Acer 5920G Hard Drive Upgrade Seagate 7200.4

Hey all.

I have an Acer 5920G, the Best Buy variety, with the 1.5GHz Dual Core and the HD DVD Drive.

From what I know this laptop comes with a 4200RPM drive, and that slows down texture loading in modern games.

With a 8600M and a 1.5GHz there shouldn't be any reason that I cannot run TF2 at very high texture quality, so logically, it must be the slow drive that is slowing things down.

I want to upgrade my drive to a Seagate Momentus 7200.3 (or .4 if they come out soon). They sport 7200RPM and are available up to the 320GB variety.

According to this page:

http://www.barefeats.com/hard56.html

The drives are up to 80% faster than the 4200rpm's, and that should make up for the extra power usage and the increased heat (I can use some thermal paste for that I guess).

So, my question is, with the upgraded wattage requirements, is this drive compatible with the Acer 5920G? I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be, but just wanted to make sure.

Oh and if you guys could tell me how hard switching out a laptop's hard drive is, I would really appreciate it. Since I know some people on these forums have experimented with their 5920G's before, can you guys let me know where to watch out for warranty tape, indicators, and such that shouldn't be broken?

I have a lot of experience with desktops, but absolutely zip with laptops.

Thanks!

 

Any standard SATA 2.5 HDD will work with your AS5920G.BTW Seagate going to release Momentus 7200.4 500GB version this fall.Price will be definitely high

Read AS5920G service manual to know how to swap HDD

 

You do not need to put thermal paste ANYWHERE.

HDD drives use a miniscule part of a pc or lappies power supply resources.

A faster HDD will not burn out the "BRICK" (AC adaptor). It will handle that easily. Your battery life is going to take a knock though... Maybe 15 to 20 minutes less than you had with the slower drive.

Otherwise all will work OK. As it is. With the new 7200RPM drive.

Except, the new 7200RPM HDD will run hotter than the old 4200RPM drive.

Nothing you can do about that. Faster drives always run hotter.

Fact of life.

Cheers,
Theo

 

Thanks a ton for the replies, ordered, arrived, and installed no problem.

It's a beauty, battery life took a hit though, as predicted, by about 15-20 minutes on balanced with very low cpu and graphics usage.

No worries, just the increased speed makes me happy.

 

are you still runing VISTA?? have you considered DUAL BOOTING XP to use when running your games?? XP will free up a bit more resouces and CPU time for running the game (instead of using so much memory and CPU for the OS)

are you running RMCLOCK to undervolt your CPU.. that can get you a 5 or 10% increase in battery life per charge...

just follow the directions on this link to UNDERVOLT your cpu...

there are threads with links to all needed XP drivers if you are interested in doing a dual boot let me know i'll try to point you to a few good walk-thrus