installing X9100 to T500

is it possible to install the X9100 to a T500 thinkpad? the t500 supports up to P9600, which i believe is around 25 watts (based on intel) and the x9100 is 45 watts. how important is it to keep to the 25 watts?

i know that there will be heating issues due to higher wattage, how much hotter will it get?

 

I dont think you are going to want to do that. The X9100 has much too high TDP for that laptop. What that means is that the cooling system your laptop has will not be able to take the heat that your processor is generating.
If you really want more power I would say the highest you should go is a T9800 at 2.93Ghz. It will perform nearly the same as the X9100, and should run in the cooling range for your laptop
However as is you have the most power efficient high clocked processor in your laptop. It is already 2.66Ghz.
Why do you need a faster processor?

K-TRON

 

well really, i was going to buy the t500 at with the P8400 at 2.26 ghz.
i was just wondering if i could potentially replace the CPU with a really high end model. i quoted the P9600 because it is the highest end that thinkpads support on that particular brand of thinkpads.

thinkpads run cool, so besides the additional heat generated by the 45watt processor, is there anything else? what i was wondering about was whether the laptop would provide enough power to run the processor

 

You could install the X9100 if you really wanted to, but I would think that it would overheat very often.
If an X9100 was used, I would recommend a laptop cooler when doing cpu intensive applications.

K-TRON

 

power is not a concern then? i would have thought that the caveat would be the power output rate of the laptop... if its just the temperature, it wouldnt be that much of an issue then right?

beside teh overheating issue

 

The laptop should be able to power it, give that the power adaptor is 90 watts.
If the power adaptor is 65 watts, the system may not be able to power it.

Physically a X9100 will fit into the socket, but whether the Bios supports it is unknown to me.

K-TRON

 

If power isnt a problem then get a laptop with a quad core.

 

like the QX9300?

where would i find the bios compatibility information?
and how often would it overheat? im assuming there is data posted somewhere about this... i would have to do a whole calc regarding heat output/chip/watt and then disspation value of the sink/fan and then optimal operating temp...

 

The T500 cannot run the quad cores, only a handful of high end gaming systems support the mobile quad cores.

K-TRON

 

what is the requirement for running quad core mobile processors?

 

1. BIOS capable of recognizing it
2. (more importantly) special power/pin configuration though they fit the same socket

 

For mobile quadcore. You need to have latest montevina specification board with pins required for quad-core enabled in Socket P - which, if your laptop don't have quad-cores offered in retail configuration, you probably don't have.

Then, there is a problem of a thermal management hardware - your laptop has cooling device shaped for dual core CPU - usually a small squared piece of copper soldered to heatpipe(s), while quad core CPUs have two dies and require larger cooling area - another problem.

And third, and the worst issue - is the heat, your laptop will NOT be able to cool that chip, you'll end up running your CPU in throttle states most of the times, which is not going to be any faster than your dual core CPU.

Regarding X9100 - despite the "only" two cores this is still a very hot chip, my QS sample (C0 QBDW, qualification sample) has min. VID of 1.0V, and it completely breaks the Vaio Z thermal system on anything above 2.66 GHz, even undervolted...

So, if you ask me, this chip is completely useless in smaller laptops - my advice is - get the P9600 (I will replace my X9100 with P9600, too - once I manage to get the P9600), that is the best value for money with best performance per watt you can get. The difference between P9600's 2.66 GHz and X9100's 3.06 GHz is so small that it is totally ridiculous to sacrifice the battery and risk overheating your system.

And that is EVEN if you can manage to run it @3 GHz - if all other X9100's are like mine - you most likely won't be able to run it above 2.66 GHz without seriously overheating.