What have you upgraded on your current laptop(s)?

[Sandy Bridge]

Let's say laptops that you have used for general-purpose computing in the past two weeks.  Not so much interested in what you upgraded in 1997, unless you're still using that 1997 laptop today.

I know a lot of our forum members like to upgrade their laptops, but what are they upgrading?

---------

I have two laptops in semi-frequent use.  On the newer one, I've only upgraded the storage so far, although it is likely to receive a memory upgrade in the not-too-distant future.

On the older one, which still sees use on the couch or in the kitchen, I've upgraded storage, memory, CPU, and screen.  Probably going to add some ExpressCard upgrades later this year, including USB 3.0 ports, but I'm unlikely to upgrade its optical drive even though I could, and already have the most powerful compatible GPU.

 

(moderators, any way to make the poll results be out of percentage of users voting for an option instead of percentage of votes cast?  it seems to be doing the latter right now)

[Aaron44126]

Holy cow, let's see.

I've had my current main system, a Dell Precision M6700, which I got when the system launched in July 2012, so I've had it for about 9.5 years.

• Storage — Started with a 500 GB 2.5" HDD, 1 TB 2.5" HDD, and 64 GB mSATA SSD ... currently at 1 TB 2.5" SSD, 4TB 2.5" SSD, and 1TB mSATA SSD
• Memory — The Corsair memory that I put into my system at the start had issues so I replaced it with G.Skill modules at some point, lowering the CL a bit while I was at it, but capacity the same at 32 GB (4×8)
• Optical drive — Started with "regular" BD-RE drive, switched to UHD BD-RE drive (just for ripping discs to Plex, actually didn't work well, I use a USB BD-RE drive now)
• Graphics card — Started with Quadro K5000M, moved up to M5000M, tried P5000 but it caused crashes so I went back to M5000M, and then because of "every now and then" stability issues and to raise money for a new laptop I have recently downgraded to K3000M
• I dabbled with ExpressCard stuff; I tried adding some extra USB 3.0 ports that way, but the ExpressCard and my system didn't get along so I have nothing in that slot right now
• Started with 802.11n wireless and moved all the way up to 802.11ax, fitting in a mPCIe-to-M.2/NGFF adapter for it in the process
• I put an ATSC tuner card (mPCIe) in there for a while but I was never able to get it to pull down any stations, I think a WWAN antenna is not suited for that purpose (...just trying to find something to use the three mPCIe slots for)
• I upgraded from the 35W (single heat pipe) to 45W (dual heat pipe) CPU heatsink; Dell only put the dual pipe version in systems with the top 3920XM or 3940XM CPU
• Replaced the stock "AVC" fans with "Delta" fans (also only typically included with the top CPU, there's a whole thread on the different fan types)
• I drilled larger holes in the bottom panel grill where the CPU fan is to increase airflow
• OS has gone from Windows 7 to Windows 10 LTSC 2021 — even was on Windows 11 briefly, before downgrading — I actually migrated the Windows 7 install off of my Inspiron 1720, and I've actually only did a clean Windows install once in all this time with the M6700; it was late 2017, and only because I was forced to with a Windows 10 feature upgrade gone bad (and I was traveling around then so I ended up waiting too long for the rollback window)

Other component swaps — Motherboard was replaced once by Dell (...wasn't actually necessary in the end) and once by myself (broke it while messing with M.2/NGFF Wi-Fi installation).  Not an upgrade but a fair amount of work...  Also I have a spare motherboard "just in case", and I'm glad I bought it when I did because they are way more expensive now.  I think that I had the display swapped out twice, and the keyboard swapped out once (by Dell under warranty).  I tried a 1080p 120Hz eDP display, but ended up not using it because of the glossy finish.  Still on the original battery, and I'm lucky to get 40 minutes off of it, but I don't use the system away from power that much.  I have multiple power adapters hiding around the house (at desks, under couches, ...) which I do plan to continue using with my next system.

 

(I'm getting a new laptop finally, when Alder Lake Precision systems drop in a few months.  And I honestly hope that I do not tinker with it as much as I did with this one, but we'll see...)

[Katja]

I had a bit of fun doing upgrades when I did, but a lot of this happened because of a defective G15 Advantage Edition system (M6 batch, which I ended up returning)

I ended up doing a lot of ram swapping; changed the 1x8gb stick in my Thinkpad E14 to a 1x16 that came out of my Maingear Vector Pro (that tongfang laptop I can't remember the model of), as well as a 1TB Samsung 980 NVME drive (one of two) that came out of my G15 before I returned it. I also swapped the wireless card in the Thinkpad courtesy of CoolStar to get macOS running on it, but I'm not currently using macOS; probably will reinstall it at some point, given some issues I had are ironed out in the config.

On my Vector Pro, I upgraded my ram to a 2x32gb kit, as well as tossing in a 2TB Inland NVME drive, purely because I wanted to have the extra capacity for games, and the extra ram for my copious amounts of productivity I tend to leave open (live streaming is a hobby, and some other niche things). I'm also aiming to repaste it in the next week or two with some MX-5, but I'm waiting on that to arrive, since Correos messed up the shipping a bit; not too concerned, but this system is running toasty and ideally I'd like to get temps further down.

My partner's laptop, a Delta 15, got the original 2x16gb kit I had for the G15, and she got my second Samsung 980, as I wasn't going to use it due to my Vector Pro having a (practically 980 Pro) OEM Samsung gen 4 drive in it; it ended up being a fun system to open due to it never being opened; but it honestly is one of my favorite looking machines to this day; I kind of now regret getting my Vector Pro due to 17 inches being a bit much, but it works until I have a monitor once I move to Barcelona soon.

I have some spare laptop dimms laying around now and I'm not even sure what to do with them; might save them for the off chance I make a project system.

[defcon42]

My 2017 machine is still as bought. Since it is BGA design, upgradeability is limited. But that isn't an issue, since it has enough power for my daily needs.

[HWI]

I use my 2020 Razer Blade 15 everyday, only thing I have upgraded is to add a 1tb NVME in addition to the factory 500gb NVME. I have thought about upgrading to 32gb of ram, has 16gb stock, sometimes I will hit 13-14gb of ram usage, little too close for comfort.

The other laptop I use is a company owned work laptop, so can't do anything with that even though it desperately needs more ram.

[User]

2019 PowerSpec 1720

As shipped;

1x16GB PC2666 19-19-19-43 2T 1.2V, 500GB WD Blue NVME, (i7-8750H) ~1.2V Max Turbo, RTX2070 ~1650MHz & 1.25V Max Boost, factory BIOS.

After Modification;

2x16GB PC3000 15-18-18-36 1T 1.35V, added Samsung 980 1TB NVME, (i7-8750H) -192mV cache/core undervolt ~0.98V Max Turbo, RTX2070 ~1920MHz & 0.931mV Max Boost, H2O UVE Unlocked BIOS.

Several BIOS tweaks, pertinent ones in Signature. Honestly a good laptop for it's BGA limitations.

Physical modifications only include removing the grills around the exhaust vents because they were orange (tacky), and blocked some airflow.

 

I'm on Win 10 Pro using WPD, OOSU10, and Winaero Tweaker for sanity. Believe it or not I use Clevo Control Center with zero issues and I'm on 3.0 v3.62 currently. Full fan control, full RGB, working power modes, it all works on this laptop even after a BIOS flash. I used ThrottleStop for the undervolt and fine tuning like overclocking the Uncore Frequency and disabling some settings. When gaming I have a profile locked to 3.5GHz which runs cooler and honestly I can't feel the difference up to 3.9GHz. The GPU never breaks 73C peak and CPU 80C unless you hit it with AVX or some simulated loads. The cooling on this model is honestly fantastic, albeit a bit loud.

 

 

[toastofman]

My current is an HP Zbook 17 G5.  I got a good deal on it because the seller said there was a problem with the keyboard, and it just needed to be cleaned.  I dropped a 1 TB nvme on top of the .5 TB boot nvme it already had, and another 16 GB 2667 MHz RAM module to round it out to 32 GB. and it came with a p5200 so ive been pretty happy except for when bios updates screw the driver up and i have to reinstall all the Nvidia drivers to keep the thread_exception_not_handled errors at bay when gaming.

It's a BGA cpu, I'd upgrade it if I could but there isn't a lot of room to upgrade so I'm happy with the 8750h it has.  It IS mxm, so potentially room to toss something else in it, a 1070 if I could get it cheap, or something else if possible down the line but around 100-120 watt is about as far as it could go because the PSU is 200 watt.  But for now it's great!

 

Before that, I got RMSMajestic's Alienware M17x R4 as a barebones with the eDP 120hz screen and was super-pumped after years of Dell Precisions to have a laptop more suited to tinkering.  It has been no end of trouble and hardware failures.  It had the Alienware keyboard blight, so I swapped out the keyboard.  I put a decent CPU in it, a 3720QM I think.  I put my W7170m in it, 8GB RAM, a 512GB mSATA SSD, and a 1TB 2.5" SSD.  It immediately fried the motherboard, and the keyboard stopped responding too.  I had to buy a new motherboard.  I luckily was able to return the keyboard, and the vendor tested it and said it isn't damaged.  He sent it back, I replaced the keyboard ribbon, and the keyboard still didn't work.  The vendor was really nice and agreed to refund me the money I paid (insanely overpriced, $110 USD).  I bought a M18x R1 keyboard, and even with the different color ribbon it worked so I thought I was in business.  Loading as fast as I could to get HWinfo64 for AMD GPU fan control, it burned up not only the GPU, but now what I suspect is the other replacement motherboard because the system doesn't respond to a known-functioning M3000m I got off eBay for 30 dollars.  It still just 8-beeps and displays nothing even after a full CMOS clear.  I tried to sell it on eBay and it sold for 150 dollars, but the buyer wanted me to send it to a different address than eBay and PayPal had listed so I cancelled the purchase...  And in my house it sits.

[Aaron44126]

2 hours ago, toastofman said:

It IS mxm, so potentially room to toss something else in it, a 1070 if I could get it cheap, or something else if possible down the line but around 100-120 watt is about as far as it could go because the PSU is 200 watt.  But for now it's great!

1070 would be a downgrade!  In therms of CUDA core counts,
Quadro P5000 ≈ GeForce GTX 1070
Quadro P5200 ≈ GeForce GTX 1080
(...Comparing specs only of "laptop" versions of these GPUs.)
Not to mention that the Quadro GPUs have 16 GB vRAM, but the GeForce only have 8 GB.

[toastofman]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

1070 would be a downgrade!  In therms of CUDA core counts,
Quadro P5000 ≈ GeForce GTX 1070
Quadro P5200 ≈ GeForce GTX 1080
(...Comparing specs only of "laptop" versions of these GPUs.)
Not to mention that the Quadro GPUs have 16 GB vRAM, but the GeForce only have 8 GB.

Ah, I was going off of a visual approximation of rough Fire Strike scores for graphics and thought the 1070 was a bit faster.  I'm pretty happy with it so I hope it holds up a while!

[Sandy Bridge]

14 hours ago, HWI said:

I use my 2020 Razer Blade 15 everyday, only thing I have upgraded is to add a 1tb NVME in addition to the factory 500gb NVME. I have thought about upgrading to 32gb of ram, has 16gb stock, sometimes I will hit 13-14gb of ram usage, little too close for comfort.

The other laptop I use is a company owned work laptop, so can't do anything with that even though it desperately needs more ram.

I haven't let the fact that laptops are work laptops stop me when it comes to RAM.  I've upgraded three of them.  The first time with the company's knowledge, and they reimbursed me for the RAM, but it was a small company.  The second time was a big company, so I didn't bother asking, just added the RAM and a couple days before my last day swapped back in the original RAM, and made the RAM I'd used to upgrade the work laptop an upgrade to my personal laptop.

The most recent time I also just did the upgrade, but that time I forgot to swap back in the original before returning it.  Oops.  Somebody wound up with more RAM than they expected.  Probably a lucky buyer on eBay since it was at the end of its corporate lifecycle and due to be replaced.  But they probably didn't notice, and if they did they didn't care, which I know because they've reached out to me about re-joining the company if I want to.

13 hours ago, User said:

2019 PowerSpec 1720

Several BIOS tweaks, pertinent ones in Signature. Honestly a good laptop for it's BGA limitations.

One of my mates has a PowerSpec laptop, it's a solid machine!  His is a 1070, so not as powerful, but it's been nothing but reliable since he got it, and it was a great deal.  Probably a Clevo/Sager base model, IIRC?

-----------

Wireless cards!  I knew I forgot a category!  Funnily enough, it's even a category that I have personally upgraded, from 802.11g to 802.11n on my Inspiron 1520.  Most laptops only support two WiFi antennas; I've read that's because more antennas = more power usage.  But that one supports three, so I get a full 450 Mbps theoretical max speed, better than one-antenna 802.11ac laptops.  100 Mbps Fast Ethernet is still usually faster in practice (and yes, I wish Dell hadn't been so cheap and had spent the 5 cents for gigabit Ethernet), but at least when I'm on WiFi I'm getting the best 802.11n speeds I can in a laptop.

@Aaron44126Fascinating that you've done the antenna size mod!  I looked at putting 802.11ac in my 2007 laptop but that the sizes of both cards and antennas had changed and was like ehhhhhh... not sure it's really worth it.  But I'd only seen that it theoretically could be done via eBay, not read an account by someone who had done it.  Still probably isn't really worth it from an effort standpoint given my typical use case, would be more of a "push the bounds on the Ultimate Upgrade possibilities" item.

[saturnotaku]

I swapped out the stock 2x8 GB 1Rx16 RAM and 512 GB PCI-E Gen 4 SSD in my ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 for 2x16 GB 1Rx8 RAM and a 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro, respectively.

[John Ratsey]

Changing the SSD is the only upgrade I can do on this notebook. I suspect that most of the current crop of thin-and-light notebooks are similar.

[Mr. Fox]

Cooling mods are always a must, because they're never as good as they can/should be the way they ship from the manufacturer. Most are pretty horrible stock, unless you think the CPU hitting 90-100°C is acceptable.

[KING19]

I installed my old HDD from my old HP Envy on my Legion 5 after i bought it but after a year i upgraded it with a 1TB m.2 NVMe SSD, I also tried to upgrade the battery from the 60Wh version to the 80Wh version twice but it didnt work out and one of the batteries i was allowed to keep after getting full refunds, The battery works and charges normally but i cant boot up my laptop on battery without plugging in the AC Adapter. I might buy another one soon but this time with a 3rd party battery instead testing my luck with Lenovo Genuine batteries

[Maxware79]

Alienware M18x R2

Chassis - Resprayed from Stealth Black to Delft Blue

CPU - Upgraded from i7-3740QM to i7-3920XM (Cost was roughly $1000AUD in 2013)

CPU Heatsink - Upgraded from Single pipe to Triple Pipe

GPU - Upgraded from Dual GTX 675M's to Dual 780M ($1500AUD upgrade at the time, 2013)

GPU - Upgraded from Dual 780M's to Single GTX 1070 (Dec 2020) Now downgraded to Single GTX 970M

Memory - Upgraded from 16gb DDR3 1600Mhz to 16gb DDR3L 1866Mhz

Storage - Upgraded from 2.5" Sata SSD to Samsung 970 Evo NVMe via MXM to NVMe adapter using the secondary MXM slot

 

[ssj92]

Alienware M18xR2:

Intel Core i7 3920XM CPU

32GB (4x8GB) DDR3L 2133Mhz RAM

NVMe MXM Adapter with 1TB Samsung 980 PRO SSD

2x Samsung 860 Evo RAID0

nVidia RTX 3000 MXM GPU 

Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E + BT 5.2 Mini PCIe Card

18.4" Display OC to 80Hz

 

Alienware 18:

Intel Core i7 4930MX

32GB (4x8GB) DDR3L 1600Mhz RAM

NVMe MXM Adapter with 1TB SK Hynix SSD

2x 512GB SK Hynix SSD RAID0

80GB mSATA SSD

nVidia RTX 3000 MXM GPU

Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E + BT 5.2 Mini PCIe Card

18.4" Display OC to 90Hz

 

Alienware Area-51m R1:

RAM is upgraded to 64GB DDR4 2400Mhz

Wi-FI is upgraded to Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 + BT 5

 

Alienware M14xR2:

Wi-Fi upgraded to Intel AX210 Wi-FI 6E + BT 5.2

 

Alienware Aurora R4 Desktop:

Intel Core i9 10980XE 18-Core CPU

EVGA X299 Micro Motherboard

EVGA 1200w P+ Power Supply

nVidia RTX 3090 (currently swapped out for Titan V)

Noctua Dual Tower Cooler

1TB SK Hynix NVMe SSD

2 x 8TB Western Digital Red Raid1

 

[Mr. Fox]

12 hours ago, KING19 said:

I installed my old HDD from my old HP Envy on my Legion 5 after i bought it but after a year i upgraded it with a 1TB m.2 NVMe SSD, I also tried to upgrade the battery from the 60Wh version to the 80Wh version twice but it didnt work out and one of the batteries i was allowed to keep after getting full refunds, The battery works and charges normally but i cant boot up my laptop on battery without plugging in the AC Adapter. I might buy another one soon but this time with a 3rd party battery instead testing my luck with Lenovo Genuine batteries

Have you checked to see if there is any kind of BIOS setting that can be disabled related to detecting a "non-genuine" AC adapter or battery.

[HWI]

On 2/5/2022 at 1:07 AM, Sandy Bridge said:

The second time was a big company, so I didn't bother asking, just added the RAM and a couple days before my last day swapped back in the original RAM, and made the RAM I'd used to upgrade the work laptop an upgrade to my personal laptop.

 

That's a good idea, think I will do that.

[electrosoft]

Using a ZtecPC X170SM-G:

 

Upgraded the stock binned 10900k to an even more binned 10900k

Upgraded to Corsair 3800 sticks and dialed in 14-14-14 timings @ 3200

Ordered another stock 256GB SSD to match the factory installed one to go Raid 0 but it got lost in the winds so I'll order another

[KING19]

On 2/7/2022 at 10:54 AM, Mr. Fox said:

Have you checked to see if there is any kind of BIOS setting that can be disabled related to detecting a "non-genuine" AC adapter or battery.

I dont think so

There is a option in the BIOS to disable the battery completely when i want to open up the laptop and afterwards i would have to plug in the AC adapter afterwards. Besides that the battery works normally even on Lenovo Vantage. Its hard to get a Battery from Lenovo directly but even some people had problems with them too, I given up on it for now.

[Papusan]

Upgraded from 6700K-7700K- 8700K and the last upgrade was 9900K for my Clevo P870. I just build a new desktop because there isn't any new options in laptops that is upgradeable anymore. The P870  series was the last of it's kind with real upgradeability (not even the last good LGA/MXM laptop from Clevo as the X170 is able to do this). You can upgrade the Cpu, Memory, Gpu, Storage and Wifi modules on this laptop. With todays modern and thin you ar lucky if you are able upgrade the memory and storage. The thin and light trend goes faster and fast towards Apple design... Aka Apple similar (Gaming) laptops with Windows as OS. And none can do much about it. Maybe if people stop buy it we may see a change. This isn't if or not. its the future for laptops. Only bancrupt or massive decrease in sales for the OEM manufacturers can push the needed change. But its up to you all. If you all accept whatever being thrown out from the different OEMs and pay for it, then be you sure it will be even worse down the road. What we have seen is only the beginning. Happy upgradeability.

[K4sum1]

In my 8770W, I have upgraded my GPU to a 980M, RAM to 32GB, swapped the DVD drive for a Blu Ray drive, gave it 2.5TB of SSD storage (and likely more when I buy a MSATA SSD), and gave it a SB0710 using the ExpressCard slot.

Some things I want to do, but I don't know if I will do are upgrade the WiFi card but not sure what to, get a DreamColor display, upgrade the CPU, and upgrade the GPU to a 1070 or Quadro equilivant.

[copingNutria]

Asus K53SV

CPU: i5-2430M -> i7-2720QM

RAM: 4GB DDR3-1333 -> 16GB DDR3-1333

Stock HDD 5400RPM -> 240GB SSD (SATA-3)

 

Dell Latitude E6440

CPU: i5-4200M -> i7-4710MQ

RAM: 4GB DDR3-1333 -> 16GB DDR3-1600

Stock HDD 5400RPM -> 240GB SSD (SATA-3)

eGPU via ExpressCard slot (GeForce GTX 660 2GB)

 

Lenovo L440

CPU: Celeron 2950M-> i7-4710MQ

RAM: 4GB DDR3-1333 -> 16GB DDR3-1600

Stock HDD 5400RPM -> 240GB SSD (SATA-3)

 

Zbook 15 G1

RAM: 8GB DDR3-1333 -> 32GB DDR3-1600

Additional SSD in Optical drive bay

eGPU via ExpressCard slot (GeForce GTX 660 2GB / Radeon HD7850)

[Samir]

So I mainly start with RAM and then storage and accessories like a factory docking station.

[TruenoG7]

Alienware M18xR2:

CPU: Intel Core i7 3940XM

RAM: 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3L 2133MHz RAM hyperx Impact

GPU: Nvidia GTX 980M Sli

PSU: mod dual 330 watts (660 watts)

LCD: Pantalla de 18,4" OC a 70 Hz

 

Alienware M17xR2:

CPU: Intel Core i7-940XM

RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3L 1600MHz RAM hyperx Impact

GPU: Dual HD 8970M Crossfire

PSU: mod dual 240 watts (480)

LCD: RGBLED Resolution (1920*1200P)

 

Alienware 17 R1 (2013):  Current

CPU: Intel Core i7-4940XM

RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3L 1600MHz RAM hyperx Impact

GPU: Nvidia GTX 870M, GTX 880M (thinking of upgrading to quadro rtx 3000, 4000 or 5000, I still can't decide)

PSU:  240 watts

LCD:  173HT DELL P/N: GN36T]: Full HD compatible with GeForce 3D Vision (1920*1080P) 120 hertz

 

Dell Precision M6500

CPU: Intel Core i7-940XM

RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3L 1600MHz RAM hyperx Impact

GPU: ATI FirePro M7820/(HD 5870M)

PSU:  240 watts

LCD: RGBLED Resolution (1920*1200P)

 

Dell Precision M6700

CPU: Intel Core i7-3740QM

RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3L 1600MHz RAM

GPU: FirePro M6100/(HD 8950) update to NVidia Tesla M6 8GB

PSU:  240 watts

LCD: LED Resolution (1920*1080P) 8Bits

 

Dell Precision M6800

CPU: Intel Core i7-4900QM

RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3L 1600MHz RAM

GPU: FirePro M6100/(HD 8950) update to NVidia Tesla M6 8GB

PSU:  240 watts

LCD: LED Resolution (1920*1080P) 8Bits