CPU Upgrades for an old Laptop.

[Accessless]

I have an old HP G6000 series laptop, which I have recently disassembled, cleaned out, re-applied thermal paste and reassembled to resolve an overheating issue. This got me thinking about the possibility of upgrading the old gal (the misses named it Lappy).

A RAM upgrade will be simple but the CPU is going to be more interesting. It's a socket S1, currently using an AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-56.

There are plenty of S1 CPU's to choose from (not that they are easy to find, this will probably be more of a theoretical exercise than practical), but is there any way of finding out which CPU's will be compatible before buying them? (besides straight up asking HP, their customer service is amazing so they would probably just mail me a complete list but that would spoil the fun :p ).

[DaveLembke]

Best bet is look at your laptop model and see if they used that same motherboard for other higher end CPU models. This way your almost guaranteed that the BIOS would support it. Lastly you will want to stick with a CPU that is pretty close if not exact to the TDP of the original CPU to avoid an overheat condition as a better CPU may run hotter.

Back in the day i upgraded a Pentium III 500Mhz laptop to 600Mhz processor from another Dell that was dead. CPU worked like a charm and it ran slightly warmer but no problems. the upgrade was nice to have the extra 100Mhz which made it slightly faster when compiling code and running games like Diablo 2 etc.

Processors are pretty cheap on ebay. I have been buying 2nd hand processors there for $5-$20 each and no problems yet. * Only problem I had was not paying attention with a socket 478 Pentium 4 HT 3.0Ghz CPU that I bought for $5. Installed it in the motherboard and no boot, I was going to leave negative feedback and then I saw that stupid me didnt read the entire description it was a Mobile Pentium 4HT socket 478 CPU and the pinout is different so not compatible with desktop socket 478 motherboards. Oh well it was only $5 wasted. Learned to read full description. At least I didnt get a picture of the processor for $5 as some people I heard got scammed on ebay years ago buying pictures of Play Station 3 systems when they first came out... description said it was a picture of the system and it was priced like $200 when the system was brand new and just came out for more. Some people thought they were getting an really good deal until the picture of the Play Station 3's arrived. 

[Accessless]

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, my laptop has the top end CPU that they ever manufactured with so no clues there.


Just found out an interesting Intel-esk quirk to the S1 socket, it has variations... S1G1, S1G2, S1G3 & S1G4.

Judging buy my current CPU only Gen 1's are compatible.


Sigh... so much for just ramming a 2.4GHz quad core in place of a 1.9 GHz dual core.

[Geek-9pm]

Accessless, May I ask some question?
Do you think there might be something weak about tthe CPU your have?
(Maybe it was the low end of a family of CPUs for that laptop.)
How much gain would you like to have with your old laptop?
How you considered other ways to improve performance?
Have you got the best RAM for that laptop?
Have you thought about a better, larger hard drive?
Just asking. 

[Accessless]

Accessless, May I ask some question?
Do you think there might be something weak about tthe CPU your have?
(Maybe it was the low end of a family of CPUs for that laptop.)
How much gain would you like to have with your old laptop?
How you considered other ways to improve performance?
Have you got the best RAM for that laptop?
Have you thought about a better, larger hard drive?
Just asking. 

Just trying to give a bit of a boost to an old machine for some pennies. There is no way that I would get an SSD for it, any large amount of money would be better spent on a newer second hand machine.

[Mark.]

budget permitting, it doesn't have to be a big cost exercise to go the SSD route.
I did 3 old laptops this year, $AUD130 for a Samsung 250GB SSD, and about 2 hours of labour for a fresh Windows install.
and I couldn't be more pleased with the improved speeds, they were all more than 8 years old and now act like they are only 2 years old.

[patio]

Waste of money...on that laptop.

[Accessless]

Waste of money...on that laptop.

I Totally agree.

However £15 for a slightly faster CPU and double the RAM, that's got to be done even if its just for S*** and giggles.


[FYI - HP has a replacement component order form with all the relevant components for that laptop, works for me as a compatibility list]