upgrading a g50v-x1 questions

[ewilson248@aol.com]

to all:

I am wondering if it is possible to upgrade a g50v-x1.

right now it has a P8400 Dual core CPU and a 9700m Nvidia card.
they both seem to be socketed and upgradable.

looking online, I found a 460m video card MXM III that looks like it might work. but the TDP is 72watts vs. 45 on the OEM 9700. But I had planned on improving the cooling anyway.

Is it possible to swap out the 9700m for the 460m. are they compatible in terms of the thermal specs , electrical specs, and physical specs? or maybe some other upgrade?

same goes for the CPU - what are my options?

thanks, Ed

[Zygomorphic]

CPU - find a quad core of the same vintage...if the cooling will handle it. The 460M is likely not going to work, as it will pull more current than the mobo can supply. My advice, honestly, is to save your money and get a newer ROG of course ;) computer.

[ewilson248@aol.com]

The whole point of buying this laptop was to be able to upgrade it later, and not buy a new one. What is the point of having things that are socketed if they can't be upgraded? If the 460m would be too much, then what would would work? if I found a card with similar thermal specs, i.e - 45w TDP. Do you think that would be close enough? tracking down hardcore laptop video card specs seems to be next to impossible. But since they seem to standard pcie / mxm card slots the only questions are thermal, power consumption, and electrical.

[Zygomorphic]

I assume that you did not buy the BestBuy version, which I hear cannot take a quad-core CPU. The others can. If you know what the highest end GPU is that ever was put into your notebook, match that in terms of TDP. That would be safe. If you upgrade the cooling, you should be fine on that front, the only potential issue is the power consumption. Specs for just about every video card in existence can be found on this website:
www.notebookcheck.net

Best of luck! :)