laptop upgrade

Curry Addict

i want to upgrade my del inspiron 1720. i want to buy a nw mobo cpu and ram for a good price. any recommendations of where i can buy for a good price?

ricman

Unless theres sumthing wrong with the dell,it would be cheaper to sell it,on buynsell,or adverts.ie .Laptop motherboards are not upgradeable,apart from increasing the memory, ie ram upgrade,or fit a larger hardrive.if you want a faster cpu, buy a faster laptop.A 1.5ghz cpu is grand for most people apart from running games,which require a faster cpu and a fast graphics card.
windows xp or any 32 bit os can only use 3gig ram max, 64 bit os,s can acess 8gig ram or more.Most laptops have only space for 4gig ram anyway.

dazzday

Can you post your specs so we can see what you currently have.

TBH in general, upgrading is not cost effective compared to performance results. Also depends on what you are after from your laptop...gaming performance, cpu intensive tasks like encoding, multitasking etc.

Not sure what you mean by new mobo...mobos arent really interchangable in laptops and are by far the most expensive part.

The cpu is a socket P so its probably possible to upgarde to T9300/T9500. However I'd be sceptical about the cooling in the inspiron. What CPU temps are you gatting now at idle and under load?

The GPU is an MXM II slot so upgradd to 9600M GT or 4670 may be possible depending on bios. Again temperatures are an issue and copper modding more than likely needed.

If you are just looking for a performance boost in multitasking and general everday use, RAM upgrade is a very cost effective way.The laptop supports upto 4gb RAM. ~€100

IMO upgrade the RAM and a fresh install of an OS (Win 7 64bit preferably) and you will notice a significant improvement.
A HDD upgrade may be worthwhile if space and loading times are issues.
Unless you like a technical challenge, upgrading anything else and you'd be foolish not to buy something new.

Curry Addict

the spec is already T9300 with 4gb of ram and a 8600m GT. its very well maintained.
playing games like sims 3, loading times are rediculously slow and performance is poor. I would like to boost the performance significantly but looks liek thats not possible.

dazzday

Well the loading times are entirely dependant on the HHD. Upgrading to a 7200rpm will see some improvement, an SSD significant improvement.
The Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid may be the best compromise for cost and performance.

For the GPU why not improve the drivers and overclock? 8600M GT is a monster of a card to overclock.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/192125-finally-overclocked-my-dell-inspiron-1720-good-results.html

loads of hits on google.

Alanstrainor

To me it looks like you've already got a very well spec'd machine. I'd be reinstalling windows to improve system performance, and if that doesn't do it i'd consider a HD upgrade, but even adding more RAM is a waste imo. Any game today will run on 4Gb fine.

Curry Addict

loading times are about 2mins!!! on sims 3 which maybe just a function of this particular game.
i recently reinstalled windows as i do every couple of months and im maticulous at keeping it clean and in good shape. i guess the HDD is a bit of a bottleneck alright.
over clocking looks like a good option thanks for the guide ill do that.