Whether Your Laptop Can Be Upgraded?
Compared to a desktop, several parts of a laptop cannot be removed because they are soldered together. Thus, you can’t upgrade everything on your laptop. Firstly, before upgrading laptop hardware, you need to know whether your laptop can be upgraded or if there are soldered components.
How to find which parts can be upgraded? You can read the manufacture’s manual first. If there is no manufacturer’s manual, then you can try a system scanner. Run it on a Windows laptop or Macbook and it will scan your machine to find out the parts that can be upgraded in your laptop.
Or you can search for the method on the Internet by inputting “How to upgrade RAM in XYZ” in Google. XYZ means the exact model of your laptop. If you see a correct guide, go ahead. If you don’t, it’s best to skip the upgrade.
Which Parts Should You Upgrade?
What can you upgrade in your laptop? The most common laptop components that can be upgraded are RAM modules, batteries, hard drives, and wireless cards if these components are not soldered together.
Among them, hard drives and RAM modules are the most common and easiest. You can add more RAM or install an SSD rather than an HDD, which are the best upgrades to improve PC performance.
However, the battery and the wireless card cannot always be upgraded. It’s necessary to figure out first research and check if you can change them on the laptop. If yes, then you should find a compatible battery through the same vendor.
You can purchase Wireless cards that are the simple mini-PCIe cards. If you want to make your old laptop be compatible with Wireless AC standards, you can replace the mini-PCIe card. Additionally, you could even get a Wi-Fi USB dongle.
Some Parts Should Not Be Upgraded
The processor, motherboard, and screen are the main parts that should not be upgraded among the components of a computer.
Most laptops take into account specific motherboards and processor series, and how much heat the laptop generates is largely determined by these two parts. Therefore, the case is designed to effectively dissipate the estimated heat.
On the other hand, you don’t need to upgrade the screen and I’m not sure whether it can be upgraded. You can replace your broken screen with the same type. If you want to upgrade the screen, you need to buy a new laptop.
How to Find Compatible Parts
Now you know the basic hardware that brings a new life to your laptop, then you need to know exactly what to buy. For example, laptop RAM and desktop RAM are not the same. If your laptop is old, it might use older DDR2 RAM instead of DDR3 or DDR4 RAM.
There are some guides on the Internet to find out compatible parts for your notebook when you want to purchase RAM and SSD. All you need to do is choose your laptop manufacturer and model. And a list of compatible RAM and SSDs will be given to you.
You can also find out how many DIMM expansion slots the laptop has and how much memory it can support, in addition to the specifications for the acceptable RAM or SSD.
Then you can use the specifications to search for similar memory or storage on Amazon or other sites. It will be compatible with your laptop if it matches the specs.
Should You Upgrade or Buy a New Product?
If your laptop has such issues, you may choose to buy a new laptop:
- Your laptop is running too slowly.
- You can’t install a new operating system or your laptop don’t support new software.
- You have frequent problems.
But sometimes there is only one damaged part in your notebook and you have purchased it recently. By this time, you just need to upgrade your notebook. Thus, you can do the choice based on your need.
Final Words
It’s based on your actual need to buy a new laptop or upgrade your old laptop. Additionally, before upgrading laptop hardware, you should learn more about all aspects of your laptop. This piece of news has given you some details, you can refer to it.
Originally published at https://www.minitool.com on August 21, 2019.
