Breathing new life into my P7805U

I picked up a P7805U new from Best Buy back in I think July of 2009? Something like that...

Anyway, got lucky and nabbed one new in box with the WUXGA screen, and have just enjoyed the crap out of this computer ever since. Absolutely the best bang for the buck for a laptop I have ever purchased...

I'm certainly not disappointed with the performance of the computer, but I've started to tweak on it a bit in an attempt to breath some new life into it and keep it relevant and able to play current titles for another year or two.

I couldn't tell you what BIOS rev I had stock, but I had never changed it... The computer got to where it would no longer restart properly, it would simply go to a black screen when Windows shut down but never follow through with an actual restart... Had to hard power down. Updated the BIOS to 9C.23 and that has fixed the issue. The GPU fan seems to be a bit more consistant now as well... Not howling on and off all the time.

Next I replaced the WD Scorpio Black 320GB drive I had with 2x Seagate Momentus XT 500GB in RAID 0. The 700GB of extra storage space is quite nice, but more impressive is the fact that this single upgrade has shaved a hair over 56 seconds off of my boot times. Wow... These are very nice drives, and dead quiet, contrary to many reviews which complain of vibrating and clicking. Mine are outstanding. YMMV

I checked the specs which claimed that 4GB of RAM was max... But saw reading through these forums that you could go to 8 with no problems. So, with that in mind I picked up 8GB of Crucial DDR3 and threw it in, and what do ya know Win 7 x64 picked up the 8GB of RAM and that has made things much smoother...

While I was in there I blew out the fins for the GPU heatsink and that's made a pretty mig difference too.

For the final act, I just ordered a Core 2 Extreme X9100 and some IC Diamond thermal compound. I don't plan on doing any OC'ing just yet, but I do plan to diassemble the laptop and apply the IC Diamond to all the heatsinks, blow out the GPU heatsink fins, clean the fan blades for the CPU and GPU fans and make sure everything is looking tip top...

I've been tickled with the performance of the laptop, and hope that these changes will keep me happy with it for some time to come. All for a little under $500 in upgrades.

Any input on what I can expect from the X9100? Or the improvement in heat dissipation using the IC Diamond? (Still have stock thermal compound all around). Any other changes I could make to improve the performance?

Appreciate all input / feedback!

 

You can get a x9100, but the t9900 is more stable. The x9100 is 45w, this means more heat. But it has the same specs as the T9900. The only difference is that t9900 is 35W and it's not overclock-able, plus 3.06GHz is fast enough. The x9100 is overclock-able i do not recommend overclocking laptops specially this one it tend to heat up. I would go with the T9900 and use really good thermal past, plus there's a mod for the fan where you can cut the yellow wire to the fan, and fan is running at full speed but you can wear out the fast this way so you put a small switch so you can easy switch from gaming mode to defualt mode and this takes care of the fan problem, i OC my GPU so it heats up more so i don't lag cuz the fan starts working at 85*C and turns off at 70*C so when its oc it heats up to 85*C then it wont turn off till it hits 70*C witch meant that the fan would stay on in long period in gaming. I do not recommend this i did manage to crash my Graphic's Driver it hit 108*C i was so surprised, i only Overclocked it by 5% not that much its more of a tweak. "Do not do this and fry your GPU!"
Heres a video of P-7805u with the T9900 (this is not me) YouTube - ‪P 7805u FX New T9900 CPU Upgrade!!! GTA 4 Extra High Settings 1920 by 1200‬‏

"I’d recommend looking at a T9800 or T9900, both of which are 35W processors that offer pretty much the same performance as the X9100, while generating much less heat."

 

Yeah, I looked for the T9900 cause I agree that I felt it would be a better choice for the same reasons you mention here. Lower wattage, same base speed, same cache etc...

I ended up going with the X9100 in the end because it was substantially cheaper. Not sure why this is, but I picked up a new X9100 for about $50 less than I could pick up a used T9900.

I never considered the T9800 TBH. I am trying to get absolutely every last ounce of speed I can out of this computer...

All that said, that new Asus G74SX is lookin pretty good... LoL Butthat would defeat the purpose of all my recent upgrades.

 

the stock 7805u cooling system is quite capable of handling an OCed X9100 under load.

I can quite comfortably game @ 3.7GHz @ 1.3625v for prolonged periods of time with temps hitting 90C max. ICD7 on both the X9100 and northbridge chipset. No copper shim mod.

Prime95 and OCCT @ 3.7GHz is also doable but temps verge on the TJMax of the X9100 which can cause auto-shutdown to prevent overheating.

At least one user has reported stability in everyday use @ 4GHz @ 1.450v although i personally dont go that high for gaming. Prime95 @ 4GHz will overheat in less than 5 mins unless you undertake some major reconstructive work on the heatsink by epoxying on finned copper blocks and drilling extra ventilation holes in the back panel etc.

Right now, I idle @ 30C @ 3.2GHz @ 1.1875v so in short, you'll be fine with the X9100.

 

Good info Moto,

I was only planning to OC to 3.4'ish as a daily use machine. From what I have seen here with the X9100 / ICD7 combo, that should be very doable with the stock cooling system.

As it stands, my P8400 hits around 54C mac on Prime 95 after 15 minutes. It hits that peak around 7 minutes and never goes above it. And that is with 2 year old stock thermal compound which has basically been reduced to dust, removing the heatsink to check it, reinstalling the heatsink until my new CPU arrives with no thermal compound reapplication. LoL... I thought for sure it would get hot as hell and explode running Prime95 after that abuse, but no such luck...



Thanks for the post... Hope I get a good X9100 specimen and can nab 3.7 as well. That would make me happy in the pants.