Old trusty M1530

I'm about to get my old M1530 back from my brother. Back in the day when it was considered Dells first venture into the stylish and powerful, I loved it. It just doesn't seem up to scratch now. I was actually lucky and got a unit without the nvidia heat plague. I really want to kit it out now. I'm planning to get some 4GB ram. I'm undecided on the x9000. I know it works and I have very good knowledge of controlling temps in a laptop. I just want to know, it is worth it? Is it manipulatable with throtlestop? Like Dual-IDA etc.

Any other suggestions? I just want to max out this laptop to the fullest spec it can handle.

 

You could go with an X9000 but would you want to spend 220-280 and deal with heat issues?

You could try a T9300/T9500 and enjoy lower temperatures or even a T8x00 series Penryn.

XPS M1530 should be able to go to 6/8 GB DDR2.

 

i have built 3 xps m1530 machines, one with t7500 (2.2 ghz), one with t9300 (2.5 ghz), one with x9000. I run 8 gb of ram on two of them with vista ultimate x64 and windows7 ultimate x64. I have one with 4 gb and vista ultimate x86. I never had a heat issue with any of them, no matter what cpu i used. When i used throttlestop, i kept getting blue screen, no matter what multiplier i used. So i replaced the x9000 with a t9500 and saw no performance difference. I, like you wanted to max the laptop out. The biggest performance gain was going to Intel SSD. I used the 256mb motherboards, blueray and intel 6300 wireless card. My recommendation would be spend your money on ssd and watch your computer fly. I took the x9000 cpu and built me a custom xps m1730, where you can set the cpu to 3.4 ghz with the bios. Awesome laptop but it weighs alot, i feel like i am carrying around a desktop.

 

If your up for it, consider applying a FSLx or tme-unlock PLL pinmod T8100/T8300/T9300/T9500 to get a dual-IDA overclock anywhere b/w 3.1-3.6Ghz. See http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...pll-pinmod-overclocking-methods-examples.html . That's getting into i5 performance territory.

 

I have a m1530 with the T9500 and 8gb crucial DDR2 667mhz memory. Upgraded it from the T6600 and 4 gigs of ram. The laptop is much quicker, works awesome for me with VMware.

I will tell you, after testing memory, Corsair 8gb DDR2 800mhz memory is NOT compatible with the m1530 chipset. Windows will detect the 8gb properly, but memtest86 will give you errors.

I bought the more expensive crucial memory, 667mhz and it performs awesome.


edit:

Can I ask, would this type of overclock allow you to run 800mhz memory or does that stay the based on the chipset?