[William_25]

I posted a thread like this in the 11z section but I figured people who have mini 9s and 10/V's might know the answer as well. Well here it goes. I haven't cracked open my 11z yet and actually if I do upgrade my 11z I'm going to take it in to an professional computer store to do the work. I just want to know if those of you who have opened up your mini if you've noticed that the processor was soldered to the daughterboard or can it simply be popped out? As far as my question about the hard drvie I was wondering how much heigth did the hd cage have? They have a 1tb hard drvie from western digital for $250 and it's about an 1/8th of an inch thicker than all the rest of thier hard drives. The WD Drive is just under half an inch thick. How is the clearance on the cage as far as heigth goes?

[holmes4]

The Atom CPUs are soldered.

[William_25]

What about the Pentium SU4100?

[holmes4]

As best as I can tell, that is also soldered. It is a MicroFCBGA956 "Socket", but the datasheet shows solder balls not pins. I could be misreading this, but I find no source of motherboards supporting this processor independently. I can't find a Dell service manual for the 11z either.

[William_25]

The Pentium SU4100 shows it supports a bga956 socket?

[WolfKeeper]

You need to understand what a BGA "socket" is. Ball Grid Array is a surface mount technology, which means soldered to the mainboard.

http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/pkginfo/Ch_14.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array

[William_25]

O.K. That answers my questions the CPU is soldered to the board. My next one is does that make it impossible to switch out the processor? Or just highly expensive and problematic? Either way I guess I won't be able to upgrade my processor to to the Intel Core 2 Duo SP9600

[holmes4]

Depends - do you have a BGA rework station with the expertise to remove and install a 956-ball package? Do you know that the chipset and BIOS will recognize the SP9600? Can the 11z dissipate enough heat to support the 9600 (TDP of 25W vs. 10W for the SU4100)? Do you have a source for the CPU in quantity 1? I note that one listing shows "price at introduction" as $316 - presumably in trays of 1000.

Let me comment that if it was feasible to put a CPU of that performance in something like the 11z, it would have been done by manufacturers. There's always tradeoffs when choosing a CPU. Just because one theoretically fits that doesn't mean it's a usable solution.

[William_25]

I know the chipset will recognize the new chip. The bios might need to be updated. I'm not sure if there's a shop in town that could remove a chip that was soldered to the board. I can buy a single chip at $330 bucks. I think the main reason why they don't put anything bigger than the SU4100 is because they want to keep the computer in the netbook price range. I like the size of my 11z and I don't mind hooking up dells USB Optical Drive everytime I need to download or watch a dvd. But when you could buy a 15 in inspiron laptop for a hundred bucks more than the 11z most people would choose the 15. I take my computer everywhere though so the 11z is perfect size. I know there might be a lot of problems doing it so that's why I'm researching and trying to find the answers. So far I can't figure out what model board the 11z uses amongst other things.

[WolfKeeper]

I don't think it's feasable for a human to remove the chip manually. The soldering process, if you read the documentation I posted, involves heating the entire surface and the entire processor attaches itself to the board.

You aren't going to find anything about the system board because these boards are custom manufactured for Dell for each model of laptop produced. Sure you might find a service manual, but it's not going to tell you much more than how to swap it out for a new one when failure indicates it. That's how computers and laptops are serviced these days. Everything is a FRU, or field replaceable unit, including the system board as a whole. No one services individual components on the logic board.