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    Adventures in cpu replacement :)

    Discussion in 'Alienware M11x' started by ejohnson, Apr 9, 2012.

  1. tosiek

    tosiek Newbie

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    Does it work?
     
    tosiek, Aug 19, 2013
    #101
  2. ejohnson

    ejohnson Is that lemon zest?

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    Sofar, no :(

    I can get it to boot to post, but I cant get past that.
     
    ejohnson, Aug 19, 2013
    #102
  3. tosiek

    tosiek Newbie

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    Have you switched OC off? You should try to remove battery for few minutes. :(
     
    tosiek, Aug 19, 2013
    #103
  4. hecatomb

    hecatomb Notebook Enthusiast

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    Well that was a letdown... sorry to hear that man after such a long journey. I'm trying to make my M11x not so sluggish right now.. but I fear there's not much else I can do. I like the 500GB of the original HDD, but I should really move to a SSD.
     
    hecatomb, Sep 21, 2013
    #104
  5. nforce4max

    nforce4max Notebook Consultant

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    Was this a good sample when it was sold or was it just another dive? I hope that this doesn't scare people off from doing such a project after all I got lucky on a su9400 for $10 and hope to do this one day. It might be possible that the bga work may have gone bad or you got a lemon. I doubt that there is any firmware/bios issue with the swap after all they are both the same core and if it didn't recognize the new cpu it should have started with an error code but would have still kept the defaults on the cpu voltage as well fsb clocks. I looked into the gpu swap a little the only work outside the bga is the bios rom for the timings and clocks for the vram.
     
    nforce4max, Oct 14, 2013
    #105
  6. ejohnson

    ejohnson Is that lemon zest?

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    I think it was either a bad solder job or a bad cpu, at this point I am unsure and have very little extra time to try to solve it. Soon enough though, I will get it to work.
     
    ejohnson, Oct 15, 2013
    #106
  7. nforce4max

    nforce4max Notebook Consultant

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    I am wondering if it might be possible to solder this by hand without the right beads and stencil but the pads on both the board as well cpu will have to be cleaned. Somewhere on youtube there are professional training videos for soldering that are top notch. I figure that some new solder can be tinned to the pads on the board and cpu then align and do a reflow. The only thing that can go wrong is the joints short or there is an open if the solder doesn't all melt. The only downside is that the cpu will sit slightly lower but if the joints are good they will be fairly strong and might resist cracking. I know a gpu swap will work (GTS 360m) that if flashed prior to being salvaged with the correct timings for the existing vram on the alienware board. Same chip, most likely same voltage and both run 35w typically with slightly better clocks.
     
    nforce4max, Oct 15, 2013
    #107
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