upgrading inspiron 9300 mobo

I would suggest putting the several hundred dollars your thinking of spending on this "upgrade" and along with selling the 9300 buy a newer laptop.

If your in the USA check out Dells Factory Outlet

• Dave is an established member here
• Dave was trying to help you out
• His answer is probably the consensus here
• This question has been answered before
• More than once
• Use the search, stop acting entitled

This is from another thread but it applies here too:

lol I don't work for Dell.

I was merely saying IMO it's not worth it to try to Modify the 9300, since your changing the Mobo, Memory, Hard Drive (unless you have the 9300 with the sata i/f) possibly the inverter, and probably some plastics. and the GPU. which leads to the question which GPU do you have in the 9300?

The M90 & 9300 GPU's have a close footprint but are not the same. and of course may not be reconized by the BIOS.

I may offer one suggestion - why not get a complete M90 base I seen some on Ebay in the $ 219.00 price range. then use what parts you can to complete it.

Anyways sorry if I wasted your time, Good luck with what ever you do.

You'll find my answer is no different than Dave-p's and zzulp's. By the time you shell out all this money for the required parts you could have sold your 9300 and bought a second used M90 for the money. Heck, you might even find an M90/M6300 still under warranty.

I hate to be a party-pooper, but with Laptops advancing every bit as fast as Desktops upgrading laptops just isn't feasible anymore unless its just the inexpensive basics.

Dude you are way off base with your responses. NO ONE who posts here is getting paid for their efforts. We all post to help others, because we like to not because we have to. Getting rude isn't going to help you get answers. Some times newer users of this forum such as yourself, don't realize that their question has been answered on many occasions before.

When a more experienced poster gives you advice to do a search it isn't to belittle you, it's just to guide you to more thoroughly seek the info that you desire. For example, I've found that the best way to search for an answer is to search ALL of the Dell forums using the "advance search" feature making sure to check the "child" forums. This will give you the best chance for success. Searching just this tech forum doesn't always give you the answer as many tech related questions have also been answered in the other Dell forums. And to complicate matters a bit we've recently gone through a major reorganization in the Dell forums so that many threads are no longer in the forums they should belong to.

So lay-off your righteous indignation and swearing and instead focus on the very good advice they're trying to give you.

Laptops aren't desktops! They generally aren't designed to be upgradeable. Motherboards are proprietary and designed to fit a specific shell. Things like number and location of external connectors and internal cabling are just some of the problems. Placement of attachment standoffs from the base and palm rest to the board are another. Rarely if ever does a motherboard from one model fit into another.

In your case, there isn't another board that will effectively upgrade your unit. As far as I know only an XPS Gen 2/M170 motherboard will fit, but isn't really an upgrade as it's the same performance wise as your i9300 except with connectors for the fancy lights on the XPS.

So as the other posters told you, your best option would be to not spend anymore on your i9300, sell it for what you can, then use the proceeds towards purchasing an upgrade.

I hope this helps.

Ciao

Hey man, I tried helping... tried helping you TO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!

Go ahead and go to another forum, though I fail to see the value in advice that is only the kind you want to hear. Which is not how we roll.

You are.

Arg, why did you guys have to bump this. I was trying to let it go but I have some free time now and I'm bored. I will try not to flame but it doesn't even matter since he won't read it.

• Ebay parts aren't more reliable than refurbished Dell parts in general
• You definitely lose 4 USB ports in the back, not 2
• I listed the other ports the OP loses in my previous post
• I gave the answer to the OP's question in my previous post listing the parts the OP would need
• My quote in that post is actually a quote of a quote of a quote of a quote
• Theres a reason no one has done this before afaik
• Sometimes you have to be a pioneer and take other people's speculation to test.
• The only part worth keeping off the 9300 is the screen because the casing results in too many ports lost (unless you cut the casing).
• A search on "9300 motherboard upgrade" in Dell forums resulted in three threads on this topic, however, you do kinda have to dig. Still though, only took about 15-20 minutes.
• I am never wrong (well there was the one time hehe...)
• Thanks for the tissue

I'm contemplating googling the OP's name to see if another forum gave him the same answer or alternatively, no answer at all. I would figure a list of parts needed would be enough but I guess the OP wanted something else.