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    Interesting CPU upgrades

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by weinter, Jan 15, 2010.

  1. weinter

    weinter /dev/null

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    I was looking at ebay and I saw this.
    Interesting upgrade options, wonder what is the performance like...
     
    weinter, Jan 15, 2010
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  2. moral hazard

    moral hazard Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    I'm guessing that it is a BGA chip converted to PGA.

    And it should have bad performance right (since it's a low voltage CPU)?
     
    moral hazard, Jan 15, 2010
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  3. weinter

    weinter /dev/null

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    The point we rarely see BGA to PGA conversion for CPUs that is what make this rare...
     
    weinter, Jan 15, 2010
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  4. moral hazard

    moral hazard Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    But doesn't that also make it fragile?

    What if the pins start falling off?
     
    moral hazard, Jan 15, 2010
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  5. H.A.L. 9000

    H.A.L. 9000 Occam's Chainsaw

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    Wow. I didn't think you could do that. What would be the practicality of that? Power savings? Lower heat?
     
    H.A.L. 9000, Jan 15, 2010
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  6. weinter

    weinter /dev/null

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    Yep i think that is the point. Some people value mobility over high performance so this is an option.
    I don't think the pins fall off so easily, I think they simply BGA solder it to a base with the same pin out
     
    weinter, Jan 15, 2010
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  7. timfountain

    timfountain Notebook Consultant

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    What they have done is use something called an interposer. This has a BGA site on one side and regular pins on the other. The CPU is heat-flowed onto the interposer. It works well and I have used loads of these during prototyping where you want to swap out CPU's. The problem is that the interposer adds about 2.5mm to the height of the CPU when it is in the socket, which means you might have a problem fitting it to the heatsink as the whole assembly will be raised. Most times it will work out fine and the end result is a nice low-power but reasonably quick C2D solution,

    - Tim
     
    timfountain, Jan 19, 2010
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