Which manufacturers solder CPUs?

I'm looking at buying my first laptop on eBay. I'm not too concerned about it being top of the line because I have my desktop. However, I would like to be able to upgrade it in the future.

I'm going to get a laptop with a Core Duo but is there a list somewhere or something that says which manufacturers use BGA CPUs and which use socket CPUs? I talked to a sales associate online through Gateway and they told me they solder the CPUs, but I'd like to believe the person didn't know what they were talking about...

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Chris

 

In my experience it's usually only LV and ULV cpus (low voltage and ultra etc.) which are soldered to the motherboard. If you're buying a UP (ultraportable) then this will be an issue, otherwise you should be ok. I have not heard of any manufacturers as a whole who do this, you should be ok for upgrading most large line laptops like lenovo, toshiba, sony etc.

 

It depends more on the chip/chipset than the manufacturer. I agree with Jess regarding the LV/ULV processors being BGA and regular Core/Core 2 being PGA.

However, upgrading a CPU is not a trivial matter and will likely not be worth the expense. You'd be better off getting more memory, a faster hard drive, or putting the money in the bank towards the next laptop.

 

Oh, believe me, I intend to upgrade many things before I went to the CPU. I'm just looking at long term upgrade possibilities as I tend to not buy "new" things very often.

Great feedback though guys, thank you so much!

 

It's usually not worth it to try to upgrade a laptop, as it takes work and is rarely worth the money to sell off the parts you have to replace. It's usually your best bet to get what you want in it except for maybe hard drive and RAM, and even then, try to get half the RAM you want eventually in a single stick, rather than having to replace one chip to get more.

But that's just my opinion, after seeing my spare parts piles grow over the years

 

Go with an Asus Barebone unit.

vvvvv

 

Absolutely. I also believe that Apple solders their procs to the mobo.

IT doesn't answer the question, but I agree with this advise anyway.