Can I upgrade my Dell Precision M6600 laptop CPU from i7-2460M.

The MSCE person that flipped it to me falsely said it was a quad. I unfortunately believed him.

I know if it is soldered in, I am pretty much S.O.L.

I have found some that will fit, but the numbers show 10 - 20 more watts, depending on the model. Is that more of a heat or power supply issue, or both. Would a better HSF do, or would it possible require mo' power?

Thanks,

A VERY frustrated Flash!!!

 

You can upgrade up to a 2960xm. It is not soldered in. It is actually quite easy to do it yourself. Just need the new cpu and thermal past and some screw drivers.

 

Thanks for the response. I hope it is easy. I have never done a cpu. Just thte easier stuff.

What about the wattage and/or heat issues the new CPU might cause? This one is 55w where my 2460m is only 35w.

 

check if the CPU heatsink have at least 2 heatpipes, if it does it will be the one that sufficiently cools UPTO a 55W CPU

P.S. just had a bried check on ebay and it looks like all m6600 CPU heatsink are dual piped, so its going to cool the CPU sufficiently, and strictly speaking its economical to get 1 heatsink to sufficiently cools all of the configurable CPU options instead of different heatsinks for different TDP, my guess is that your current i7 has a huge thermal headroom on the mid 50~60C fully loaded

 

I'm not sure exactly what you mean... Only in theory. Can you elaborate? Also, how can I tell if it has dual pipes? I expect it will be easy, but I want to be sure.

 

open up the notebook to check if the CPU cooler is dual pipe i.e. you see 2 pipes going from the CPU to the fan exhaust

the economic sense is that, if they have 2 different heatsinks for the CPU, presumably one for the 35W cpu and the other one for the 45~55W CPU, this means 2 lines of production and 2 double the time spent with the engineer, and double the time doing the pre production check because both heatsinks need to be verified to work under full stress -> hence extra cost of operation, whilst if 1 heatsink fits the 55W CPU, everything below it will be sufficiently cooled, and my bet is the money saved from cutting out 1 pipe is less than the extra effort maintaining 2 lines of production since the precision lines does not have a high sales figure as compared to other consumer products

we can also tell from what ebay offers, and from various teardowns that whatever CPU the m6600 come in with, its got to be a 2 piped heatsink, and i don't see a 1 pipe/3pipe variant so its pretty conclusive that the heatsink takes whatever sandy bridge CPU you snap onto it

 

I don't see how you jump to those assumptions? There is more to cooling than the number of pipes.

 

In addition, The Dell M6600 is a pain in the butt to upgrade.. It's alot like the M18x, basically a complete teardown. You don't just pop off the back panel like in a sager/clevo. Here is a teardown video, i have done one of these before.. Not a very fun thing to do.
Basically the same thing as the other m6x00 models.

 

so, would you like to tell me if the m6600 has more than 1 type of heatsink, and can be visually distinguished? i don't see much other than telling from the number of heatpipes to verify that the heat, for the m6600 specifically, is capable of cooling a CPU of 55W or under

so if you find 2 different heatsinks on the m6600, specifically m6600, which are both dual piped but have a different cooling ability, i'd take down my assumptions based on what i'm seeing on THE specific model (m6600)

 

Sorry, I can't give you that info.

But I still don't see a manufacturer putting in a superior cooling solution when providing a lower end cpu - they're tuned to save fractions of pennies, not waste dollars per system.

 

Hmmm, used to have a m6600, processor is upgrade-able to the 2960xm, I put a 2720qm in mine. However, the cooling a bit lacking for the 2960xm, and the bios will not allow overclocking of any kind, there by alleviating the purpose of getting an extreme processor. I would say to get 2840qm/2820qm, cheaper, and less hot.

 

What about power? Will the system handle the extra 20 watt draw on it?

 

Depends on the power adaptor that you have. Is it over 180W?

 

180w will be fine for the quad core cpus, and came standard for all m6600s. The power difference between the 2640 and the non extreme quad cores is 10w.