Needs USB Stick with bootable DOS to run BAT files for Flash. Run EC first, then BIOS.

I've had a P304 for a long time as my office workhorse, and a few months ago it's finally been 'retired' for another laptop as the battery finally died and i couldn't use it off the power anymore (and affordable replacements are near impossible to find from reputable vendors).

I wanted to look at whether i can use it as a home (file) server until i can get a proper one later on, but i've hit a bit of a snag: It's quite loud when it goes under any load. I've set a 1600mhz limit via the power settings on the CPU, but that only goes so far. Aside from the noise, i'd also want to tweak it to use as little power as possible.

Hence i've been looking at options to get it to stay quieter for longer. Repasting/dusting is the obvious first thing, already done, though it doesn't really produce appreciable results.

Another option is to disable the dGPU, but that basically goes to idle anyway when no game is running on the machine, so that would have nigh zero impact.

Another would be to undervolt the CPU (and other BIOS shennanigans), but there is a massive roadblock here, in that the BIOS is extremely 'thin on options', to put it mildly. I can change the boot order, and that's about it.

I've seen some posts about a BIOS mod which enables all the fancy stuff (for the W230SS in general, not P304 specific), but i haven't actually been able to source it anywhere.

Does anyone here know where i could find a more feature rich, up to date BIOS for this machine, or am i out of luck? It feels a bit wrong to just throw it away otherwise.