Possible GPU upgrade for Precision M4600

Hello!

So after reading these threads over multiple times and getting the upgrade bug I ordered a used M5100 from ebay.

Last night I got my card in the mail and happily set about installing it. I also bought new thermal paste and applied it on both the gpu and cpu as I already had it out.

Upon booting I had some weirdness happen; at first it wouldn't boot. I heard a loud click and then nothing. Then after trying to start it up again it went into bios mode and let me eventually boot into Windows. Installed crimson drivers, everything going to plan!

Then I notice my I7 2640m is only running at 2548 or so mhz and closing the lid after waking up would limit it to 798 mhz. So I figure I probably need to turn off speed step and turbo boost on bios as I read it can up the gpu core as well and I thought it might not be compatible. So I turn off the laptop to enter bios and lo and behold it doesn't want to turn back on. Confused I look up online what happened as it the new card was running perfectly fine, and found a source suggesting to remove wifi card clips and clock battery and try again. So I did and then the computer turns on but loud click like the first time and powers on the second attempt. While it is booting after the bios screen and before the windows logo screen, I have a weird black screen with one green line/artifacts pop up.

I turned off speed step and left turbo boost on Bios and went about seeing if FIFA 18 works as that was main motivation for upgrading the gpu as the 1000m quadro wouldn't even let me boot it up. And it worked, very well but a bit laggy on auto settings. So I downloaded throttlestop and then the cpu was running better than it did before as I never managed to trigger turbo boost before and I was blown away how well FIFA was running. I figured there might be throttling but the temperatures on the cpu reached 81 celsius max on Windows 7 experience quality checker and max 65 celsius while running FIFA so I don't think I was reaching max temps.

So I figured I'd test it again, this time just restarting the laptop and seeing if it would start back up. To my surprise it does, passes bios load fine, windows logo fine, lets me play Fortnite just fine. So then I try shutting it off again and seeing if the problem magically solved its self. Needless to say it didn't, and now my laptop wont turn on. I left it over night and in the morning it still doesn't want to. I didn't have time this morning to take the battery from the motherboard out and check but I'm fairly sure that would fix the problem.

My question is; did i screw up the thermal paste (it was my first time applying it and who knows) and it's causing some sort of voltage trigger? Or is it the graphics card throwing the system for a loop and causing the mobo to go into safe mode and not start up? I'm kinda at a loss and would love to be able to shut my laptop down sometimes without having to take apart the back cover and resetting it everytime.

edit: forgot to mention bought laptop with 130 W adapter, could that cause my start up problem?

 

Do you have the latest BIOS? At least for my M4800, one or two of the updates in the last couple of years deal with various boot / LCD issues.

 

@roumaniankid

First of all, the reason your CPU throttles is the 130W power supply. For your setup it should be more than enough and the only free way prevent system from throttle is to use ThrottleStop.

Secondly, I highly recommend you to set up fan control (a guide in my signature, also I can share my optimal configs for SpeedFan utility), coz M4600's EC can't read GPU temps so there is no proper fan control from the hardware side.

About GPU issue. Seems like you need to clean the MXM pins on your card with alcohol and/or super clean piece of cloth. But before putting it back to the lap, try to power the lap on without MXM card - you should be able to boot with integrated graphics. Also, if there was some power short cut due to MXM, you should detach PSU from laptop and AC outlet and remove the battery and hold the power button for 30 sec.

P.S. Your lap is only boot from 2nd attempt coz usually after BIOS reset or MXM upgrade or switch you laptop "reconfiguring" some parameters - I don't recommend to manually stop this process coz its automated.

 

For CPU control I would use ThrottleStop, but you've got that already now. But the AC Adapter is a little on the small side for your system I think. I had the 150w and would hit the wall especially after overclocking the m5100.

Im not aware of any sleep/wake issues but never hurts to update the BIOS to the latest available.

The click, was it more of a pop or a sound from the system itself? If the latter, its just the system restarting to apply the stock BIOS configuration.

Like Valuxin stated, you can take out the GPU and boot with integrated, integrated is only disabled with AMD GPU since Enduro is not supported on the m4600.

 

You guys are amazing!

I believe I have A16 bios but ill try and look for a newer revision and see if that fixes my problem as its kind of a headache to take apart the whole laptop again so I'll go the path of least resistance.

Would it be any issue with using ThrottleStop and keeping the 130w adapter, can I ruin any components? I rarely run off battery/AC so I don't necessarily mind frying the adapter as long as it keeps giving me power.

So on Hardware Monitor or something like that it gives me a value for the GPU specifically for the Radeon unit, is that inaccurate or false? I've noticed that it goes up and down and maxes around 50/60 degrees celsius which I credited to my thermal paste but if it's lying to me I'll definitely look into managing the fan profiles.

@valuxin I'll definitely try cleaning and reseating the GPU if the bios update doesn't work! Thank you for the suggestion

@TheReciever It was more like a pop, or the sound the computer makes if you were to hold down the power button (which I didn't do, just shut down from windows.) It was kind of a scary sound but everything worked better than I expected so I doubt anything is fried, fingers crossed.

I'll update more when I get home from work, thanks a lot again!

 

In my experience the PC would crash or just shut down when the power supply was lacking. You can always limit the package power though.

50/60C is normal, I hit about 71-74C but thats because I am applying 1.150v which is above stock voltage. 1.2v and I think I was reaching some chip degradation.

Interesting sound, mine makes a last cry for its life when I shut it down like that lol. Generally though when ever it makes that noise its because something adverse was happening in the background that was affecting behavior during gaming. Restarting always cleared this up, though the PC would act like it cant find the boot drive (still does at times) after this, a few reboots would clear this up.

Forcing a shut down that way will not create any adverse effects on the system.

 

@roumaniankid

130W should be enough for your system: your CPU is 45W max in turbo and GPU is 55W max when casual OC is applied + 8W max for RAM + 12-15W for chipsets and HDDs and + 7W for the screen = 130W on full load with 4 DIMMs and 2 HDDs. It should be fine. But yeah, if you'll see some cheap 180w PSU - it's better to buy one.

About GPU temps - software tools are showing real temp. The problem is that motherboard itself (all credits for system BIOS) can't monitor anything from AMD but M5950. I'm trying to say that all your fans are CPU depended: no load on CPU - no cooling for GPU even if it's 90C.

 

That makes sense! I'll keep an eye on it and if it gets too high I'll be sure to use your guide thank you!

Any updates on the better video cards or still waiting on shipments? I saw a gtx 770m on ebay but I couldn't justify spending $200 on a card I wasn't sure would work.

 

@roumaniankid
Anything newer than Fermi will not work as they should. I've tried some Kepler and Maxwell cards - they will work only under Windows XP. Also, 770m is MXM 3.0b and it won't fit unless you remove top ram slots and upgrade the cooling.

 

There should be some efficiency as well though I dont know how efficient it is, assuming 80% it should allow it to function correctly but who knows.

GTX 770m is 3.0b and this laptop can only accept 3.0A. The known best working cards are the M5100 and W1570m. We are waiting for good news from Valuxin on if the RX 560 works correctly (no pressure) but otherwise the previous mentioned GPU's are the current limits of the platform. Sadly, the 965m doesnt work on the m4600, the m4700 and m4800 are another thing entirely though.

There just isnt much interest in MXM3.0A since typically they just use BGA at that level.