W701 upgrade question

[positive]

When upgrading the W701, does it require Lenovo specific CPUS and GPUs? I believe the fastest processor is the 940xm, and the GPU the 3800m, but do they need Lenovo FRUs to work properly?

Even though the 940xm is the fastest, is there another one that is more readily available and a sweet spot for price/performance?

Thanks

[RealBlackStuff]

CPUs are not Lenovo-specific, any Intel CPU that meets the W701 specs will work.
The only limit is your wallet.
AFAIK there is no faster CPU than the i7-940XM, but compared to the i7-920XM there is little improvement.
And put in as much RAM as it will take (4x4GB or can it also take 4x8GB?) plus a decent SSD or two.

[Screamer]

No, but I do seem to recall that the W701 and the W701ds accepted only quad-core Core i7 processors. The other processors, such as the dual-cores, did not work due to missing microcodes. I could be wrong though, but I feel that this is likely as the 4-RAM-slot W510 had an identical problem.

As for the MXM GPU slot, yes. There's a whitelist in the BIOS that prevents other MXM GPU cards from being used in the W701 and the W701ds.

[positive]

Thanks for the replies. It seems like the CPU is easier to find than the 3800m, which I can't find anywhere.

[TPFanatic]

And put in as much RAM as it will take (4x4GB or can it also take 4x8GB?) plus a decent SSD or two.

It can take 4x 8 GB, for 32 GB total.