Looking to upgrade old laptop, how to go about doing it, and is it worth it?

Buy this SSD: LINK

And this enclosure: LINK

Read this guide: LINK

And if things are still bogging down a little, buy the RAM: LINK

SSD as said above... best bang for buck.

Cloning the OS drive C will make as simple as just swapping the drives out.

Then I would monitor RAM usage and buy more if needed

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I'm also wondering if you all know how to get to the hard drive to remove it on my specific model, I can't seem to find any disassembly instructions.

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I would imagine tutorials for other Studio models would apply to yours, too. Dell doesn't change their design within a specific model type very often. From what I can see in other videos, there should be an L-shaped panel on the bottom of the laptop. Removing the panel would give you access to the hard drive, RAM, and wifi card. If that doesn't seem to be the case for yours, let me know. Odds are, it's either access via the bottom panel, or it slides out of the side after removing a couple of screws.

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And I also wanted to double check and make sure the above mentioned ssd and ram drives were compatible with my specific notebook?

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I always check, but if you want to look it up for your own peace of mind: LINK

LINK

Looks like I have to disassemble the entire damn thing to get to the hard drive. Just my luck. Glad I found this though.

Since the entire thing will be open, anything else cheap to replace that I should replace for improved performance? Like the fan for example, or will the implementation of the ssd alone likely fix this?

Oh my god, that's a horrible design. Sorry it's going to be such a hassle.

As for replacing other components, you could look into an OEM replacement fan, but that won't fix the fan ramping up. That would only fix a fan that's faulty (making a noise like it's going to fail).

You could go into windows power settings and set your CPU cooling from active to passive. That will make the CPU downclock under load, so if performance suffers because of it, you'll know why.

I have an ASUS laptop with a super-hot GPU and CPU. I've actually hurt myself before while trying to play a game with it resting on my bare legs. My CPU is the same gen as yours, but an i7. The only real remedy is using a laptop with a more efficient CPU and a better cooling design.

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It takes forever to boot and is extremely sluggish doing pretty much everything from opening programs, running programs. And the fan is constantly kicking on when even just browsing the web.

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But if I can get this old computer into stress free working shape for browsing web, watching videos and word processing/spreadsheet activity for a couple hundred bucks it would be worth it to me.

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Why don't you try the free stuff first?

You can hit ctl/alt/delete and click on task manager. Click "show processes from all users".
This will show all processes that are running and what percentage of the cpu is being used. You are probably at 100%.

You probably have a lot of processes that start up upon bootup that you do not need. Dell and HP are bad about that.

You may have malware....

I suggest downloading malwarebytes, the free version. Unclick the free trial box for their monitoring application! Once you clean up your computer, uninstall Malwarebyters. It runs a lot of stuff in the background that you can't turn off unless you get the paid version.

Try either Ccleaner (free version) or Norton Utilities (they used to have a 30 day trial version) to do the following three things:
1. Uncheck needless startup programs
2. Run wipe free space on your main drive.
3. Run the cleaner function. It should delete a boatload of files the first time it runs.

If you spend money upgrading hardware, you will just run unneeded applications and malware faster.

Go thru and delete unneeded programs you never use to free up disk if you are low on free space.

Check virtual memory. This can be important! You may need to set it manually if you have a lot of junk programs running. Your OS will suggest a size. You can make it larger if you have enough free space.

Pick any brand SSD you want. The 2.5" drives will work fine. It's true that the budget SSDs like the BX200 generally have low write speeds (compared to other SSDs, but still faster than hard drives). Most people consider it an acceptable sacrifice because you write to a drive less frequently than you read from it. The 850 EVO and MX200 are both excellent.

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is there an issue using different brands for RAM and hard drives

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Nope.

advanced uninstaller pro, will help you remove some unused apps and crud you downloaded but forgot about and are bogging down the computer and gets the leftovers from usual uninstalled pgms

it also has a startup manager and tells you what is needed and what is optional...it makes it easy for rookies to uncheck startups without causing a disaster

good luck

Welp just finished the dismantling of a horribly designed PC.

And installed the new ssd. Decided to go with the Samsung. Ended up using their migration software that came with the drive. Very easy and relatively quick. Took about 23 minutes. I did buy the sabrent USB enclosure and now have a nifty little external harddrive using my old hd.

The disassembly to get to the hard drive took a bit of time, but I had zero problems until I mounted the new ssd into the casing upside down, and when I went to remove it I stripped a goddamn screw. Fortunately I was able to get it out after about 30 min.

All in all a super clean and easy process, I can only imagine it's a thousand times easier having quick access to the hard drive.

It's crazy snappy now, and makes me wish I had done this a while back.

Boot Speed:

HDD: 1:30

New SSD: 0:33

And that HDD boot time is after I pulled all my files off and did a factory restore. It took at least 3 to 4 minutes to power on and wait for everything before I could pull up a web page prior to that restore.



Thanks again to all that contributed, and your advice.


ILikeLSUToo...