Does my damaged motherboard p/n 940820-001 have physically compatible alternatives?

[DavidBristol]

I have an Envy 17-ae103na Intel Core i7-8850U 1.8GHz s/n 5CG74514KS. I've spilt tea into the LHS of the vent and the screen is now blank (although power light is on and I can hear fan).  I guess I've damaged the motherboard, but I can't find a replacement (p/n 940820-001) in the UK so I wonder if there are alternatives that would be compatible and easier to source.

[Jupitero]

Hello.

The Maintenance and Service Guide for ENVY 17m p.50 lists all the spare part numbers for all system boards. (=motherboards)

The -601 models have a Windows 10 license so replacing your current model with that should automatically activate the Windows license. The -001 models do not have Windows license which is fine if you have a separate Windows license or are using non-Windows operating system.

[DavidBristol]

The service manual will be useful but I'm still not entirely clear about compatibility.  For instance, the system board Discrete graphics 940MX 4 GB i7-7500U (925397-001) is 4 GB, like mine, but is 7500U slower than 8550U?

Also would graphics component 940MX be capable of driving my screen?

It's been nearly seven years since I bought the laptop so I'm not clear about the Windows situation - I guess my licence resides on my hard drive.

[resistencia]

Hi @DavidBristol 

Any of these motherboards can be used, now if you want to use original  may want to buy on Ebay, remember the 601 motherboards have the license stored in the BIOS if you have a 001 it is because you purchased  the license separately.

940820-001 For HP ENVY 17-AE Motherboard i7-8550U MX150 4GB | eBay

[Jupitero]

Hi,

The 7200U and 7500U are Intel's 7th generation laptop CPU's with 2 processor cores.

The 8250U and 8550U are Intel's 8th generation laptop CPU's and have 4 cores.

Newer generation CPU's are also faster and in general the bigger model number the faster they are.

Your 8550U was the top CPU model for this ENVY 17m line of laptops. Feel free to google for example "8550U vs 7500U" to find benchmarks showing the difference of the processors in different usage patterns. The 7th gen CPU's are perfectly suitable for office work. If you play 3D games then I'd expect them to be noticeably slower.

A big difference between 7th and 8th generation Intel CPU's for many end users is that Microsoft supports only 8th gen CPU's (and later) with Windows 11. In practise the 7th gen CPU's will still work but in the future Microsoft may make Windows 11 permanently incompatible.

Similarly the Nvidia MX150 is a successor to the Nvidia 940MX. Both can drive your screen, they only differ in raw performance - the MX150 is faster. The amount of memory in the GPU matters only with games really. In office work the 940MX is perfectly fine.

Re: Windows license - Windows requires a license. All HP laptops that come with Windows preinstalled have the Windows license "tattooed" onto the system board. Windows will automatically find it and activate itself. This is the case with the -601 system board models. If you opt for a -001 model then your Windows will likely revert to unactivated state. In that case Windows will ask for a license key which can be bought for bit over £100.

[DavidBristol · Accepted solution]

Many thanks for taking the trouble to answer so completely.