T42 CPU upgrade

[RolfThinkPad]

Hi,
ThinkPad T42 1.7GHz Pentium M

Does anyone know if the processor can be easily upgraded to 1.8 GHz, or even 2.0 GHz?

It must be a straightforward processor swap with zero other hardware issues.

[RealBlackStuff]

Anyone of these will work:

Pentium M 710 	SL7V5  	1400 MHz 
Pentium M 715 	SL7GL  	1500 MHz 
Pentium M 725 	SL7EG  	1600 MHz 
Pentium M 735 	SL7EP  	1700 MHz 
Pentium M 745 	SL7EN 	1800 MHz 
Pentium M 755 	SL7EM 	2000 MHz 
Pentium M 765 	SL7V3  	2100 MHz

Make sure you clean up/replace the thermal paste between CPU and fan.

[Johan]

Rolf:

If you seek to "speed up" your T42, then I suggest that you (if you haven't done it already?) rather upgrade your old, slow mechanical rotating harddrive to a fast SSD, in stead ... as this upgrade will give you a much more speedy T42, compared to upgrading the CPU. If you wish to read more about SSD's in T42's, I suggest you see the sticky GUIDE: Make your T4x *FAST* by replacing the HDD with a SSD! and the threads linked to therein... all you'll need to know is there!

The ultimate speed-upgrade of your T42 (unless upgrading the motherboard itself to one of the hopefully forthcoming nb51.com "T50" motherboards, which is beyond the scope of this thread to discuss) would be to both replace the (old, slow!) HDD with a SSD and upgrading the CPU at the same time!

Good luck with the project!

Johan

[sktn77a]

The 1.8Ghz upgrade isn't worthwhile. The 2.0GHz upgrade will yeild about 20% improvement in CPU intensive tasks. I upgraded my T42 from 1.6 to 2.0 and did notice a difference but I think the money is better spent on a bigger, faster HDD and 2Gb RAM. And by the time you have done that, you could have probably sold the T42 and bought a more modern laptop (the T4x was very good in its day but it is a 10 year old design now).

[RolfThinkPad]

Thanks all.

I was only thinking about the CPU because I need to replace the fan soon, and so need to separate the heatsink from the CPU and GPU anyway.

I also see that my CPU has 2MB level 2 cache which makes a big difference over 512K cache versions.

My T42 has maximum RAM (2GB) with a good GPU and is fast, especially as I've tuned XP by getting rid of all the excess nonsense that drags systems down. Let's just say the T42 is "travelling light". Indeed I get comments even in 2013 that my laptop is so fast!

Re. hard disk, I replaced the standard disk with a brand new higher performance model, but still IDE, and noticed a big difference. The new disk has 4 times more cache plus other improvements. For me it is plenty fast.

Thanks for all the input.