M50 8189 Upgrades

[Chasbhill]

I have an M50 8189 that has two Sata slots on the mother board.  Can I install a Sata Hard Drive and keep the IDE drive that came with the maching? 

I also want to know if the motherboard will support a processor upgrade.  I'd like to to to an Intel Q6600 Dual Quad, but have no idea if that is possible.  Does anyone know of a link on the Lenovo site that would provide me with upgrade information?

Chasbhill

[billbolton Community Moderator]

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Chasbhill wrote:

I have an M50 8189 that has two Sata slots on the mother board.  Can I install a Sata Hard Drive and keep the IDE drive that came with the maching? 

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Yes, you can.  I have done that successfully.

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Chasbhill wrote:

II also want to know if the motherboard will support a processor upgrade.  I'd like to to to an Intel Q6600 Dual Quad, but have no idea if that is possible. 

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The M50 uses a Pentium 4 processor, so you can't fit any of the current Intel processors, like the dual and quad core types such as the Q6600.

Cheers,

Bill

[Chasbhill]

Do you mind telling me which Sata drive you used, and whether it came with the necessary drivers?  Also did you make the Sata HD the primary and the IDE the slave?

Chasbhill

[billbolton Community Moderator]

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Chasbhill wrote:

Do you mind telling me which Sata drive you used, and whether it came with the necessary drivers?  Also did you make the Sata HD the primary and the IDE the slave?

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I'm using a Seagate 320GB drive as the boot drive, with the original 80GB drive (don't recall what type it is) on the IDE controller.

The SATA drive does not require a driver, but the SATA controller chip on the system planar (motherboard) does.  You can find the relevant driver here..... 

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-60642

Cheers,

Bill

[Chasbhill]

Thank you Bill, you've been a great help!  I'm off to buy a Seagate 310 Gig HD.

Chasbhill

[ViciousLizard]

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in.

1) This motherboard uses socket 478 and the chipset will only work with single core Pentium 4 processors in the range of 2 to 3.2 GHz. It is remotely possible that with a BIOS upgrade you could get the system to work with a single core Pentium 4 HT that runs at 3.6 GHz. Not really worth the trouble to find out. A single core Pentium 4 HT @ 3.6 GHz would be roughly equivalent to a Pentium D 820 (a slower dual core processor) for most intents and purposes.

* However you would need a better power supply to run a 3.2+ GHz CPU. 

* Its really not worth the trouble to find out if the system is compatible with a faster chip; the fastest available for socket 478 is mediocre by modern standards.

* Upgrading a BIOS is only recommended for very advanced users.

2) Intel Core Duo & Core Duo Quad processors are not made for the socket 478. They are made for socket 775. Rare dual core processors which would work with the socket 478 are not compatible with the M50's chipset.

source:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-54856

Message Edited by ViciousLizard on 10-28-2008 09:51 PM

[rfculp2]

thanks for all the great detail, lizard! so if i'm understanding correctly, the only way to utilize a duo processor is to upgrade the motherboard? is there a lenovo option for this? if not, what is recomended? i'm stuck with this machine (budget cuts) and am killing it with video editing.

thanks for any help!