Toshiba Satelilite Pro C870 1CQ

[Erwin1]

Hi,

I want to upgrade my Toshiba Satelilite Pro C870 1CQ from Intel Core i5 3230M to Intel Core i7 3630QM (the cpu is not soldered). I have no experience. Do I also need to upgrade the cooling and BIOS?

Kind regards,
Erwin

[Calbris]

Upgrading the cooling assembly is a not a must, it'll function with the 3630QM installed. However, the current cooling assembly will likely struggle to keep it cool. If you prefer to stick with the existing assembly, I suggest buying a 3632QM. If you'd like to upgrade it, find a heatsink plus fan combo that carries a H000050280 part number. The cooling assembly that your Satellite Pro C870 contains is likely the H000037340, which is not sufficient to cool quad-core processors in my opinion.

Updating the BIOS would be very much recommended, I doubt you'd want to try your luck on a older BIOS version with a newer processor. The worst case that I can think of is a no boot scenario, which was common on older models such as the Satellite P25-S509. That model wouldn't work with a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 on the earliest BIOS version, I had to swap back to the original processor and update the BIOS just so it could boot.

I believe this is the newest BIOS available for the Satellite Pro C870 - https://content.us.dynabook.com/content/support/downloads/casa10fg_windowsbios_v6.80.exe