The up-gradable laptop I can't get rid of: CPU upgrade etc

In this video I upgrade the HDD to an SSD. New ram. And even put a faster cpu in my Lenovo thinkpad e320.

The old cpu was a i5-2410M. Now it has a Intel Core I7-2760QM in it. Works quite well and is still a fast CPU for its age. I rendered this very video on it in 4K(I was going to do HD but I wanted to stress the thing). I did take 4h 30min for a 14min video (software render in shotcut).

I had to throttle the cpu to 2.4Ghz; now temps are about 88 degrees C. Very stable and still much faster than the old cpu.

This I7-2760QM can go up to 3.5Ghz but then the laptop consumes like 55 Watts... and crashes after an hour of intense use; temps are about 97 degrees C when it's doing that.

Also sorry for the horrible editing on the text at the end. When you render a video for over 4 hours you don't want to completely do it again for a slight mistake.

[WXSTANG]

All these companies... "lets be sustainable, the Earth is in trouble." Also these same companies "lets make throw away laptops. cell phones, and electronic devices that can't be fixed or upgraded."

[bart]

Did a similar upgrade to my T510. i5 to an i7, 8Gb of ram, 1tb ssd - incredible these machines are, still holding over an hour on the original battery. No issue with thermals tho in the t510.

[ChairmanMeow]

Upgrading the cpu in a laptop in <current year> is a fantasy!! i really miss the days where you could repair and upgrade almost everything you bought.

[parranoic]

Really nice video, one tip I would give you is remove the battery before doing any upgrades

[ccoder]

You can probably also upgrade the WiFi card. Lenovo does like to lock the BIOS so it will only accept certain models, but you can usually find modded bioses that remove that. I have several computers that now have 802.11AC and bluetooth where they didn't originally come with that.

[TwitcyTrain]

Lol the OCD with the thermal paste . I feel your pain

[trandinhvietdung]

the so-called 32GB support on 2nd and 3rd gen Intel are actually designed for 4-channel memory (means you have to install 4 sticks of 8GB DDR3) so in dual channel (2 slot) you can only go up to 16GB.

[madcat]

I don't mean it in a negative way, but your voice made me think of Dankpods.

Then you talked about Aussie dollars, then it made sense to me.

It's probably the most chill laptop upgrade video I've seen, and it was entertaining to watch.

[dizwell]

Worst thermal paste application I think I've ever seen! 🤣🤣🤣

[Eche_]

2 things about this video impressed me the most. How the laptop looks, it's in amazing condition and the fact that it is a very rare laptop being CPU upgradeable. Cheers

[CarbonPhoenix]

I've done the exact same thing with an old Toshiba of mine! It came with much worse specs, and the upgrades came with some interesting surprises. It came with a (also 2nd gen) Pentium b950, 4gb ram and a shitty 500gb hdd. I got a 240gb SSD, 16gb of RAM and an i7-2630QM. It accepted all 16gb of ram at the full 1600mt/s surprisingly. The laptop was only supposed to be able to use ram up to 1333. My temperatures never exceed 70C with the new cpu even though it's much more powerful

[temetka]

I rather enjoyed this video. Your voice overs were engaging, I loved the commentary as well. I am a big Thinkpad nut and hope that your machine serves you well.

[RowanBird]

I have an HP from 2006, the hard drive bracket is interesting because it's an adaptor that adapts in such a way they it allows the hard drive to swing down, with the connector moving down

[TheAnoniemo]

FYI, you can always use faster memory with a CPU that only supports slower memory. E.g. if you got DDR3 1600 it would work with the i5 no problem, it would just run at 1333.

[_RedsTech_]

I find that most business grade/mid range laptops, up to 2014 or so, are upgradable in this fashion. I've done a handful of laptop CPU upgrades myself ranging from a Thinkpad R51 to a more current Dell Vostro 3555.

[Nine-Signs]

People forget, until post circa 2010, laptops coming with socketed CPU's and ram enabling full upgrades was standard practice across the industry for decades. Now such a thing is sold to you as a gimmick for a much higher price by bespoke companies while the main bulk of producers use vastly cheaper production methods of soldering direct to board, which also ensures the product is destined for landfill much sooner than needed.

[eduardoavila]

An upgrade i would suggest (even more if you're going with a higher tdp cpu) is the heatsink one. I can see in your pcb that your laptop has a model wich has discrete graphics.

The heatsink from the discrete graphics version has more mass and more thermal capacity, probably enough to be fine with your 45w processor and temps be just as before.

[magicarmyman]

Did a cpu upgrade on my t420 a while back. Put in the same 2760qm and let me say. On of the best laptops I have used. I does everything I need it to without complaint or fuss.

[The_Fat_Turtle]

Older HP Elitebooks had a lot of upgradeability too (relatively speaking) as they had MXM form factor dedicated GPU's that could be swapped out. Good luck finding much that will work as HP likes to blacklist stuff in BIOS updates but it's nice to know that it's replaceable at the very least.

[TheEli]

before doing anything on the board, first remove the battery..