Notebooks Questions & Answers
Notebook upgrading. What can be upgraded, why and is it worth it?
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Today with my buddies had an argument about notebooks upgradeability and is it worth it to do it instead of just selling it and getting a new one. So what do you guys think on the subject and what actually can be changed in a notebook and what benefit will it bring?
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As far as I'm aware, notebooks aren't the best choice if you wish to upgrade hardware. Best you can do is to upgrade your memory (ram) if you've bought a model that is not factory loaded with the maximum amount of memory. Processor and graphics aren't user replaceable (if possible at all), thus service charges and new components aren't going to be cheap.
Besides ram, swapping your HDD with SSD will deliver massive boost in performance and speed. This is a lot easier to achieve (even yourself) and is well worth the money invested in the upgrade.
So, overall, if you're looking for increasing the video performance, it is indeed better to sell your existing notebook and buy a model with more powerful GPU and CPU. If you're looking for affordable option, I'd suggest getting a SSD drive + more RAM. That will not give you the possibility to play the latest available games, but will freshen up windows and application loading times, as well as overall speed.
Actually, you can change most of the notebooks internals. If you have a wi-fi G, you can change it to N (if the notebook has a mini PCIE slot), RAM, HDD (as Dexter stated), you can change the optical drive to Blu-ray for example, you can add a Bluetooth adapter in some cases. This pretty much sums up the easy upgrades. CPU and Graphics (if it is an MXM card) can be upgraded as well, but prices of these components, doesn't justify the performance gains. a good MXM card ranges from $300 to $600 + and are not available on the regular retail channels. So if the latter two are the things you wan't to change, just change the notebook altogether. It will cost less and will be a lot faster.
Can't find a good reason to upgrade a notebook, especially minor stuff like wireless adapter and bluetooth. May be a higher capacity battery, but that's probably it. After all, no matter how much money you spend upgrading, next month you'll find better deal with better specs. So I'll either use it as long as it is in a working condition or just sell it and add some $ for a better spec'd model. That way I'd still spend some cash, but will get more for it.
Replace HDD with SSD - this is the most reasonable upgrade you can do :)