Inside HP Pavilion 15 (2016) – disassembly, internal photos and upgrade options

    We already had the chance to teardown the 17-inch HP Pavilion and we are glad to see that it’s just as easy to disassemble because usually, HP notebooks are kind of hard to maintain. Except for their strictly business lineups, though. Here’s how you can access the most commonly upgradeable parts of your new Pavilion 15.

    You can find more about pricing and information here: http://amzn.to/29DWl3J

    1. Removing the bottom cover

    It’s done fairly easy and on contrary to the 17-inch variant, the 15-inch Pavilion doesn’t have a user-replaceable battery so it requires only a few screws to be removed. Be careful when putting them back together, though, as some of them are a different size. After the bottom is loose, proceed to pry it up.


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    2. Storage options

    The new Pavilion 15 offers not only the standard 2.5-inch drive slot but you can also fit in an M.2 SSD stick as well. We are not sure if the M.2 slot is present in other entry-level configurations, though, as this one falls into the “gaming” category due to the powerful CPU and GPU on board.

    Anyway, our unit came with a 2.5-inch Seagate 1TB HDD.

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    The M.2 slot is located near the battery and supports 2280 sticks with B-edge key or B&M connectors. We’ve also tried if the motherboard can recognize an NVMe drive but no luck. Lately, we’ve been testing some affordable machines with PCIe NVMe support (Lenovo Ideapad 700) so it was worth the try.

    UPDATE: Apparently, the HP Pavilion 15 supports PCIe NVMe SSDs but our pre-production unit does not. On HP’s official website, the notebook can be ordered with either M.2 SATA SSD or an M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD. Unfortunately, the 17-inch option is still a no go if you are looking for NVMe-enabled machine.


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    3. Battery, RAM and Wi-Fi module

    The battery is rather big with 61.6Wh (5150 mAh) capacity located at the bottom right corner, or bottom left if you are looking at the keyboard tray from above.


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    The motherboard holds two RAM slots supporting DDR4-2133 chips. Our unit came with just one 4GB Samsung chip leaving the other one free for upgrade. The usual configs, however, will feature at least 8GB of RAM.


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    The Wi-Fi module is placed away from the rest of the hardware – near the left edge of the motherboard. It doesn’t say the branding, except that it’s an engineering sample, but it’s probably an Intel Wireless Dual-Band AC module.

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    4. Cooling system

    We will let you in on a little secret here. We are done with the temperature stress tests and the notebook came out perfectly fine but we would gladly see it in action with a Core i7-6700HQ CPU and GTX 960M GPU. It’s unclear whether the current thermal design with two heat pipes sharing the heat and two adjacent fans will do enough to keep it cool. We’ve seen some similar cooling solutions that don’t right cut it. It’s important to note, though, that more powerful configurations that feature GTX 950M and GTX 960M GPUs come without an optical drive in order to make enough breathing room for the hardware.

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    You can find more about pricing and information here: http://amzn.to/29DWl3J

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    Juan David Alvarez
    8 years ago

    same cooling system as lenovo y40 …. but worst, they are not covering the gpu memory chips

    Dmitry
    Dmitry
    8 years ago

    This GPU is GTX 950M. I seriously doubt, that it will fry anything. With GTX 960M or higher this concern is understandable, but not with 950M.

    Johnathan Le
    8 years ago

    The M.2 SSD key is wrong. It is coming with M key and B&M key and then it is actually supporting M.2 NVME. The problem is the M.2 SSD installed opposite side. You can zoom into the key and this is five pins. Also, you can search for the China model “Pavilion 15-bc024TX” and see the image with installed m.2 ssd.

    User
    User
    8 years ago
    Reply to  Johnathan Le

    So could You tell me with certainty if it is possibile to install a Samsung SSD NVMe as 950/960 Pro (PCIe 3.0 x4), please?

    Johnathan Le
    8 years ago
    Reply to  User

    Yes, that is. HP Pavilion 15 2016 truly support M.2 Nvme. My laptop has been replaced by Plextor M8PeN 512Gb, it worked perfectly.

    User
    User
    8 years ago
    Reply to  Johnathan Le

    Thank You for the answer.

    sylar2a
    sylar2a
    4 years ago
    Reply to  Johnathan Le

    what do you mean by “problem is the M.2 SSD installed opposite side”

    User
    User
    8 years ago

    Thank You for the answer.

    Kim
    Kim
    6 years ago

    Hello is Hp pavillion15 bc030tx i5 gtx960 has extra slot for ram?please answer thank you

    eddy
    6 years ago

    hello my laptop is the HP Pavilion 15-aw003 model V7S27LA would like to know if it has a slot for an SSD M.2 2280 sticks

    zain
    zain
    6 years ago

    my motherboard of Hp pavillian 15t got burn. Can it is possible to replace it and if yes then from where i can get

    carl
    carl
    1 year ago

    hp pavilion laptop. looking at keyboard at the bottom left corner, swelling up and starting to crack case. what is going on and what is in that location