Hi, I have a toshiba 5105-s701 laptop. I've upgraded the drive on it
to 7200 rpm, upgraded the minipci wifi card, upgraded the memory to
1G. I'm curious if it is possible to do something with the CPU on this
machine?

Hi Wicksom, 

Unfortunately, no, the CPU in this laptop, as with most laptops, is
not upgradeable.  The motherboards in laptops are not designed to
support replaceable CPUs.  They tend to be directly wired to the board
instead of through a socket, as with a desktop.  Even in cases where
the CPU can be replaced the clock on the board is not designed to be
adjustable to different  processor speeds.

CPU replacements are actually available for your laptop, but it's
unlikely that they would work without a motherboard upgrade.  Even if
it would work the only processor upgrade available to you is the 2GHz
chip, up from your current 1.8 GHz.

You might be able to upgrade the motherboard with a board from a
different model that uses the same case and upgrade the processor with
it.  The 5105-S901 uses a 2 GHz chip and would almost certainly have a
compatible case.  However the cost is prohibitive.  You would need
both a new board and a new CPU.  To give you some idea of the cost
here are prices and links from sparepartswarehouse.com:

Motherboard without CPU for the 5105-S901: $431.05
http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/Toshiba,Laptop,Part,P000350580.aspx

2.0 GHz CPU: 383.75
http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/Toshiba,Laptop,Part,P000363290.aspx

With laptops available for little more than $1000 I would suggest that
if you're in the market for an upgrade you're better off selling what
you've got and buying new.

I hope this helps, 

Hibiscus

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Request for Answer Clarification by wicksom-ga on 17 Jul 2005 10:09 PDT

Hibiscus,

Thanks for the quick response. I agree that upgrading to a new laptop
is the sensible solution. I really like the 1600x1200 screen on this
one that is hard to find in a new laptop. I wouldn't mind doing the
mobo+cpu upgrade (especially as I think that I could probably find
broken laptops for parts sale as opposed to buying retail), question
is then how do I figure out which mobo+cpu combinations are likely to
work?

Thanks

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Clarification of Answer by hibiscus-ga on 17 Jul 2005 11:29 PDT

Hi again Wicksom, 

I hadn't thought of broken laptops, but you're right, that's probably
a good source of parts.  In that case I think the only one you can be
sure about is the 5105-s901.  The cases should be identical.  It's
unlikely that any other Toshiba motherboard will exactly fit.  You
could try to find one that's similar, but the port locations are
probably going to be slightly different.  Other boards might also not
support the resolution of your current screen.

So it's only the s901 that is a really solid choice.  With that you've
only got the one processor option of 2GHz.  The question is whether
that 10% increase in speed is really worth the effort.

Hibiscus

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Request for Answer Clarification by wicksom-ga on 17 Jul 2005 17:09 PDT

Hi Hibiscus,

That is a good question. The 901 seems to have a Pentium-M vs. my
regular p4, so shouldn't the speed difference be more significant?

I looked at the 5205s, which seem very similar to the 5105. You are
right, even though they have alot in common it seems like the ports
were moved around on them. Too bad, the 5205-S705 looks really good.

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Clarification of Answer by hibiscus-ga on 18 Jul 2005 15:55 PDT

Hi Wicksom, 

You're right the Pentium-M would be somewhat faster than a P4 of the
same clock speed, but I think you'd still find the speed increase
would not justify the cost and considerable effort of swapping the
motherboard.  It's unfortunate that laptops are so difficult to
upgrade.

Hibiscus