Motherboard Upgrade for AIO. Is it feasible?

[Mando]

47 minutes ago, DevTech said:

 

 

Run the Windows 10 Performance Monitor and see where the slowdown is...

 

hes backported to XP mate  lets not start that off again heheh 

[DevTech]

4 minutes ago, Mando said:

hes backported to XP mate  lets not start that off again heheh 

Well, how on earth is he going to install a modern motherboard and expect "ancient crap no drivers for modern stuff XP" to work?

 

Should we be considering using the Babbage Difference Engine?

 

 

[The Evil Overlord]

You could always retrofit a RPI

Doubt you'd notice the difference being as you'd be happier running it on xp, at your own peril.

[DevTech]

6 minutes ago, The Evil Overlord said:

You could always retrofit a RPI

Doubt you'd notice the difference being as you'd be happier running it on xp, at your own peril.

Or a Pi running a Babbage emulator programmed by a Zombie version of the Countess of Lovelace?

 

[Mando]

1 hour ago, DevTech said:

Well, how on earth is he going to install a modern motherboard and expect "ancient crap no drivers for modern stuff XP" to work?

 

Should we be considering using the Babbage Difference Engine?

 

 

its a bit like beetlejuice, dont say it 3 times...please!

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 9/11/2017 at 11:09 AM, ShadeOfBlue said:

There is nothing you can do with that board. It is proprietary and specific to that model PC. Everything about it -- from the port types and locations, to the board shape and mounting holes -- are unique. If you are running Windows, you would also need to buy a new license if you changed to a different motherboard. And there are other reasons you can't/shouldn't do that as well. But those are enough.

QFT an OEM license can't be transferred, unless it is actually retail and you bought it separate to the AIO.

[CrashG]

2 hours ago, saurabhdua said:

Are you aware of any official 'Exchange schemes' relevant to HP variants from the Company side? Its a 3-year old Model. Can I "Upgrade" via exchange through their official outlets/franchisee?

No, I am not aware of anything like that. Order online or your local computer shop then sell the old one on ebay/craigslist or something. If you are going to spend money, put it towards a decent computer and don't waste it on your current one.

[DevTech]

55 minutes ago, Steven P. said:

QFT an OEM license can't be transferred, unless it is actually retail and you bought it separate to the AIO.

He can repair or upgrade the computer, he just can't use the license on another computer,

 

If he showed the sales receipt for a new motherboard to upgrade that computer to Microsoft Support, they would activate it.

 

See Mando's post above. There is no "transfer" of license going on (unless the old motherboard was restored to use at some other location.)

 

This is the way that Microsoft is currently interpreting things.

 

(I have been told that in some other thread, the OP said he wants to use XP which makes the concept of an "upgrade" into an exercise in futility anyways)

 

 

 

[Astra.Xtreme]

You "could" probably find a way to mod a standard PC mobo in there and figure out how to splice into the power supply, but the biggest problem would be how to fit the CPU cooler in there.  I'm guessing it wouldn't fit and the back cover of the PC would have to be left off.  There could be other hurdles such as how to get the screen connected to it.  I can't imagine it's a simple HDMI or DVI connector, so that would be an even bigger challenge.

 

My suggestion would be to cut your loses and build a new PC.  You could probably salvage the RAM and HDD from the current PC to save a little money up front.

If you buy used components from Ebay (or somewhere similar), you'll also be able to save a lot of money.

[Mando]

2 hours ago, Steven P. said:

QFT an OEM license can't be transferred, unless it is actually retail and you bought it separate to the AIO.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/replacing-motherboard-on-system-running-oem/9aed1ae6-99f9-477a-940b-d8d9003f9246?auth=1

 

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-tweaks-activation-rules-for-the-windows-10-anniversary-update/

 

 

if the motherboard has failed and like for like replacement cannot be obtained, Microsoft will allow a reset of activation status on an OEM COA on a different motherboard (heck they dont even check that all other components to tally up to the activation limit have been changed or not), its conflicting to what the standard EULA states but the automated activation system allows it, the smart phone activation app allows it and the Microsoft activation contacts on their phone numbers will reset it to the point of it being the first time activation for that OEM COA

 

All they ask is "How many PCs is this key installed on?" You state 1 and add that the motherboard has died and a like for like replacement cannot be obtained, and they are happy to clear the activation flags on that Installation ID generated from the COA there and then. I have checked this with various Microsoft representatives & my VLSC contacts i purchased VLKS with numerous time sin the last decade.

 

To them that is not a licence transfer (although technically it is) they assume the COA is attached to the same case and the other components not a part of the motherboard have not changed. its a bit like the work around of purchasing an OEM key when you are not a registered system builder, as long as you buy it with a bit of qualifying hardware (hdd, optical drive and even ram sticks)

 

as stated before ive done it on numerous occasions since windows XP & Windows 7 in a professional capacity in the last decade, with clarification from Microsoft employees as it being permitted. It also works with digital entitlement OEM Windows 10  

[LaP]

If you gonna replace the MB at this point you should salvage what you can (RAM maybe PSU) and build it in a brand new case. These HP case are awful most of the times.

[The Evil Overlord]

17 minutes ago, LaP said:

If you gonna replace the MB at this point you should salvage what you can (RAM maybe PSU) and build it in a brand new case. These HP case are awful most of the times.

If memory serves, I believe it's one of those all on one touch screen units. 

[saurabhdua]

On 12/09/2017 at 3:27 PM, DevTech said:

Run the Windows 10 Performance Monitor and see where the slowdown is...

Hello!

Iam very much on Win 10. Thanks for avoiding prejudices to a large extent. :-)

Please guide me on how to use & what to showcase from W 10 Performance Monitor?

Thank you.

[saurabhdua]

Thank you to all for all the efforts put in thus far!

Lastly, please help enumerate the Check-list or various Safeguards should be applied while shopping PC/Laptop/AIO "Online" or via a "Physical retail outlet" ?

These days every Model, every variant out there flaunts 4GB RAM, 1 TB Hard-drive & some Generation of Intel processor !

What's the single-stop "Key differentiator" to spot the Best amongst the Rest ?????

They don't sport WEI (Windows Experience Index) Upfront nor do they roll eyeballs via some Standard Benchmarking Score..!..so how come a Common-Man spot the difference b/w various variants? 

Common-sense make you believe to buy some economical variant because price of Hardware must have plummeted over these years!

& thus one end up in buying PC with 2GB DDR III RAM, 500 GB Hard-Disk & (must be Good) kind of AMD Processor!

That's how I calculated & that's how I shortlisted & that's how I purchased!

What's the "empowerment" here for a Common-buyer???

Please reveal an Insight.

Thank you.

[DevTech]

2 hours ago, saurabhdua said:

Thank you to all for all the efforts put in thus far!

Lastly, please help enumerate the Check-list or various Safeguards should be applied while shopping PC/Laptop/AIO "Online" or via a "Physical retail outlet" ?

These days every Model, every variant out there flaunts 4GB RAM, 1 TB Hard-drive & some Generation of Intel processor !

What's the single-stop "Key differentiator" to spot the Best amongst the Rest ?????

They don't sport WEI (Windows Experience Index) Upfront nor do they roll eyeballs via some Standard Benchmarking Score..!..so how come a Common-Man spot the difference b/w various variants? 

Common-sense make you believe to buy some economical variant because price of Hardware must have plummeted over these years!

& thus one end up in buying PC with 2GB DDR III RAM, 500 GB Hard-Disk & (must be Good) kind of AMD Processor!

That's how I calculated & that's how I shortlisted & that's how I purchased!

What's the "empowerment" here for a Common-buyer???

Please reveal an Insight.

Thank you.

You are here because you wished upon a magic star and well magic is not what it used to be.

 

Start by listing all the things you current don on a computer and all the things you intend to do on a computer over the next few years.

 

Chances are, you have nothing special, but I have seen people list challenging computer usage that they thought was ordinary so it is always a useful exercise.

 

Next you need to figure out if you have a multi-tasking style when you use a computer. That makes a hue difference in the power you need. Some people do one thing at a time and then close that program and then open another one and close that so there is only one main program running at the same time. Some people (like me for example) like having everything they run all open at the same time with hundreds of websites open for reference etc so that you can quickly move from one thing to the other. That costs literally double or triple the hardware cost even if you don't do anything special like video editing etc.

 

There is no magic sauce, just 4 main things:

 

1. CPU

 

2. RAM

 

3. DISK

 

4. GPU

 

On top of that you want:

 

5. Good power supply

 

6. Good cooling

 

7. A super fantastic great superb LCD screen if you dislike eye strain

 

The "Empowerment" is :

 

A) deciding what you want to acheive,

 

B) then list out in detail what you want,

 

C) then ask at Neowin and

 

D) lots of people will suggest desktop or laptop models and also give you those groan-worthy silly shopping lists of build your own parts that pollute the hardware forum.

 

Then you take the feedback and see what matches up with your budget.

 

It also helps if you just double your budget before you start so you won't "nickle and dime" yourself to death a second time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DevTech]

2 hours ago, saurabhdua said:

Hello!

Iam very much on Win 10. Thanks for avoiding prejudices to a large extent. :-)

Please guide me on how to use & what to showcase from W 10 Performance Monitor?

Thank you.

Just keep the monitor running while you use the computer and see if any of the graphs "get busy" for CPU or RAM or DISK...

 

[Mando]

3 hours ago, saurabhdua said:

Hello!

Iam very much on Win 10. Thanks for avoiding prejudices to a large extent. :-)

Please guide me on how to use & what to showcase from W 10 Performance Monitor?

Thank you.

Apologies mate, i thought after our last debate you had decided to run with XP, no offence was meant  

 

WEI is still in 10, its just hidden, to access it do the following.

 

• Open an elevated command prompt (right click CMD and select run as Admin
• Click yes to UAC prompt
• type winsat formal
• press enter
• wait for it to finish and close the command prompt, then open game explorer to see the result.

Or

https://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.220

 

grab Winaero WEI tool and run that  

[DevTech]

6 minutes ago, Mando said:

Apologies mate, i thought after our last debate you had decided to run with XP, no offence was meant  

 

WEI is still in 10, its just hidden, to access it do the following.

 

• Open an elevated command prompt (right click CMD and select run as Admin
• Click yes to UAC prompt
• type winsat formal
• press enter
• wait for it to finish and close the command prompt, then open game explorer to see the result.

Or

https://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.220

 

grab Winaero WEI tool and run that  

I think he was trying to say that as a consumer, he was trying to use WEI as a method of comparing computers when considering which one to buy. Which is exactly the reason that Microsoft removed it from easy access, although I can't recall if it was their idea or pressure from OEM's - to the average consumer it did in fact communicate a few useful "worst case" gotchas a piece of junk model might have.

 

 

[Mando]

18 minutes ago, DevTech said:

I think he was trying to say that as a consumer, he was trying to use WEI as a method of comparing computers when considering which one to buy. Which is exactly the reason that Microsoft removed it from easy access, although I can't recall if it was their idea or pressure from OEM's - to the average consumer it did in fact communicate a few useful "worst case" gotchas a piece of junk model might have.

 

 

yep, for example i just run it on my work issued W7 laptop precision M6800, and despite having an autodesk supported CAD card as secondary card, WEI ignores it. Its not really accurate for the purpose.

 

• i7 4910Q (quad core with HT) 2.90ghz
• 16Gb 
• dual RAID0 SSDs
• intel 4600 igpu/Radeon 8950

yet i get this, its clearly ignoring the Radeon for 2D/3D

 

 

Not bad rating for a 2 year old laptop i suppose, if you can call a 4.5Kg CAD "portable" workstation a "laptop" 

 

[DevTech]

2 minutes ago, Mando said:

yep, for example i just run it on my work issued W7 laptop precision M6800, and despite having an autodesk supported CAD card as secondary card, WEI ignores it. Its not really accurate for the purpose.

 

• i7 4910Q (quad core with HT) 2.90ghz
• 16Gb 
• dual RAID0 SSDs
• intel 4600 igpu/Radeon 8950

yet i get this, its clearly ignoring the Radeon for 2D/3D

 

 

Not bad rating for a 2 year old laptop i suppose, if you can call a 4.5Kg CAD "portable" workstation a "laptop" 

 

I always wanted to buy a M6800! I wavered back and forth between that and Alienware and then ended up with my XPS 9550 a year later. I really miss 17" screens - need to use glasses on a 15" screen!

 

For 7, the highest score was 7.9 so in fact I think it is measuring your GPU correctly.

 

Still an absolutely top end laptop today for most tasks - RAM upgrades to 32 gigs and GPU upgrades as well aftermarket by quite a few notches.

 

 

 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

There are some upgrades you can make to the existing system.

 

The AMD E1-1500 APU will reportedly support up to 16GB of RAM (2 × 8GB DDR3L-1066 memory), although it is possible there is some limitation specific to HP's implementation on the Arroyo4 which limits it to 8GB.

 

You might also be able to replace the WLAN card, which is an Atheros AR5B125 MiniPCIe that only supports 1 antenna on the 2.4GHz (802.11bgn) band with something like an Azurewave AW-CB161H,  Broadcom BCM94352HMB or Intel 7260HMW MiniPCIe card, all of which support the faster 802.11ac wireless standard, and some of which have Bluetooth 4.0, as well.  However, not all motherboards work with all MiniPCIe cards, so you will want to verify compatibility before you purchase.

 

Lastly, as others have mentioned, there is replacing the HDD with a SSD.  This will give this 2013-era AIO computer the greatest performance boost of any upgrade, although faster Wi-Fi would probably be nice, too.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

[DevTech]

3 hours ago, goretsky said:

Hello,

 

There are some upgrades you can make to the existing system.

 

The AMD E1-1500 APU will reportedly support up to 16GB of RAM (2 × 8GB DDR3L-1066 memory), although it is possible there is some limitation specific to HP's implementation on the Arroyo4 which limits it to 8GB.

 

You might also be able to replace the WLAN card, which is an Atheros AR5B125 MiniPCIe that only supports 1 antenna on the 2.4GHz (802.11bgn) band with something like an Azurewave AW-CB161H,  Broadcom BCM94352HMB or Intel 7260HMW MiniPCIe card, all of which support the faster 802.11ac wireless standard, and some of which have Bluetooth 4.0, as well.  However, not all motherboards work with all MiniPCIe cards, so you will want to verify compatibility before you purchase.

 

Lastly, as others have mentioned, there is replacing the HDD with a SSD.  This will give this 2013-era AIO computer the greatest performance boost of any upgrade, although faster Wi-Fi would probably be nice, too.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

The CPU is soldered inplace so unless he is handy with Surface Mount De-Soldering, the CPU upgrade might be a teensy bit challenging.

 

[Mando]

On 9/14/2017 at 11:53 AM, DevTech said:

I always wanted to buy a M6800! I wavered back and forth between that and Alienware and then ended up with my XPS 9550 a year later. I really miss 17" screens - need to use glasses on a 15" screen!

 

For 7, the highest score was 7.9 so in fact I think it is measuring your GPU correctly.

 

Still an absolutely top end laptop today for most tasks - RAM upgrades to 32 gigs and GPU upgrades as well aftermarket by quite a few notches.

 

 

 

ya tis been a pretty robust bit of kit, but when your needing to contort with it round the back of a comms cabinet, the 4.5Kg weight is a pain in the ass  I ended up blagging a surface 4 pro from work for the task, my employers aint all bad  I didnt get to choose the M6800, my boss decided on them when i was on holiday, because he wanted one! funnily enough his died a couple months back and Dell couldnt repair it, hes got the latest Precision now. I have 3x24" 1080p monitors on the dock on my desk and rarely use the laptop screen, only at home tbh or on the move. The M6800 runs my test lab Esxi on the 2nd SSD, runs a dream total overkill for my needs tbh.

 

Mine keeps soldiering on, must about time to replace it, 3yr cycle here, shae really its been pretty reliable. The powerpack is fricking huge, takes a kettle lead from mains

Only issue is when i remove it from the supplied dock, if i dont lift it square the bloody thing powers back on when released  then again my previous laptop was a Lenovo X201S i7 model, that old girl is still going strong at home, now with W10  tough as old boot leather & weighed about a gram  (it didnt really but felt like it!)

The X201 has been dropped, sat on, kicked across  server room floor.....you name it and it still works, last of the IBM Thinkpad chassis, before the abominations Lenovo claim are thinkpads. I have fallen for the retro thinkpad.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Gotta love AMD E series CPU's what a pile of ###### they are. As to your motherboard upgrade, even if you could get a board to fit in the case you also have to deal with connecting the screen. So you would have to have some kind of converter to connect to the screen to the motherboard as the motherboard that is in there now has a connect for already on the board.

 

A year or so ago as a test I cloned a customers HDD install that was on an E-series CPU to an SSD to see if I Could get the machine usable, and it didn't do much good as that craptastic CPU was a major bottle neck.

[+Warwagon MVC]

6 hours ago, goretsky said:

Hello,

 

There are some upgrades you can make to the existing system.

 

The AMD E1-1500 APU will reportedly support up to 16GB of RAM (2 × 8GB DDR3L-1066 memory), although it is possible there is some limitation specific to HP's implementation on the Arroyo4 which limits it to 8GB.

 

You might also be able to replace the WLAN card, which is an Atheros AR5B125 MiniPCIe that only supports 1 antenna on the 2.4GHz (802.11bgn) band with something like an Azurewave AW-CB161H,  Broadcom BCM94352HMB or Intel 7260HMW MiniPCIe card, all of which support the faster 802.11ac wireless standard, and some of which have Bluetooth 4.0, as well.  However, not all motherboards work with all MiniPCIe cards, so you will want to verify compatibility before you purchase.

 

Lastly, as others have mentioned, there is replacing the HDD with a SSD.  This will give this 2013-era AIO computer the greatest performance boost of any upgrade, although faster Wi-Fi would probably be nice, too.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

3

Great Idea's, but that E-Series CPU has got to go. If he can't replace that craptastic CPU, I wouldn't bother. That CPU gets pegged at 100% CPU so easily. Passmark gives that CPU a score of 691. To put in perspective an Intel Atom Z3735G (the one which is in the HP Stream 8 tablet) .. gets a passmark score of 909.

 

Whenever an AMD E-Series Desktop / Laptop comes into my office for repair, I cry inside, because I know the repair is going to take 3x longer than it should.