So can I upgrade the CPU of the 4430s ProBook?

Currently I have an i5 processor, but if it's possible to upgrade to the i7, I'd do it in a heartbeat!

Here's the pn of my ProBook: A2U87U8#ABA

Would appreciate any input on that? If it is upgradeable, what i7 spec do I need?

Thanks!

 

Yes, you can upgrade to a i7-quad since it uses a socketted CPU. It's already been done on a 13" 4330s: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-business-class-notebooks/630676-hp-probook-4330s-i7-2820qm.html and on a 12.5" 2560P http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...tebook-2560p-owners-lounge-3.html#post7936035 .

 

I'm in the UK (England) and have just got a 4330S with the i5-2430M as well as the Radeon 6490M which has now turned in to the 7470M after updating its driver to the latest one available on HP's website. I have only had the machine for a couple of weeks.

It is an HP Renew machine with stock code LW813EAR#BCM that seems to have originally been marketed in the Czech Republic judging from the sticker on the palmrest about the product features that is in Czech (something they probably should have changed to one in English in the Renew channel process but overlooked). It cost significantly less than non HP Renew brand new 4330s machines with a core i3 and only integrated graphics and 320Gb hard drives. However it came in a fully sealed HP box with HP sealing tape from the factory in China that had checked and Renewed it. Ebay sellers are now selling the machine for 180 USD more than I paid for it but the firm I bought it from was a legit major HP Renew channel that may be had too much stock of this unit.

My plan is to to upgrade the processor to the fastest one this motherboard will take in about 18 months from now when I expect the processor will cost like 50 USD. Currently a 2820QM seems to be about 300 USD. In my book that's way too much to pay to upgrade when I only paid 700 USD for the whole laptop and I was also previously used to a now dog slow 1.6ghz Centrino. Also despite the claims of HP that the maximum RAM the laptop can handle is only 8GB I believe that's not true and as SODIMMS of this type get larger capacities then the machine should be able to handle much larger amounts of RAM as they become available and also get cheaper?

I do appreciate how easy HP have made it to access the insides of this machine and one of the main reasons I bought it is because is was the only affordable 13" laptop that also had an Express card slot and a USB 3 socket and had an easily upgradeable processor. On top of this the graphics card was an attraction at the time although I can now see that if and when I upgrade the machine to a Quad i7 and have say 16GB of memory that the Radeon 6490M will effectively be pointless as the HD Graphics will run faster than it does.

The main downside of the machine for someone using it mainly in their home (as I am) is clearly noise as although the latest HP Bios lets you set the fan to not be on all the time the fan is only ever off for the first two or three minutes after your power on and the fan then kicks in with a big neeeowwww sound as it starts up although then runs fairly quietly. But anyhow the 640GB Hitachi SATA hard drive also makes a noise that sounds like another fan running but is in fact the noise of the drive spinning. I'm planning to burn a Hitachi Feature Tool CD and turn on AAM on the drive but even then I will be left with the main fan noise, which is probably similar to the hard drive noise so may be there's no point. The noise it makes is bearable unlike some laptop I've bought that just had to go back but on the other hand its there and I'm conscious of it - I really would have preferred a silent notebook but I expect that would mean getting one with a rubbish slow process and no easy access, Express Card slot or any way to upgrade it to a Corei7 later on.

Regarding the Express Card slot on my previous DV1000 HP notebook all three USB sockets broke off the motherboard on that after two years. I'm hoping that if I'm more careful about not using squashed USBs that don't fit well etc that this won't happen again this time but I'm very conscious that if that does happen and you don't have an Express Card slot or PCMCIA slot that your laptop is effectively toast at that time. I kept my old laptop running for another five years with PCMCIA USB2 cards. The AKE hide inside USB 2 cards that I used latterly were much neater and also had much longer lives than the previous type that stuck out and always seemed to burn out after about 10 months of continuous use.

As one of the main features this laptop doesn't have is a built in 3G feature I could always use the Express Card slot to provide that on a built in basis. Also it seems to be one of the very few 4330s machines that doesn't have a Fingerprint reader. It would have been nice to have that but the overall spec of this machine was so good for the price that there was nothing close price wise so I can live without it.

The noise thing is as shame but on the other hand on the last DV1000 machine the motherboard burned out 1 day before its 1 year warranty expired even though the next motherboard HP fitted lasted for 6 years, But I then always ran the machine on a metal cooling base which probably made the difference. To cure the noise issue would need both a different BIOS that left the fan off until a higher temp and would require a quieter make of hard drive like a Samsung. Again may be I will consider that in two years time when I can get another drive for like 20 USD instead of the current 95 USD or so.

 

I have a ProBook 4430s with the celeron B810 cpu. I would like to know what is the largest cpu I can upgrade to.

 

I would imagine you can upgrade to the Quad Core i7 unless the Celeron version of the machine has a different motherboard that is not compatible with the faster processor. Someone here should know that and confirm that point.

However I would note that my 4330S machine with an i5 processor gets quite hot and/or there is quite a lot of fan activity on hot days. So get ready for a lot more fan activity a lot of the time if you fit an i7 processor in a 13.3" Probook S. I believe the machine the i7 upgrade was originally done on was a larger screen size in the Probook S family?

 

Thanks for the info. I have checked and the socket is the same but I want to be sure it will work and not hurt the computer.

 

These are screen shots of my system information

 

:thumbsup: I want to say thanks to everyone who posts in here, I have got a lot of information, here and other threads. helping me figure out my computer. I went ahead and purchased an Intel i7 2720qm quad and replaced the celeron B810 in the HP Probook 4430s. It is working perfectly so far my laptop is 10x faster and there are no heat issues. I was worried about going from a 35w TDP to 45w but there does not seem to be any issues. The celeron was regularly hitting 100% CPU usage the i7 has not been over 30%.