Changing a CPU on a laptop

baldzone · 9 Oct 2008 at 07:10

Never done this before. The missus went out and bought a crappy Pentium dual core lappy (sooooo slooooww!) and I'm wondering if it's possible to fit a C2D into it? Not having played with laptops before I'm a little concerned about opening it up and also heat dissipation issues.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite L40-18Z

Any advice greatly appreciated

oxygene · 9 Oct 2008 at 07:21

I looked into that with one of my laptops before. Even if you can add a new cpu, chances are the heat with you current one is barely shifted enough. Plus theres not exactly a guide as to what laptop mobos can take. I'd leave it.

misterPK · 9 Oct 2008 at 09:26

Laptops are a pain to take apart, you have to be very careful with the millions of screws they usually have in them. It's not impossible, but as has been said, you need to make sure they are compatible.

PK!

Admiral Huddy · 9 Oct 2008 at 09:30

This is true.. My rate for laptop HW repairs is double the price, just to put people off.

When I've done this, normally take digital pictures and label everything as I go along. Even then, there's always one screw left over ???

Laptop are so cheap now days, sell the one you have and buy new.

baldzone · 9 Oct 2008 at 10:07

Thought as much.

She'll have to lump it or use my desktop.

Cheers guys

ShakenNstirred · 9 Oct 2008 at 10:21

i have a 8 year old Intel 800mhz laptop from advent
i upgraded the CPU to 1.1gig about 3-4 years ago and its fine
I'm still using it now.

how much ram you got in the laptop as that can make it slow if there isn't much ram
if its running vista u want 2gig min in it and i guess also the graphics share ram which will leave less ram to use , again slowing it down

AtaRo · 9 Oct 2008 at 10:25

You will probably see a good speed improvement if you downgrade to XP and double its memory to 2GB.

baldzone · 9 Oct 2008 at 11:33

It's only got 1 Gb iirc. Could try and persuade her to upgrade it.

She got the laptop 'cos she wanted Vista. XP is a no go unfortunately.

Mick-1965 · 9 Oct 2008 at 11:44

baldzone said:
Never done this before. The missus went out and bought a crappy Pentium dual core lappy (sooooo slooooww!) and I'm wondering if it's possible to fit a C2D into it? Not having played with laptops before I'm a little concerned about opening it up and also heat dissipation issues.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite L40-18Z

Any advice greatly appreciated

According to tosh website the cpu in this is a T2330.
This CPU is based around the "core" architecture, don't get it confused with the old pentium D netburst CPU`s .

As said above upgrading the ram to 2 gig will help allot.