HP Zbook 15 GPU upgrade

[Kryptozoolog]

Hi!

I've got Zbook 15 (the first generation, I guess) with Intel i7 4700mq processor and nVidia Quadro k1100m.

I use this laptop to play games and this GPU is useless for me with other powerful details. 

I asked one service centre and they said that I can upgrade my GPU only in Quadro series or with very difficult process of bios flashing to some geForce GPUs. 

I also found some answers (but I'm not sure if they suitable for my laptop) about upgrading even to geForce 1050 or something like that.

I would like to ask you:

1. Can I upgrade my GPU to something from GeForce serie (like GTX660 or better) and how to do this?

2. Which models of nVidia Quadro serie I can put into my laptop? 

I know that power supply is important in this so I attached photo with its characteristics.

P.S. I ain't got no money to buy a new gaming laptop, it's enough to upgrade this GPU.

Thank you all for help!

[Huffer]

In this case the power supply is not very important. You have a 120w adapter which will drive any kind of video card you can put in there. Your laptop is a mobile workstation it is not designed for gaming. nVidia Quadro cards are engineering cards; they are similar to gaming, consumer video cards but optimized for things like CAD work and not for gaming. They can run some games however. I have the 3rd gen 15 inch Zbook and I actually bought it with just the Intel video and added an MXM video card and a new heatsink to support it. HP wanted like $1300 for the video card and heatsink and I found them on eBay for like $350-400 and felt fortunate. You can probably install a GeForce MXM card but you are correct that you may need to flash the system BIOS or perhaps the video BIOS of the video card to get it to work. The point is this is not easy or inexpensive to do. MXM laptop video cards are not industry standard plug and play things. It takes some money and some tech skills and some research to do this. 

Your laptop does natively support a Quadro K2100M video card:

NVIDIA Quadro K2100M NVIDIA N15P-Q3 graphics board 734277-001

This would be a plug and play upgrade. Your old heatsink would work and all you have to do is swap video cards. 

$119 on eBay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/For-HP-734277-001-NVIDIA-Quadro-K2100M-2GB-N15P-Q3-A1-MXM-3-0-LAPTOP-VIDEO-...

Your Service Manual

However, this is not going to be a huge upgrade. It would provide some improvement to gaming just not huge. You want to install a GeForce card. If you want to pursue that I would be happy to work with you and find what will work and how to get it working. Post back with any more questions. 

[Kryptozoolog]

Thank you very much for your answer.

Yes, now I know this laptop isn't designed for games and it was my biggest mistake to buy it. But I need to solve it, because I can't buy a new one.

I checked about k2100m and it's not really much better than mine. I really need something better.

I've found one guy on youtube who upgrade this laptop. He managed to use M2000M in this laptop with k610m heat sink. But he didn't write how he did it. 

He also use awesome GTX965M GPU and uploaded vbios file and wrote that hybrid graphogr must be enabled.

I prefer to have GTX965M but I would like to have anything better than my current GPU.

This guy's videos:

M2000M test - https://youtu.be/5BShVv5Je2Y

GTX965M with vbios file in description - https://youtu.be/rQ4JjI4juVk

[Kryptozoolog]

Hi!   Do you know if I need to flash bios to upgrade to Quadro m2000m?

[Huffer]

My G3 natively supports the M2000M but your first gen wants a K2100M and they are different video cards. I am sure it would not hurt the effort to flash the BIOS to the latest version but you may also need to flash the video BIOS on the MXM video card. That is stored in an eeprom chip on the video card and is very hard to do, requiring special equipment. And you have to find some vbios to use in the flash. 

[TRANTOR1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRMwQAftRzA

All is possible!!!

No bios flash required!

The card is original of  HP (zbookG3)!

The TXT device file in the driver is modified!

Installed in unsigned driver mode!

[Huffer]

That is a G2 model and we were discussing a G0 model so its nice but does not really speak to the issue at hand. 

[TRANTOR1]

They are almost same!

[Huffer]

horseshoes and hand grenades not electronics