Dell and Upgrades

Hello all, I am completely new to Dell as I have never purchased one of their products before. What I am wondering is does Dell ever let you upgrade any of the hardware and such, when they get say newer cpu's or vid cards? I am getting an XPS M1710 with the 7900GTX, 2.0 Core Duo, and 2Gig ram; I know that is powerful, but just trying to look ahead. Im hoping I can get a Merom and maybe a DX10 card after theyve been out a little while, Im probably too optimistic about the card though

 

Yes and no - some parts are upgradeable but not supported by Dell so if you do, you may void the warranty, if it's still under warranty. So upgrades are supported by Dell so you will have to check with them. Others on this board will be more knowlegeable in terms of specific parts that can be upgraded (besides, ram, hardrive etc...)

 

you can upgrade you RAM (max is 4GB on that system, but nothing other than like CAD will use 2GB of RAM, even games like FEAR can run well with 1.5GB) and you cna upgrade your hard drive. Thats basically it. It is possible to ugrade the CPU although it can be very difficiult on some systems (not sure about the Dell your looking at) but it will require you to take out basically every part of the computer to get to it, and I'm sure that will void the warentee. And you cannot upgrade the graphics either, there was an older Dell XPS and an alienware that let you, but both of those ideas failed...

 

As the other stated, you can upgrade some parts (RAM, HDD, etc). This doesn't void your warranty, but its not covered in your warranty either. Your warranty only covers your orginial parts, so any upgrades that should fail, you'll be responsible for.

You can upgrade your graphics card, but only to the specific cards offered for your system, so basically any card that Dell offers now and in the future for your laptop - you can upgrade to. Again, you'll have to assume liability for any damage.

As to whether merom is supported - right now it is hard to tell. There have been expermients done which users have been able to successfully put Merom in the core duo systems. These were just expermients though. Until Dell says that you can put Merom in your system, none of us can say for sure that Merom will be supported. Right now, your warranty would be voided if you put Merom in since it is an unsupported modification, and most likely even if it becomes a supported modification - it will probably void any warranty that you have. Its similar to what king said - it would be difficult to install Merom, and several complications could occur, so i don't see how you can upgrade it and still have warranty.

SG

 

Thanks guys for the info, that was just something I was curious about before I order the system, which I think ill be doing Fri. Heres to hoping I get it as soon as others have reported getting theirs. Im really looking forward to my first lappy!

 

I disagree that it would void your warranty if you put in a merom CPU in it. You obviously wouldn't have warranty on the processor any longer, but I would be surprised to hear that it would void your entire warranty. The 7800GTX in a 9300 was not supported by Dell, and they denied that it would work in the system. However, it didn't void the warranties of the people who did the upgrade. Merom would be the same way. It's not supported by Dell and not a advertised upgrade, but it's still possible, and I don't know why it would void your warranty entirely.

 

Mainly i say that your warranty will be voided because you have to literally take the laptop completely apart. Graphic cards are another story - dell has always said that it will support upgraded cards since they aren't that difficult to install. AFAIK, dell has never recommended upgrading processors/cpu.

Here is a quote from one of their web documents:

Another thing to think about is that only certain upgrades will not void the warranty. I can't find the page, but there is a tech document on dell that states hardware upgrades are possible, and most do not void your warranty - but some do :-/