Upgrading CPU in a cheap laptop?

What mobo does the laptop have?

If you don't know try CPU-Z.

What mobo does the laptop have?

If you don't know try CPU-Z.

Hi mate,

The CPU's are usually(!!) soldered in to the motherboard in laptops making in hard to upgrade!! Swapping out that old 4200rpm harddisk for a shiny, new 7200rpm PMR harddisk will make a big difference however... Also it is easy to swap out ailing optical drives in laptops for newer multi-format DVD burners... I have done both with my laptop - it runs a lot faster now and can read/write DVDs again (having been dropped once!!)

If you had googled on "CPU pin count" you would have found (on Wikipedia):

"Micro-FCBGA is Intel's current BGA mounting method for mobile processors. It was introduced with the Coppermine Mobile Celeron and replaces the older BGA2 ball-grid-array mounting method used in the Coppermine Pentium III mobile CPUs. Micro-FCBGA has 479 balls that are 0.78 mm in diameter and arranged similarly to the pins in a pin grid array. The processor is affixed to the motherboard by soldering the balls to the motherboard. This allows for a much thinner CPU/interface profile than a pin grid array socket arrangement, but the micro-FCBGA chip is not removable from the motherboard. Micro-FCBGA is commonly used to mount ultra-low-voltage and low-voltage versions of mobile CPUs to the motherboard, likely due to its much thinner profile fitting better in the very thin sub-notebooks that those CPUs are usually used in. However, standard-voltage versions of the CPUs also occasionally use a micro-FCBGA interface instead of a pin grid array socket."

So the answer re processor upgrades in laptops is generally NO!! (Unless you fancy resoldering 479 tiny little balls of solder!!)

Bob

No. No.

If you have a 945 chipset you are ok to upgrade to core 2.

Check it first.

Wakey, wakey "TrueKeeper"!!

The guy said he wants to upgrade a LAPTOP (read L-A-P-T-O-P) CPU!! They are SOLDERED onto the motherboard!! Are you paying attention now!!

Bob

@BobWya: no CPUs are NO LONGER soldered onto mobos! That ended with Cyrix' chips! Both AMD and Intel chips have dedicated sockets for laptops. Yes they are harder to use than desktop mobos, but no, they don't prevent CPU upgrades!
Question is thus perfectly legit, and comments were more or less OK.

Now, case in point: if your laptop has a chipset revision that is said to handle more recent chips, then you may want to try. However:
- the only 100% surely working chips are those that are found as upgrade options for this laptop model: it means BIOS support
- anything more recent may, or may not, work; the best solution, is to get a chip, test if it boots, and keep the chip if it does.

mitch074 knows what's he's talking about. I upgraded my laptop from a T2400 (Yonah) to a T7600 (Merom), as have plenty of people. The upgrade you'd probably be looking at is Yonah to Merom, and the CPU has to be of the TXY00 variety, where Y is an even number. A T7700, for instance, WILL NOT work. But I think the Celeron and non-Celeron Yonahs have a different FSB. The reason I was able to upgrade from the T2400 to the T7600 with relative ease was because the FSB was 667 in both cases, plus I had a service manual and bought a new heatsink with thermal material in 3 spots. It wasn't just a matter of plugging in the CPU, applying Arctic Silver and screwing the heatsink back on. And there was BIOS support, as well.

Not all laptops have the CPU soldered in. I have had two that got the MB replaced both times I watched the technicians (HP and Dell) pull them out of the socket and putt them in the socket on the new board. one was a p IIIm
the other one p4m.

Only the Intel LV and ULV series are BGA anymore. Everything else is socketed.

Hi

sssddefewfgwgrergergggr...

(Thats the sound of me quietly crawling under a large rock...   )

Bob