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Interesting laptop CPU upgrade question...

J

JackBurton

Lifer
I'm thinking about getting Sony's S 170 laptop. The thing is, they charge an UNGODLY amount for the CPU upgrade (not a big surprise for Sony). What I wanted to do, is get the cheapest CPU they offer (Celeron M 1.4GHz) and getting a Pentium M 2.0 Dothan CPU from newegg and upgrading the lapop myself. This would save me about $500. Do you guys think it would work? I don't see that it would be a problem as the laptop has an option for a 2.0GHz to select from on Sony's website. But what do you guys think? Have any of you guys done anything like this?
 
I don't know if you could do it because they really pack those components in there with proprietary designs. They might use a different socket or mainboard, or a different cooling solution for the pentium-M. But some guys are engineers or self-taught engineers, and if you have experience with this sort of tinkering, it may be possible.

The problem is, what if you open the thing up and you have to dig deep into the machine to get to the proccessor, and then you find that they welded a heat pipe to the chassis, and you have to get out a jackhammer just to remove the old proc. I dunno. I would never attempt it.

 
Get the Pentium-M 1.7A (the best price/performance there) and be happy 🙂 . Then get one of those new Hitachi 7200rpm laptop drives from a place like Newegg with the money you "save" not paying the exorbitant price for a 2 GHz CPU. Laptop HD's are a breeze to swap, and those icky 4200rpm drives they come with are slow!

Voila - faster system, and cheaper too!
 
Not the best idea if you haven't done anything like it before. For one, it will surely void your warranty.
Most people who upgrade their cpu's only do so until well after their warranty has expired. By then, cpu prices have fallen to low amounts anyways so it's worthwhile to consider doing.

Second, as others have mentioned, it may not be so easy to open your case and disassemble the heat pipe assembly without risking damaging something in the process.

I would suggest you take jiffylube's comment and upgrade the hard drive. It's the most overlooked option for a laptop to stick with the stock 4200 drive -- those are painfully slow.
 
Just to give you a little more background on myself...I take apart Dell and Compaq laptops all the time. Taking the laptop apart and putting it back together is not a problem at all. I just need to know if I can swap it out.

jiffylube1024, I plan on getting their cheapest hard drive too, and swapping it out with an 80 GB 5400 RPM drive from newegg. I'm also getting the least amount of memory and getting 2 512MB sticks from Crucial. As for the P M 1.7A, it's a $350 difference between it and the Celeron. I'd rather put that money toward a super fast 2.0GHz CPU (~$600) from newegg.

This sound like a pretty good little project to get involved in. I think I might call Sony and ask them if they can upgrade the CPU later if I wanted to. If they can, I should be able to do it myself. Also, I don't see why they would sell a Pentium M CPU if it can't be swapped out. And I highly doubt Sony has separate motherboards for different speed CPUs. But, we'll see. 🙂
 
I usually do this unless someone else is footing the bill. On my own, I always buy the slowest processor, smallest ram, and smallest HDD. The you can replace all that stuff straight away, and sell the pulls. Last time I ended up breaking even selling the pulls on eBay.
 
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