broken dell laptop. Can I put the chip in a desktop?
 

A guy i work with has a broken dell laptop. It's a p4 2.2 with a gig of ram. I could use the extra ram and larger hard drive in my notebook. I have a p4 2.4, so I wouldn't need his chip, which makes me wonder, can I put that notebook chip in a p4 mobo? Do they have the same socket? Would bios freak out over the mobile chip?

edit: a desktop mobo, I mean

Is it a mobile core chip? If so, the bios might not like that. Mainly, I suppose it would depend on the chip's form factor.

If I understand your question correctly, I think the answer will be "probably not" - RAM sticks for laptops are a completely different size than RAM sticks for a desktop tower. The best thing to do would be to visually compare them; if my suspicion is correct they should be significantly different.

If you instead are considering taking RAM out of one laptop and putting it in another laptop, the same general comment would apply, but if the sticks did seem to match, I'd be very careful to confirm that the "new" RAM that you're adding is compatible with the laptop. Good luck with it either way -- J.W.

nononononono...

just the processor. the memory is for my notebook. does a p4 laptop processor have the same socket type as a desktop?

My Inspiron 5100 uses a "standard" P4 (non-mobile). I am 99% sure it would fit in a desktop motherboard with no question. The mobile ones, I am not so sure about.

No, they have different sockets. A Intel based laptop uses a Intel mobile socket, while a P4 desktop uses a 478. Same goes to AMD processor, AMD's mobos uses socket A and latops use AMD mobile. As usual, I could be wrong :)

And based on Matir's reply, it really confirms that I was wrong then :)

The only way to tell for sure is to get the Motherboard's Id number and "name" and then go to the Motherboard manufacturer's website to confirm the form factor of the processor pinouts and slot type.

Often times mobile processors are incompatible with desktop motherboards because of propriatary engineering.

There may also be other compatibility issues that I am not aware of.

Thorn

Even IF the socket would fit , the core-voltage would send the chip to the eternal bit-fields;
Laptops are designed to use MUCH lower power-levels than a desktop does.
This , I figure , is also the reason , laptops are allways lagging behind Desktops , when it comes to raw computing-power.

Ok, thanks for all the great replies. I guess I'll just try to get some ram off of him, and not the whole notebook.

You are pretty close on the problems with this issue. The voltage is the factor. If your desktop can accomodate the lower voltage, you can likely run the processor, but you'd have to be careful. The lower voltage os to keep the temperature down, since laptops are hard to ventilate. That translates into lower performance, though. Overclockers know this, as they boost the voltage to increase stability when they are pushing it.

No, a mobile P4 is just a higher grade chip than an equivalently rated desktop P4, otherwise it's the same. It doesn't even actually use much lower power levels, it's still a current-leaking P4, so it's nowhere near as energy efficient as a Pentium M. High voltage wouldn't kill a chip directly, and heat caused by the higher voltage wouldn't either because you'd have to use a desktop heatsink anyway. That might be problematic, a mobile chip normally wouldn't have a "heatspreader" (it's really just a protective shell and actually impairs heat transfer somewhat), so it might not fit too well due to a desktop chip being taller, and if it did you'd have to be more carefull not to damage the processor(but then again, some people remove heatspreaders from desktop P4's anyway). I haven't heard of a mobile P4s using a different form factor, though not a lot of people mention using mobile P4's in desktop systems, and as was mentioned before, there could also be software/bios locks or incompatibilities

Here's some CPU power consumption specs: http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm
They're just official, not actual measured ones (Intel understate theirs, especially for Presscot chips)

Not really for CPUs though, pentium M's compare quite well to desktop chips. Mobile hard drives are probably a bigger bottleneck since they typically run at 5400rpm, though some people still use them in desktops, because they have the potential to be much quieter than desktop drives.