Dell Inspiron 9300 upgrade

[Jlagreca]

Hey all,

So I bought my Inspiron 9300 a little over 2 years ago, and although its age and the fact that it is a laptop it does relatively well, but not well enough. I'm a gamer and I have my monster desktop at home which I opted not to bring to school with me. Anway, I've done quite a bit of research to find out that the Inspiron 9300's are actually quite upgradeable. The best compilation of all the information I found was from right here(GotFrag Hardware - Hardware Home News Story - Transformers: Inspiron 9300, but as the guide is over a year old, I came here to see if anyone had done this before to shed some of their wisdom on the subject.

The main question I had was with reguards to the processor. I don't plan on doing the "pin mod" (as described in the above guide) as my processor is already a pentium M 2.0ghz, and apparently has a poor success rate. According to CPUZ, pentium M's are socket 479 mPGA, and according to newegg the socket is just M. However the mobile core 2 duo's are also a socket M. So fitting the chip wouldn't be a problem, but would the motherboard allow it? The motherboard's model (Dell 0C5668) has been around for a while, yet I haven't found any information about its chipset and if it would be compatible with a core 2 duo.

If anyone has had any experience with the 9300 and would be able to help, I appriciate it!

[jorsoft03]

Your chipset is too old to support a C2D, that's just the truth. You can probably upgrade to a faster Pemtium M but that'll be it. The 2.1GHz Intel Pentium M 770 processor (Dothan) is the fastest one I could find that'll work. You do have a few options for upgradeable graphics, though. Since you've probably got a decent processor and ram, that'll be your best avenue for performance increases. These would appear to be your optons:

inspiron 9300 video, All matching items for sale.

This site will tell you the part numbers and brief description of the graphics boards so you can search for them. The site itself is very expensive so my advice is google the part numbers and see if anybody else, or ebay, is cheaper. The card itself is usually pretty easy to install. The first time I did one it took only 5-10 minutes.

Internal Parts And Assemblies

[Jlagreca]

Ah I feared the chipset wouldn't allow C2D, too bad... But thanks for the info jorsoft03. A video upgrade was defintely on the list of things to do, as I found a refurbished(sp) go 7800GTX for a decent price on ebay. RAM as well.

My next question would be: would a 2.0ghz pentium M act as a bottleneck for a card like the above?

[jorsoft03]

Probably, yes, but what choice do you have? What proc do you have right now?

ANd make sure the 7800 you're looking at is a Dell moel that's compatible with laptop if you haven't already. Just be sure to double check the part numbers as there have been a few folks who've made that mistake.

[Disillusion]

Yes, the chipset is too old to support the C2D, plus the sockets are not even the same. The Pentium M Dothan is called a 479 socket, but really only has 478 pins.

I did the pin mod to my 9300 and got a successful 2.4 Ghz overclock out of it. The 2.4 GHz is the only one I would go for since you already have 2 GHz, but evidently it isn't very successful. Some people have to add a ton of voltage and some chips just won't stay stable no matter how much voltage you give them.

Your best bet right now is to get 2 GB of RAM, which can be had for only $80, and a 6800 Ultra or 7800 GTX video card.