My laptop is probably 4-5 years old but up until today it performed very well, but I need to speed it up. After having it next to my Dad’s i realised it’s pretty dam slow.
I asked a shop for advice and pricing but nobody has come back to me.
Currently it is a Proline W150HNM
i5 - 2410 2.3ghz x 4 cores
4GB DDR3 RAM
The Graphics confuses me as it says NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M and also Intel® HD Graphics 3000 under a separate category.
Long story short - I am not going to game on this Laptop. I need it for work.
As an initial upgrade should I look at RAM or an SSD first?
Combination of Format and upping RAM will bring it back up to decent standards…unless you have an ssd elsewhere and are “spoilt” with its speed, i’d say thats a purchase further down the line. It IS a 2nd gen intel, so getting long in the teeth I reckon but not so much so that it should be crawling…
And simply because I’m the devil. Install Linux on there and really unlock the performance.
I have a couple of old laptops that I use with various flavors of Linux loaded and you’ll barely notice that it’s an old ass laptop. Besides, plenty of Steam titles support Linux these days.
To name but a few :
Rocket League
CS:GO
Euro Truck Sim
DOTA2
Civ5
Borderlands 2
Cities Skylines
XCOM and XCOM2
so you’ll be slighly spoilt for games, unlike a couple of years ago
Yeah, it’s not recommend to mix different clock rates. Depending on your motherboard and which slots you use it might work, but you might experience issues.
Modules rated at different speeds can be run in dual-channel mode, although the motherboard will then run all memory modules at the speed of the slowest module. Some motherboards, however, have compatibility issues with certain brands or models of memory when attempting to use them in dual-channel mode. For this reason, it is generally advised to use identical pairs of memory modules, which is why most memory manufacturers now sell “kits” of matched-pair DIMMs. Several motherboard manufacturers only support configurations where a “matched pair” of modules are used. A matching pair needs to match in:
Capacity (e.g. 1024 MB). Certain Intel chipsets support different capacity chips in what they call Flex Mode: the capacity that can be matched is run in dual-channel, while the remainder runs in single-channel.
Speed (e.g. PC5300). If speed is not the same, the lower speed of the two modules will be used. Likewise, the higher latency of the two modules will be used.
Same CAS Latency (CL) or Column Address Strobe.
Number of chips and sides (e.g. two sides with four chips on each side).
Okay cool since the ones I have in now is also 1600 but running at 1333 because of my mother board this would work as long as the cas latency is also the same it should be fine.
I have ebucks that are burning me to spend them. What would you guys think would be the best way to “upgrade” my system?
My PC Specs
I currently have the following storage in the system
SSD - 240gb (54.1gb free)
Hdd - 500gb (60.1gb free)
Hdd - 2Tb (its quite old so its not really ideal for running games of) (226gb free)
External Hdd -1 Tb (1.38 TB free) - i use this drive to record gameplay etc.
Would you guys suggest I ratheer buy more RAM or am I being stupid for wanting to buy M.2 2280 SATA3 SSD for more storage space.
I know it would probably be better to get a newer GPU but that is not in the budget at the moment.
16GB of memory still holds up these days. Only Flight Sim is nudging the need for more. Whereas with the size of games growing all the time I think more SSD space is becoming necessary.
It depends on what the budget is, but if I were you, I’d look into the following elements:
M.2 NVME SSD upgrade is great. The speed increase you get from other drives is amazing and the most tangible upgrade you can make. Perhaps not as massive upgrade going from SSD to NVME, but more space always helps, especially if it’s that fast.
Better screen. Something that’s either higher refresh rate at 1080p or a 1440p screen. Again extremely tangible upgrade that you’ll see immediately. Your rig should be able to take games at 1080p to very high FPS, which will be great on a higher refresh rate screen, or going for very pretty 1440p at 60 Hz. You should be good on both.
More cooling, can never have too much cooling in your machine, perhaps an AIO
I think that will be good upgrade ideas on your current machine, as other upgrades will mean new GPU/CPU/Mobo which will be rather expensive.
