Hi,
I want to upgrade my wife's laptop which has an i3-3120M with a better processor.
It's a sturdy laptop (HP 4540s) and i would like to extend it's life as much as possible with a small investment, now that i can afford it. Already bought a SSD and 4 additional gigs of ram.
She uses it mostly for office applications and watching movies while i use it sometimes for light gaming (AoE2, HoMM3, Path of Exiles, Dota2) when i go to small Lan Parties (maybe 10-20 times per year).
I can place any gen 3 mobile CPU that has 35W, at least that's what the manual says so i7-3632QM or i5-3380M seem to be the best.
I've found second hand a i5-3360M, which is 100Mhz lower than the 3380M, for little below 50$ (i feel this is a steal but am not sure) and a i7-3632QM for double.
What would be the best pick considering the large frequency differences, what we will be using it for and future-proofing? Should i wait to find a 3380M and what price should i pay for it considering the offers above?
All the i3's and i5's are essentially the same chip underneath (binned slightly differently) and wouldn't improve anything noticeably for most laptop uses.
Only the i7-3632QM with it's 4 cores would really make a noticeable difference over the others. If you're not going to get the i7 you could pretty much just keep the 3120M.
The HP4540's uses a Socket G2 rPGA988 CPU socket so I've linked the list of supported Socket G2 processors below.
http://www.cpu-world.com/Sockets/Socket%20G2%20%28rPGA988B%29.html
As far as pricing goes. I can't give you any sort of solid figures. I don't often buy laptop chips, it's usually not worth it for me compared to a newer system. Anything between $50-$100 ish is Ok. Less is a good day. Mind you, I'm from South Africa so prices here vs there may not quite match up.
Considering an additonal 50$ in order to get an i7 isn't to much, I'd get the i7.
unless you have a reflo machine (the soldering oven) its pretty difficult to replace embedded parts on a laptop, personally I think your best off just leaving it alone. I run the i3-3110M with an ssd and 8gb ddr3 and it runs everything i need "VMs & photoshop"
but...if your looking to render video or 3d models you should probably step up to a desktop or a significantly more powerful laptop
It's a socketed CPU. rPGA988B. Ivy Bridge Mobile devices is one of the few places where intel still used Pin Grid Array sockets due to their low profile.
No soldering needed.
Looks like one of these:
In this case the i3-3120M does not have Turbo Boost so i'm stuck at 2.5GHz. While the i5 has 300-400 MHz increased base clock with Turbo Boost up to 3.5-3.6 on one core, depending on the model. That's 12-16% increased in performance at base clock and 40-44% increased Turbo, right?
The i7 on the other hand is 12% percent slower than the i3, mind you, at base clock and only 28% faster with Turbo.
The heaviest duty this laptop will have is run games, Path of Exiles or Dota 2 being the most demanding of them until now.
But your comment also reminds me of the GPU part which is faster on both i5s by 50-100MHz.
I'm afraid to fall into the "get the 7 because it's a bigger number than 5" trap. I don't want to spend an additional 50$ on something worse for my use case scenarios.
I have an HP laptop with a 3630QM and it's an amazing chip. On all 4 cores will boost to 3.2GHz and on a single one boosts to 3.4GHz. Tears through general purpose activities, games decently, doesen't throttle even near the 100°C temp while playing games and handles VMs really well. Also the i7 it's a true 4 cores CPU and you might get a longer life out of it if your notebook is still in good shape and you're planning on keeping it as long as possible. If you're just waiting to save up some cash to buy a new one go for the i5.
P.S. Intel ripped me off: the 3630QM it's just 200MHz faster than the 3632QM but the TDP is 10W higher lol
oh cool, didn't know they did that anymore
What if i pick up a i7-3740QM (45W) at 105$? Do you think it will work even if in the manual they keep to a 35W one?
The PSU of the laptop is the brick so if that can handle it would the power delivery?
If your are unsure look for the 3612qm and the 3632qm. Both are 35W quad core parts.
I have upgraded to a 2630qm in my laptop (t420) and it requires a 90W charger for that.
A good thing to note is that the bios may not support the quads.
The HP documentation is a bit contradictory. It first says that quads is not supported at all but the list the two I mentioned earlier in the replacement parts list.
I would go for the two above. Then the cooling can support it as well