Travelmate 8103 Overclock - 1.8 GHz to 2.4 GHz - success or bust? (56k warning)
In my search for a Clockgen program for my Acer Travelmate 8103, I stumbled across this thread and was instantly intrigued. Who wouldn't be? The prospect of raising my processor speed with little to no effort other than removing my chassis and motherboard and putting a little piece of copper wiring in my socket? Well, it just so happens that I'm in the process of building a P-M desktop using the CT-479 (edit: was) and understand that Sonoma class processors clock higher than Carmel; Carmel's limit seems to be around 160 FSB (on air), which is well above the thermal limitations a laptop will have without altering the multiplier.
About 3 days ago, I won an eBay auction for a 1.8 GHz P-M 745 for 240, and was pleased and surprised when it arrived yesterday before I had awoken. Well, I happened to have a lot of free time today, so I decided to give it a shot. I proceeded to Lowe's and picked up a good screwdriver (Phillips naturally), a set of needlenose cutter pliers, and some braided wiring. My mother had suggested to me after said purchase that if I wanted really thin wiring that I should strip down some kind of cable. Duh, I didn't think about that. The braided wiring (which I was going to unbraid for thinner wire) was too thick anyways.
Before I could begin I needed to know what I needed for this project - like the pinout chart with the circled numbers - so I drew my own picture of it.
After I gathered all my information, I began immediately unscrewing all the screws on the back of the laptop. Immediately after I face a problem - the chassis isn't coming up. This is about 15 minutes before work, so I decide to post here about taking apart my laptop to see if any soul can help me find my answer. Duh, I get home around midnight and see no one posted to it. Sane. I do a search and I realize that there are "tabs" above the keyboard which hold it in place, so I get my knife and I push those tabs up:
http://www.2geeksandagirl.net/yukado...overclock3.jpg
More screws. I unscrew all of them except two little black ones that don't seem to be holding anything, but the chassis is still not coming up. After messing with it for about a half hour I decide to remove them; it comes right up. Sane. After going through hell to remove the next part of the chassis and all the cords, I find out the CPU is at the very end of the line.
http://www.2geeksandagirl.net/yukado...overclock4.jpg
I am nervous about proceeding because I've already voided my warrenty and don't need to break anything, but I do because I've gone this far. I get to the CPU finally and by this time the whole damn thing is out of the chassis.
http://www.2geeksandagirl.net/yukado...overclock5.jpg
Remove 7 screws, the heatpipe is out; which leaves me with the CPU and the GPU. I remove the CPU and get to a nice looking, "hard to break" socket. Well it actually only takes me like 15 minutes to get the copper wire in there the first time. I replace the CPU, add some thermal grease that was packaged with the Thermalright XP90, lock it in, and start screwing things back. I screw back most of the motherboard, then start putting the rest of the chassis back on. I replace the battery and hit power.
Nothing.
I start hyperventilating and freaking out; I just wrecked a car, if I wreck this I'm screwed. I calm down and start going back. It ends up being that the chassis is still a little out of place and the battery doesn't make correct contact with the connectors. The computer boots; everything works minus the LCD. I don't freak out; one thing at a time, I think. So I take it upstairs and plug in my monitor to it. I reboot it and it's working! I start up and as soon as I hit my desktop, bam the monitor shuts off. Sane. I restart and hit F8 and go to "Boot in VGA Mode" and it works out this time. Must be something to do with the LCD not working, right? Well I go into CPU-Z and I die when I see that the proc was running at stock speeds: 1.8 GHz, 400 FSB, my RAM running at 99 MHz with the "tight" timings of 3-4-4-8. Sane. I shut it down and take it back downstairs; take it all apart and I remove the CPU. Now comes the 2 hour grind (no pictures; I was far too nerve wracked for this one.) I spend nearly 2 hours getting a copper wire back into the spot; I lose a lot of U shaped copper wires here. I'm losing a little of my paitence but realize that I'm actually having fun experimenting.
I get the copper wire in and remove and replace the CPU a couple of times to make double sure that it's there this time. For some reason before it dawned on me just now to clean the thermal pad off the heatpipe, so I do, and the CPU again, and put on fresh thermal paste. I put it all back together (no screws this time) and I put in the battery and start her up: the HDD light remains solid and that's it. I get nervous but a minute later I realize what's wrong. Not only did I forget to replace the harddrive, I didn't lock the CPU into the socket. So I do all of that and boot her up. I check CPU-Z.
Well after all of that I screw everything back in; I end up with like 3 missing screws (2 outside, one HDD) and 6 extra. I find out later that my right speaker doesn't work anymore, but I figure when I put AS5 in the computer that I'll look into it. I don't care because I use speakers anyways.
So in the end, there was only one result, and that is...
Conclusion: SUCCESS
http://www.2geeksandagirl.net/yukado...ff/success.jpg
CPU-Z Verified
This project was a lot of fun and I went from being able to bench SuperPI 40 sec to 35 seconds - alone an important enough reason to do this entire mod; plus I'm left with a processor that my adapter is for. For all those interested in this, good luck to you; taking your laptop apart is hell!
--SS
