I currently have an Toshiba Satellite C55-A5286 Laptop and I plan on upgrading it for increased performance all around. I have narrowed down that I can get 16GB of DDR3 RAM for it and that an SSD would work with it. I want to upgrade the CPU too because as of now it has a Core i3-3120M (Dual Core Four Thread) and that doesn't seem to preform very well. I've found an i7-3720QM on Ebay and I'm willing to take the risk of buying it off Ebay. In theory it would work because it shares the same socket as the 3120M and the TDP is only 10 Degrees higher. My only concerns are if the CPU cooler in the laptop right now would provide sufficient cooling and just to make sure it's possible. If there is anything I should know about upgrading the laptops CPU please tell me as I'm a noob when it comes to Mobile processors. Thanks for any help at all!
Toshiba Satellite C55-A5286 CPU Upgrade? Laptop
- Thread starter SOGGHD
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voltoid27
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- Sep 17, 2014
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It MIGHT work, but I highly recommend against it because of that 10W higher TDP. Laptops are thermally constrained enough as it is, and adding 10 additional watts into the mix will only make things worse. My advice is to stick to a 35W CPU like the Core i7-3632QM (which reduces base clocks but has higher Turbo headroom and double the cores/threads) or the Core i7-3540M (which raises all the clocks and adds Turbo but has no additional cores). I'd personally go for the i7-3540M since it doesn't sacrifice single-threaded performance for multithreaded like the 3632QM does (at base clocks).
UniqueSparkle
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- Mar 27, 2016
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Can you upgrade the CPU in toshiba satellite c55d-A5170? Which should I use? We upgraded memory to 16GB Vengeance
voltoid27
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I'd rather you start a new thread and not give out your contact details so readily (spammers really like it when people do that), but since you're here I'll answer your question. You have an AMD E1-2100 APU, and these are always soldered to the laptop's motherboard and can't be upgraded. Theoretically you might be able to find a replacement motherboard that has a better APU soldered on, but I make absolutely no guarantees with this. Suitable APU's would be the A4-1250 (~10% less power consumption) or the E1-2200 (5% faster CPU clock), but these are barely better than what you have now. I'd say enjoy the metric crapton of Chrome tabs you can have open with your 16GB of RAM 
UniqueSparkle
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- Mar 27, 2016
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voltoid27 :
I'd rather you start a new thread and not give out your contact details so readily (spammers really like it when people do that), but since you're here I'll answer your question. You have an AMD E1-2100 APU, and these are always soldered to the laptop's motherboard and can't be upgraded. Theoretically you might be able to find a replacement motherboard that has a better APU soldered on, but I make absolutely no guarantees with this. Suitable APU's would be the A4-1250 (~10% less power consumption) or the E1-2200 (5% faster CPU clock), but these are barely better than what you have now. I'd say enjoy the metric crapton of Chrome tabs you can have open with your 16GB of RAM
UniqueSparkle
Commendable
- Mar 27, 2016
- 4
- 0
- 1,510
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