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Dell Inspiron 8600 cpu and ram upgrade

post #1 of 8
2/17/07 at 10:49pm
Thread Starter 
hello everyone. I have a dell inspration that i want to upgrade the ram and cpu. It came with a pentium M 1.4 cpu and 2 sticks of 256 = 512 ram. I am thinking of getting 2gigs of ram and i dont know what motherboard i have or what type of socket. Can someone let me know what socket I have and what combonation of ram/cpu would make this thing fly?

thanks,

pbox
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post #2 of 8
2/18/07 at 7:42am
First up, moved thread and appropriately renamed... it is Inspiron not Inspiration...

The i8600 uses the Intel 855 chipset which can accommodate an Intel Pentium M 765 (2.1GHz) if you are really keen... that is rather expensive though and one step down to the 755 @ 2.0GHz is more cost effective. The RAM you are after is 200-pin DDR SODIMM running at 333MHz. Note: newer DDR2 RAM will not work.

OK, that all being said... upgrading to max specs on this laptop will cost you a fair bit of dosh and still leave you well behind the 8-ball technology wise as it is several generations outdated. I'd suggest it would be worth saving your money for a while until you can afford a new laptop completely.

Stu
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post #3 of 8
2/18/07 at 10:14am
Well I have this same laptop which also had a 1.4 Pentium-M. I just dropped in a Pentium-M 2.0 last month and I dropped in a stick of DDR333 1GB late last year. I am running 1.2GB of RAM now and this week I am putting in the additional 1GB to max out the RAM to 2GB and I am buying a 100GB 7200rpm harddrive as the one I have is a whooping 4200rpm model. Should be a significant difference. I picked up the Pentium-M 2.0 Dothan for $186. People will tell you it may not be worth upgrading but if you don't have a ton of cash for new I think its fine to pay a fair amount for an upgrade and get a few more years out of it. I use mine for photoshop so I don't need to keep up with gaming demands.
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post #4 of 8
2/18/07 at 11:06pm
Yeah, but for all of those upgrades you are looking at spending at least US$400-500... to me that is a lot of money to spend and still be rather outdated. But I suppose each to his/ her own.

Stu
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post #5 of 8
2/19/07 at 6:47pm
I will agree with you that it is a substantial amount of money. But I see it differently. If I only have $500 to spend right now and know that I could only save another $500 till next year, chances are that I still won't be able to get that bangin' laptop that makes most desktops jealous. I upgraded my laptop and still have the harddrive and memory to upgrade and I am sure I won't be buying a new one for a good 3-4 years.
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post #6 of 8
3/20/07 at 9:25am
I26, I sent you a PM but don't know if this bb alerts you that you have a message waiting. Anyhow, where did you get your Pentium-M 2.0Ghz CPU? I'd like to do the same upgrade to my Inspiron 8600 but am having a devil of a time finding the chip for under $450.
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post #7 of 8
3/20/07 at 7:28pm
You may find a 2GHz but rarely a 2.1GHz and if you do it will cost way to much. I bid on one and it ended up going for $280. I bought a 2GHz using buy it now feature and it cost me $186. It was well worth it. I can look for you later at the ebay stores I purchased from. I'll be in touch within a few hours.
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post #8 of 8
1/21/08 at 10:31am
If anyone is interested in a REALLY good price on a harder and harder to find 400mHz FSB Dothan 2.0 ghz chip SL7EM, here ya go:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Mobile-Pen...QQcmdZViewItem

IMHO, this is a great upgrade for us i8600 guys. I went from a 1.4 Ghz Banias Pentium M when I got the laptop to this chip, and it runs Vista 32 just fine. My comparison desktop is a Q6600 o/c 3.6 w/ TEC cooling and 8 gb RAM running Vista64.
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