Upgrading my Laptop CPU.

[grimreeper132]

right so after waiting nearly a week now, my new i7 3612QM has finally arrived, meaning it's time to remove and replace my current CPU in my laptop a i3 3120M. This is my first i7 that I've owned, cause I am skint, and it's meant to be a quad. I have sort of checked compatibility as there is a variant of my laptop, a Lifebook A532, with the CPU I am upgrading to, but as this is not something most people do, who am kidding, barely anyone does, there is no actual information on whether it is compatible, so yea this will either go badly. but yea lets do this now

 

Note: If you see this and think "I want to do this to my laptop" although it's not the case in my case, but in yours, the CPU could be solder in, in that case you can't do this. Also check that the new CPU is compatale with your laptop, if there is a variant of your laptop with that CPU, then it probably is, (it might not be though, just a heads up, and at the point of writing this I don't know for sure if mine is definitely compatible, but hey ho, we will see)

 

Note 2: I have sorta wrote this in a way so an idiot can follow this, sorry if you feel it's a tad basic in places, I just decided that this is pretty much a guide so it should be a guide for everyone

 

step 1: get a spare laptop incase this goes badly, which I did by being given access to a shed of old used PCs, which included 2 laptops of reasonable condition, which I know one definitely works and the other is an unknown at the moment.

step 2: remove all important data off the hard drive, literally all of it, again in case this goes badly, or if windows wants me to reinstall it or something, we will see, it can't hurt. it'll take 2h probably though,  never mind when wired cut it down to 5/6 minutes, yay

step 3: remove the battery and the bottom of the laptop

Spoiler

 

yes I know it's slightly broken, but it doesn't matter it's to small to matter

 

step 4: find the screw driver again, as I lost it literally 2s after placing it down (I'm good at this)

step 5: unscrew the heat sink screws in reverse order of their numbers (4,3,2,1) cause there's numbers on the heatsink for some reason and unplug the fan

Spoiler

the numbers might be faint

step 6: wonder why the fan for the heatsink wasn't screwed in

step 7: wonder why there is a screw magnetically stuck to my laptops magnetic part which is for the heatsinks fan, as I have never removed the heatsink of this laptop before

Spoiler

step 8: remove the CPU, you will need to unscrew the socket screw here (the laptop equivalent of the socket arm thingy (I don't remember what it's called) I'm just saying this incase you don'y know this, I doubt you do though) I recomend using a screwdriver, but I lost my head for my screw driver to do that, so I used a knife instead

Spoiler

non thermal pasted one is the i7

step 9: replace the CPU with a the new i7 and turn the retention screw in

step 10: apply thermal compound, after finding it again, I lost it, this is turning into a reoccurring theme isn't it, I have probably applied far to much here, but it was just to be safe

Spoiler

 

step 11: place the heatsink back on and screw it in, going in a different order this time (1,2,3,4) remember to plug the fan back in

Spoiler

now with one extra screw

step 12: screw the heatsink fan in place

step 13: put the back on and screw it back together

Spoiler

I lost the little broken part, and didn't find it again till the back was back on and couldn't be arsed fixing it

 

step 14: need to go somewhere so need to delay this till I get back, so I won't know if it worked or not till then  

step 15: turn it on and hope for the best, also hope that I don't need to install windows

Spoiler

step 16: load windows and wonder how it worked first time with no problem  

step 17: get annoyed at your photo for taking so long uploading photos to your NAS

step 18: wonder if dxdiag is telling the truth about still having a 13, I don't think it is, it isn't

step 19: enjoy your new and improved computer

 

Things I didn't do that I should of done,

1) wear an antistatic anything,  

2) researched it beforehand, look into a disassembly guide or something on your laptop, I couldn't find one for mine, because I barely loooked, but look for one it will make you life a hell of a lot easier if you have a laptop which is difficult to take apart, which mine isn't

3) upgrade the RAM, because 8GB doesn't cut it for me, might for you doesn't for me though, but I don't have £100 to spend on doing that

4) actually research how much thermal paste to add, as I dunno if I put to much or too little on, I might of I might not of, I dunno

5) checked that your bios deffinately supported the CPU your upgrading to, my hunch of "it's got a variant of it for "value" (cheap as fuck, and shit as fuck) would mean that they will of just used one BIOS for all of the laptops" was correct but I suggest checking in case it isn't true for yours, that being said that could be quite hard as this is not something they expect you to do as it's a consumer grade laptop

6) This I did, and am just putting this in to make sure if you do it, you do it, check and make sure the CPU your putting into your laptop has the same or lower TDP, do not put one in with a higher TDP as it will overheat and throttle constantly. Luckily for me the CPU I wanted to get was a quad and had the same TDP, unfortunately it was expensive, so instead got a cheaper i7, which was still a quad core but it's base was .1GHz lower, that being said I got it for £65, off ebay, I think they guy was having no luck selling it as most people don't do this so handed it out a hell of a lot cheaper that what he was asking for because of that

 

 

now then I am gunna bench mark this CPU, with Cinebench, nothing else (to much effort)

and the score was dun dun dun (I did this as 7 zip was being slow) 509 which for a laptop CPU is not bad, I think, especially when the i3 3120 score is about 210 (this is not my results so dunno what mine was, but this is probably the right sort of area for it)

 

people who wanted to hear about this @19_blackie_73  @Fake Dragonite

 

 

 EDIT: removed a photo which wasn't meant to be here, but was wanting to be so so hard and so was being annoying

[iRileyx]

6 minutes ago, grimreeper132 said:

now then I am gunna bench mark this CPU, with Cinebench, nothing else (to much effort)

and the score was dun dun dun (I did this as 7 zip was being slow) 509 which for a laptop CPU is not bad, I think, especially when the i3 3120 score is about 210 (this is

 

My cpu only scores 250-260 at stock, can push to 290 when OC'd, so very good performance for the upgrade cost.

[grimreeper132]

1 minute ago, RKRiley said:

My cpu only scores 250-260 at stock, can push to 290 when OC'd, so very good performance for the upgrade cost.

aye I was thinking that, I feel like it'll certainly be worth it, money wise