Precision M4800 + HP Quadro T2000 upgrade

[Trov]

Hello, I wanted to share my success of upgrading an M4800's GPU to a Quadro T2000

 

I happened across a listing that was selling one for $180, which seems to be fairly cheap considering this is effectively an MXM A form factor GTX 1650.

I was surprised it is offered in the MXM A size; as normally one would see a Quadro T1000 instead.

 

This card is from I believe an HP Z2 Mini G5, and there is also a Quadro T1000 from the same machine, with the same non-standard board shape. More on that below.

 

About The Card

Not only is there a protrusion in the top right corner, it is slightly wider than a standard MXM A card by a couple mm.

The back; unfortunately there are some SMD components blocking the "X" shaped attachment plate for the heatsink.

I do not know how the heatsink attaches in the HP Z2 Mini; it must sit on some standoffs or something.

 

Installation

There are 3 concerns for installation:

-The card being slightly wider

-The top right protrusion

-Components on the back blocking the possibility of an "X brace" heatsink attachment plate.

 

Thankfully, nothing in the M4800's frame or screw posts blocks the card from being inserted. The only thing stopping it are the corners of the MXM slot intersecting with the T2000's wider body. The slot corners can easily be cut away with an exacto knife. This shouldn't pose much if any danger of damaging the MXM slot itself since you are just cutting plastic on a metal tab away from any of the connector pins. After cutting the corners of the slot, the card lowered down onto the screw posts.

 

One should not worry about performing this permanent alteration; normal MXM cards will still slot in just fine after doing this.

 

The next challenge is the corner protrusion. This doesn't cause any issue until you attempt to place the top bezel and keyboard back on.

It turns out the speaker assembly would intersect with it. However, the part that intersects is just a hollow plastic chamber that can be cut away with an exacto knife without damaging the speaker itself. This may affect the sound quality but the sound quality was dire enough beforehand that I don't notice any meaningful difference.

 

 

And lastly, the heatsink. Since there is no way to put the X-Brace on the back that the heatsink screws into, I had to use some nuts instead. Since there is no reinforcement on the back, I recommend avoiding tightening the 4 heatsink screws too tight.

Also, you must install the heatsink before slotting in the GPU since you won't have much of a way to hold the nuts in place before screwing in. This means having to pull the whole motherboard out of the bottom case to insert the card, then putting it back. This isn't much extra work though, it's only a couple more screws than you already had out to get there in the first place.

I had the Nvidia heatsink; it seems to be the correct distance for this card, I screwed the heatsink in without paste as a test and saw no daylight come through between the GPU die and the heatsink surface.

 

VBIOS & Drivers

I didn't need to touch the VBIOS. The laptop happily booted into Windows without any change (other than resetting CMOS) directly after putting in the T2000.

The Nvidia installer would not detect the card. However, using Device Manager, selecting the GPU and selecting "Update Drivers" and then "Have Disk" and navigating to the Nvidia installer extraction folder and manually selecting the .inf worked. No changes were made to any .inf files. After a reboot Nvidia Control Panel was installed and the card was ready for running.

 

 

Performance & Thermals

On the desktop, the card idles at 43C, though I think Chrome was open with a good number of tabs.

 

Here is Time Spy results, paired with i7-4900MQ:

 

 

Conclusion

The main downside is the card gets pretty hot at load, reaching 85C. After a few minutes of gaming, the M4800 will kick into maximum jet engine fan speed. It's not much of a wonder why, the card is rated as 60W TDP and the HP Z2 Mini's GPU heatsink is probably a good 2 or 3x the size of the GPU heatsink in the M4800.

 

However, I did compare this thermal performance to my newer Precision 5540 that came with a T2000 built-in; and I noticed that laptop allows the GPU to go all the way up to 95C and thus the TimeSpy performance on that laptop throttled down to the 3100s. So, you might be able to get away with manually keeping your M4800 fans at Medium speed to keep the noise down at the cost of thermal throttling.

 

It would be nice to be able to lower the power limit of the card to perhaps turn it into something akin to T2000 Max-Q, but unfortunately the VBIOS locks everything down, and MSI Afterburner cannot change any settings at all of this card.

 

Therefore, the Quadro T1000 may be a better fit. I expect a T1000 from an HP Z2 Mini will work with all of the same steps as above, and stay below 70-75C according to a Youtube video I saw of someone putting a T1000 in his M4800. This HP T1000 may in the coming months be a far more accessible T1000 than the ADLINK ones that rarely pop up on Ebay.

 

I did not test any external outputs; it is likely the GPU won't work in dedicated GPU mode. With Optimus mode, internal display works as you can see in the photos.

This is quite a potent upgrade; games such as Doom Eternal run very well. This still isn't the end of the line for this laptop I suspect, as the RTX A2000 is being made in the MXM A form factor. In a few years those will probably be much more plentiful on the used market.

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, Trov said:

Hello, I wanted to share my success of upgrading an M4800's GPU to a Quadro T2000

 

Amazing...  Thank you for sharing.

This is additional confirmation that Turing GPUs work fine in these machines, if you can find one (and get it to fit).  Pascal GPUs tend to cause an ACPI-related BSOD at startup on M4800/M6800 and just hang up in the BIOS on M4700/M6700, unless you have a specific ES VBIOS that can be flashed on.

 

I'll share these old posts regarding doing an INF mod to get the NVIDIA driver to load cleanly, if you are so inclined.

https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-7530-precision-7730-owners-thread.820539/page-253.html#post-10937563

https://www.nbrchive.net/forum.notebookreview.com/threads/precision-m6700-gpu-upgrade-k5000m-to-m5000m.807061/page-3#post-10797664

[Reciever]

Interesting, I have a M6800 sitting in the garage that I have been slowly cleaning up. Might put the 4980hq back in it.

[Trov]

I figure an M6800 would cope with the thermals a lot better since the heatsinks have a lot more heatpipes going around.

[MELOCODI]

Where did you get it?

[aldarxt]

Hey @Trov I think you might be the first M4800 to score with a T2000 and G3 socket!! Go post your score on 3DMark!!!

[burntstew]

Impressive. Glad i decided to check in here i was under the impression that MXM A was functionally dead with the best gpu available being m2200's and the occasional 1050.

[mtx261]

Very interested in seeing if I can get this working as well. I managed to find a Quadro T2000 for $75 on eBay, so we'll see how it goes. I have two M4800s, so I'll see if I can compare the performance of them too.

[mtx261]

It worked! I did the exact modifications OP did to the MXM slot. Laptop booted, installed drivers, and even ran some games without issue. Interestingly, my T2000 reports as a T2000 Max-Q, a lower-powered variant with a 40 watt TDP (lower then the 60w R9 M270x it's replacing). Temps seemed quite good despite the cooler not being mounted properly at all (need to get nuts for cooler). The 4700MQ in my system seems to be a great match for it too.

 

You might get more power with an older gaming laptop GPU, but I think this provides plenty of performance while also being power efficient and not requiring any weird software hacks to get working.

 

Now I just need to put everything back together...