Can I easily upgrade my laptop's processor?

[Shawn]

The laptop is a Sotec 3120x and has a 1.2GHz Moble Celeron processor. I removed the fan to reveal the processor and it is indeed removable, not soldered onto the mainboard. Can I replace it with a faster P4 or Celeron processor? If not can I replace it with a P4 of the same speed? Thanks.

 

[stevty2889]

You really won't get much more performance out of it. It uses SDRAM, so a P4-M would be severly bandwidth starved, and heat would be a concern as well. I could find any good specs on it other than that, are you sure it's even a P4 based celeron, and not a P3 based celeron?

 

[stevty2889]

After more looking, it appears it has a 1.2ghz Tualitan based celeron(which is a P3 based celeron). Basicly you have no upgrade room. The 1.2 P3 based celeron would actualy be faster than a 1.5 or 1.6ghz P4 based celeron anyway. A RAM upgrade might help, but it can only go to 384mb, and SDRAM isn't cheap. $90 for a 256mb stick

 

[Shawn]

Ok, I looked around a bit and people have said that it supports a P3 mobile cpu. Would it be worth upgrading to a P3? Where could I even find a mobile p3? Thanks.

edit: also people have said they put in a 512mb stick, bringing it to 640mb with no problems.

 

[kitkat22]

I've wondered this myself. I have a fairly new Dell Inspiron 6000 with a 1.6Ghz processor and a 533mhz DDR2 bus. Is this one upgradable or am I stuck? I'm curious for down the road upgrades.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: cscpianoman
I've wondered this myself. I have a fairly new Dell Inspiron 6000 with a 1.6Ghz processor and a 533mhz DDR2 bus. Is this one upgradable or am I stuck? I'm curious for down the road upgrades.

You'll definitely be able to upgrade that. 2GHhz is a great value.

 

[wpshooter]

Save yourself and lot of time & trouble and buy a new laptop !!!

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: wpshooter
Save yourself and lot of time & trouble and buy a new laptop !!!

I have no intension of buying a new laptop. My dad just bought a Dell for $500 and it's not much better than my 3 year old sotec. It has a 1.4GHz celeron, 256mb ram, and a 40gb hard drive instead of 20GB. The sotec ended up being around $700 after all the rebates. I don't mind putting in any time or energy upgrading the laptop.

 

[Oyeve]

I got a free Dell laptop from transfering $$$ to this credit card. Came with a Celeron M at 1.3ghz, DVD-CDRW burner, 40 gig HD, 256meg DDR ram. First thing I did was pop in a 1.7 ghz Pentium M I had lying around, added another 512meg of ram. Then I ebayed it for nearly twice what it was originally worth! It was a socket 479 BTW.

 

[Lasthitlarry]

Originally posted by: wpshooter
Save yourself and lot of time & trouble and buy a new laptop !!!

 

[w00t]

This is the problem with laptops there worthless very soon and cost alot of money.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: Shawn
Ok, I looked around a bit and people have said that it supports a P3 mobile cpu. Would it be worth upgrading to a P3? Where could I even find a mobile p3? Thanks.

edit: also people have said they put in a 512mb stick, bringing it to 640mb with no problems.

You might be able to find a mobile P3 that will work, but it won't be easy to find, and it will be expensive. Tualitin Celerons weren't bad at all, you wouldn't really get a huge differance by going to a p3-m. If you could add a 512mb stick and have it work, that would be a good improvement, but again, SDRAM is old and expensive, so it's gonna cost.

 

[Shawn]

What was the fastest P3M released?

 

[Sunner]

Do remember that laptops are designed for a specific thermal level.
Putting a faster CPU in a desktop is easy, since you might at worst have to buy a new HSF in case you don't get one with the CPU.
Putting one in a laptop however may very well leat to heat problems, both cause the HFS might not be sufficient and because heat needs to get blown out of the chassis.

Overall it's a bad idea.

 

[Nocturnal]

It's easy but the hard part is finding a processor that's compatible. You have to make sure the CPU runs at the same FSB as that chip you have in there. That's what I've found out. I've put in 800mhz FSB P4 into a motherboard that came with a 400mhz P4 and it didn't work. However, I THINK you can put a 400mhz P4 into a mobo that accepts an 800mhz P4.

 

[Shawn]

ttt

 

[Nocturnal]

For the most part. Just find the CPU that is compatible, remove the old one, put the new one in and bam, you have a working laptop with an upgraded processor. Do you know what FSB the chip runs at? Just go ahead and take the CPU out of the socket. Remove the thermal compound and you'll see the markings clearly as to what the speed is. It will say something like xxx/533/xxx or xxx/800/xxx or something along those lines. The middle numbers are the FSB that the chip runs at. So long you find a chip that runs at the same FSB you should be able to do this. How do I know? I've personally done this with Dell and Compaq notebooks. I have had to test to see if my client's motherboard was bad so I just insert a chip of the same FSB and I've never had it not work on me.