Dell Inspiron N5010 Processor upgrade

Hi there, Iv been doing some searching around to try and find a way to upgrade the processor on my laptop to an I5 up from the I3 in atm, Iv found out that you can upgrade as long as your computer has the Radeon 550v graphics card (Which mine does) or several other different graphic cards,
My questions are this -
Where could I find a processor to do the upgrade myself? Does it have to be a certain one compatible with my laptop or
Can I actually do the processor upgrade or would my laptop cook up with the extra power?

Currently living in the UK

If im missing anything out please dont hesitate to ask, thanks for taking the time to read this.

Jonathan

 

If you have the Radeon 5650 card, you can use the quad core i7 CPU's, though I don't recommend as the cooling system on the N5010 is pretty poor.

You can typically find processors on eBay, no your laptop should be fine with 45W i7's, I do NOT recommend the 55W i7 extreme processors, that might be an issue.

 

Ah so my laptop could actually handle an I7 as long as its not above 55w? Great, and yeah I thought that Ebay would pretty much be the only place to get a hold of one but wasnt 100% certain, Do you know the model numbers for the processors that are compatible ? e.g. i5 450m etc,Thanks for the response btw

 

Any Arrandale i3/i5 (1st gen) or Clarksfield non extreme CPU should work.

Arrandale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And only a few Clarksfield - 720QM/740QM/820QM/840QM. Avoid 920XM/940XM.

 

Seems to be a few on Ebay i5 430m/520m's etc, Thanks for the quick response you've been a great help, will have to do a little looking around tomorrow as its getting quite late, thanks again.