Upgrade from i5-520m to i7-920xm successful

I don't know how many of you out there were thinking of doing this, but I just wanted to report that the upgrade of my 8740w from an i5-520m to an i7-920xm has been successful.

The steps:
- Ordered a quad core heatsink from HP Part Surfer
- Bought a 920xm CPU off of eBay (I know there are arguments aplenty about doing this....luckily my CPU is doing fine)
- Bought some arctic silver 5

The most stressful part for me was removing the switch panel - even after the screws are taken out, you have a few tiny, fragile looking snaps holding it into place.

Removed the GPU and old CPU,cleaned the crap out of the GPU, used arctic silver 5 on the new CPU and GPU, and bam - just working the compound in now, with idle CPU temps of 49 C and GPU of 44C. I ran Prime95 stress test for a while, and maxed at 84 C

Now, I feel less sad at the thought of keeping my laptop another year or two

 

Question though...isn't the motherboard socket different for the i7 and i5? I thought that's why there are separate "Dual Core" and "Quad Core" CTO builds...

 

As far as I know, the main difference is that a quad core MB has four ram slots, while mine only has two. Aside from that, the sockets and everything else are identical.

After all, I'm using it to reply to this thread, so clearly it worked

 

That's a bit odd...I would have thought HP would try to make it much harder for users to get at their processors and DIY upgrade by using a different socket, because the Sandy Bridges have different dual and quad-core BGA sockets, but can both use socket G2...

 

I'm not sure what I can tell you, other than the fact that my i5-520m 8740w now has an i7-920xm in it and is stable as a rock.

I LOVE this laptop

 

although you probably don't love the fact that since you didn't switch the mobo out, you can still only fit 16 GB max of RAM, whereas getting a CTO quad-core from the factory would allow you 32GB max and way more flexibility down the line...

my $0.02...

 

I'm still trying to imagine a world where my game playing, web surfing, video watching and MS Office using will EVER require more than 2 ram slots. I know it must not be the norm on here, but not everyone needs 32gb ram. And when the day comes that 32gb of ram will make ANY difference in the daily use of this laptop, I'll be getting a new laptop.

Sorry...I just don't see how the ability to sport 32GB of ram matters whatsoever to anyone, save for the odd person who does insane programming/3D modelling/Design work. I mean, even in your own posting signature, you talk about your future laptop and how you'll upgrade it with 2x4GB ram. Does 32GB matter to you?

My $0.05

 

No, mainstream sized laptops use the same socket for all CPUs, which is the PGA one (pin grid array). The BGA is soldered and is non-replaceable. It is used mainly for low voltage CPUs in ultraportables. Also, majority of users wouldn't even notice much difference between 4GB and 8GB, let alone even need more than that.