Upgrading CPU on an old Toshiba L305

I was given an older (2009) Satellite L305-S5955 to work on. The owner stated the computer was sluggish and wanted to know his upgrade options.

Looking at the spec sheet, the lappy uses a Penryn based Celeron 900. According to Wikipedia, this processor appears to actually be a Socket P based chip running on a 800Mhz FSB, which supprised me becasue I thought most Celeraons used BGA mounts.

The chipset is listed as an Intel GL40.

Looking on eBay, I found several low cost options for a CPU upgrade. The C2D T8300 looks like a good choice. It too is a Penryn-3M CPU running at 2.4Ghz on a 800Mhz FSB. The TDP matches the Celeron 900 at 35W.

I am thinking that the addition of a second core plus 2MB additional L2 cache would make a world of difference on this computer. The owner does not use it for games or anything that would require a lot of power. At $30 off eBay, I think its probably a sound investment.

Does anyone know of any problems upgrading the Celeron 900 series to a C2D chip?

 

I don't think you should have any problems. In fact, someone was just talking about upgrading that model to a t7300 and it seems to have worked.

 

That's debatable. It really depends on the usage. Certainly for anything CPU intensive having an extra core will yield better results, but typical notebook usage like office and internet doesn't push the CPU much, outside of flash. For those situations the hard drive, not the CPU is most likely the performance bottleneck. Plus, after three years, the accumulated junk may effect performance as well. A faster drive or SSD may offer better performance, again, depending on the usage. For $30, the T8300 is a low risk investment, but without a faster drive, you may not get what you're looking for, but then again, a faster drive or SSD will be more expensive.

 

The drive is adequate for his use (its a160GB, 5400 Hitachi). The computer won't boot after attempting to load windows;it just stops loading after the slash screen and before loading the blue background. I think with the file system is toast or it has some nasty virus.

I plan on ordering the repair disks from Toshiba. That feels like the biggest crime. The system runs on Vista Hone Basic. Ughhh

Sent from my T8788 using Board Express

 

I did succesfully put a T7500 in the L305 and it worked and did try a T7300 and both worked. I didn't try the T8100 but my assumption it should work as it matches up in the same cpu upgrade family line. It did help in boot time and gave the Toshiba a little more computing power for being such a older computer.