TehSuigi's Upgrade Experience!

EDIT: PICS HERE.

Hi folks! I'm back after a day-or-two absence, while I upgraded my CPU and reinstalled my OS.
It also gave me the chance to benchmark some graphics drivers on a relatively vanilla system, which I'll post some point soon.

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for Steam and Windows Update to finish their respective downloads, I might as well post about my experience.

The Upgrade Itself
After removing the backplate and the fan (which I had already done once, when I cleaned them both out), I had the enviable task of removing the heatsink. For those of you that don't know, the CPU and GPU heatsinks are conjoined by a common pipe of copper. This pipe makes it INCREDIBLY difficult to shoehorn the thing out of the notebook - it took some effort and a little bit of noise that didn't sound good. But, it was removed.

In terms of thermal cooling, give Acer some credit. The thermal pads attached to the graphics card's memory chips are squished under a screwed-on plate that is separate from the heatsink - you can remove it and only the GPU core will be exposed! Thus, the main worry I had about the upgrade was for naught.
And what thermal paste they had on the CPU and GPU cores came off rather easily with some isopropyl alcohol. I managed to get my GPU to a brilliant sheen.

The T8300 dropped in without a problem, and I applied Arctic Silver 5 to both CPU and GPU cores. The CPU was easy, the GPU...less much. The heatsink screw posts kind of impeded my credit card application technique. That being said, I was still able to get a relatively thin and even spread on both. Unfortunately, I also managed to get it on my desk, my hands, my elbow...and this stuff doesn't like to come off skin that easily!!

Re-assembly was even more of a hassle than disassembly. The heatsink was its usual cranky self to be put back in (I did manage to do so without smearing the AS5 at all!), and now the fan required some extra grunt to replace. Another bad-sounding noise emitted, but the thing finally got shoved in.
Oh, and those power and antenna cables? Yeah, you'll need to tape them down again.

The Results
Once the backplate was back on, I tentatively booted up the system - Success! BIOS recognized it, and I was able to get Vista reinstalled without any further issues.
And OH MY GOODNESS, EVERYTHING'S FASTER. System bootup even when I dumped all my crud back on my system, shutdown, loading, wakeup from hibernate, everything! And whatever overheating issues I had with my stock T5550 have disappeared - I'm running the T8300 WITHOUT an undervolt!

Benchmark Results
3DMark06: Up 103 points from 3533 to 3636.
PCMark05: Up 1281 points from 4109 to 5390.
I'll see how it handles gaming (and specifically TF2) by end of weekend.

I'll update this post with what pictures I took on my cameraphone once I manage to get the Bluetooth connection working again.
And the benchmark results I got will be posted later in a different topic.
Let's just say I found a new favourite - 176.26.

 

Congrats on the upgrade TehSuigi. Enjoy the new power.

 

Oh trust me, I will. Once I get everything configgered the way I like it, I'll be getting actual decent framerates on TF2!

 

Did the temp lower with some AS5? I'm pretty curious about the pic. I will finaly see the inside of my 6920G. I think you are the first to upgrade it. Good job if everything works.

 

Thanks, mat! So far everything is working. And from stock, the temperatures definitely did lower with AS5. From a 0.2-volt undervolt, things run slightly warmer. But I haven't done above 65 degrees so far - no throttling either.

GPU temp never was a concern for me - low 70s using a bad driver looping 3DMark06 5 times.

 

Good job mate. When i popped a T7500 in my 5920, I had a bit of a nightmare getting the heatsink out, was a very delicate job, I had some bad sounding noises to but it all worked out, made me nervous for a bit though after hearing the noises!!!

 

Glad to hear everything went well with no nasty surprises.

 

Teh picz!

The guts of the system, just after opening.
Different view of above.
Keep in mind those two were for my own reference and trying to fix everything back together once I was done.

The T8300, all AS5'd up and ready to install.
The system sans heatsink and CPU. You can see the northbridge right below the CPU socket, and the exposed GPU core (with the VRAM chips under heatpads!).
CPU and GPU AS5'd and installed, ready to have the heatsink stuck back on.
SUCCESS!

 

Congrats mate, im rather jealous now as you beat me to it lol. to be serious though im just glad the jobs a good'un for you man and also that you have noticed the desired results, I am officialy re-inspired

great work TehSuigi

 

hmmm looks so scary to do...im not familiar with laptops and there insides , im afraid i might break a computer artery or something .

 

Could I go to a computer shop and try to get this done? I am quite bad with the insides of laptops

 

Probably not - few shops even recognize that laptop CPUs can be upgraded, let alone do it themselves.
And please keep an eye on post dates when bumping a topic. This one was almost four months old!

 

just a note, i also would tend to bump an old post, is that not the thing to do?
otherwise, you submit a new post which you then link to old posts which takes longer to do and read, or risk several people jumping in flaming - this is already covered in post 53654365 - when it usually isnt because youve read that already?
thoughts?

 

Reviving old threads shouldn't be done. Mostly because almost all the time the original poster(s) haven't logged in since then so you're bumping and old thread and asking people which will never answer you back. We tend to close threads that are older than 6 months.
I will let this one go because:
1. It's an important thread.
2. The creator(TehSuigi) is still around.

 

damn man i would really like to do that to mine..

 

Hi there, great forum i've ordered a 6920g and will be getting it in the next few days.
I found this site yesterday and haven't really stopped readin since then lol. I was interested in upgrading my stock T5800 to something with more zip and then I found this very helpful thread, horray its possible, thats not what the techs in pc world told me, hmmm.
Tehsuigi, I have also spoke on the phone to a local lappie repair man and he tells me much the same as you have already described, that the tricky part is the fan/heat sink bit, my question to you is this, do you have to reinstall the os afterwards because the man I spoke to said I would not need to reinstall anything, he said just swop the chips and i'm good to go?
I am thinking of using T9600 is this a good thing or not will is cause heat issues?
thanks in advance I will most likley be using this forum a lot in the coming months, you all do a great job sharing the knowledge.

 

T9600 won' work, it's not supported by the GM965 chipset.

Any of these should work:

Normally there is no need to reinstall the OS.

 

thankyou ATG, after seeing your avatar I might just dig up some blackadder this afternoon, but first i have a cunning plan, to learn as much as possible about upgrades for the 6920.

 

how did you get your t8300 running on 1volt
how do you change it...
and how to get the gpu on those speeds you got?

 

Look up the undervolting guide on NBR for the CPU. As for the GPU, you would need a program called Rivatuner to overclock your GPU

 

Or Nvidia System Tools, which plays nicer with the official Nvidia drivers than RivaTuner.