HP Envy 15t-k000 WiFi card/SSD Upgraded Parts Compatibility?

[hakjaved]

Hello,

I've had my trusty HP Envy 15t for about 10 years now and it's never let me down. Lately, however, I've become quite dissatisfied with its performance. Obviously, it is an old laptop (4th gen i7-4510u processor) so I can't expect too much from it, but I do not currently have the funds for a new laptop, either. 

I've been wanting to upgrade the storage to a SSD drive. I have disassembled the motherboard and seen that there seems to be an empty M.2 port on the backside of the motherboard. My question is, could I stick a 1TB Teamgroup MP-33 stick in there and call it a day, or would that storage be incompatible? I'm having trouble finding out how much memory the motherboard would support, and which kind of memory I should be looking for.

I would also like to upgrade the wifi/bluetooth combo adapter which is very sluggish, receives only 2.4Ghz signals, and is unreliable at best. My laptop came with the Broadband BCM43142 bgn adapter which is connected via 2 antennas (one says main, the other says aux). I've been looking up this adapter everywhere and I can't seem to figure out if it is 1x1 or 2x2. I was wanting to replace it with the latest MPE-AX300H wireless wifi/bluetooth combo adapter, however I can't figure out if it would be supported by my motherboard. My BIOS is Insyde F.43, if it helps. 

Photos are attached, hoping that they might be of help. Please help me breathe new life into this laptop. Thank you! 

 

[banhien]

@hakjaved 

It is a CTO machine, finding its specs is impossible now even very hard to find its manual. Please check the following discussion 4 years ago:

          https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/M2-SSD-install-not-recognized-...

Regards.

[hakjaved]

Thank you for your response. 

I appreciate you sharing that link with me, as I have not come across that despite all my research. Realizing that this is a very old machine, I have compiled a few maintenance and service guides which are for the HP Envy 15 Touchsmart series. There are many and I am not sure what the differences are between each of them. Forgive me, this is very confusing for me which is why I am posting here asking for your help. 

These are the manuals I was able to find during my research:

Maintenance and Service Guide HP 15 Laptop PC

c04091768.pdf (hp.com)

c04409752.pdf (hp.com)

I believe that all three of the above links pertain to the laptop I am attempting to upgrade. However, I have still not been able to find a solution to my WiFi/BT combo adapter problem. Is my current adapter 1x1 or 2x2? There are two antennas present, however I cannot be sure... I would like to know if the MPE-AX3000H 2x2 would be compatible with my system.

Regardless, thank you for your assistance with respect to the SSD problem. One quick follow-up question regarding that, do you think that a 1TB M.2 SSD would also function in that port or is there a hardware limit at 512GB? 

Thank you so much for your time. 

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, @hakjaved 

The Wi-Fi card your notebook currently has installed is 1 x 1 but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the type or number of antenna wires.

1 x 1 and 2 x 2 are the number of data streams up or down that the Wi-Fi card can support.

2 x 2 means double the throughput.

For example, the maximum throughput of your notebook's BCM card is 72 MBPS.

If the card were 2 x 2, the throughput would have been 144 MBPS.

I bought that same Wi-Fi 6E card for my HP 350 G1 notebook which has an Intel i3-4005U processor.

Works great.

I can't 100% guarantee it, but it should work in your notebook too.

The M.2 SATA drive capacities are normally just what HP offered in the model series, not the maximum capacity supported.

[hakjaved]

Hello @Paul_Tikkanen, Thank you so much for your prompt response! You have answered my questions wonderfully. 

I also appreciate your explanation regarding the WiFi card and its antennas vs. throughput. A lot of my research so far has actually led me to threads in which you've helped out others needing assistance just like myself, so I am honored to have you here in this thread.

While you're here, I do have another hardware related question that I thought I would ask you about. I am considering changing out the motherboard of my laptop for something more powerful, I quite like those  with the 4th gen i7 4710HQ and 4720HQ processors (k100 & k200). The motherboards look quite similar, except for the fact that my specific motherboard (i7 4510U) has the NVIDIA GT850M 4GB discrete graphics card and the motherboards with the quad core processors tend not to have discrete graphics cards. 

My question is, would you happen to know if that has been attempted by anyone so far? And do you know of any HP Envy 15 4th gen motherboards which would have a quad core CPU such as the 4710HQ/4720HQ as well as a NVIDIA discrete graphics card? I noticed that the installed heat pipes and heat dissipators tend to be different depending on whether or not such a graphics card is present, and the quad core motherboards tend to have double heat pipes running over the processor unit. I'm wondering if there was ever a unit which had both, the quad core CPU as well as a discrete graphics card and had a heatsink unit which properly covered both of them..

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Upgrading a motherboard is something I have never considered because of the complexity involved (at least for me).

Too much stuff to remove and the parts may be very hard to find and would most likely have to be used.

Unless you are skilled with that kind of work and you can find and obtain the parts you need at a low cost, I would opt for a newer notebook instead.

Chapter 3 of the service manual has the list of supported motherboards and heat sinks.

c04582332.pdf (hp.com)

Make sure you buy a motherboard with a -501 or -601 suffix because those motherboards have Windows product keys in the BIOS.

Then there will be one other issue you may run into...the model series came with W8.1.

If you are running W10 on your current notebook, you may not be able to upgrade to W10 for free again unless the motherboard you buy was a used one that had previously been upgraded to W10, and you won't know that until you try to install W10 on your notebook.

Microsoft closed the loophole in October of 2023 that allowed users to continue to get the free upgrade to W10 well after the free upgrade period was supposed to expire in July of 2016.

[hakjaved]

@Paul_Tikkanen

Thank you for sharing the link to the manual, I will be referencing it for more information. From a cursory look, it seems I have hit the motherlode in terms of the info I needed! As it turns out, apparently there were HP Envy models with quad core processors which also had discrete graphics cards. I've also learned that there was a model which came with the i7-4750HQ chip as well, the prospect of which is making me giddy lol.  The tip regarding which motherboard to purchase is also very helpful, and I greatly appreciate your passing on of the information to me and others who may need it. You're the best.

As for the problem regarding Windows keys/updates upon changing motherboards, I had never even considered that issue! Thank you for the heads up, I will definitely be keeping that in mind for the future. Unless I'm able to find some sort of workaround for the issue, that puts a damper on my plans of upgrading the motherboard (at least for now). You can bet I will definitely be in touch via this thread and update you once I have installed the 1TB M.2 SSD as well as the MPE-AX3000H WiFi/Bluetooth combo adapter. Will also let you know if I find any good W10 workarounds or awesome motherboard(s) on sale for this generation of HP Envy. 

One last thing of note, from a glance it seems like the HP Envy 17 motherboards might also be compatible with HP Envy 15s as they seem to be the same, more or less. The only difference I could find between the two was the M.2 port -- the Envy 15 has one, whereas the Envy 17 motherboards I have seen so far do not. 

In any case, I will be in touch! I am not designating a solution to this thread just yet until I post the next update so that this thread may stay open. After the update, you can bet that I will be designating your reply as the solution. 

Thanks again! 🙂

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime. 

Glad to have been of assistance. 

[hakjaved]

@Paul_Tikkanen

Houston, we have a problem.

While the WLAN adapter install went flawlessly (went from 8Mbps to 400Mbps+ download speeds overnight), unfortunately the same can't be said for the SSD. 

I've tried everything I could and just can't get Windows to recognize the SSD after inserting it into the port. I'm at my wit's end and am hoping that I haven't purchased the wrong SSD, even after all the research put into this decision. 

According to the following link, it seems like the SSD should work with the port, in theory: 

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Unknown-port-on-the-back-of-my...

And here is the link to the SSD I purchased off of Amazon:

TEAMGROUP MS30 1TB with SLC Cache 3D NAND TLC M.2 2280 SATA III 6Gb/s Internal Solid State Drive SSD... 

As you can see, I was careful not to select a NVMe SSD, and yet it still isn't being detected by Windows. I checked device manager, disk manager, HWiNFO and no dice anywhere. I'm attaching photos of the setup for hopefully more clarity.

 

 

On a side note, how ridiculous is it that they can't give a single screw along with the SSD when you purchase one. I had to use one of the screws that came with the WLAN adapter, thankfully had those lying around. It seems to hold the SSD in place pretty nicely, so I'm doubtful that that would be the issue...

In any case, this is frustrating. I'm truly hoping that perhaps there's something I overlooked. It goes without saying that I would truly appreciate your expert opinion with regards to my current predicament. 

Thank you.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Sorry that the M.2 SATA SSD isn't working.

Unfortunately, I don't know what the problem could be.

It would be unusual not to be able to install a larger capacity SSD.

Have you tried installing Windows on the SSD?

If not, see if that works.

If Windows can't find the drive during the installation, I suggest you return the drive and use a 2.5" SATA SSD instead.