acer 8942g , HM55 chipset upgrade CPU need advice.

[^nox]

Hello Folks

I have just freshly registered here, hoping some of you CPU gurus could give me a concrete answer.

I own acer 8942g laptop that has a HM55 Chipset. I currently have an i3 330m cpu but hoping to upgrade this one for either i7 720qm or 740qm, leaning more towards the 740 due to benchmarks.

I do know h to swap the cpu's and such but i am not sure if the 740qm would be compatible 100% as acer only shows the highest configuration of my model with the 720 qm.

Does anyone know if the 740qm would work. or is the difference in 720qm to 740qm substantial to even bother going for the 740 ?

Thank you, all the best !

[David (PassMark)]

Generally upgrading laptop CPU is difficult for 5 reasons

A) It is often hard to disassemble and re-assemble a laptop (at least compared to a desktop).

B) Faster CPUs often generate more heat, and cooling is limited in laptops. So there is the risk of overheating the CPU.

C) The new CPU might draw more power, which might be beyond what the laptop was designed for.

D) The BIOS might have been coded to only support certain CPUs

E) You'll probably void your warranty by upgrading the CPU yourself.

So I would strongly suggest only using the CPUs that the manufacturers has tested with the model you have (even if the socket type fits different CPUs).

[^nox]

Thanks for the reply 720 it is then ...

[^nox]

Just to shed more light here onto 8942g in case anyone wondered. I have succesfully upgraded to i7 820qm. Thermal limits are fine, its running stable as rock even after testing with numerous stress tests for over 15 hours.

A friend of mine also upgraded his to 920xm the only thing that was required was an upgrade of the psu from 130 to 150 watt for the 920xm. The 820qm didnt need such thing.

It seems laptop cpus are becoming more upgradable than before.

All the best

[foxfaisal]

For more information, please refer to the following link regarding the upgrade project for IntelŪ HM55 Express Chipset.
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Intel_(chipsets)/HM55_Express.html

I have an ASUS A52JK which also comes with Intel i5 430M CPU, which is shown in the link below:
https://www.asus.com/Notebooks/A52JK/

The same laptop also comes with other types of processor, which are:
1) Intel i5 430M/450M/460M/520M/540M CPU
2) Intel i3 330M/350M/370M CPU
3) Intel PentiumŪ Dual-Core P6000 CPU

I am thinking of upgrading the CPU of my laptop to Intel i7 940XM or i7 640M. I have checked the TDP and CPU ID for Intel i5 430M, 640M and Intel i7 940XM. The TDP for i7 940XM are higher, which is 55W while the TDP for Intel i5 430M and 640M is 35W. The CPU ID for Intel i5 430M is 20652, the CPU ID for Intel i7 540M is 20655 and the CPU ID for Intel i7 940XM is 106F1.

After reading the successful stories from the first link that I give above (and ignoring the unsuccessful stories ), I feel like I want to go for i7-940XM. If i7-940XM doesn't work, then I will try i7-640M (or lower). If the i7-940XM, works but have overheating problem, then I will try the i7-840QM (or lower).