laptop cpu upgrade

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
K

keithtwilm

Reputable
Feb 25, 2015
7
0
4,510
Hello I'm new to pc building and upgrading. I have a Compaq Presario cq56-115dx laptop. I'm giving it to my nephew and wanted to do a few upgrades. I've already added 8gb of ram and a 1tb 7200 rpm hdd. I was wondering what's the best choice for a cpu uograde. It has the s1 socket and currently has an amd v140 processor. I have done some research and know that it can supposedly handle the AMD Phenom II Dual-Core Mobile Processor N660, AMD Phenom II Dual-Core N640 , AMD Phenom II Quad-Core Mobile N970 , and the AMD Mobile Athlon II N370. I get confused at what's better the speed or number of cores?? They are all the s1/s1g4 socket and should be compatible with the stock motherboard. Please help. Thanks
 
Solution
Darkbreeze
After further investigation it seems that in regard to BIOS support and thermal compatibility, the motherboard in that unit will support up to a Phenom II N970, without major complications, and is the preferred and recommended chip upgrade, if any is done. That is the chip most probable to offer any real benefit, but honestly, unless you can find one fairly cheap, it's probably not worth the time and effort required. You might be better served simply using the RAM and hard drive in a newer unit.

Barring that as an option however, the N970 quad core will almost certainly work and should offer a significant improvement over the V140 single core chip in there now...
Sort by date Sort by votes
Whether or not the socket will accept the CPU isn't the real issue. The main concern will be whether or not the BIOS will support the chip you install or if a newer BIOS is available for your notebook model that does. If there is not a BIOS firmware revision available for your laptop or the system board it has installed, it doesn't make the least bit of different what is compatible with the architecture.

Before making any further decisions on a chip, find out what it can support or if there is possibly a custom bios available on one of the BIOS mod sites. If there is another laptop model available with the same system board that uses the intended CPU, then it's likely there is a compatible BIOS available or that the current BIOS may support it.
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
Also you'd want to check out if the laptops cooling system can handle an upgraded cpu.
Compare the TDP of the original processor with whatever one you are thinking of installing, depending on your experience you should know if it can handle a few watts extra or not
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Asking some red flag questions in my mind. When your still trying to figure out whether speed or cores makes a chip faster and your not sure how to determine bios compatibility, that just doesn't sound like someone who is ready to be swapping a laptop cpu to me.

By the way, that board does not support the X4's you listed. Not officially, at least.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Maybe the chip alone, but how much was the 8GB of RAM and the 1TB hard drive? It all adds up.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
After further investigation it seems that in regard to BIOS support and thermal compatibility, the motherboard in that unit will support up to a Phenom II N970, without major complications, and is the preferred and recommended chip upgrade, if any is done. That is the chip most probable to offer any real benefit, but honestly, unless you can find one fairly cheap, it's probably not worth the time and effort required. You might be better served simply using the RAM and hard drive in a newer unit.

Barring that as an option however, the N970 quad core will almost certainly work and should offer a significant improvement over the V140 single core chip in there now.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-PCs-Envy-Pavilion/Compaq-Presario-CQ56-Processor-Upgrade/td-p/5817429#.VO2JAOktFhE
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution


I think you can safely add on a fair bit more before it will start equating to a new laptop.

I upgraded the CPU, motherboard (and hence GPU), RAM, and the hard drive to an 500GB SSD, replaced the fan and battery and installed Windows 8.1 on my Vaio FW21L. All in all it cost me around the same as a brand new laptop of comparable performance.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Just to add to what I previously posted, for me, in most cases, upgrading core hardware on laptops makes little sense because most of what can be put inside, already IS inside. Unlike desktops, there isn't usually a huge performance spectrum between the installed hardware and what COULD be installed. In this case however, I think the added value of moving from a single core chip to a quad core more than justifies the expense of an upgrade and the only real question is whether or not that expense is MORE justified going towards a newer product. If you can get the processor for less than fifty bucks, I'd say yes.

A word of caution though. I'd highly advise getting it new if possible. With a used chip you have NO idea if it's any good, how old it is, whether or not it was abused, how much life is left in it even if it wasn't abused and most likely there is a complete lack of any means of recourse if you buy it and it's a coaster.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks Dark breeze. I think it's well worth the money and from doing further research there are a few people up installed the chip and noticed a significant improvement. FALCON I had a friend who sales computer parts so I got the ram and hard drive for nothing. If I did have to pay for it around 120 bucks for both plus the 40 bucks for the chip, 160 total....you said I could get a new one for that price. ..could you tell me where?? 350 to 400 is the cheapest I've seen. I'm upgrading this laptop for fun and to learn, as I said I'm giving it to my nephew to use for school. I also think my question about which chip was faster. ...according to cores versus gigahertz was a valid question. There actually are cpu's with less cores that are faster. ...look at AMD and Intel xenon. Me asking that question doesn't make me stupid nor incompetent to install a cpu. It's actually a simple process and I'm mechanically inclined. I'm trying to learn more about computers and how they function. When I don't understand something I ask a question, isn't that the point of this forum Falcon?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Well, when you put it that way, you have convinced me. Doing all of that for the sake of the experience, in my opinion, is worth it regardless of cost.

I wasn't trying to put you down. I was just under the impression that you were stepping over dollars to pick up pennies and maybe in over your head. I was mistaken. Subsequent posts Make it clear that you did great job preparing. Especially nice job catching the unlisted quad core upgrade. Even I missed that the first time through.

Darkbrees, you also made a good point. Usually, upgrading laptop cpu's results in an uninspiring upgrade which isn't worth the trouble. However, single core to quad core is definitely worth the attempt.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks for your responses dark breeze and falcon. I updated the bios and installed the N970 and it works like a champ and the performance is much better over the stock v140. It didn't take much time and was quick and a good learning experience.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hmm I did this upgrade on a friends laptop recently and opted to change his V140 2.3ghz single core to a £13.25 n660 3ghz dual core with a £3 fan as the old one had stopped working. I used k10stat to tune the processor by undervolting it and wound up with full load peak temperatures below 60oC or 70oC on my lap which is far better than anyone else seems to get with this processor. My benchmarks show a 3x performance improvement in most workloads and 64bit geekbench of 3044 which is similar to the fastest intel core 2 duo mobile available.
http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/8073140?baseline=1175957
I decided against the quad core n970 due to the lower single core speed and fact that most workloads wont use much more than 2 cores effectively.
My CQ56 has cooling issues when on my lap as oppose to on a desk as the fan intake sits directly over my left leg. To get around this I've fitted a 12 cell battery off ebay £13 which stiicks out at the back and creates a decent void under the laptop for airflow as well as doubling the battery life in this backup laptop.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom