Laptop Upgrade help?

[masktheunknown]

So I have an old Dell Inspiron 15r N5010. I was taking it apart for the the hard drive and since I had it open I got to thinking. 

I want to put some more RAM, a SSD and possibly a new CPU in it. I would like to put in an old i7-640m to replace the Pentium P6100. 

My only question is will I have overheating problems?

Specification wise they're the same TDP and same socket and the fact they are both dual cores.

Honestly I would like a second opinon.

[dtronicsuk]

its should be fine, mke sure you do a good thermal paste job and clean the fan and heatsink out and it should be fine, install core temp and run cinebentch a few times if you still having doubts if its cool

[D2ultima]

TDP is irrelevant for the most part.

 

If that machine was never sold with the i7, it's likely it cannot handle the i7. The Pentium is a 2GHz, 2-core CPU. The i7 is a 2.8GHz, 2-core, 4-thread CPU that turbos to 3.3GHz or so on both cores when stressed. Even if both are 35W TDP, the i7 is inherently a far hotter chip.

 

You can attempt it with seriously good thermal paste (IC Diamond, Arctic Céramique 2, Gelid GC Extreme or if a copper heatsink is present and you wish to be very careful, Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra) and maybe widening the intake vents slightly or some other cooling mods that may be possible.

 

As for the RAM, I don't know what your board takes. But good luck! I doubt it maxes out below 8GB, so you should be okay.

[masktheunknown]

If that machine was never sold with the i7, it's likely it cannot handle the i7. The Pentium is a 2GHz, 2-core CPU. The i7 is a 2.8GHz, 2-core, 4-thread CPU that turbos to 3.3GHz or so on both cores when stressed. 

 

Dell has had an i7-740 QM quad core sold with the unit, just not my particular one but I got it for free from a friend. So i cant complain. Plus the board maxes out at 8GBs of ram. This laptop is secondary to my gaming PC. I am more or less testing my abilities with a laptop and trying to learn more about building PCs. I just have to hope for the best and get good thermal paste.