Can My Laptop be Upgraded?

[TrenRojo]

Hi, I am new to this forum and I wish you have a great new year 2011. I wanted to ask a question that you may be able to answer. I have recently bought a new laptop:

HP Pavilion dv7 4070us

Intel Core i5-450 M processor 2.40 GHz Installed memory (RAM) 4.00 GB 64 Bit System

I wanted to know if is possible to upgrade to an i7 and 8 GB RAM. And if this is possible, how do you do that? where should I go to get this done? I use my laptop for some office work, not much, but mostly to play computer chess, I believe if I can upgrade, I will definitely will get more power and speed. Thanks in advance for your answers, and have a nice time anywhere you are.

[Big_Dave]

Hello,

The specifications for your laptop indicate a maximum memory of 8 GB.  This article should be helpful.  If going to 8GB then buy a matching pair of 4 GB memory dimms.

[TrenRojo]

Thanks Big_Dave for your response to my question. If I decide to do this, is this something that I can do by mysef, or is it better to have a specialist to do the upgrading. I believe I have seen these at the store.  

Thank you again.

 

[HaggisCat]

Your "i" series processor is plenty fast for a Chess and going to 8 GB of RAM won't make any difference in the speed of the computer.

 While the Chess game is running press the 3 keys all at ounce to get to the task manager : ctrl  alt  delete

Click on the Performance heading and look under the CPU graph and Memory.

 I bet your game of Chess is probably only using less then 2 GB of RAM and about 3% of it's CPU, if that.

 Also, check to see what the performance graphs are doing with just the desk top running and nothing else. If it's a 64 bit machine it should be using 0 to 1% CPU and around 1 to 1.5 GB's of RAM.

 If you want to make the laptop faster go for a Hybrid drive or a Solid State one.

 I would not advise putting an i7 processor in a laptop that was designed for an i5. The cooling fan and heat sink would not be adequate to keep the CPU cool.

[TrenRojo]

While the game was underway, this is what the reading showed. The lowest CPU usage was about 94. You said that it will be better to go for a Hybrid Drive or a Solid State; this also means to replace the one this computer has with one of those? I wa looking in the internet to find the meaning of hybrid drive and solid state, these are actually the hard drives, correct? thank you for helping me.  

[HaggisCat]

That is surprising to see that ! Could you please give me a link to where I can download this Chess game, I would really like to see what it does on my machine.

 To answer your question, yes, that is the hard drive. However from what your screen shot shows, you are heading in the right direction in your first post. Upgrading your RAM  to 8GB is a bit overkill as you have 4GB and its still has some left. Upgrading your CPU is possible, but the whole machine would have to come apart to expose the motherboard. When going to a faster CPU, other things to worry about is cooling and if the MB can support the new processor.

 Upgrading the RAM is easy as it's usually accessible through a small panel on the underside of the laptop.  

[TrenRojo]

This is another shot from a "engine vs engine" play using Fritz,  you can make 2 chess engines play against each other without going to the website. It shows 89% CPU Usage and 1.82 GB Memory, a little bit less that when you play vs other computers.

Well to be able to go in there and play against other chess engine players, you have to buy, Fritz 8 or newest version, which is Fritz 12 (the one I am using), it comes with a 12 month free access to playchess.com. This is a website where you can play chess using your computer, only in the room named "engine room". I will see if I can upgrade my laptop, and hopefully it will be alright. Thank you for the help, and let me know if you join playchess.com, we might play some chess games : )

  

[HaggisCat]

I sent a personal message to Huffer and he agrees that your i5 processor should handle it, he thinks there is something else going on here. If you still plan to upgrade your processor, do so with caution. The bigger one also uses more wattage and your MB has to be able to handle that.

Go back to your task manager again and see what processes are running with no Chess and with it. Here is a screen shot of mine with just IE8 running and it's taking most of the juice, but no where near what yours is.

 

 The desk top Windows is surprisingly high at a bit over 12,000 KB, but Windows 7 has to look pretty. The Logitech one is my Bluetooth mouse and the rest are IE8.

 Anyways good luck with this as you seem satisfied that upgrading the processor will help and thanks for the offer, but I don't play Chess, I know how to, but I have no skill at it. It would be like the tortice and the hare !

[TrenRojo]

I will show you the screen shot of mine as soon as I figure out how to make it as clear as your screen shot.