system board upgrade 8560w

[Yassine_hp8560w]

Hello,

I want to upgrade my 8560w (dual) system board (with cpu i7 2620M and 2 RAM slots) to a quadcore system board with 4 RAM slots and a quadcore i7.

Is it possible from a technical point view? or is there some components that remain outside the system board and do not allow to make such an upgrade ?

The manual mix all possible configurations together and does not precisely say the possible upgrades starting from a specific configuration..

Many thanks in advance,

Yassine

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

The system boards are a drop in replacement for each other. This is the one you want:

For use with quad-core processors in all countries except China and Ukraine 652638-001

You will also obviously need a Quad Core processor. You can move all the add-ons over from the old board to the new. Memory, video card, wireless, display cable, etc. Even the processor heatsink is part of the video card cooling system. It is the same on dual core and quad core boards. 

This is no easy task, by the way. There are lots of connecting daughterboards and subassemblies. 

Your Service Manual

System board on eBay

If you can do the work yourself, it is $115 for the board and then about $200 for the CPU:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Core-i7-2860QM-Quad-Core-3-60GHz-5-00GT-s-DMI-8MB-L3-Cache-SR02X-/1216...

$315 might be a working economic proposition on a $2000+ laptop. If you were paying me to do it I would not touch it for less than about $3-400 in labor. Looks like an all-day job. The Manual is not designed for upgraders. It is made for technicians who remove and replace like-kind parts only. Officially, there are no upgrades, it is a bit of a gray art.

If this is "the Answer" please click "Accept as Solution" to help others find it. 

[Yassine_hp8560w]

Thanks a lot for this concise and clear answer !

I already have a quadcore processor and additional RAM for the 4 slots, my mistake was to only trust the seller of the "refurbished" laptop who told me upgrade to quadcore is possible with the current (dual) mother board.

A first disassembly test seemed quite easy (except for the few  ZIF connetors that I partially broke.. but hopefully I will get new ones with the new motherboard..)

I feared that HP put some basic components outside the system board to prevent such upgrades, so thanks a lot for your answer, it's a very nice relief 🙂

[Huffer]

Yeah if you broke zif connectors this is a no-brainer. You could not get a replacement dual core motherboard for any less than the one on eBay I linked you to. Be careful in there this time, please. 

[Marwin]

Hi, I would like to to the same thing.

My old motherboard is 652637-001, I was wondering if I can replace it with the 684319-001 motherboard (alcor upgrade).

In other words, is there any substantial difference between the quad core mother board with the alcore chip upgrade and the one without, mentioned here earlier ( 652638-001 ) ?

The reason is that I can get a new 684319-001 motherboard, while I found only used options for 652638-001.

[Marwin]

Update: hardware wise the upgrade was  no problem. But there seem to be problems with the BIOS; I get the message "Warning - machine not in comitted state" and can't get rid of it.

I'm not sure whether my difficulties in rebranding the mobo and trying to set the amt and Vpro are linked to the choice of upgrading rather than buying the same board, but  in retrospect I wouldn't do this again.