CPU Upgrade on an older laptop

[Nonpossible]

Hello,

I have a Dell Inspiron 17" N7010 that I bought back in 2009 to use overseas. I purchased it for 800 dollars and it came with an i5 450m processor. Since then I have maxed the RAM to 8Gb (It wouldn't take 2x8 DDR3, only 2x4) and upgraded the HDD to a 7200RPM 750Gb.

This laptop still runs pretty smooth and has definitely given me more than my money's worth over the last 6 years, but I want to keep it running.

My plan is to upgrade the i5 450m to an i7-620m, so my questions are: 1) Can the motherboard of an N7010 support i7? 2) Will the upgrade even be worth my time? From what I'm seeing, the specs aren't that different, but maybe I'm missing something.

At a minimum I'm going to upgrade to an SSD, Clean the vents/fans and reapply new thermal paste.

Thanks in advance for your input, should you provide any.

&& haveAGreatWeekend;

 

[andy_Man]

Most motherboard chips are soldered in.

 

[Nonpossible]

Most motherboard chips are soldered in.

CPU's are soldered in? I've never heard that. Weird.

 

[captaincharisma]

well really CPU's are not upgradable on laptops

 

[Twigman]

You should be able to upgrade from the i5 to the i7, I don't believe that the CPU is soldered in on this particular laptop. You won't see leaps and bounds of speed improvements but it may seem a little more responsive in heavy workloads from the extra 0.4GHz and 1mb cache. If you wish to do this, be sure you get an i7 with PGA988, and not BGA1288, as that is what your i5 is using currently.

Good luck

 

[Nonpossible]

You should be able to upgrade from the i5 to the i7, I don't believe that the CPU is soldered in on this particular laptop. You won't see leaps and bounds of speed improvements but it may seem a little more responsive in heavy workloads from the extra 0.4GHz and 1mb cache. If you wish to do this, be sure you get an i7 with PGA988, and not BGA1288, as that is what your i5 is using currently.

Good luck

Thanks, I'm getting a lot of conflicting info in this thread, though. I suppose I should disassemble the laptop before ordering the i7. I was hoping to avoid the pain of taking everything apart twice.

 

[captaincharisma]

You should be able to upgrade from the i5 to the i7, I don't believe that the CPU is soldered in on this particular laptop. You won't see leaps and bounds of speed improvements but it may seem a little more responsive in heavy workloads from the extra 0.4GHz and 1mb cache. If you wish to do this, be sure you get an i7 with PGA988, and not BGA1288, as that is what your i5 is using currently.

Good luck

Thanks, I'm getting a lot of conflicting info in this thread, though. I suppose I should disassemble the laptop before ordering the i7. I was hoping to avoid the pain of taking everything apart twice.

well considering there is no definite answer to your question on whether it is soldered or not then yes i would check fiorst before ordering a close to 800.00 CPU

 

[Twigman]

There are several photo and video based disassemblies out there on the internet if that is a worry. I have also found i7-620m's for far cheaper than 800 (dollars? pounds?), £60 MAX on eBay from reputable sellers (second hand).

 

[andy_Man]

The i7 is not even a true quad core, it's a dual core with HT just like the i5. It's just clocked slightly higher 2.66ghz vs 2.4 I think the cpu upgrade will make so little of a difference.

Don't do it! Waste of money.

 

[Nonpossible]

The i7 is not even a true quad core, it's a dual core with HT just like the i5. It's just clocked slightly higher 2.66ghz vs 2.4 I think the cpu upgrade will make so little of a difference.

Don't do it! Waste of money.

I did know that they were both Dual Core. My laptop most likely would not run anything quad core. I was just wondering if there was anything I was missing in the specs of both CPUs, because I too suspect the difference wouldn't be noticeable.

Thanks for the input! I think I will stick to just upgrading the HDD. Do you think I should apply new thermal paste to such an old laptop or just stick with cleaning the fans?

 

[Twigman]

You would be right in saying that the laptop would not support a quad core, from either not being able to supply enough power to it, not being able to dissipate the extra heat it would generate to even the BIOS not supporting such a chip.

Just the hard drive then. Adding new thermal paste is never a bad thing, if it's never been replaced before then it is likely it would have dried out. Apply away!

Edit: apologies, you said you were upgrading to an ssd from a hard drive. Whoops.

 

[Nonpossible]

You should be able to upgrade from the i5 to the i7, I don't believe that the CPU is soldered in on this particular laptop. You won't see leaps and bounds of speed improvements but it may seem a little more responsive in heavy workloads from the extra 0.4GHz and 1mb cache. If you wish to do this, be sure you get an i7 with PGA988, and not BGA1288, as that is what your i5 is using currently.

Good luck

Thanks, I'm getting a lot of conflicting info in this thread, though. I suppose I should disassemble the laptop before ordering the i7. I was hoping to avoid the pain of taking everything apart twice.

well considering there is no definite answer to your question on whether it is soldered or not then yes i would check fiorst before ordering a close to 800.00 CPU

This CPU sells for about $100 USD on Amazon.com and around $70 USD on eBay. So it's well within the budget, especially if that means this machine will run for a couple more years.

 

[Nonpossible]

You would be right in saying that the laptop would not support a quad core, from either not being able to supply enough power to it, not being able to dissipate the extra heat it would generate to even the BIOS not supporting such a chip.

Just the hard drive then. Adding new thermal paste is never a bad thing, if it's never been replaced before then it is likely it would have dried out. Apply away!

Edit: apologies, you said you were upgrading to an ssd from a hard drive. Whoops.

No apologies necessary. I appreciate your thoughtful responses. Compared to others, you seem to be communicating on the same freq. as me. Haha