CF-31 upgrades...

Hi,

I currently have a CF-31 MK1 with a i5-540M.

Is the cpu upgradable or soldered to the board?

Max ram support?

If it use the Socket G1, will it support a higher dual core (i7-640M or even a quad core Core i7-940XM?)

Thanks!

EDIT: anyone with service manual? Can't find any for the CF-31 , i've seen one with part list only.

 

CPU is soldered and not upgradeable.

Panasonic lists max RAM as 8gb

 

Welcome to the Panasonic Toughbook forum

What you seen on ebay is the service manual and all it is, is just a break down of the parts and part numbers so you can order replacement parts from Heartland services. They are Panasonic Toughbook repair center. Also shipping is not cheap. It starts at $20.00 but they do ship fast by FedEx if they have it in stock.

 

Thank you guys!

 

if you are into the GPS stuff ...
a good upgrade is one of those aftermarket GPS modules that outperforms the factory unit .
the module and antenna are mounted in the corner of the lid ... so , there is not hardly any coaxial cable loss .
four thin wires snake back and connect (via an adapter) to the point where the old module connected .
all in all , it is a pretty easy upgrade and if memory serves me correctly (ha !) the price has dropped a bit .
(i do not have the ebay link handy)

one of the members here (Shawn) provided myself with a custom module/antenna ... it works a bit better than the aftermarket version (!) .

 

hy

Why can we improve many aspects of the Toughbook, proving them beyond theory, and still quote the book knowing that it is based on dated information?

Panasonic, nor its engineers, are going to go back and test newer RAM with a product that the company has declared obsolete.

My CF-31J has run with 16GB of RAM for over a year with no problems, under both Windows 7 x64 and Ubuntu x64.

 

Because the information is correct.

The original poster has a mk1. Your CF 31J is a mk2. Different CPU and chipset.
Your mk2 second generation i5 2520m will support 16gb.

The mk1 uses a first generation i5 cpu. 540M

As per the INTEL datasheet the Max memory for a 540M is 8gb. This is an Intel thing, not a Panasonic thing.

Read it here:
http://ark.intel.com/products/43544/Intel-Core-i5-540M-Processor-3M-Cache-2_53-GHz

 

most of us here know that the limit of ram with a 32 bit OS is 3.xx gig (call it four to make it simple) .
this holds true , no matter what with , normal motherboard and bios designs .
adding ram above this amount is an exercise in futility .
in years gone by , the limit was 1 or 2 gig ! this was due to processor and MB design and the bios .
man , i am pretty sure i had a MB that supported 512 meg of ram .

along came the true 64 bit processors and MB/bios design took a giant leap .
but still , even with a 64 bit processor the processor design as well as MB/bios design was the deciding factor in maximum ram supported (read as : would actually use/work with) .
i recall seeing MBs with a 4 gig max supported (kinda silly in my book) but the cost of ram was fairly high , so the manufacturers of MBs and processors limited their designs to 4 gig .
today , ram is about as cheap as it gets and you will find more processors , motherboards and the bios able to address more ram .

 

Back in the ugly days of 8 bit processors (PC-AT and DOS) you could support more RAM by doing something called "paging". You would think that it would be possible on a modern machine but the very act of paging probably gives you a significant performance hit at the bus and CPU speeds that we are working with today. It takes more time to page than it does just to use a part of an SSD as a cache.

Due to a lack of support for many applications (that I use) to run nicely on a 64 bit machine I am staying with Windows 7, 32 bit and my 4 gig of RAM.

 

The 32 bit memory limit of 4GB is in a sense BS promoted by MS, probably to get
people to buy their OS again in the 64 bit version. The 32 bit CPUs since 1995 have
paging built in and there were 32 bit servers with 64 GB installed in the old days. It is
all explained here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

There were registry hacks (along with a Kernel patch) years ago to make 32 bit XP,
Vista, and 7 support 64 GB
of RAM, even for Win 7 but it usually does not work today because all the code in
the system has to be written following the rules for PAE to work. I think that if you
have Intel graphics it will still work, but with NVIDIA their drivers are poorly written
and it fails.
I tried it not too long ago, and with NVIDIA the system would crash with any graphics
intensive tasks:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e2-for-more-than-4gb-with-a-32-bit-os.761349/

Just reread that old thread and in the last post someone provides info to make the
patch work in Win 7 32 bit, one of MSs updates is not compatible. Wow that was
back in 2014, time flies!
I wish this worked because a 32 bit OS just makes a lot more sense to me.

 

i agree that "paging" was used to extend the amount of ram that was addressable ...
does anybody here remember the days of the Z80 processor ? maybe that is why i don't much care for programming today .
however , i shall digress .

for the multitude of people "out there" , the simple explanations are the best ... look at the specifications of the parts you are working with .
as an individual gains more knowledge they can run towards the more involved solutions (or away from ... depending) .
an example of this is 16/32/64 ... think of the processors that would handle 32 bits internally but the buss was only 16 bits wide (and so forth) .
"shift-n-load"

 

You are absolutely correct! I did not read the OP post carefully enough and did not notice that he had a Mk1/i5-540M CF-31.

Additionally, I am quite sure that the i5/540M has no hidden support for more then 4GB RAM, I tried it... LoL

My bad!

 

If a Mk2 can run 16Gb reliably. my Mk4 should also as the i5 3340M is 'rated' to work with upto 32Gb.

What other jewels am I missing?? Anyone have any other tweeks they want to bring up??

 

it is not just the ability of the cpu to address given number of bytes of RAM ...
the architecture of the MB (associated support in bios , etc) to support that amount of RAM is also needed .

there are examples of MBs put out by companies that would only *work with* a certain amount of ram even though it was possible to use many different types of cpu .
the MBs that we are working with it this equipment are not exactly *new* ... something that has to be taken into account and easy to forget .

 

The chipset is "usually" the main factor

 

yep ...
the chipset is a big factor ...
that is why some new loads of an OS on a machine are slow until one loads the "chipset" stuff .

 

For my needs 8Gb is plenty, but if memory gets much cheaper, why not! ;-)

I remember my first computer, an old atari with a tape drive... I read an article recently where they put a Lot of Gb onto a regular cassette with modern equipment... What was that Gates said about 'never needing more than 640Kb of memory'?? LOL

 

sony had/has an 8mm tape (remember their Hi8 video ?) that was put to digital audio recording ...
i built a couple of recording studios based around a rack full of them .

as far as i am aware of ...
a program has to (basically) instruct the comp to use ram instead of a/the swapfile or allocated hard drive working space ...
if it does not do this , the program will not be run from ram .
a look at "task manager/processes and performance/resource monitor (this can be set up to look at many different things) will show what is going on with the ram and HDD (or ssd) .
when one changes over to a ssd and notices an increase in how fast a program opens and processes data demonstrates what happens when a/the swapfile is now running out of the ssd instead of a *slow* hdd .
an example of a program that runs strictly out of ram is "TAILS" ... sweet little program .

 

Absolutely impossible?
This chip has a ball grid array?
BGA chips are possible for changing by soldering (ir/air station...).

And why do not exist i7 versions from MK1 Cf-31?
A very expensive Notebook, and no generation 1 i7 version 0_o?