I"ve decided I want to get rid of or somewhat solve the stupid fan cycling problem on my W3J buy putting some AS5 on my cpu. I can't however figure out how the hell to take it apart. I've taken a look at the Z63A asembly guide but that is no help becasue the W3J has the ATI vga module, and way more heatpipes. Just wondering if anyone has any guides or if some of the resellers which do the cpu upgrades could help me out with this. Yes I do know i'd be voiding my warranty by doing so but I don't care

Well i finally got everything out........i'm quite suprised the ati vga module looks somewhat modular, its got 2 small 1 inch by 1/8 inc sockets, anyone have any idea if this is somewhat like mxm or not.

Hi Silvr6 how did you pull the ati vga module out? I removed the three screws that fastened it, but I don't have any idea how to pull the card. Seems like it is very firmly attached. Could you please enlighten me?

Ok after removing the screws just gently pull up on the right hand side of the card as the socket things are on that side, it might take a bit of effort becasue the gpu has a thermal pad on it.

Got pics?

I own a W3V and I'm totally interested into converting it into a W3J. I found the ASUS parts website here http://estore.asus.com/shop/category.asp
and I'm totally convinced that they are pretty identical, just want visual confirmation of the parts and dissassembly. this could be interesting, for $250 with the Mainboard and VGA board (X1600) I can have a nice performance upgrade, of course I need new RAM and cpu, but you get the point.

Interesting. Found some pics on the internet and saw that the Bottom case is slightly different due to the Heatsink / Heatpipe / Fan / VGA board combination. I would need to change the bottom case as well which is also on the Asus Parts Store for $30. I would then need a new heatsink fan/ thermal heatpipe as well. So it would be more costly. Probably $350 including shipping for all the parts required, update the BIOS, then a Core 2 Duo T5x00-7x00 CPU with DDR2 667 Memory(I have DDR2 533 now).

would it be worth it? gotta try out since my Ensemble warranty is already expired (NOV) for my W3V.

Considering that those that currently own a Yonah W3J would have to void their warranty to upgrade the CPU to Core 2 Duo Merom, I'm pretty much in the same position other than paying $350 extra.

hmm...

hi, i'm also interested to know if it is worth it? did you do it?