Acer Aspire laptop graphic chipset upgrade (nah!)

purplecatty

purplecatty

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I just took my Acer Aspire 5040 wlmi laptop apart into millions pieces because it was overheating and found out hair, carpet fibric, and cat dander clogged the heat pipe cooler fin. I cleaned it out with toothbrush. So I decide to check out if graphic chipset is upgradeable what Acer Techician told me. I checked and it's not upgradeable. See the 2nd pix that you can see permanently soldered ATI X200M chipset and other is blank one which was supposed to be an socket for upgrading graphic card, none!!!

Anyone who own Acer laptop can see what it look like :lol: The laptop screen, keyboard, covers lying on left side of desk and on right side is stack of drives, wifi card, memory card, and small covers lying on right side of desk. Mobo is on the center. I put it all together and took me 30 min to do that.



here's all the pix!!

Catty
 
Wow, other break again?

Graphic card can be upgraded if you change entire of motherboard, that's complicated to do it.
 
Pacman said:
Wow, other break again?

Graphic card can be upgraded if you change entire of motherboard, that's complicated to do it.
Click to expand...

:rofl: not worth it. I don't have problem finding another mobo similiar to mine (Acer Aspire 5040 have exactly same board but three different graphic chipsets that changed without notice but have ATI Xpress 200M, ATI Xpress 1100M or Xpress 1300M if you googled.) It's not that complicated to me.

Once I get another laptop with powerful graphic chipset, I would be very happy to give Acer lappy to my kids to use for school ect. I didn't buy it, I got Acer Aspire free from friend as a gift tho.. Personally, I regretted that I should have taken HP Pavillion laptop which is twice thicker than my lappy and have memory card reader, Firewire, and some nice features. I took acer first then week later, he had HP pavilion and It was too late for me cuz I sent Acer to customer service under warranty to fix DVDrw drive that conked out on a first night!!. If it hadn't happen, I would have an opportunity to swap it. HP laptop was sold in Ebay before I got Acer back. Grr!!

Yup, I breaks lot of computers :rofl: j/k

Catty
 
I wonder, catty - I have about two or three old computers at my parents house, where it can be easily rebuilt with new schitt and all, would these laptop schitt fit in the old computer and upgrade with the other cool schitt into it, would it be worth the lot?
 
JClarke said:
I wonder, catty - I have about two or three old computers at my parents house, where it can be easily rebuilt with new schitt and all, would these laptop schitt fit in the old computer and upgrade with the other cool schitt into it, would it be worth the lot?
Click to expand...

Laptops and PC are entirely different breeds. Laptops are slimmer and smaller than PC. Ram memory such as DDR is different cuz Laptop use SODIMM which is shorter than PC DDR and it would damage the PC if Sodimm ddr memory inserted regardless. You can't hook up laptop monitor to PC's graphic "D" jack. It's DVD or CD drive are slim and have different jack than PC.

The only one that can be compatible is a laptop hard drive, You'll need an IDE adapter from 44 pins to 40 pins. That's about it.

But if you have couple of few years old laptops, you may swap parts or part out one and upgrade others if it have same memory type, DVD or CDrom drive type, hard drive ect. Monitor is not compatible with other laptop cuz of different configuration unless you google search to see if one laptop monitor can be fitted into other same brand laptop with faster processor ect.

PC is the easiest one to part out and upgrade other PC if it uses same hardwares.

I have seen some smart computer freak using laptop with broken monitor (he just rip the broken monitor out and threw it away anyway) and use the "D" jack back of his laptop hooked up to PC monitor and made it useful.

Old PC or laptop may still have useful life if using Linux such as Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Sabayon Linux, ect.. You'll have to find which flavor of Linux it'll run better. If you have PC or laptop that is less than 2 years old, You would be very lucky to install XP or Vista basic to make it useful.

I use Mepis Linux 7.0 on my 600 mhz board in the garage and it works nicely. It is hooked up to network. I use it for to look for information or chat on AIM or send and receive Email ect at my workbench. I tried to watch Hulu show but it was choppy 'shoot!!' But youtube ran okay on it cuz video was in small format. It's a good way to make it useful on crappy old pc.

Here's the pix of my 600mhz system. Look for it and be amazed what I did with it :rofl
Catty

Hint: I shucked it along with the books under the monitor table:rofl:
 
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