Replacing and potentially upgrading motherboard on a laptop

[PRXSTIGE]

I have an ASUS N551J Laptop, i7 GTX850M and 8GB of ram. A few days ago the GPU started flickering and showing signs of death. We got a new one but since I want to save that laptop as well I wanted to ask if anyone knows if that could happen?

That series of laptops have a variety of motherboards with different specs, the one I was looking forward to buy and install is N551VW, reason being it's i7-6700HQ and GTX960M.

Is that upgrade possible in terms of compatiblity? i.e screw holes, ports, etc?

[Radium_Angel]

You'd have to look at two motherboard images side by side and determine that for your. I *suspect* it would work, however. Laptop manufacturers tend to re-use a lot of parts to save on production costs. 

Let me root around ebay and see what I can find

[PRXSTIGE]

10 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

You'd have to look at two motherboard images side by side and determine that for your. I *suspect* it would work, however. Laptop manufacturers tend to re-use a lot of parts to save on production costs. 

Let me root around ebay and see what I can find

I did look and they all look the same, though I haven't found proper images of them all. Another question I just thought of is if it's actually worth paying 250-300 dollars for an i7 and GTX960M since that GPU is kinda dated.

[Radium_Angel]

Here are images of the two mobos. You can decide for yourself, but I think there is just enough difference you might be in trouble, especially when it comes to the CPU cooling solution, as you can see the cutouts are slightly different.

 

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, PelegPLT said:

I did look and they all look the same, though I haven't found proper images of them all. Another question I just thought of is if it's actually worth paying 250-300 dollars for an i7 and GTX960M since that GPU is kinda dated.

Worth that? I wouldn't...but then again I"m not you...that's a judgement call that I cannot make

[PRXSTIGE]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Worth that? I wouldn't...but then again I"m not you...that's a judgement call that I cannot make

You think I'm better off just using that laptop with the integrated GPU?

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, PelegPLT said:

You think I'm better off just using that laptop with the integrated GPU?

What's your use case for this laptop?

[PRXSTIGE]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

What's your use case for this laptop?

I thought about maybe gaming with lightweight games (mostly Rocket League), running an android emulator and just normal web browsing. I currently use an acer laptop with AMD A9 and Radeon R5 Graphics so it's much worse than what I could have.

[jaslion]

8 minutes ago, PelegPLT said:

I did look and they all look the same, though I haven't found proper images of them all. Another question I just thought of is if it's actually worth paying 250-300 dollars for an i7 and GTX960M since that GPU is kinda dated.

Nope. It is defently not worth it as you can find full laptops with those specs for under 400$. Not constantly but pretty often. If this is for gaming a 960m is still kinda bad. I came from a 970m about 6months ago and that was JUST enough for recent ish games. The 960m being a fair bit worse than a 970m does not bode well at all.

[Radium_Angel]

Sure, AFAIK the Android emulation doesn't use hardware acceleration for graphics so the iGPU should be fine. RL I am given to understand that runs on practically anything.

 

[jaslion]

I would connect the laptop to a external screen and see if it also happens on that. Could just be your display cable is defective.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

Sure, AFAIK the Android emulation doesn't use hardware acceleration for graphics so the iGPU should be fine. RL I am given to understand that runs on practically anything.

 

Pretty much this.

[PRXSTIGE]

9 minutes ago, jaslion said:

I would connect the laptop to a external screen and see if it also happens on that. Could just be your display cable is defective.

I'm trying it right now, really hoping it's the cable BUT considering the screen is flickering and becoming black until restart pretty much leads me to believe it's the GPU thats bad.

10 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Sure, AFAIK the Android emulation doesn't use hardware acceleration for graphics so the iGPU should be fine. RL I am given to understand that runs on practically anything.

 

That's very good news. It would definitely be an upgrade compared to what I use now. Hoping I could force to use the iGPU I still haven't completely understood how I do that.

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, PelegPLT said:

Hoping I could force to use the iGPU I still haven't completely understood how I do that.

Some laptops have a physical switch, others do it in BIOS, still others do it with software. I suppose you could always disable the nVidia card in Device Manager...