CPU upgrade from Core 2 Duo T6400 to P8600- worth the trouble? (free)

I bought my sister a Dell Inspiron 1545 about four years ago and the hard drive started acting erratically in the last few days. I immediately backed up everything on the drive to an external drive. I’ve also ordered a 500GB 7200rpm Western Digital Scorpio Black hard drive to replace the existing one.

I only paid $390 for the laptop from Dell Outlet originally, so it doesn’t make sense to spend much money on upgrades. It already has a 4GB of RAM, 64-bit Windows 7 and an Intel 5100-AGN wireless card. She bought a new battery for it about 18 months ago also. It currently has a 5400rpm hard drive, so the new WD 7200rpm drive should give it a little performance boost.

I’m trying to decide if it’s worth the trouble and risk to upgrade the CPU. It has a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T6400 processor and I have a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo P8600 in my old Dell Latitude E6400 that I could use. On the Passmark CPU Benchmark, the P8600 scored about 19% better than the T6400.

I’ve never changed a CPU before, so I’m a little nervous about damaging something in the exchange. But I’ve replaced everything from hard drives to displays to motherboards, so I’m betting that I can handle it….but will it be worth it?

Thoughts and input will be appreciated!

 

CPU replacement in the Dell Inspiron 1545 could not be easier, really. Not even a complete klutz could muck it up. The panel on the bottom of the laptop gives you access to the heatsink. When I was buying and selling lots of socket P cpu's, I used an Inspiron 1545 to test them because of how quick and easy it was to change the cpu.

 

Yeah, why not, it seems very straight forward, I would try upgrading to P8600. In future we may not be able to upgrade CPUs it seems, not even for fun as they will be soldered, I hate these new CPUs with "U" :cry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL9z2uFBjkU

 

Agreed with the others; might as well give it a try. The P8600 might give you a couple extra minutes of battery life too.

See Step Four in this guide I wrote a number of years ago for the basics of applying thermal paste to a CPU: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3005

Kudos to your sister for keeping that laptop so long - the $390 you spent on it turned out to be a fabulous investment.

 

If it's easy to replace, I'll add that the P8600 is worth installing - the laptop should be snappier. That's based on my experience with a T7200 and a T9400 - there's a noticeable difference in performance between the two.

 

If your power adapter/cooling supports it, why not throw in a quad-core?

Intel Core 2 Quad Mobile Q9000 Slgej 2 00GHz 6M 1066MHz Socket P Quad Core CPU 0675900977983 | eBay

45 watts.

 

Yes, contrary to popular belief, the Core 2 Duo Era was very GHz driven.

 

Alot of Dells whitelist Core 2 Quads, and I doubt the motherboard circuitry could handle the 45W Core 2 Quad.

 

Modded BIOSes, do you speak them?

Also, the X7900 Dual-Core has 44W, and if that is supported, then the Quad Should be able to run fine.

 

Generally speaking I would only recommend processors a notebook was offered with; the 1545 wasn't offered with the Q9000 (or any quad-core for that matter).

There would be thermal concerns even if the notebook accepted a quad-core; notebook makers design heatsinks to meet the requirements of the chips they use and no more. The Inspiron 1545 was offered with CPUs rated for 35W TDP at most; therefore we can only safely assume the heatsink is capable of dealing with up to 35W.

At any rate we are going off track here; the OP has a P8600 in-hand. Getting another CPU would cost money and considering the existing T6400 works fine ...no point.

 

X7900 also runs hot as hell. But will not require a BIOS mod.

Could you post a link to a modded BIOS that would enable the use of Quads on these machines, since they will NOT run it with a stock one...

I have a neighbour and a good friend of mine who'd like to play with his Dell...