Upgrade questions for my laptop

[ArvinC]

Hello everyone.

I have a Gateway 400 series notebook. Currently, it has a 845-Mobile series motherboard with a P4 1.8 processor (NOT the Mobile P4), a 30 Gig HD, 512 of RAM and running Windows XP. I want to upgrade the processor, go to 1 gig of RAM and get a new hard drive. I've built 5 PCs on my own, but have never ever worked on a laptop. My questions are these:

1.) Is it possible for me upgrade my CPU on my own...open it up and yank the old one out? Or is it better left to a Comp USA, Gateway or PC shop?

2.) How fast can I go in terms of CPU speed for the 845-series motherboards? I'm assuming that I can only pick from the 533mHz FSB models, correct?

3.) What is the best/easiest way to copy my old hard drive to the new hard drive? (Sorry for my ignorance here, but I've never backed up or mirrored an entire hard drive before.)

Thanks for any info or suggestions!

Arvin

 

[ActuaryTm]

1. Yes. With a little patience and careful attention, a processor upgrade can be accomplished by any end-user with a basic understanding of machine internals and components (ie, if you've ever opened your desktop machine prior, assembled a machine yourself, etc). Heat concerns may be an issue, however, as this particular machine makes use of a desktop-grade processor. Would suggest monitoring the idle and under load temperatures of the current processor to make certain no substantial rise in operating temperature occurs with the newer processor. Be certain to use a bit of thermal compound between the processor and HSF assembly.
   
2. Any of the Socket 478 non-HT processors should suffice. From the specifications (supposition would suggest this is the particular model machine you have, as you mention the 845MZ chipset), appears the board supports 400MHz FSB, which should include a number of Pentium 4 and Pentium 4 based Celeron choices (up to the ~2.4GHZ - 2.8GHz range). Also note from the specifications: your particular machine appears to be running at the maximum supported ram already.
   
3. As far as hard drive choices, this particular document may prove useful, though it may be a bit outdated (ie, your machine should support nearly all drives on the market today).
   
   Drive imaging is fairly common these days, even in the consumer market. Most of the dreaded "restore" discs offered with machines from alternate companies are merely images that are then restored with a few options (operating system only, full restore, etc). End user products such as Ghost, Drive Image, and Drive Backup are readily available. A few open source alternates exist, but require a bit more knowledge to facilitate correctly.
   
   Drive Backup (mentioned above) creates the image from within Windows, while Ghost will run outside the operating system to create an image backup. The newest version of Drive Image (v7) can also create an image within Windows, as well. Believe all the above solutions allow the image to be created to a network location. Most media types (CD-R/-RW, DVD+/-RW, etc) are also supported.
   
   Of course, another solution would be simply to back up one's personal data files from the first drive (either to a network location, or some form of optical media), perform a clean installation (either with the discs that were included with your machine, or a standalone version of your perferred operating system), and then restore the data files once complete.

Good luck.

 

[ArvinC]

...detailed reply! I am gonna go and attempt the upgrades myself. Hopefully, the thing won't burst open once I remove the bottom cover!

Arvin

 

[jdiddy]

You can get direct access to the cpu by removing the keyboard. You don't need to removed the bottom cover. My sisters GW 450 was over heating and I just had to remove the keyboard then the hsf and slapped on the Arctic Silver and that was it.

 

[BigBadBiologist]

One thing you may want to consider is buying a laptop CPU instead of a desktop CPU. You can generally find lapotp CPUs pretty cheap on eBay. They use less power and run cooler.

I just upgraded my CPU in my AOpen laptop. There was originally a Willamette-cored 1.7GHz celeron in there (old destop CPU). I put a Mobile celeron 1.5 in there. Now the heatsink needed a little modification to make sure that it made contact with the CPU (the mobile CPUs do not have a heatspreader like desktop CPUs), but after I made sure it touched, it worked fine. That made the laptop run a lot cooler and gained a ton of battery life. Plus, the speed was about the same (mobile celerons have 256k cache instead of 128k like desktop celerons).

But after that, I decided to get a little silly. I pin modded the CPU to run at 133FSB, so the CPU now defaults to 2GHz. Feeling even stupider, I used clockgen and now have the CPU running at 2.2GHz. Not bad for a $30 CPU.