M17x Upgrade - steps/advise please

Hi guys

yes us poor IT guys always gets this situations

anyhow - my CEO wants to know if its possible to upgrade his son's M17x laptop, but unfortunately i have none to zero experience on upgrading them.

reading up a bit tonight, it seams totally possible - but i normally like to throw a little bit of caution down.

Can someone please assist me to determine :
what the possible upgrade options is for the laptop (specs to follow)
and what the recommended upgrades should be.
I would prefer if the upgrades didn't require installing after market firmware's/ BIOS on the laptop - but it seems that you guys are all expert on this by now
I am not sure what revision M17x it is (and it also seems to be difficult to determine).
If you guys can recommend software that can pull more detailed info about the hardware installed - please do so

ok

Spec's provided to me is as follows :


Current Specs: (Gotten by speccy)
Operating System
MS Windows 7 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 740QM @ 1.73GHz
Clarksfield 45nm Technology
RAM
4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 659MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Alienware (CPU 1)
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1440x900@60Hz)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 (Dell)
Hard Drives
313GB Western Digital WDC WD3200BEKT-75PVMT0 (SATA)
Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GA31N
DTSOFT Virtual CdRom Device
Audio
IDT High Definition Audio CODEC
Desired Specs(as requested by his son):
16 GB Ram
Latest CPU (latest i7 etc.)
Latest Graphics card (Preferably NVIDIA)
If possible bigger hard drive ( solid state )


I suspect it's an R2 model(due to the CPU) - but i cant be sure if its a crossfire setup or not.
anyhow -
As requested - please advise what CPU upgrade is possible(and if any noticeable performance upgrades will be noted).
GPU upgrade i noticed there is some guides - but some recommended options will be appreciated

Thank you very much


Neo_X

 

Go with 120 or 250 SSD sata II for the R2 that will make it feel like new system. Just installed one in my wife's system big improvement. Max is 8 gig 1333 ram that was a lot back then. A I7 920 or 940 ex will drop right in. Video cards unless you really want to mod the system I would keep the 5870 or 5870's good cards and still play all games very well, the other upgrades will make the system like new. Oh and the second drive I would drop in a 500 or 750 Seagate Momentus XT for storage. Last you could pu in a 1200p RGBLED screen find them on ebay hope his old man pays you well..lol .

 

Mine is pretty much maxxed out. I flashed AMD 6990s with AMD firepro vbios though for folding@home. Everything is pretty much plug and play.

 

Grab an LEDRGB 1920x1200 off ebay if you can find it....best upgrade ever! Especially since he has the 1440x900 display. The system will accept NVIDIA 580M's but fan control will be manual only and as far as I know no one has yet gotten SLI to work....I believe the 6990's will work in xfire but have the same fan control issue in the R2's. Staying with the 5870's is probably the safe move. Daddy won't like it if he bricks that new $700 NVIDIA card! If you don't want to go the whole SSD route....I love my Seagate XT Hybrid 500GB...25 second boot to usable desktop. But if $$ are no prob or if you don't need the extra storage space go for the SSD.