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Upgrading CPU and gfx chipset in M1330

quadomatic

quadomatic

Senior member
I decided the T6400 in my Dell XPS M1330 was lacking...so I picked up a T9300 on eBay. Going from 2.0 GHz to 2.5 GHz, and triple the cache.

Additionally, I also found out that the graphics chipset on the m1330 is upgradeable. The performance with an Intel x3100 GMA chipset is pretty bad in OS X, so I picked up a GeForce 8400m and the corresponding cpu/gpu combined heatsink, and a copper shim to help deal with the heat issues.

I'm somewhat worried about battery life and heat issues. Anybody know if either will be a problem?
 
heat can be an issue, but i do not know the specifics for your setup.

i have an acer 5534 which came with a stock 1.2 GHZ dual core athlon (L310), i upgraded my cpu to 2.0 GHZ dual core turion (TL60) and if you run the cpu full load for more than several minutes it starts throttling the cpu speed up and down.

the thing is i had seen countless reviews for people who did similar upgrades on acers with similar cpu setups and virtually all of them claimed it worked fine but if one did not look and test in detail this issue would have been easily overlooked.

my problem is also made worse because i put a kingston SSD in it also, which turns out runs hot, much hotter than the stock spindle drive, ~45C idle vs ~35C idle

another problem i have is this model laptop is supposed to be thin and light and thus has a limited cooling system.
laptops are basically an integrated system and you should be mindful not to exceed the power/thermal capacity of the chassis.

another thing to check for is that if the bus speed/memory speed is increased, and if it is, if the existing ram will run at the higher speed.
I did not pay attention in my case and later noticed the memory speed was increased and it was just luck that my system came with faster rated memory modules that ran fine at higher speed.

Battery life in my case, in light use is unchanged, but if i hit the cpu or disk hard the windows estimated battery life plummets.
In light use, est runtime is 3:XX hrs but as soon as i hit the cpu or disk hard to goes to 1:XX after a couple minutes of use.

in casual use though my heavily upgraded setup works fine and is blazing fast for a laptop.


A quick and dirty way safety might be to look at what the most powerful stock setup that exists for that chassis and trying not to exceed that setup.
 
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I'm pretty sure the m1330 was offered with the T9300 towards the end of its lifespan, along with the GeForce 8400m. I guess I'll be okay then.
 
OMG...I just realized that I misunderstood what people were saying on notebookreview, and I need to replace my laptop's whole mobo to get Nvidia support, not just replace the chip...argh!

I can't just cancel the order either...it's eBay...
 
Heh, I got lucky and requested a cancellation in time, purchase was refunded.

Unfortunately, it appears I'm still liable for the copper shim and alternate heatsink/fan I ordered. I guess those will still be handy if I decide to replace the motherboard with one for the Nvidia chipset.
 
Never count on upgrading more than hard drives and RAM on a laptop, especially in that class of notebook and from a major OEM. 🙁
 
Certainly check, because sometimes you find a nice surprise. I was browsing some thinkpad forums for info on replacing my wireless network card in my IBM Thinkpad T-41p, and found a discussion about the fact that the T41 which used the Banias cpus and the T42 which used the Dothan cpus had the exact same bios, and that a T41 could be upgraded from a Banias cpu to a Dothan cpu with just the latest bios and a cpu swap. $200 and 2 hrs later, my 1.8Ghz Pentium M Banias cpu was replaced with a 2.0Ghz Pentium M Dothan, for a nice speedup with zero loss of battery life due to the improvements in the new cpu.

Everyone else here is right, don't count on being able to upgrade anything, but you might as well check into it because sometimes you get lucky and an upgrade of some sort is possible.
 
copper block will help. use diamond paste.

underclock the geforce if you must when you're absolutely not using it for performance.
i don't know if the intel graphics is really upgradable, I thought they housed different internal chassis requirements and the bridge technology was graphics card specific upon clone-manufacturing?

also if you manage to get it installed, the geforce chips are faulty, don't expect it to last over a few months, lucky if it continues running for over a year. personally, I would have just stuck it out with the intel chip. mobo failure increases when paired with the geforce card.

don't drop the laptop either, the lcd connector chip and its wires are junk.

good luck.
 
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The 8400 is hit or miss. Yes, there is a known issue with them but not all are destined to fail. My wife's 1330 was going fine for nearly 3 years before a different issue necessitated a mobo replacement.
 
I think it's a pretty universal rule that if your laptop comes with integrated graphics only (so its not switchable) then it can NEVER be upgraded. Either the slot has been removed or there are not even pads.

Even if you have a dedicated card, its pretty unlikely nowadays, even acer have stopped using cards, and it tends to be higher end machines with the GTX460M and up.
 
Meaker10 said:
I think it's a pretty universal rule that if your laptop comes with integrated graphics only (so its not switchable) then it can NEVER be upgraded. Either the slot has been removed or there are not even pads.

Even if you have a dedicated card, its pretty unlikely nowadays, even acer have stopped using cards, and it tends to be higher end machines with the GTX460M and up.
Click to expand...

Yep...

Totally unrelated...but are you still using that Athlon XP 2400+ mobile as your primary system? That was beastly back in the day...
 
Haha, no, that lasted a while though. Currently on a modified 7738G, but kept the sig for nostalgia sake.

The setup was the first one I had when I got into benchmarking.

The 9800pro I got soon after really made a rounded system.
 
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