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Resolved Question

Upgrading a Laptop?

by Aug 13, 2018 1:54PM PDT

I'm trying to find a laptop for my father, but finding one with the exact specs and price that I'm looking for is not gonna happen.

Said that, what if I buy a laptop with the CPU, Screen size, Resolution and Panel type that I'm looking for, and upgrade from there the RAM, GPU and Storage?

That's an easier task, isn't it? anyways, say I find a laptop that I like, before purchasing it online, how do I know which RAM, GPU and SSDs are compatible with it?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

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Best Answer

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Very few laptops have such upgrade paths.
by Forum moderator Aug 13, 2018 2:09PM PDT

And when you find such you find that you overpay for an upgrade that is costly and may never materialize. These are not desktops. There is a lot of history on GPUs and later when folk go hunting for the GPU upgrade, the owners find the cards are either not available or compared to laptops now, about half the cost of a new laptop.

As to RAM, just use Crucial.com but for now if you have 16GB you are set for many many years. For now almost any laptop with 16GB, an i7, a GPU (1050 Ti or better) and SSD is a very good place to be.

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Question
by Hi-P Aug 13, 2018 2:35PM PDT

Oh I see, another thing, how do I know what SSDs are compatible before purchasing it? as in, if they are NVMe compatible, I know very little on the topic

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Try Crucial.com again. Why?
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Aug 13, 2018 2:55PM PDT

They also show SSDs and if they offer MVMe for your model then you know.

I do quite a few internal drive upgrades so I'll share it can be a bit more steps that some want to put up with.

For me this is just how it's done and NBD.

1. Clone the NVMe drive to some external drive.
2. Swap in the new drive to the laptop.
3. Clone the copy made in step 1.

Usually that's it but some gripe about the costs and work.

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Answer
Well if your looking at the
by Aug 14, 2018 5:53AM PDT

2-in-1 or convertible category your not going to find the laptop is upgradeable. Gaming machines are more likely to be upgradeable but even then they aren't as upgradeable as they were say 5 years ago. If you buy a laptop from a website ot the OEMS (Dell, HP and Lenovo and the rest) you can configure laptops with the components you want. Also Xoticpc.com can allows you to configure your laptop. Laptops sold retail in retail stores like Best Buy are not allowed to modify configurations unless they are an after purchase modification (which you would pay labor and for the part). Typically SSD and HD have the same interface SATA but SSD can be a smaller M.2 interface which almost looks like memory rather than a SSD. Also sometimes PC will put memory slots under the keyboard and you have to remove the keyboard to replace the memory.

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Thank you!
by Hi-P Aug 14, 2018 12:13PM PDT

That was some really useful information Happy

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