Corry

Damn, I had figured normally it would be like that, but seeing how clevo managed not to follow standards somehow, or set everything hidden via other mechanisms (Ive got a theory or two) plus your mods, I had hoped that perhaps to make other menu items show up, maybe you'd broken that feature (hoped anyhow lol). Still, any idea where on the MB it should go? I can figure out most of what I want to know without that on my own, but some things are specific to the board, so I'll still ask if you happen to know

Anyone know where the TPM chip is located on the MB? I'd like to see if my machine has it. If it does, Prema could we pretty pretty please get the options unhid for it? or, could you tell me how to unhide options? I'm considering writing a new setup app as a shell app to fix the issue if its something difficult siunce it looks like the HII spec isn't too difficult to work with.

I've managed to answer most of my questions. Short story is I just found rj's barebones machines. Given how my almost 5 years old hm seems to be playing the weakest link game, and I was considering spending a lot on a "newer" video card, the barebones seems to make more sense. Biggest question on my mind currently is my optical drive. I had thought it was in a caddy of some sort, but it's not. I assume since it was upgradable it's still somewhat modular so would my blu-ray burner from my hm transplant to either the 150 and/or the 157sm? I can pull the service manuals in a few days which may help, but my power brick roasted nearly taking the machine with it. Hadn't even gotten around to flashing prema's ic bios since I wanted the new brick before modifying the tdp numbers! Other than that, looks like the new 330w brick will still work, as will my recently replaced battery. Ram I knew would be fine (16 gb 1600mhz ddr3), and the Samsung 850 pro ssd will be much happier in an sm. The barebones comes with a 965m which although bottom of the line, is waaaay ahead of my 485m that's trying to die that inspired all this research! So if I'm reading it all right, the barebones 150 with a 4910 sans optical drive, and powering options is around $1300. The 157 is $100 more, but most seem to like the thermal design of the 157 better, and the 150sm looks almost like a twin of my 150hm. I was looking at $700 or so for a used 680m, or a massive fight/headache and $900 for a grx980m...and maybe failure. Add the $420 I paid for the 2960xm and subtract a bit for selling at a loss to sell quickly, and it comes close to balancing. Might even be able to sell the 150hm mb/proc (think its s 2700qm series) and make up some of the difference. Seems wiser than a "new" video card. Granted rj has some $450 options, maybe even $400, but I can't see paying half for a new old architecture card. So any way I look at it, with my maxing out the cpu and replacing the gpu I'm out $800ish. Just a small amount more and I have a much faster machine. Seems like the smart choice to me....someone want to talk me out of it? Is the optical drive going to be the thing that blows my cost up? Anyone want a 4.5ghz capable without voltage adjustments or tdp adjustments 2960xm processor?

I'll have to find the NBR thread later I guess using the NBR search tool as google didn't turn up much last I checked. The only REAL issue I have is wheter its literally just a connector/cable swap? If it is, and I suspect it is, then theres no problem at all. Otherwise, I'll have to get the details The GPU limitation I'm aware of. I would like to know more about it, as I know a tiny bit about bios but happen to know a professional BIOS programmer that also doesn't get on forums. I also offered to pay for prema's new motherboard so he can work on it. I think another forum member wants to do the same, so hopefully we can cover the financial aspect, then hopefully he'll just get the time aspect covered eventually. I didn't realize there was no additional airflow for those heat sinks people spoke of, so yeah, without them being outside the case, I can see how it wouldn't do anything but delay, so thanks for the heads up so I could stop wasting my time! I did a fair bit of work on it tonight. Its my only machine right now, so yeah, its back together. I did put the aluminum tape on, got the 2960XM in there, repasted everything with the gelid gc-extreme paste (seems to have the highest thermal conductivity of the pastes....liquid metals I may try later once I figure the heat sinks aren't likely to be coming off again for a while!) I also, somewhat controversially, lapped the GPU heatsink. Mine was pretty badly warped so I'm glad I went through with it. Even still, I know laptop heat sinks don't have a ton of spare material, so lapping can make things worse rather than better. In this case, I could see there was a fair amount of pressure offered by the mounting system, so I had some breathing room. The paste that was on there initially was an atrocity, so between those 2, GPU temps are way back down and the machine is running pretty smooth again. I didn't lap the CPU heatsink. 1, theres a non-conductive tape on it. It likely doesn't make contact with any of the surface mount components anyhow, but I'd rather make sure I replace it if I remove it. The bigger issue though is I'm not sure theres enough spare material there. If I decide to go for it, I may skip the roughing and just opt to smooth things out a bit more, make some larger areas of contact between any pits. Reason to do it is the guy that installed it had some really acidic fingers. I have a fingerprint across the heatsink that's etched in! I don't know if the grease on the persons finger was *that* acidic, or if there was a reaction with the TIM they installed. Regardless, its there, surely detracting somewhat from heat transfer, TIM makes up for it somewhat. I think if I opt to try though, I'll order a replacement and have it ready, have my micrometers out to periodically check the amount of material removed, and be ready to junk....or salvage the pipes/radiator and junk it. I should have taken pictures, but I was in a hurry. This is my only computer at the moment! (That's a whole other story though, and not interesting in a computer sort of way!)

I've seen lots of posts alluding to this, mentioning cable swaps and the like without any real details. I guess I'm late to the HM mod party. Sad because prices are on the rise. Anyhow, As I said in other threads, the GTX485M in mine is trying to die a slow painful death. Its beyond irritating! Heres hoping the newer cards can be forced to be compatible That said, I'm planning the whole slew of updates to my HM. Ordered a 2960XM from the bay. Will eventually need the updated firmware to go with it That said, in prep for everything, even if I end up having to go with an older card, power and cooling will both be issues it seems many have already solved, or at least "solved". The power supply issue seems to be people are grabbing certain model dell/clevo/etc power supplies and either swapping cables, connectors, or both. Some dells might need a wire tied to ground. (the small one on a big supply since they wouldn't waste a high current capacity wire on data communications!) Do I have that correct? Are those 4 pin power supplies really just using 2 of the 4 connectors? I'd have to measure the gauge of wire on my 180W supply before deciding to shove more power through it. I realize many have done so without issue, but if that pushes it beyond the AWG or ISO specs, I'd rather try and find the correct connector to solder on to the original wire if its true that theres only a max of 3 wires in those 4 pin supplies. I'd also prefer to use them since the strain relief on my cable bit the dust a long time ago and has been supported with a lot of electrical tape....to beyond the choke....to keep the strain off. I'd like something that looks like "new" again Second - Cooling- Both here and on NBR I've heard mention of using small heatsinks. The aluminum tape over the radiators is self explanatory, and even the one of adding more fins to the radiator....while serious props to him, not something I think Ill be trying to duplicate. At least not while my laptop is my only computer...What sort of heat sinks are people installing and where? How much effect does it have? I think I saw one more where someone added additional heat pipes to the heat spreader. That looks doable, but I couldn't figure out how the case supported it. I'm in the process of designing a 3D printer, so the thought has crossed my mind to 3D print a new case to support such mad scientist work That's a longer ways off in the future though....that's what happens when you decide to forget the kits and strike out on your own because you want to be difficult Can't even use the RAMPS board everyone else is using, so I have to do some of the electronics/firmware work. Anyhow, if there are threads to these, I cannot seem to search for them. Search on the forums doesn't seem to get "all the words" and matches "some of the words" so I either get threads about the p150hm and something else like GPUS, or threads about power supplies for other computers. Same thing with cooling. Spent most of the day trying to comb through it all, and found a lot of good info, like the info about putting the 2960XM in the machine on NBR from jaybee. (thanks for that!), but not the other stuff. Even in that thread which included some mentions of the power supply I couldn't find specifics! Maybe it just really is *that* simple, but since its a power supply, I want to make absolutely certain before I do anything that might blow my machine up! Thanks guys! Glad you all are here breathing new life into my old HM!

I went looking for the 3 board specifically and didn't turn up much, but then, I've also noticed rj seems to have everything, but his search function is terrible. Let me know how it works out. All the 680M's out there are used or "new other" whatever that's supposed to mean. I'd rather buy a new video card and spend the money on something up to date rather than used, questionable, and not as "good" lol. I'm not really a BIOS person myself, but I do know some people who are. They can't give access to anything proprietary, but might be able to help out if I beg enough. I'm a software engineer myself and not a java programmer. Low level stuff, assembly, C and C++ only. I've done some OS work, but nothing more complicated than getting into protected mode and bringing up USB....Well, almost bringing up USB....Couldn't get EHCI to finish initializing for some reason. UHCI/OHCI were simple, EHCI should have been similar, but weren't. Also ran into some strange ownership issue where if I set ownership, and warm booted the machine, nothing would work until a cold boot. Never could figure that out, and I had plenty of example code to work with! But that's all way off topic. Point is, if there's any sort of get up to speed quick on what has to be done document, I may be able to not only help contribute monetarily, not just in helping get some information if necessary, I might be able to directly contribute. I honestly don't even know where to begin, or what the actual issue is with using the newer cards, but I know sometimes explaining it is worse than actually doing the work. I'd show you examples of what I'm capable of, but my workplace has always been those secretive types of places in the US, so nothing gets published, so that's a no go (Believe me, I'm looking to get into commercial work....just gotta wait for the job market here to heat up some more.....that and get my stupid leg fixed after a bus illegally entered the carpool lane from 0 MPH 20' in front of me while I was going 52MPH...can't even drive a car now, walk much, sit much...so yeah, projects are what I need to keep my mind off the misery!)

Ugh, I would have edited my post....but I'm still too much of a newb here....oh well, here's to that post count!!! (ok, if you guys don't want to count it fine lol) Would this be the sort of thing you need? Clevo Laptop Parts :: P150HM/P170HM :: Motherboard for P15xHM/P170HM - R&J Technology, Clevo Barebone Notebook kits, Laptop and desktop system builder

What would it take to get you working on this? I assume its not just a cash problem? If it is, how much? Would it make it work for my 150HM? My 485M is going slowly. Fortunately very slowly. I was about to pull the trigger on a 680m until I read that post. As I said in my intro, I think I'm going to make a surface pro my next machine, but it won't have much for graphics....I mean the haswell graphics are certainly better than previous generations, but Intel isn't NVidia or AMD when it comes to graphics.....so I'd like to keep this monster up a while longer. Better graphics would go a long way towards that. The SSD has helped immensely. A CPU upgradw wouldn't hurt either so now that's my next search to run on here.....that and I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to do some of the cooling mods

New here, had no idea that there were people out there modding laptops like I see here. In a way, I guess that makes me glad my video card is trying to die a slow painful death. I had figured it was time for a new machine! I'll get to that aspect. First though, machine is a Clevo 1510HM, I ordered it just before the SATA bug became public then had to wait months for my machine to be shipped to me! I generally don't buy laptops that often....wow....just realized this thing is 5 years old....and that's about as long as I keep laptops! This thing is still kicking though! I bought it through AVA Direct, which I highly recommend you do not since for a cross ship of parts, not only do they put a hold on a debit card, but have a $50 non-refundable charge! That's ludicrous! My wireless card died after a while, still under warranty when I had that issue with them! It wasn't worth the $50 that they had a fee on! Anyhow, back to the story, this machine is awesome. I dumped 16GB of ram in it and a 512GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD, so I can dedicate 8 to a VM which runs almost non-stop. for one thing, I run autodesk inventor in the VM. No issues. Quite fast. Love it. Despite being 5 years old, this thing is in no need of replacement. My only complaint with the machine has been its weight. I don't take it with me much because its so heavy! I decided a while ago, despite the lack of graphics power, my next "laptop" (probably not popular here) would be the MS Surface Pro. I say not so popular since its not like its really moddable. But its light, its a haswell i7, 512GB SSD, great battery life, and to be honest, that stupid pen is awesome. I'm just not quite sure its up to everything my trusty P150HM is up to! So I don't really want to abandon it yet despite the impending Surface Pro purchase. Suddenly I find it might be possible to stick an NVidia 680M in here?! I found one on ebay 4GB clevo model, ready to pull the trigger despite the price. Decided I needed to search the forums for info on it, and blast, gotta register. And then what if I can't directly find the info I need? Might need to post! Gah! I'm a career lurker.....a leech! Not a poster Anyhow, that's me. So on to searching for info on replacing my dieing gtx485m... Oh, and by slow painful death, I mean today it BSOD'd, rebooted, screen started flickering in the top center, load a web browser, BSOD. Reboot, BSOD. Shut it off for a few hours and come back, and its ok. I've had other BSOD's on the NVidia driver as well throughout the life of the machine. Hard to claim warranty when it still works as well as it does for as long as it has! This machine owes me nothing! I just want it to run a bit longer, so I figure I saw some other stuff about processor upgrades, power supply upgrades made necessary by the other updgrades.....so I'm off to see if I can figure it out, or maybe beg someone to put it all in one place

Ha, I was about to say thanks, and count that as one post towards being able to download it, but I suspect my timing isn't wonderful considering the last 2 posts! Not sure I really "need" the manual, though. Was more curious to know what clevo thinks they know that I don't Had this thing apart a lot (P150HM, and only apart for nonsense reasons, no real issues until recently....video card is trying to fry. Can you guess why I registered here!? ) Anyhow, regardless of post counts, whether I need the manual, etc, thanks for fidning those and posting them. When I was less experienced with computers I know having the manual around always made me feel more comfortable taking them apart.....and even with great systems devised to keep screws in order for reinstall, sometimes you still get the machine back together and have a screw left over, so thanks!!!!