So this is super niche but I couldn’t find any info on this and took a leap of faith that things would work. Who knows, maybe it’ll help someone out one day.
I had a Latitude 7390 2 in 1 with i5-8250u CPU and soldered on 8GB RAM. It’s a fine laptop and I sort of love it but was really starting to struggle with only 8GB RAM and my battery was also knackered. Not wanting to replace the laptop, I set out on a quest to upgrade it but found little to no info as to whether it would work. Being me I thought “screw it let’s try anyway” and here we are.
What I started out with:
Motherboard: 0XMNM2 – i5 8250u, 8GB, no Thunderbolt 😦
Battery: 71TG4 – 45wh 11.4v
Cooler/fan/heatsink: 0P51WH
What I ended up with:
Motherboard: 02WCVJ – i7 8650u, 16GB, Thunderbolt 🙂
Battery: K5XWW – 60wh 7.6v
Cooler/fan/heatsink: 034T0C
So there you go, exciting stuff. Everything was plug and play really. Once you first reconnect the battery you’ll need to connect the laptop to a power source or it won’t boot. If you use a brand new motherboard you’ll then be asked to provide a service tag. I imagine you can enter anything here but I used the existing service tag of my device.
The original cooler does still attach to the board and you could probably get away with using it like I did for a couple of weeks until I could work out the right part number. It’s pretty much the same except for the fan being a bit smaller with more blades. The CPU is slightly further over to the left on the new board so the old cooler doesn’t quite fit correctly in the case making the back plate sit a few mm proud, you’ll also need to snap off one of the mounts on the fan to stop it fouling on the board. All in all better to get the new cooler.
For all you fan nerds out there, this is a photo with the new cooler on top and the old underneath. It’s a super bad photo that makes it just look like a shadow from the flash but you get the idea.
This also fixed my once a day random disconnect of USB devices which is nice. Guess the original board was faulty from day one, thanks Dell!
Random IT Stuff 