Notebook Upgrade Advice.

[jcastle]

For curiosity sake, I decided to open up my Compaq 1600-XL145 Notebook. It's a P3 500 (coppermine). Works nice, but just wanted to see how they put it together. I was surprised to find a socket 370 in that bad boy. I pondered the possibilities and wanted to run it by some other tech savy people as myself.

The P3 500 has a 100MHz FSB. The notebook has no way of changing the FSB in the bios and the tiny mainboard had no indication as to what jumpers to configure. So, I'm stuck at 100MHz for the FSB. This being the case, the fastest 100MHz FSB P3 is the 850 coppermine. Everyone see where I'm getting at? I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience swapping out CPU's in this notebook. In theory, it should work. All P3's are multiplier locked so I'm not worried about that. The CPU will multiply whatever the FSB is. I'm thinking compaq went with the FC-PGA socket for ease of upgrade specifically for this purpose. Anyone else with their 2 cents?

BTW, the processor is not an Intel Mobile CPU, just the regular P3 coppermine.

-Jess

 

[cavingjan]

The biggest consideration you need to look at is heat. Faster processor generates a lot more heat and will also use more power too. Battery life will decrease. (If that is a concern)
Look to see hwat the fastest processor they put into that model of laptop.

 

[jcastle]

Fastest one for that line of notebook is 650. But I'm assuming they didn't continue putting the coppermines in the notebooks beyond this speed because intel introduced the mobile line, which is not pin compatible with the coppermines. Guess all I can do is pull it out and slap the 850 in and cross my fingers and hit the power button. In theory, it should work.

About the heat. The notebook seems to have a built in temp sensor which clicks on a fan in the rear of the notebook. The heat sink on this thing is incredible. It basically spans the length beneath the keyboard and is designed to direct the airflow from the rear fan to the side of the notebook. The design is sound, and i think it would handle the extra heat from the upgrade. Power consumption I don't really care about, I can always buy a second battery.

Perhaps I should send some pics... maybe my next reply.

Would be cool project to post on a website.

-Jess

 

[Smbu]

Well if it's just a regular fcpga cpu you could probably put in a P3 1ghz in there. Not one of the EB ones, but an E version with a 10x multiplier. (10x100=1ghz)

 

[bacillus]

maybe he should try to get the same stepping chip for the upgrade as I'm fairly sure it's not a cCO stepping. I'm only thinking this as the default voltage of a cBO stepping is 1.6V vs cCO of 1.7V & I'm uncertain if the m/board would be able to provide the default voltage to boot at higher voltage if he can't get a bios update so the cpu can be correctly recognised.

 

[cavingjan]

Another thing to consider (sorry I forgot this earlier) is whether the BIOS can understand the chip. I had a super7 that couldn't understand a 450 chip. Shuoldn't be much of an issue but you never know for sure.
On the heat thing. My K6 233 laptop had a pretty hefty design when it came to heat and in fact when I opened it up, I discovered a K6 266 chip jumpered as a 233. I rejumpered it and tried it out. I could not heavily use the cd drive in it (aka play Diablo 1 with the sound on) without freezing the system. I also managed to burn my legs one night in hte hotel when I sat the thing on my lap. Opened it up and rejumpered it back and its been running noticibly cooler. Don't underestimate it. If you can borrow someone's chip, try it out. But I'd wait until the system is not adequate anymore first.

 

[jcastle]

I wasn't aware the 2 different stepping versions had different voltage specs. I just knew that one of them allows multiprocessor. Hmm... interesting. I'm sure the flavor I have is the 1.6v spec.

Here is a cheesy webpage I slapped together of my notebook and the possible CPU upgrade.

http://jcastle3.homestead.com/index.html

All I need now is to get my hands on a P3 850 CPU.

I've read some stuff on software CPU coolers like cpuidle and RAIN. Anyone have experience with these? Do they actually work? If so, this may help the cooling issue.

-Jess