R51 1831-TU2 Upgrade Options

[gmiker]

My son has an R51 1831-TU2 and I was wondering the following:

Where should I look to find CPU and HDD upgrades?

How complex is the upgrade?

[underclocker]

Wecome to the forum!

You machine was pretty well spec'd from the factory, see below;

Product: ThinkPad R51 1831-TU2

Original description: Based on 1830-BTU: P M 1.7GHz, 1GB RAM, 60GB 4200rpm HDD, 15 XGA(1024x768) TFT LCD, 32MB ATI Radeon 9000, 24x24x24x/8x CD-RW/DVD, Intel 802.11b wireless(MPCI), Modem(CDC), 1Gb Ethernet(LOM), UltraNav, Secure Chip, IEEE 1394, 6c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

For a noticeable speed improvement, I recommend a 7200 rpm drive. You'll need any ATA (vs. SATA connector) drive. I believe ATA capacities available up to 100GB, possibly more.

You can also upgrade the CPU to the maxium of 2.1GHz with a Pentium M 765 CPU (this is a 400MHz bus unit). However, the cost is probably still over $150 and your 1.7GHz is actually pretty fast. Note: any 400MHz bus Pentium M CPU will work.

You can also upgrade the memory to 2GB, but this won't make much difference with XP, unless you run many apps at once or a memory hungry app., like Photoshop.

Drive upgrade is fairly easy, however maintaining the restore partition complicates the job a little.

CPU upgrade takes a little patience, but hundreds on this forum have done it.

Memory upgrades are simple.

Please use the forum search function for lots more information.

Good luck!