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Can you upgrade both a HDD and the RAM on the one notebook?

  • 17-04-2009 11:11pm
    #1
    JBoyle4eva
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,264 ✭✭✭


    OK, I'm pretty clueless about upgrading and such, so gonna explain this as best I can.

    I've a Samsung R40plus notebook with 1GB RAM and 120GB HDD with Windows Vista. It's extremely painful for what I want to do (i.e. Running multiple applications, saving multimedia files, etc.) and recently, my Optical Drive died of it's own accord.

    I really think I've two options: buy a new laptop or upgrade what I have. I'm in urgent need of help, and was wondering what would you techie advise I do?

    If I chose to upgrade my laptop, will it become more costly than buying a new laptop? I'd be aiming for 3GB RAM and possibly 300GB HDD.


Comments

  • #2
    AlmightyCushion
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 35,158 Mod ✭✭✭✭AlmightyCushion


    That should take 2GBs DDR2 so-dimms. I don't think it will take more than 2GBs of ram. A standard 2.5" sata hard drive will work in that fine. They go up to 500GBs. Make sure it's height is 9.5mm not 12.5mm as the 12.5mm drives might not fit.


  • #3
    JBoyle4eva
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,264 ✭✭✭JBoyle4eva


    AlmightyCushion wrote: »
    That should take 2GBs DDR2 so-dimms. I don't think it will take more than 2GBs of ram. A standard 2.5" sata hard drive will work in that fine. They go up to 500GBs. Make sure it's height is 9.5mm not 12.5mm as the 12.5mm drives might not fit.

    Hmmmmm....would 1GB more RAM improve my performance by much?


  • #4
    AlmightyCushion
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 35,158 Mod ✭✭✭✭AlmightyCushion


    It depends. If you a have crap cpu it would be bottlenecking you. Has your laptop always been this slow. If not then it might just be that the windows install has gone to crap and in that situation, re-installing windows would make a big improvement.


  • #5
    JBoyle4eva
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,264 ✭✭✭JBoyle4eva


    The thing is, it's always been like this. I've had this notebook since October 2007, and re-installed Vista in Feb 08. It's gotten to the stage where I even dread Word processing, as thats really started to lag when I leave Firefox open to browse.

    My CPU is a Pentium Dual Core at 1.73 GHz....could this be a problem?


  • #6
    AlmightyCushion
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 35,158 Mod ✭✭✭✭AlmightyCushion


    That cpu would be grand. Use task manager to see what ram usage is at when you notice things being slow. If it's very high then adding more ram would make a difference.`


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  • #7
    JBoyle4eva
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,264 ✭✭✭JBoyle4eva


    AlmightyCushion wrote: »
    That cpu would be grand. Use task manager to see what ram usage is at when you notice things being slow. If it's very high then adding more ram would make a difference.`

    Generally, when ram usage is high it's around 630 MB....so I guess RAM would solve a lot. Any reccommendations on where to buy it?

    But, what about the optical drive problem I mentioned?


  • #8
    AlmightyCushion
    Moderators, Education Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 35,158 Mod ✭✭✭✭AlmightyCushion


    You could replace the optical drive.


  • #9
    PogMoThoin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    JBoyle4eva wrote: »
    Generally, when ram usage is high it's around 630 MB....so I guess RAM would solve a lot. Any reccommendations on where to buy it?

    memoryc.ie. Use Cpu-Z to determine what exactly is in slots of the laptop, chances are its 2x512MB which you will have to scrap and replace with 2x1GB. You'll notice a big difference with Vista as 1GB isn't really enough for multitasking. Also, Vista will use more ram (when its there) for prefetch, say You like to open Word every morning shortly after booting, Vista will prefetch it and have it stored in memory so that it opens quicker. It doesn't like having ram sitting there empty and uses it to speed up the opening of applications it thinks You'll need, an amazing feature really.


  • #10
    DS
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 654 ✭✭✭DS


    I would really reccommend downgrading to XP. I spent months pulling my hair out with Vista lagging for even the most simple tasks such as opening a folder, and that's with a dual core processor and 2GB. I think the video card may have been the bottlekneck. Before you do anything disable all the fancy visual effects in Vista (it has a kind of classic mode doesn't it?), and see how things run then.


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