How to upgrade your laptop’s graphics card - smithweriatere

Pssst—there's a secluded that few in the PC play community know: You in reality can upgrade your big-oily gaming laptop's graphics.

But even the few who know it's possible, believe information technology to not be worth the time and exploit. Later all, who wants to abrade some obscure forum to find out whether blowing a wad of cash happening a GPU from eBay will work? So there's the underlying risk of having the used GPU amplify after a month of use.

Enter Eurocom, a Canadian laptop vendor that in February began offering one-stop-shop upgrade kits for consumers who desire to take the risk of performing the equivalent of open-philia surgery on a laptop computer. Even better, the kits cover competing vendors (as good as Eurocom itself, natch), much as Alienware. To find out how intimately these kits work and how the laptop rising slope process goes, PCWorld distinct to rise a laptop and run off the numbers.

eurocom 980m card — You probably can rising slope your old play laptop's art circuit board, but is it worth it?

Temper your expectations

First, before you get excessively excited thought you can have some other a few years out of your four-poundin, deep-eyed-and-light gaming laptop computer sporty by swapping dead the GPU, you probably rump't.

Most of the upgrades available from Eurocom are aimed at the Big Berthas of laptop gaming that push the definition of movable. It's about as though the rules forbade whatsoever laptop weighing less than vii pounds from being upgraded.

That's because these upgrade options are usually only for big laptops made by the manufacturing business Clevo. Clevo's not the only manufacturer, of course, but it's the most common.

The good news program is that even if your laptop is from a small boutique gaming company, coloured red and has a custom keyboard on it, in that location's actually a good opportunity information technology was made by Clevo, which presses dozens of different designs for dozens of different PC makers.

The laptop I'm using for the rising slope is a Eurocom P150EM Racer. It's generically famed as the Clevo P150EM. Inside is an Ivy Span quad-core Core i7-3740QM, 8GB of DDR3 and a Seagate hyrid SSD on with a GeForce 675MX.

The GeForce 675MX itself is a Kepler-based GPU with 960 CUDA cores. It's non a bad itsy-bitsy card. (Note that Nvidia oversubscribed ii different GPUs with the mold number GeForce 675MX. The older one was Femtometer-supported and far slower.) The 675MX by itself is even so usable if you want to turn fine-tune settings, simply I'd had enough of turning settings down. Indeed I had Eurocom loan us its GeForce GTX 980M kit, grabbed my screwdrivers and cranked up Lil's John's Turn Down For What? Kidding.

The de facto upgrade

The physical portion of the upgrade is fairly unequivocal, but there are some things you should tick before you continue.

First, browse Eurocom's VGA showroom to hear whether the company sells a GPU for your laptop. Eurocom supports Clevo units to boot to Alienware units. Once you find a GPU for your laptop, scan the fine print. You may need a certain-level BIOS connected the laptop for it to work, and you may as wel need a certain-flush power brick too. This may cost enough to deter some from doing so.

For the undaunted, with BIOS updated, it's now time to uninstall the Nvidia drivers on the laptop for the GeForce GTX 675MX visiting card. You so business leader down, unplug and pull the stamp battery out. Eurocom warns you should also take the customary ESD precautions, and wear a grounding strap. You can a alive high-risk life we do and righteous have it off without any of that, merely at least discharge any built-up static electricity in your body, and second thought doing it on the retro shag carpet you just installed happening a low-growing-humidity day.

On the P150EM, remove four screws and slide off the bottom cover. In that respect's other doorway that covers the 2.5-in force back also. If this were a pear-shaped upgrade, I might ditch the disc drive for an SSD, or at to the lowest degree also slot in an mSATA SSD into the available slot to improve my drive memory access times. With just the main hatch open though, you have riddled access to the GPU and CPU.

eurocom p150em guts — The "Eurocom" P150EM is actually built by Clevo, which means the GPU acclivity for information technology should fit many an other laptops too.

What about the CPU?

Much to Intel's agitation, a lot of gamers really don't motive to stay with the quickest CPU if "all" they do is play games. If you're concerned about bombardment life or do a great deal of video encoding/editing, so yes, you might need the latest and superior CPU. The give the P150EM is quite the right way: The quad-core Ivy Bridge has a base clock speed of 2.7GHz and will Turbo Supercharge to 3.7GHz.

Haswell is certainly a better CPU, but aboveboard, Ivy Bridge ease has plenty of life in it. Present's the cogent evidence you put on't need to upgrade the Mainframe in that aging war horse cavalry below. In immaculate mult-threaded carrying into action, the Core i7-4720HQ is about the same speed as the old Ivy Bridge Processor in the EuroCom P150EM.

originpc eon15x handbrake encode — In vivid performance, the quad-core Ivy Bridge microchip is just as fast as a similarly priced Haswell musculus quadriceps femoris-core chip.

Thusly precisely leave information technology unequalled. Necessitate a project? Add an MSATA drive or more RAM to the P150EM.

The GPU matters more in gaming

I won't say the same for the GeForce GTX 675MX. It's a good part, but information technology's non a GeForce GTX 980M. Even better, the GeForce GTX 980M upgrade kit features an 8GB frame buffer. You probably won't need all that RAMm just when you start turning up features in GTA V and watch it consume more and more Random access memory, you'ray glad you're not "stuck" with 2GB of RAM.

eurocom gpu heatsink — You'll need a couple of itsy-bitsy-head Philips screwdrivers to remove the inflame pipe from the GPU.

Remove the heat pipes

To access the GPU, you have to remove three screws from the heating plant pipe on the GPU core, and another threesome happening the heating pipe connected the voltage regulators and the RAM. Heat pipes, for those who put on't have intercourse, are cooling mechanisms that wick heat out where it can atomic number 4 expelled by blowing chilly air through IT.

Formerly all seven screws are removed from the two heatpipes, you use the paper tabs on the heatpipes to pull them off mildly . The heatpipes may actually be stuck to the GPU from the melted thermic glue, so don't be afraid if it doesn't budge. At the same time, use common sense on how a good deal force to use to remove it. Softly rocking it around a bit may too help go bad the seal of the thermic paste.

eurocom upgrade2 — Here's what the P150EM looks alike with the upgraded GeForce GTX 980M mounted.

With both heat pipes moved, you now have access to the MXM module. Two hex-shaped nuts that also must be removed. You can use a half-size box turn, crescent wring, pair of pair of pliers or flathead screwdriver to break them relax. Once loose, back both off victimisation your fingers. The module will not gently rock up at an angle and out of the slot. Information technology's like a giant RAM module almost in the way information technology slips into the slot.

eurocom kit — The Eurocom kit comes with screws, mounts and parvenue inflame pipes to catch the latest GPU you bought.

The kit for our unit included the MXM mental faculty or Mobile PCI Utter Module, ii heat pipes, screws and offsets for the GPU. Virtually of the screws and offsets looked the same, but I terminated up using the New ones to be safe. The high temperature pipes looked a trifle different, so I definite to use the new ones, assuming they were mated to the 980M GPU.

Installing the new 980M card is a bit like a tur piece of Wa: You slide the edge connector parting manner into the slot and then push it a little to make a point it's fully seated while tilting it down.

Now introduce the 2 hex kooky you previously removed and torque them down with a flathead screw number one wood just a tiny bit ,soh they don't pull out. Establis the heat pipes, making sure to avoid the typical rookie move of leaving the protective elastic hatch on the outpouring paste.

eurocom gpu heatsink2 — The graphics upgrade kit I received from Eurocom comes with a fountain pad practical to the heat pipe. Just make sure to avoid rookie mistake #14: Remember to clout off the protective plastic sheet off.

Use carefulness when installing the GPU heat pipe

When attaching the heat pipe that goes happening the GPU core itself, don't get also crazy. Unlike a CPU, which has an integrated heat broadcaster to protect it, the GPU core is directly exposed for maximum cooling. Chipping a trifle off the edge past pressing kill excessively hard on that will destroy it. The heat spreader uses fairly small screws, so it's tougher to scathe the core itself. Exercise caution at this stage.

With everything installed, commit the bottom plow backmost on. Instal the battery and plug it in and power dormy. If you did it entirely correctly, IT should power up and boot into Windows. However, remember that in most laptops, at that place's integrated graphics, and it will boot to the IGP before exploitation the discrete graphics menu. You'atomic number 75 non quite in the clear yet.

At first when I did the upgrade, I could use the "quotation" drivers from Nvidia's website. But those drivers would not recognize the new GPU and refused to install. After extraordinary head-scratch, I contacted Eurocom. And yes, that's another reason why buying from Eurocom rather than put-upon on eBay helps—I can turn of events to them for advice.

No reference drivers

It turns unsuccessful reference drivers don't cultivate with the new GPU. Nvidia's drivers actually hindrance computer hardware signatures ahead allowing installs. Drivers, from here on kayoed, can only equal obtained from Eurocom. The good intelligence is if Eurocom goes kaput, there is a lively community of interests which mods the drivers to make for. Standing, you don't to go hunting for drivers. Because timeliness is extremely important to gamers, I asked Eurocom how lasting IT takes to unloose drivers after Nvidia does. The company said pretty fast. How fast?The example I was inclined was that it took an employee three years to update Nvidia drivers for 64 separate cards. That's beautiful quick.

Once I had the proper drivers installed, it was time to check the card to visit if I had installed it correctly. To do that I victimized Ungine 4.0. This synthetic benchmark wish put a heavy cargo on the GPU while also displaying its temperature during examination. Eurocom technical school documentation said I should see 90c to 95c for IT to be normal. Mine were a trifle high, and then I unsealed up the unit and torqued down the GPU on the heat just a tad more. I closed her back aweigh and tested again and my temps had dropped down to the mid- to intoxicated 80s—within the normal operating range according to Eurocom.

Performance-testing my upgrade

To see how it performs, I compared benchmarks I took before and after the GPU swap-unconscious and threw in the Line EON15-X laptop with GeForce GTX 980M to see if all was good. It was. There was a slight performance drop, but that could equal from the faster CPU in the Beginning as well as a somewhat better cooling solution, as it's a newer laptop computer. The improvement in this synthetic is huge over the original GeForce GTX 675MX though.

eurocom p150em 3dmarkextremeoverall — For comparing, here's Origin's EON15-X with GeForce GTX 980M to see if we give up much performance on the upgraded P150EM. The answer is nope.

In an actual unfit I saw healthy bumps, too. With the original GeForce GTX 675MX, Tomb Raider set to Ultimate tone is out of the head at 1920×1080 resolution. With the GeForce GTX 980M in piazza, I saw 74 FPS set to Ultimate. That's above the wizardly telephone number of 60 fps for all shooters. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor assail Ultra sits down at 32 fps on the original GPU. With the new unity I was playing at 65 fps. I also ran Grand Theft Auto: V earlier and after and saw it go from unplayable (with almost everything turned to maximum) to playable. GTA V does tend to hammer GPUs depending along the settings. I motivated to run more GTA V tests, but a DRM issue with the game put a stop to that. Why Rockstar? Wherefore?!?

eurocom p150em tombraider ultimate 19x10 — 980.The Eurocom P150EM with GeForce GTX 980M upgrade kit installed smokes the original GeForce GTX 675MX in Tomb Raider set to Ultimate.

Doing the math

The results weren't surprising. It's an awing performance jump releas from a GeForce GTX 675MX to a GeForce GTX 980M and no unitary can argue with that. What they'll reason with is whether it makes sense. The upgrade kit out from Eurocom costs $980. Sanctified kryptonite! Mobile GPUs have never been as cheap as their screen background counterparts (a retail desktop GPU is $600), but that's still a righteous lump of change.

Reckon about the options. If the main problem was non wanting to compromise on modern games because the old GPU was inadequate, the secondary is buying a revolutionary laptop. To go into a laptop with a GeForce GTX 980M-class nontextual matter card, you have to spend at least $2,000. And so from a certain point of survey, disbursal $1,000 to arrest state-of-the-art performance saves you $1,000.

In that respect's also the argument that you could vindicatory sell the laptop to fund a new one, but I priced that out: You'd be lucky to sell this finical time of origin laptop computer for $700. That hush means $1,300 to get its replacing.

Another option: Sell the victimized GPU, too. While exploited desktops GPUs from 2012 don't hold value, mobile ones obviously do. I've seen the GeForce GTX 675MX sell online for $300–not bad.

Combined final thing to consider: Eurocom does warrant the GPU for six months of enjoyment. The society won't assistance you if your ham-fisted slipway bust your laptop doing the upgrade, but if it the GPU melts itself in three months, Eurocom says information technology's covered.

We know most people aren't ever going to collapse their laptop. Even off with its altissimo price and risks, however, there's some justification for doing a graphics upgrade on a laptop if you lack the performance and are willing to do the turn.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/427542/how-to-upgrade-graphics-in-a-laptop.html

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