Hello, I found this forum while searching for doing a GPU upgrade on my Acer V3-771g (Geforce GT650m) notebook.
For years I've been told that GPUs simply can't be changed on a notebook, but recently I've been searching more thoroughly and found out that notebooks that uses MXM card GPUs can be upgraded, however my notebook does not have this. So I started looking into buying a new computer, but seeing as I live in Norway, a decent gaming laptop costs way too much with my current salary. Then I started looking into the "impossible" as quoted from everywhere online regarding upgrading the GPU on a notebook.
During this time, my keyboard broke and I had to send the notebook off to get repaired. While waiting for a rental computer I decided to boot up my old Dell Latitude E5420, but to my dismay it was running slower than ever. I decided to do my first ever cooling paste replacement, and with this particular notebook you have access to the CPU and cooling unit directly from the bottom cover. The replacement was done in 10 minutes. I decided to do the same to my even older (2009) Acer Aspire 5737Z. I had previously tried to open this notebook but for the life of me I couldn't understand how to even get the thing open. After some youtube browsing I found a guide, and after 2 hours of tearing the laptop completely apart I got to the motherboard, flipped it around and saw the cooling unit. 5 minutes later the paste is replaced and I start putting everything back together. Then right before attaching the keyboard I saw a connector with no cables going into it, and I was sure I had forgotten something. Ripped it apart again, got none the wiser, then downloaded a service manual. This particular connector is for a peripheral I don't have on this computer (fingerprint scanner). Put everything back together, boot up, no errors, everything runs smoothly.
But what I found while inspecting the motherboard was that the graphics unit is visibly there, and I thought that it shouldn't be that impossible to actually replace it (on my 771g). This leads to me searching around and finding out that it is soldered on (and most people still considered it impossible to upgrade for this reason). Until I found a post from this forum that somebody indeed has succeeded in the thing 99% of the internet considers an impossiblity. After reading through that post a few times and having exchanged PMs with Khenglish (who have been very helpful), I found out that I in fact can upgrade my notebooks GPU to as high as Geforce GTX 960m.
So that's my backstory as to why I'm here. I have bought a solder station and preheater for this purpose, along with a lot of equipment like thermocoupler, polyimide tape, a bottle of >99% iso-propanol, flux, solder braid, GPU cores and some more. I have spent quite a lot of money, but all of this comes down to a total of 1/4 of the price of a notebook with 960m where I live.
When I have received everything I need to do this upgrade, I will make post on this forum detailing the entire process. I still have a few things to work out regarding vBIOS. Hopefully I will be successful in my attempt.