen, which I purchased in 2020.

 

This 4090 upgrade required a modded heatsink (I ended up splicing parts from a Zbook and a Clevo P870) and I may still continue to mod it to get better thermals.  So far, it works well, games run almost fine.

 

The main issues are the following:

 

- Card runs a bit hot without a laptop cooling pad (up to 88c core, 95c hotspot, 106c memory), but I think I'll need to try liquid metal and thicker memory thermal pads. Runs greatt with the laptop cooling pad that I have (Llano v12)

 

- It won't go to fullscreen mode when hooked up to an external display (I've only tried HDMI); maybe its something that's fixable as I've been out of the laptop modding game for 10 years

 

- The laptop itself won't accept a bigger power supply. I tried a 330w power supply from a HP Omen and it didn't recognize it. So I'm stuck with the 200w unit for now, which may explain some of the throttling issues. I might try the SlimQ power supply since it supposedly have compatibility with most HP laptops.

 

Anyways, I'm happy with it so far, can get back into some gaming now. I've attached some pictures, was too lazy to take pictures of the heatsink itself. I'll take pictures when the liquid metal kit comes in.

 

[ichime]

That timespy extreme result was without the laptop cooler. This is the result when I placed it on the laptop cooler with AC air running through it. It should be hitting higher, but probably due to my power supply only being 200W

[Kalman]

Hi,

It is very promising for future improvements!

I have not seen anyone use MXM RTX 40 series in any other laptop.

Is it the first of a kind?

[SuperMG3]

The display is from the Intel UHD and the renderer is the 4090 correct?

 

Could you please also provide us the ZRT 4090 VBIOS please? Thank you.

[JadeRover]

Hi, nice job ! Enjoy the card =D

 

I myself have a Zbook 17 g3. You can mod the power conn to make it think that it is connected to a 200w HP PSU.

I did it on mine, I have a 180W dell psu, cut off the conn, soldered a HP blue pin conn only to + and - of my dell charger. Do not connect the ID pin to anything if you are putting resistors inside the laptop.

Finally inside the laptop I soldered a 100K resistor between Charger + and ID pin of the charger, everything fit in when I closed the cover.

 

You could also have the resistor inside the charging cable, instead of inside of the laptop. That way the laptop recognises genuine chargers correctly.

 

I think the MXM slot is limited to 100 - 110w (? basing myself off the P5200 that is limited to 110w in the G5 Zbook). You might need to solder 2 jumper wires (thick ones to deliver AMPS) between ground and + of your laptops main power rail and the MXM board main power rail. This should bypass the MXM slot power limitation, however not sure how the laptop will react as it has a current resistor on the main power rail and seing 250+ watts being pulled might trigger an overcurrent protection.

 

Good luck ! 

 

 

[SuperMG3]

On 7/13/2025 at 2:11 AM, ichime said:

I was able to install an nVidia GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile MXM card into a HP Zbook 17 G5 (which came originally with a Quadro P3200). I also upgraded this machine with a Quadro RTX 5000M pulled from a HP Zbook 17 G6, which I have since pulled out for the GeForce RTX.

 

The card is pulled out of a Morefine eGPU and it seems like the card itself was made by a chinese company called ZRT: https://en.zrt-tech.com/MXMgpucard.html with a power board limit of 150W (which is fine because I'm limited to a 200w adapter lol)

 

My laptop is a HP Zbook 17 G5 that came with an Intel Xeon E2176M with a 4k UHD touchscreen, which I purchased in 2020.

 

This 4090 upgrade required a modded heatsink (I ended up splicing parts from a Zbook and a Clevo P870) and I may still continue to mod it to get better thermals.  So far, it works well, games run almost fine.

 

The main issues are the following:

 

- Card runs a bit hot without a laptop cooling pad (up to 88c core, 95c hotspot, 106c memory), but I think I'll need to try liquid metal and thicker memory thermal pads. Runs greatt with the laptop cooling pad that I have (Llano v12)

 

- It won't go to fullscreen mode when hooked up to an external display (I've only tried HDMI); maybe its something that's fixable as I've been out of the laptop modding game for 10 years

 

- The laptop itself won't accept a bigger power supply. I tried a 330w power supply from a HP Omen and it didn't recognize it. So I'm stuck with the 200w unit for now, which may explain some of the throttling issues. I might try the SlimQ power supply since it supposedly have compatibility with most HP laptops.

 

Anyways, I'm happy with it so far, can get back into some gaming now. I've attached some pictures, was too lazy to take pictures of the heatsink itself. I'll take pictures when the liquid metal kit comes in.

 

Hello. Could we have a screenshot of gpu-z showing the TDP specs?

 

[ichime]

On 7/13/2025 at 7:29 AM, Kalman said:

Hi,

It is very promising for future improvements!

I have not seen anyone use MXM RTX 40 series in any other laptop.

Is it the first of a kind?

I think so…😅 the G5 Zbooks are often forgotten but it’s one of the rare combos of a 4K screen, touchscreen and MXM slot. Thought I’d give it a shot!

 

On 7/13/2025 at 8:35 PM, SuperMG3 said:

The display is from the Intel UHD and the renderer is the 4090 correct?

 

Could you please also provide us the ZRT 4090 VBIOS please? Thank you.

 

Yes, I tried making it boot off the 4090 (discrete GPU mode) and screen wouldn’t turn on. The HDMI output still worked, however.

 

I uploaded the VBIOS to Techpowerup:

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/277644/277644
 

On 7/18/2025 at 6:32 AM, JadeRover said:

Hi, nice job ! Enjoy the card =D

 

I myself have a Zbook 17 g3. You can mod the power conn to make it think that it is connected to a 200w HP PSU.

I did it on mine, I have a 180W dell psu, cut off the conn, soldered a HP blue pin conn only to + and - of my dell charger. Do not connect the ID pin to anything if you are putting resistors inside the laptop.

Finally inside the laptop I soldered a 100K resistor between Charger + and ID pin of the charger, everything fit in when I closed the cover.

 

You could also have the resistor inside the charging cable, instead of inside of the laptop. That way the laptop recognises genuine chargers correctly.

 

I think the MXM slot is limited to 100 - 110w (? basing myself off the P5200 that is limited to 110w in the G5 Zbook). You might need to solder 2 jumper wires (thick ones to deliver AMPS) between ground and + of your laptops main power rail and the MXM board main power rail. This should bypass the MXM slot power limitation, however not sure how the laptop will react as it has a current resistor on the main power rail and seing 250+ watts being pulled might trigger an overcurrent protection.

 

Good luck ! 

 

 

 

Thanks! If option #2 doesn’t work, I may look into that. During my testing, the MXM slot can pull about 150 watts (topped out at 153w) but seems to throttle back the CPU some.
 

On 7/19/2025 at 12:55 PM, SuperMG3 said:

Hello. Could we have a screenshot of gpu-z showing the TDP specs?

 

 

Couldn’t find any info on TDP rating on the first screen on GPU-Z, but here’s a screenshot of it hitting about 150w while running 3Dmark (max was 153w, max from the chip itself was about 147w)

[SuperMG3]

5 hours ago, ichime said:

I think so…😅 the G5 Zbooks are often forgotten but it’s one of the rare combos of a 4K screen, touchscreen and MXM slot. Thought I’d give it a shot!

 

 

Yes, I tried making it boot off the 4090 (discrete GPU mode) and screen wouldn’t turn on. The HDMI output still worked, however.

 

I uploaded the VBIOS to Techpowerup:

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/277644/277644
 

 

Thanks! If option #2 doesn’t work, I may look into that. During my testing, the MXM slot can pull about 150 watts (topped out at 153w) but seems to throttle back the CPU some.
 

 

Couldn’t find any info on TDP rating on the first screen on GPU-Z, but here’s a screenshot of it hitting about 150w while running 3Dmark (max was 153w, max from the chip itself was about 147w)

How do you cool 150W?

[SuperMG3]

6 hours ago, ichime said:

I think so…😅 the G5 Zbooks are often forgotten but it’s one of the rare combos of a 4K screen, touchscreen and MXM slot. Thought I’d give it a shot!

 

 

Yes, I tried making it boot off the 4090 (discrete GPU mode) and screen wouldn’t turn on. The HDMI output still worked, however.

 

I uploaded the VBIOS to Techpowerup:

https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/277644/277644
 

 

Thanks! If option #2 doesn’t work, I may look into that. During my testing, the MXM slot can pull about 150 watts (topped out at 153w) but seems to throttle back the CPU some.
 

 

Couldn’t find any info on TDP rating on the first screen on GPU-Z, but here’s a screenshot of it hitting about 150w while running 3Dmark (max was 153w, max from the chip itself was about 147w)

You sure your card is from ZRT? Isn't it from X-VISION? ZRT does max 135W

[ichime]

20 hours ago, SuperMG3 said:

How do you cool 150W?

Here is the heatsink I made; pieces are a mix of the original heatsink and that from a Clevo P870dm. Definitely not the most elegant, but it’s something.

 

 

I removed the previous memory pads and thermal paste and replaced with Gelid pads and Liquid Metal. Temps are a bit better, memory still shoots to 100c when running FurMark, but slower to reach those temps now.

 

Experimented with undervolting a bit (0.94v originally, downed to 0.79v); temps dropped only about 5c with power draw reduced to 140v)

 

19 hours ago, SuperMG3 said:

You sure your card is from ZRT? Isn't it from X-VISION? ZRT does max 135W

 

You know, you might be right! I looked at the MXM card and the resistor pattern most closely resembles the most recent X-Vision 4090Ms with the green PCB. I read that when Morefine first released their 4090 eGPUs they used ZRT cards…then they went on backorder, then came back on sale with a higher price tag. So this may be an X-vision card all along, or at least the latest version as the previous X-vision RTX 4090 had a black PCB

[Kalman]

2 hours ago, ichime said:

removed the previous memory pads and thermal paste and replaced with Gelid pads and Liquid Metal. Temps are a bit better, memory still shoots to 100c when running FurMark, but slower to reach those temps now.

It could have been a challenging work to do! Wouldnt be better if you somehow solve the cooling the other half of the VRMs?

Also you should try Thermal grizzly Putty Pro instead of pads because if you do not know the exact pad size it is much more better with same specifiation as Gelid extreme.

[SuperMG3]

4 hours ago, ichime said:

Here is the heatsink I made; pieces are a mix of the original heatsink and that from a Clevo P870dm. Definitely not the most elegant, but it’s something.

 

 

I removed the previous memory pads and thermal paste and replaced with Gelid pads and Liquid Metal. Temps are a bit better, memory still shoots to 100c when running FurMark, but slower to reach those temps now.

 

Experimented with undervolting a bit (0.94v originally, downed to 0.79v); temps dropped only about 5c with power draw reduced to 140v)

 

 

You know, you might be right! I looked at the MXM card and the resistor pattern most closely resembles the most recent X-Vision 4090Ms with the green PCB. I read that when Morefine first released their 4090 eGPUs they used ZRT cards…then they went on backorder, then came back on sale with a higher price tag. So this may be an X-vision card all along, or at least the latest version as the previous X-vision RTX 4090 had a black PCB

Yeah wonder why no eDP support