upgrade from i3 to i5/i7

[QUOTE=Digerati;1029118]

No they don't. As can be seen here, these i3, i5, and i7 CPUs all use the LGA 1156 socket. What may be confusing is there is an i7 version that uses the LGA 1366 socket.

Only the i7 8xx series, all the i7 9xx series are 1366, that and everyone keeps referencing desktop CPU's instead of laptop versions. And as far as those 3 different laptop CPU's go, only if all 3 motherboards have the same socket would they be interchangeable,

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The i3 is PGA988, where as the i5 and i7 can be either PGA988 or BGA1288. That is how Mad was able to swap his,

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which wouldn't have worked if 840QM had been the BGA1288 version.

This part I completely agree with,

As far as swapping all these CPUs around, for one, if I were your sister or dad, I would not allow it. Life is not fair.

Most of the time it can be done but it's usually not a good idea.. Heat is usually the biggest concern if you don't care about the warranty, with power coming it 2nd. You probably shouldn't try to upgrade a CPU in a laptop that came with a 4 or 6 cell battery and a 65 watt power supply, but those can usually be upgraded too. On the other hand you definitely shouldn't upgrade a cpu in a laptop that already has cooling problems.. especially a smaller laptop. With 16.4" or larger, cooling is seldom a problem in all but the worst designed systems. Quite a few 15" and almost all 14" or smaller laptops with discrete graphics just don't have the cooling capacity to handle a higher wattage cpu than the one it came with.