Just got an oldish HP G42 laptop. 3 gigs of ram, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, and an old AMD Athlon II P340 ecu.
Mostly going to be used for internet, spreadsheets, tuning, and maybe some light photo processing until i finish saving for the PC i really want for that.
Looking to spend a few bucks to future proof it a little bit. Figure throw 8 gigs of ram at it, and maybe upgrade the CPU? Looks like the AMD Phenom II P960 would yield a 50%+ increase in cpu performance.
Phenom II X940 would yield almost 100% increase, but it seems to be 45w, rather than the original and P960 that are 25w.
Are both the X940 and P960 compatible as a drop in?
Also considering a smaller SSD.
If you want to save money, that old CPU will still get the job done decently, so basically it's a matter of how much you want to spend.
BTW, did you check to make sure this laptop has a removable CPU? On some they're soldered-in, in fact, until recently very few laptop CPUs were upgradeable.
For RAM, if you have a 32bit OS you can't use much more than 3 gigs so you should leave it. If you have a 64bit OS, you should ideally have at least 6GB, absolutely not less than 4GB. Keep your future upgrade path in mind though - you'll probably end up getting a new mobo later, will it take the same RAM this one does? (Edit: desktop and laptop memory modules are physically incompatible, so that depends on what kind of computer you're going to get later).
SSDs will make your computer VERY fast but carry a very serious risk of irrecoverable failure without warning. If you decide to run one, you have to take backups VERY seriously.
Swank Force One wrote:
Mostly going to be used for internet, spreadsheets, tuning, and maybe some light photo processing until i finish saving for the PC i really want for that.
So...why not just leave it alone and save your money for the machine you'd rather have? Money spent on this one will keep the replacement machine further away.
According to CPU-Upgrade, physically yes they are Socket S1 processors.
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/CPUs/AMD/Athlon_II_Dual-Core_Mobile/P340.html
Knowing what other CPUs HP used with that motherboard in the G42, and/or any other models that used the same motherboard will let you know for sure what processors the motherboards supports. Might work no issues, might need a BIOS update, might be SOL.
The extra 20 watts will help drain the battery faster, but with some good thermal paste, I'm sure the stock heatpipe and fan can handle it.
I would be very surprised if the CPU wasn't soldered on in that laptop, making a CPU upgrade very difficult if not impossible. Here's what I think I'd do in your situation:
-
Windows 10 - see if that makes the machine a little more snappy. I've been seeing some blog posts indicating that Windows 10 does provide a bit of a performance increase on older hardware.
-
8GB of RAM (as long as you can get a 64-bit copy of Win10 - since it looks like you have a 64-bit Windows 7 license, this should be doable).
I think I would only do the SSD if those two don't bring performance up to an acceptable place. Then, get the SSD and an enclosure for the hard drive you'd be pulling out of the laptop, to use as archival/backup area.
G42 motherboard, AMD Socket S1 bigger than E36 M3 right there. First thing I checked before writing a response.
szeis4cookie wrote:
* 8GB of RAM (as long as you can get a 64-bit copy of Win10 - since it looks like you have a 64-bit Windows 7 license, this should be doable).
Windows licenses are 32/64bit independent, so if he's running 32bit, he could do an in-place upgrade to Win10 32bit and then clean-install Win10 64bit.
foxtrapper wrote:
Swank Force One wrote:
Mostly going to be used for internet, spreadsheets, tuning, and maybe some light photo processing until i finish saving for the PC i really want for that.
So...why not just leave it alone and save your money for the machine you'd rather have? Money spent on this one will keep the replacement machine further away.
This one is sticking around regardless as a tuning slave and for traveling. Doesn't need to be really fast, and it won't be due to the hardware it's stuck with, but being able to stretch it for 2-3 years without wanting to throw it across the garage every time i boot it up would be nice.
I'm not willing to spend much more than $50 on it.
For $50, if you can get a 64bit OS on there, bump the RAM up to 6-8GB and call it done. Otherwise save the $50.
GameboyRMH wrote:
szeis4cookie wrote:
* 8GB of RAM (as long as you can get a 64-bit copy of Win10 - since it looks like you have a 64-bit Windows 7 license, this should be doable).
Windows licenses are 32/64bit independent, so if he's running 32bit, he could do an in-place upgrade to Win10 32bit and then clean-install Win10 64bit.
It's Windows 7 64-bit. From what i understand, this means a Windows 10 64-bit upgrade for $free.99.
bigdaddylee82 wrote:
G42 motherboard, AMD Socket S1 bigger than E36 M3 right there. First thing I checked before writing a response.
What does this mean? Yes easy upgrade?
The CPU is removable but laptops aren't always easy to work on, so not knowing about this laptop's chassis, I wouldn't call it easy 
Use a good thermal grease when putting it back together, not the cheap white junk that often comes with CPUs and heatsinks. That crap dries out and causes overheating years later. Anything Arctic Silver makes is good.
I mean like... if i can get the mobo out of the lappy, it's easy from there? BIOS is what i'd be afraid of.
Arctic Silver 5 is what i used to use back when i was building desktops.
Upgrade your laptop's BIOS to the latest before starting the upgrade, from there you should have nothing to worry about.
Any Socket S1 CPU should physically fit the socket. See that link above.
However, that doesn't mean that any Socket S1 CPU will actually work in that mother board. Just because it physically fits doesn't mean that that motherboard/bios supports the CPU. You need to do some research, or take a gamble and try it.
Now days, I'd expect any S1 that was available at the same time as the P340 to also work, but that's not gospel.
I ran in to issues often with P4 Mobile and Pentium M CPUs back in the socket 478/479 days. Just because the CPU physically fit in the slot didn't mean it would work.
I'd recommend upgrading the hard drive to a faster one before upgrading the CPU. Modern computers all have plenty of processing power, the performance bottleneck is storage speed.
To make a car analogy, it would be like upgrading your engine from a V8 to a V10 when you're running all-seasons on little pizza cutters
Here's a teardown video of your laptop on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDa7uMsFaIc
That would give you a good idea if it's doable for you or not.
I'd say 100% you want to get a SSD, even before considering a RAM or CPU upgrade.
The SSD will make the biggest speed difference. You could still be desperately short on RAM, but it will give you a super-fast swap file so you'll hardly notice
