Hi all. I am a newbie to this forum and I really, really need some good, honest advice as I am sure I will no doubt get. I have an Acer Aspire T180 with an AMD Sempron 3400+ 64 processor in it. I have had it about a year now and I am running Vista Ultimate on it quite sucessfully. However, I now wish to upgrade the CPU to a dual core processor. I have benchmarked the computer with both Lavalys Ultimate Edition and also PC Wizard 2008 and both inform me that the CPU is a socket AM2. Personally, I don't understand a word about any of this as I am new to upgrading CPU's. I have phoned Acer here in the UK but they are totally and completely useless to say the least and told me to phone the company where I purchased the computer from. They were very helpful but could still not give me all the details I wanted, so that I could buy the correct CPU upgrade. However, Acer did inform me that the Aspire T180 would take a dual caore up to a speed of 5200+ (I think thats what they said anyway)? I dont even know the make of the motherboard as I believe that Acer dont make the MOBO's themselves, but have them built by outside companies, to Acer specs. My last computer was an Acer Aspire T135 (AMD Sempron 3200+ 64) and I know for a fact that had a Gigabyte MOBO in it but this T180 I now have has nothing on the MOBO at all, to tell me what make it could be. Seeing as Acer and ebuyer (whom I purchased the computer from) both told me that the T180 is a socket AM2, I have recently purchased an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.40GHz (AM2), in the hope that this will suffice for the upgrade. Can anyone out there in this forum please, please help me and tell me if I have purchased the wrong CPU upgrade or will it actually fit and work, as I know absolutely nothing about this! Many thanks in advance if you can assist as it would be greatlyappreciated. Regards, Mike, Rochester, UK.

PS. My mate just came round and fitted the new CPU for me. Took him all of 5 minutes to fit it and it works like a dream! I am very, very pleased as it proved that it is, in fact, a socket AM2 MOBO and the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.40GHz (AM2), works perfectly! And boy, is it considerably faster than the old piece of crap I had in there before! Cheers! Mike.

Edited: 10/18/2007 at 01:16 PM by MickY_G

Thanks for the update!

The Acer Aspire T180 uses motherboard from Foxconn. Its based on one of these AM2 board, with some small modification.

Foxconn AM2 MCP61S motherboards

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could anyone give me a tutorial on how your buddy installed the processor in 5 min? seeing how i have the exact same prob as you.. but dont know where or how to put the cpu in my motherboard the aces aspire t180

Note: It may be appropriate to reapply the thermal grease to help with the transfer of processor heat to the heat sink.

1. Remove the processor cooling fan and heat sink by using the lever to release the spring clamp that is holding the fan in place.
2. Lift the lever that releases the processor.
3. Carefully lift out the processor, noticing the orientation (there is a small diagonal notch/mark in the upper right hand corner).
4. Orient the new processor by the diagonal notch/mark and insert it carefully into the processor socket.
5. Lower the lever to secure the processor. Apply thermal grease if necessary to the top of the processor chip.
6. Re-install and clamp the cooling fan and heat sink.
7. Close the case and power on the computer. Check for messages or errors--there should be none.

Good luck

Dear JettaRed

I have an ACER AST 180 u381B (ess'lly a T189) with an AMD 3800+ chip and would like to upgrade to a dual core AMD chip is there a way/website/analysis of the motherboard to determine which AMDx2 chip would work?

Also if I changed the chip would I need to upgrade the BIOS?

ACER technically supportive is not being very helpful

Dear Micky,

How did you determine which upgraded AMD chip would be compatible with your system?

Did you need to upgrade the BIOS when you changed the chip?

I am replying to my own post.

I just want to add that I replaced the amd 3800+ cpu with a amd 5000+(dual core, 2.6). I did not upgrade the BIOS. The computer now works twice as fast.

I was conservative about my upgrade; although the motherboard supports faster am2 processors I was not sure whether or not I'd need to upgrade the BIOS.
(I was reluctant to upgrade the BIOS because it is a PHOENIX bios customized for ACER).