Upgraded Acer 3680 Celeron CPU to a T5300!

so just to clarify, my current laptop is a Aspire 3680-2022 with a 940GML chipset. if i were you buy a Aspire 3680-2633 with the 943GML chipset, and take my hard drive out of my current laptop, and put it in the new laptop, i shouldnt have any problems?

 

As long as the bios is up to date, that is a correct assumption.

 

i wud advise u to just swap the motherboard....it ll cost u about $160 shipped....!! since u can sell ur old one as well....it wud be a gud deal....!!
the 940 just wont go above the T1350....irrespective of the bios and the hotfix sadly....i have tried everything in my power to make a darn core 2 duo work....but still in vain....!!

 

i was looking at motherboards, thing is, its actually cheaper for me to just buy the whole 3680-2633 system than just a REV. E motherboard with no attachments. ive painted my laptop and all, done some modifications to the case so that i can use a high-gain 18 dBi antenna with my Atheros wifi card, with a RP-SMA jack out the back of the laptop. so if i got a new computer, i'd swap out everything thats in mine, with everything thats in the new one, and run the new motherboard in my old caseive been wanting to get my girlfriend an anniversary present anyways, so my old laptop in a new case should be nice

 

would like to see the mod on the antenna
i sometimes on a nice evening sit on the roof of my house,and the antenna mod seems like a good idea as the signal drop can be a problem.
Cheers,
Phil

 

its actually a pretty simple procedure. while i had my laptop apart earlier today, i took advantage of that un-used plastic panel that sits next to the ethernet port on the back, drilled a small hole there, just big enough for the RP-SMA jack to come out the back. a 12 inch U.FL to RP-SMA pigtail is exactly what you need. you can route it perfectly from the AUX port on the wifi card, up, and over to the back of the laptop perfectly. you use about 11.5 of those 12 inches. i'll post pictures when im done with it. right now the lid on my laptop is fully black, with a big Apple symbol in the middle. i call it my AcerApple

 

that would make an excellent little thread... i to would love to see exactly how you have done the MOD... while it seems like it should be fairly easy to do,,, nothing inspires like a few good PICs,,, and detailed instructions

 

nice. my pigtail came today, installed it, and took before and after screenshots, installation shots. its really nice. before, i had 5 bars on my wifi (the laptop is sitting right above the router) and 2 bars on 2 of my neighbors routers. so 3 networks in all, 2 of which had crappy signal. after hooking this up, i now get 5 bars on mine, 4 bars on my neighbors, 2 bars on another neighbors, and 3 new networks popped up that ive never seen before.whats even better is, i dont even have to carry around my $100 wifi antenna wherever i go to get good reception. i can plug in any antenna that uses RP-SMA and it works twice as good as the built-in antenna. i'll be making a new topic with pictures and instructions later today.

 

cool i really wanna see how this is connected to the card,, and does wifi still work w/ out external antenna (using fact wires or have you removed them?
or are you just screwing a mini antenna to the jack and have effectively disabled the factory antennas?

i think i have great idea for the 3rd antenna needed when upgrading to N-draft cards... i'll try to get some additional info on my idea

 

Hello everyone, back again... and unfortunately yes with another question and not upgrade success just yet. The T7200 has just be taken out of Neweggs standard offerings and so I am now looking at a T7400 for my Aspire 3680-2682. Trying to find a cheap T7600 I stumbled upon the information that the T7600 comes in two forms, one is with "ball pins" and the other is the more common previous standard pins. I would assume that my aspire with a white socket M479 takes that standard pins. So when did this new ball pin design show up that I might have to worry about an incompatibility depending on which make of the same processor I would get?

EDIT: I tried to make sense of the possible physical problem I may run into (with the T7XXX series only?) but wikipedia only confused me more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_479

 

do not get the BALL model... you want the standard pin version!!!

 

Okay, thats what I thought. Thanks!

 

no prob,, glad to help

bigO

 

Ok, I'm going to buy a T7400 from Newegg within the next few hours and thus am placing a $330 bet that it will work. Also buying some arctic silver 5 and the arctic silver 5 thermal compound prep kit($10 more to the bet). If this does not work I guess I have 7 days to return if its a wrong fit. However, if it does fit and does not work.... guess I will get an ebay account or take orders from anyone here that would be interested. From everything I have read here in this thread there is no reason it shouldn't work, but I am a little weary of making such a large wager. Well here it goes... I'll post my results back within a week.

 

T7400 shud work just fine....since it is similar to the T5500/T5600 with just the multipliers raised....

 

Received my new T7400 today and am going to install it yet tonight in my lappy. Wish me luck! I'll post back later tonight with my results.

 

good luck Aspire.
take it slow and with no distractions.

we will try and wait for your post:
good luck mate,
Phil

 

i keep forgetting that you can't just do a 15 min upgrade like the 5315's

but i'm looking forward to hearing of the upgrade

 

Add another upgrade success to the list! I now have a brand new T7400 inside my Aspire 3680-2682! Up and running lightning fast.

My Aspires upgrade list:
Stock CPU: Celeron M 440 1.83GHz 533MHz FSB
New CPU: Core 2 Duo T7400 2.13GHz(4MB L2 cache) 667MHz FSB EDIT:6/21/08:NOT running at 533MHz(chipset limitation), sorry for the confusion!

Stock RAM: 1x 512MB 533MHz DDR2 RAM
New RAM: 2x 1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM running at 533MHz(chipset limitation)

Stock HDD: 80GB SATA 1.5Gbps 8MB cache replaced with
New HDD: 200GB SATA 3.0Gbps 16MB cache

Thank you everyone for providing this thread for information to do this upgrade! You have taken my budget machine and enabled it to become a machine that rivals desktops! I will create a 3680-2682 upgrade instruction pdf file and upload it to help continue the success stories and as my way of giving back to this wonderful community! Thanks again!

 

congratulations! was 330+ dollar risk worth it? i know anybody that contributes to this forum that helps others do what they really want to do is the best i think. i see you have some chipset and configuration limitations on your motherboard that effect all your upgrades. look into that next time you invest. i consider your choice of upgrades to be overkill because all but the HD operate on 533mhz and your HD will not operate above 1.5Gbps on the SATA controller, based on your motherboard configuration for your acer 3680-2862 respectively. I do think equal performance can be achieved based on what the user is looking to do/solve can be achieved with other CPUs that have been successfully tested and listed on the 1st page of this thread. thanks to krazyphire and countless others i know when i upgrade my resale value and performance of this laptop i won't go any higher than a t5300, 2gb matched set of CL4 533mhz RAM, and 200GB 7200RPM HDD w/ 16MB cache. For someone who don't know the basics of bottlenecks and computers the resale value for your laptop would probably be higher than mine. you got this machine upgraded and working you get credit there and in so, your confirmation adds to another upgrade option to this thread. krazyphire? you going to put this person's working config up to the front of the thread?

 

wow....congrats....
i guess thats the highest upgrade achieved on the 3680 till date....
so i think it is *official* now....i943 3680s can be upgraded upto the T7600....

 

Enjoy that lightning speed..... i bet it's a huge difference...

do a Wprime test and report your results please... i wanna see how much more performance you are getting outta that thing

 

Thanks! I am a computer science student that originally bought this laptop for only word processing to find that I wanted to use it for coding and other high demanding tasks for my classes so I wanted to upgrade my laptop to be as fast as possible. I have a powerful desktop* but transferring files from school computers to my computer is more trouble than its worth(I commute so its not just taking files back to my dorm).
*desktop: Core 2 Duo E6420 2.13GHz 4MB L2 Cache 1066MHz FSB, 4GB 667MHz ram, geforce 8600GT Factory Over Clocked (256MB GDDR3), 250GB SATA 3.0Gbps HDD w/16MB cache

As for the bottlenecks that are in my system I came to know of them before I upgraded, to get 533MHz RAM cost as much as 667MHz and at no penalty for getting the higher MHz I choose to get it at the possibility of a chipset driver upgrade making the i943 a 945 as some have reported chipsets being able to do in this thread. Now with the CPU, the T7XXX series is the first core 2 duo to offer 4MB of L2 cache which I found to be important. Also I wanted to purcahse a new processor that had the factory 3 year warranty. Newegg ran out of the T7200 and for only 20 more dollars I could get the T7400 which was in stock. I will admit that is overkill, and has completely voided the budget aspect of my laptop but a warrenty and peice of mind that it is a new processor that it has not been possibly abused by someone else is very important to me. As for the HDD, SATA 3.0 has been around for I think around 4 years so I thought that the motherboard would support it. So the Aspire 3680-2682 does not support SATA 3.0Gbps?

Either way, my Aspire upgrades were designed to keep my lappy useful for my next three years of college. I suppose that if I get tired of the bottlenecks I will buy a new motherboard from the higher aspire series and swap everything to it.

I only have one last question with all of the upgrade, I did not replace the thermal compound for the graphics chipset, and did not touch it at all. By removing the heatsink and not adding new compound is there is risk of damage to it by possibly creating a poor thermal connection?

EDIT: I forgot to say about the $330 risk I took for the new CPU. Yes that was a little nerve racking as I don't have money to throw away if it didn't work, but from all the research provided here I was very confident that the new processor would work. So with my desire for maximum laptop power to never worry about upgrading again for the life of this lappy I took the chance. I'm very happy it worked out.

 

did you leave the old heatsink compound on the heatsink?? did you make sure it was centered over the contact point between the CPU and heatsink??

if not you need to get something to put between the two..

Artic Silver 5 is $10... and well worth the peace of mind it would give!!

 

if u didnt touch the gpu's thermal compound....then its fine....
no need to change that since integrated grafix does not produce as much heat as compared to its dedicated counterparts....!!
and u mentioned that the FSB has been downgraded to 533MHz....how is that..?!
I thought only the ram wud function at 533MHz whereas the CPU wud work at 667MHz....!!

 

Yes I did not touch the GPU heatsink compound. Centered the heatsink overtop and refit it down on top as I was not going to let the cpu compound smear. There is a perfect square in the GPU thermal compound from where the gpu connects to the heatsink. Any way to monitor those temps to see if it gets hot that I should add some AS5? I think it should be fine.

I thought my chipset had the 533MHz FSB limitation. I'll double check with cpu-z. I may be mistaken.

 

yeah it ll be gr8 if u cud provide screenshots of the cpuz pages....!!
and there ll be really no need applying AS5 to the gpu....it hardly produces any heat....
i ve opened and closed the heatsink a dozen times....and i never bothered about the gpu..

 

anybody want to buy a i943 motherboard and a T5300 CPU for $200?

 

my bad,,, i thought you were talking about the CPU heatsink,, the GPU is fine and should never have arctic silver placed on it especially if there is a foam-type thermal pad between the GPU and the heatsink

sorry to confuse you

my mistake,, guess i should read more

bigO

 

Well Done ASPIRE

sounds like you have a nice new laptop to play with and test.
congrats to you

 

Congrats on another Happy Upgrade in Our little Acer Corner!

 

The sucess rate and solid info with upgrades on this thread is awesome

All you guys who have contributed to the knowledge and data base material makes me proud to be part of a unique clan of people that actually care and do their best for a product and people they truly want to help.

Probably unheard of on the NET before.

Heck, any Forum on NBR could try what you folks have done. They would probably fail where you have suceeded. Why?

1. Well, I think most Acer owners have no airs and graces. We (Acer) folks are looking for best bang for buck. We like to get the best value for our money. Acer provides that in abundance. From the humblest lappie to a real performer.

2. Most Acer owners (like me hopefully) realise that a lappie is not a lifetime investment.. I often shake my head at people that spend a fortune on a laptop that will be outdated shortly after they have purchased it.

Truly, a waste of hard earned money.

3. Acers are as reliable as any other lappie out there. Personally, magnesium chassis etc. make no sense to me. I treat a lappie with respect. You simply canno't throw a lappie around. Drop an Acer or a De.l once. From a decent height.

Something will break. The multli-layered PCB will take a knock. No matter how good the chassis is.

If a notebook user want's the best of the best, than a Panasonic Toughbook would be the best of the best.

Rambling here

Cheers,
Theo

 

Thanks guys,

Now I am trying to verify the FSB speed I am actually running. According to CPU-z my T7400 Bus Speed is 166.7MHz. So what FSB speed is my CPU actually running at?

 

I just finished wPrime benchmarks on my laptop.
32M 36.581 seconds
1024M 1163.121 seconds (Windows fell asleep during this 2nd test. I think this lead to thread 1 having a 3 second gap behind thread 2 which finished first. Both threads were on par until windows fell asleep)

 

since the FSB speed is 166MHz....then the CPU is running at 667MHz (166x4)
What is the Ram speed shown by CPUz....is it 266Mhz or 333MHz....??

 

My ram is running at 266.7MHz so it is 533MHz FSB. That's great to know that my processor is able to run at full speed. Here I thought that my chipset limited the FSB for cpu to 533. I can live with the ram being under-clocked for what its rated. Thanks for clearing that up for me angad1608.

 

Hmm....it is actually sad....since i have experienced the ram running at 667MHz in my 3680 and it is a tad faster than the 533MHz one....
I am going to ask BIOSMAN if he can make a custom bios for my 3680 which includes the options of setting the DRAM:FSB ratio and the selection for the CPU multiplier....!!
At the moment, I am hunting for walkthroughs on how to break the cpu multiplier....!!

 

Which bios revision do you have? I am currently running on the minimum Core 2 Duo bios v1.3505. Would the newest bios unlock a faster ram speed? I need to update that anyway, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

EDIT: I just check acer downloads for my 3680 and they only have the 1.3505 bios. Isn't there a newer version I saw mentioned in this thread?

 

I am using BIOS v1.3508....but I dont think it will make the ram function at 667MHz....!!
any way here is the link to the latest BIOS v1.3508

 

Is there a difference between European drivers and Pan American drivers? I'm feeling lucky to have gotten this far with my upgrade and don't want to brick my lappy with an unsupported/incorrect bios. I am just very cautions when dealing with bios versions as if the wrong this is installed, very bad things can happen.

 

well....most guys around here download from the euro site as it is more well established and updated more frequently....!!
i bought my laptop from an asian guy and have always updated it with drivers from the european site....!!
if u feel too nervous about the bios....i wud advise that during the upgrade....go into the advanced options in WINPHLASH....and check the options which wud ensure that the new bios is a newer version than the current one and are compatible....(I dont exactly remember those options)..!!
and keep the backup of the current bios on a USB disk..!!

 

you know, if you want the latest drivers for any of your laptop's components why are you going to your laptop OEM website? They get all their drivers from the "equipment suppliers" such as realtek, intel, nvidia, and so on. whatever your laptop OEM company is, they have to pay someone to provide a website service to provide drivers for customer with all their "recent computer products". you would cut out the middle man by going directly to the equipment manufactuer of the component your looking for drivers to install. and also, Aspire_3680-2862...i assume your CPU is supporting FSB of 667mhz as it stands but that is bottlenecked as soon as your calculations from CPU hit your RAM circuits before or after "data of input devices are calculated by CPU -to- output on a display (digital I/O)". which is what we know a computer essentially is yes, no? I believe your asking to much. But, if you want to make the best of what you got and this is the way you really want to do it then more power to you. I have never heard of anybody doing this before! they say this with custom performance upgrade and custom exterior mods for auto's...anything can be done with the right money. the same applies to "crazy" ideas with computers and auto's.

 

Thanks angad adding the bios link to the frontpage.

 

you can upgrade your acer in many other ways as far as internals go. if your good with planning projects and soldering or a wannabe then try purchasing some small gauge wires, appropriate soldering supplies, multimeter, and get some external peripherals/accessories. for some with internal firewire support try some firewire ones. Most everyone has USB support for external peripherals. specific ideas of mine are like...upgrading flash card reader, install speedy high capacity jump drive, install USB hub, bluetooth, and touchscreen support (pricey). look into USB peripherals and accessories. and make sure you check out the specifications and limitations of your motherboard's USB controller(s) because power is limited to each USB port.

 

yeah i guess power is limited to each usb port....which would not be sufficient enought for a firewire port..!!
But I am planning to install one in place of the two back USB ports..!!

 

go ahead...make-your-day

 

Well, I suppose there is the FSB of the CPU not equal to the RAM FSB but only enthusiast computers are currently built to have the FSB's match. My desktop pc has 1033MHz FSB cpu and 667MHz ram. Only recently has RAM been able to reach the FSB speed of CPU's with DDR3 technology(which is extremely expensive). So this difference isn't too bad. I have equal RAM sticks so the RAM can function at its maximum efficiency. Also, wouldn't a faster CPU FSB enable full RAM efficiency and enable the CPU to send and receive commands from other hardware within the same time it would take to read just the ram if the CPU didn't have the faster FSB?

Bottlenecks or not, this is the way I went about getting more power. I don't have the money to go out and buy a brand new machine for the convenience it is worth(I only got the laptop for writing papers while on campus, nothing more as I have a nice desktop to go home to). Also, I loved building my own pc and love upgrading hardware so this was an excellent challenge. I was able to learn a bunch of new things I haven't done before like how to completely dissemble a laptop, apply thermal paste to a cpu and also about all those chipset codes and what they mean. I'll admit that tearing a laptop apart for the first time to do this upgrade was a little crazy on my part, and even more crazy to spend $330 on a processor that should work as it wasn't tested outside of theory. Ok, I'll admit it, I think I'm crazy for doing it looking back at the risks I took. But I like being this kind of crazy .

All said and done upgrading a computer yourself saves you money as you don't have to pay someone to do it for you. I saved roughly $200 by upgrading myself than going out and buying a new lappy. Not to mention that most pc manufactures go for cost and give you slower ram or HDD's(stock 5400RPM in my lappy, now a 7400RPM) than what you could get for the same price if you DIY. So in the end I got better components for less.

I am not completely done with my Aspire yet though. I am thinking of giving it a DVD burner and maybe a paint job .

 

Do the math for the GB/sec that the FSB can move and that dual channel memory provides and you will see why you don't "need" 1066mhz memory. It's just like the P4, there's no reason for super fast mhz memory unless the performance is there. Faster mhz does not necessarily faster performance. If you recall, DDR2 at the slower clock speeds was not faster than DDR but what it did allow for was the ability to clock faster whereas DDR was hitting a wall in terms of how much faster it could be clocked.

 

goofball....wah wah wah wah...what?

 

can anyone let me have a copy of a service manual for a acer aspire 3680 as i need to replace power plug
[email protected] thanks if anyone can help