Trying to Install a dGPU into a HP zbook fury 15 g7 - Featurebyte lock shenanigans or Drop-In and go?

[JMD64]

Greetings,

So I have acquired this Zbook fury 15 G7 (model 298B3AV with i5-10400H ) off Ebay, seller claimed it have a T2000 but suprise, the GPU port is wide empty so I am trying to upgrade it with one.

I got a second-hand T1000 daughter board which is claimed to be working, and I made sure everything were in order including other part I were supposed to install along with it, but the laptop can't detect the GPU and it's not even showing up in BIOS/Device manager.

I am not sure for this model if I can just slot in a GPU and it would straight up works, while researching someone pointed me to this thing called "Feature byte" with other examples of HP products getting locked out from certain features even when the supposed hardware were installed, so I am now assuming its one of those situation.

It seems the next step would be flashing a Factory BIOS and attempt to write new DMI onto the board gaslighting it into thinking it have a GPU but I am not certain that if I need to use the exact DMI (I found one other model of ZB15G7 on HP Partsurfer sporting the spec I want to upgrade- a 10400h with T1000 but I can't find the DMI for it) in order to work or I can just flash whatever DMI onto it as long it's listed to have a GPU, perferrably a T1000/T2000?

P.S: It looks like the Feature byte have this rhythm where some part of the number would stand for certain part/spec in the computer, so in the worse case sceneario I have to "fabricate" one from scratch, however I am not sure if only coming up with just the Feature byte would be enough or I had to also come up with the BuildID and UUID.

[JMD64]

UPDATE:
So I did managed to reflash the BIOS in factory mode, however even after entering the Feature byte I found with T1000 listed on PartSurfer it still can't detect the GPU installed, so I think I am going to call it quit for now since I had spent too much time on this yielding no result.

Attached below is a clean factory mode BIOS (32m) I got, for 16m EC refrence #47 of this thread: HP ZBook Fury 15 G7 bios password - Badcaps ,for 8m it seems doesn't matter in this process. As always you should do backup of your old BIOSes given if you are doing this, you sure have a Chip Programmer ready, and I can't gurantee the file I got works on 100% of the machine too.



For people interested in rewriting DMI info via Factory mode, it seems the only thing that matters is the Feature byte and BuildID:

After cross refrencing about two dozen Zbook Fury 15/17G7 serials, I found out all of them shares the same few Build ID which you can just put in whatever you find as long it starts with "20WWAVDT601". You can even reuse your old one with no issue.

For Feature byte, they are identical if they have the same spec, it's not a unique number. For example a 10850H/T2000+WWAN equipped 15G7 has Feature byte number 3X47 6J6S 6b7B 7M7Q 7U7W 7m7s aBap aqau awb8 cAdU dpdq eMfP guhK hkjY jhk8 mEmV nV.M3 ,then ALL of the ZB15/17G7 sporting 10850H/T2000+WWAN will have the same Feature Byte, even if the flash target doesn't have the spec listed, you can still add whatever Feature Byte onto it as long it's not made-up, yet the spec won't change and the other effect is unknown. I assumed it would "unlock" the GPU since I found people reflashing DMI onto ProDesk to gain BT/WLAN function so that's what I attempted with no result.

Serial Number, you can just made it up or use the old one, it doesn't care.

Not sure about the SKU number, I used what I found online but it seems does nothing.

Other field than "factory host based MAC address"(It wont prompt you until the 35 boot attempt used up, go to Advanced>Mac address passthrough and type in your WIFI cards MAC address), you are free to type in whatever you want.