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Upgradeable video on laptop? - NOT!

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PCAddict

Diamond Member
I just bought an HP Pavilion N5430 for work and noticed that it had two small removable access panels on the underside. Of course, one of them was for accessing the DIMM slots. The other one looks like it houses the video circuitry, which is be mounted on a DIMM-like card which is in an SO-DIMM slot.

Anyone ever seen anything like this? I am going to snap a picture of it tomorrow with my digital camera. I'll post it when I do.
 
might be, i know some Dell Inspiron and Latitude notebooks have the video card as a daughter board mounted into the MB, and assuming there are no problems with the bios or something, they can be upgraded.
 
There's one thread about three days ago who got bored and took apart is HP and found the ways to upgrade the CPU. He also mentioned about the video card on how to change it. But his dilemma is where can he get a replacement video card from? Do you know of any store who sells video card for this 5XXX HP's? I'll be very interested to upgrade mine.😎
 
I'm going to take the access cover off tonight and take the picture. I'll upload it to my webspace tonight as well. I'll post the link here once it's done.
 
You sure thats video? I dont see nay heatsinks, no memory, a small chip, and no lcd cable. That appears to be a mini-pci card, handling a modem and onboard ethernet (2 wires and 4 wires on the plugs).
 
You may be right. I have to take another look at this. I'll open it back up and look at the labels. I forget what led me to believe it was video. Damn beer. 😉
 
That there would be your modem/nic it is called a mini-pci card, I have a pavilion n5170, I took it apart and it seems that the video board is replaceable but I dont know if it is upgradeable, where would you buy one, I have 4crappymegs of sis video and would love to have even just 8mb ati or even sis.

Check out my pics from when I took it apart to fix the network card connection, there is a 4pin cable that plugs into the motherboard, whoever assembled it put the plug in at an angle and squashed two pins down, I tracked down the problem and used a needle to straighten the pins.

The Mutha Board


Bits and pieces everwhur
 
In the second picture, the circuit board that is between the sony monitor and the laptop display panel is what I believe is the video card, there are two connections from the card to the mobo and two cables from the display panel to the card, I assume one is video and one is backlight.
 
And for those who are wondering, the laptop works fine, actually it works better than it did before I took it apart since the nic couldnt work with two bent pins not making the connection at the plug near the external lan jack
 
i wrote that thread. the panel on the bottom is for mini pci modems and ethernet . the video card is that thing with the small heatsink. I built my laptop out of the parts of 2 broken ones, so ihad to swap video boards. You have to take that metal frame off before you can get to it. I upgraded my CPU today to 800mhz, i will be making a guide on how to do it later. hehe . Oh yeah PC addict, your duron laptop uses that POS tridentcxp shared memory chipset, that is built into the motherboard. you are basically screwed on upgrading it. You can probably upgrade the CPu though
 
That is definately a mini-pci card. My laptop has a little screw on cover for the 56k+10/100 nic mini-pci card. The video card on a laptop is usually not upgradeable. Mine has an 8mb ATI Mobility Rage Pro vid card that is built into the motherboard(I saw that when I dis-assembled my laptop). I was planning to upgrade the cpu on my laptop, 500mhz mobile Pentium 3, but it appears that I am unable to as the cpu seems to be connected directly to the mobo(no socket as far as I can see).
 
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