Advice needed from Computer nerds (I love you really)

[Samdy Gray]

What's the make and model of your laptop?

[tans]

Its an Advent 7211 with an Intel Celeron 2ghz Processor.

It had 1gb of RAM originally but i have since upgraded that to 2gb.

[Peter Venkman]

Well Magic....for £800 either building it yourself or getting your friendly local nerd to build it for about £30 (which is what I charge friends) you can have a bloody good machine that can play Crysis etc at near maxed levels (pretty much the benchmark all new PC's are aiming at).

Even if you need a decent 21" monitor in there you can still get a bloody quick machine.

If you do not play games then save money on a grpahics card and get more bang per buck processor and quick overclockable memory, but you can still have that too easily in your price range.

As SiPie says the E7200 is a great overclocker but a quad core is not a vast amount more and with good cooling can go just as fast but with better multicore threading capability.

Such as the Q6700 or Q9400 or even a Q9450 quad core all can reach 3.66 to 4ghz with the right mobo and cooling solution.

The Asus P5k Premium Wifi is a fantastic mobo, and that with the above chip, 4gb of PC1066 memory, a 1TB Samsung Spinpoint hard drive and a 4850 ATI Graphics is an option I would recommend, along with a case of your choice (as long as it has good fan positioning) and a half decent PSU and that can easily be had for £600 leaving you £200 for a good monitor.

Easy!

[Peter Venkman]

Something like this......changing a part or two if desired, this is including a 22" monitor but if you dont need that then all the more PC for your money!

[url width=800 height=642]http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g171/jjedmunds/new.jpg[/url]

[tans]

Ive found a laptop spares site, however how would i know if the processor would work etc etc?

[Simon Pieman]

You have to match the socket of your motherboard to that of the processor. Also, you need to make sure the bus speed of the motherboard is the same as the processor.

I changed the processor in my Dell laptop the literally the other day. Gone from a 2.2Ghz Celery to a P4 2.8Ghz which is the quickest I can get in that laptop unfortunately.

I'll have a look later on tonight at your laptop specs for you Tans, but laptops aren't as easy as desktops for upgrading processors. The major issue I had was that the processor was stuck solid to the heatsink (the thing that distributes the heat). Took a very patient and delicate operation to get the two apart, so I could put the heatsink on my new processor.

Also, it is more than likely you will have to buy 2nd hand off ebay as they don't make old compatible processors anymore.

[tans]

Cheers if you could have a look thatll be spot on.

[Peter Venkman]

The Celeron M 450 2000MHz is the fastest of that class of Processor.

Its the top spec chip for the Socket M 533FSB at 1.3v so I am 99.9% certain that its impossible to upgrade as it uses the maximum bus speed available to your motherboard.

[Simon Pieman]

Yeah I had a look and edmunds is right.

It's got a fairly decent sized cache and the speed is ok. Probably not worth an upgrade if you're running XP. Depends on the reason you want to upgrade.

[tans]

Its running Vista, and some gameplay is shite and slow.

[Simon Pieman]

You've got integrated graphics which are rubbish for the more modern games. You should look to purchase a desktop if you want a pc capable of playing games (you could do this for as little as £300 with a monitor), or pay over a grand for a decent gaming laptop.