Thinkpads Forum

Sorry, I know that CPU upgrade questions are the worst that people come by. I couldn't find any results that got me a straight answer.

What I know: I have a T60 with a Yonah 1.83 Ghz Core Duo with a 667 FSB. My question is, can I upgrade to a Core2Duo CPU Merom as long as the FSB is the same or will the architecture of that Merom CPU not even be compatible?

You can upgrade to a T7200, T7400, or T7600. They are all 667Mhz FSB Meroms. T7200's start at $50 to $60 shipped on EBay.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_Cor ... 28Merom%29

Harry pretty much said it all, but you also need to check to make sure you've got a reasonably recent BIOS, and that you've got a Rev. 3 motherboard. (The odds of not having a Rev. 3 are tiny, and the BIOS is easy to update if necessary). The T7600 is probably not worth the extra premium it commands, and will run significantly hotter than the T7400 or 7200. Regardless, the replacement of the thermal paste will probably keep things cooler in your machine than it's been for quite some time. I should get off my butt and replace my processor (same one as yours), too! Good luck!

Great! Thanks for the info!

So yall are saying I can replace my t2600 with a t7600 with no problems at all? I have the latest bios also.

Yes

The upgrade is very easy and well worth the effort IMO.

I upgraded mine over a year ago and have had zero issues.

Good luck

sysiphus wrote:Harry pretty much said it all, but you also need to check to make sure you've got a reasonably recent BIOS, and that you've got a Rev. 3 motherboard. (The odds of not having a Rev. 3 are tiny, and the BIOS is easy to update if necessary). The T7600 is probably not worth the extra premium it commands, and will run significantly hotter than the T7400 or 7200. Regardless, the replacement of the thermal paste will probably keep things cooler in your machine than it's been for quite some time. I should get off my butt and replace my processor (same one as yours), too! Good luck!

Why do you guys want to upgrade your processor? Myself, I'm contemplating downgrading my Core 2 Duo T5500 (1.67GHz) to a Core Duo of some kind in order to achieve a quieter machine. Haven't looked into it deeply, but it seems like something I might want to do. The T60 can't recognize more than 3GB RAM anyway, so the 64 bit capability of the Core 2 Duo's seems a waste. What's the benefit?

Because the faster CPU is faster... Not everyone is as sensitive to fan noise, and apparently not all T60 are equally noisy even if equipped with identical configurations.

I doubt any Core Duo will be cooler than your lowest end Core 2 Duo... Maybe a Core Solo - but then you really are crippling performance. If with all your modding you don't reach a quieter machine, maybe the fan is just defective. As Wild_bill shows, it's perfectly possible to have a cool&quiet T60, even with a T7400 and dedicated GPU.

dr_st wrote:Because the faster CPU is faster... Not everyone is as sensitive to fan noise, and apparently not all T60 are equally noisy even if equipped with identical configurations.

I doubt any Core Duo will be cooler than your lowest end Core 2 Duo... Maybe a Core Solo - but then you really are crippling performance. If with all your modding you don't reach a quieter machine, maybe the fan is just defective. As Wild_bill shows, it's perfectly possible to have a cool&quiet T60, even with a T7400 and dedicated GPU.

I think wild_bill was saying his machine keeps cool even with the fan off (e.g. 37C in normal circumstances), so my problems would not seem to be a bad fan but likely a bad thermal connection between the CPU and the heat pipes. What else could it be? I wouldn't think different T5500's would put out varying amounts of heat.