HP Laptop - graphics upgradeable?

[roweder]

My sister has a laptop from HP and she likes to watch iTunes and Hulu movies on it, and when she does, the laptop turns it's graphics fan up and it gets really loud. I was thinking that for Christmas I might upgrade her computer to a Nvidia 9800 card or something like that to keep the fan from turning up, but I'm not sure if it'd be possible. Would I need to find a video card specifically shaped to her laptop, or is upgrading laptop graphics just like upgrading desktop graphics?

I'm not sure what laptop she has, I can get the model number from her if it would make a difference.

 

[patonb]

No its not possible to to do that.

Odds are its dirty, but you could also get a cooling pad to try and stop the fan from spinning up.

 

[roweder]

Darn, that's what I was afraid of, but I didn't think of the possibility that it is dirty, should I be able to take it apart to dust it with compressed air?

 

[MindoverMaster]

It's hard to get at it. Just blasting the vent holes will help.

 

[roweder]

ok, thanks

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I know the majority of people that wait to long to blast the exhaust out with canned air, and a THICK layer of dust accumulates, usually this layer just blows backwards a bit, and gets stuck in the fan.

I personally, would take it apart, and give the heatsink a good cleaning, laptops aren't difficult to take apart, just time consuming, and all the screws are usualy a different size, so you should document where each screw goes.


Just to note, SOME laptops you CAN upgrade the graphics cards in, but, this is RARE, one laptop in particular is the Dell Vostro 1500, it ships with one of three different GPUS, if it shipped with an Nvidia 8400, it CAN be upgraded to the 8600, but the card costs around $300, from dell, and it's not a "standard" card as it sits in a laptop.