8 year old spec upgradable?

B

BrizzleC

New member
Had laptop built in Dec 2012 and won’t to know whether I can upgrade or whether to shift this off to Laptop Heaven and get a new shiny one.

Being honest, id go for a newbie any day, except in Covid times and pay cuts it’s difficult to rationalise this when I may be able to upgrade.

I am currently working from home with some large spreadsheets and a lot of multi tasking and quite frankly I’m losing the will to live on a daily basis as it’s all far too slow.

Plus, using my laptop in anger everyday has revitalised my inner gamer once again and most of the latest stuff (and even the older games) are failing on startup.

Any advise, suggestions, support is great.

Original spec below, upgraded to Win 10.

Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor i7-3630QM (2.40GHz) (Special Offer)
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
1st Storage Drive
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Power Cable
1 x UK Power Lead & 120W AC Adaptor
Battery
Optimus Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N-135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB/Thunderbolt Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Keyboard Language
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 8 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Office Software
FREE 60 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 2010 Professional Edition
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1.3 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days
 
C

CinnamonCakes

Silver Level Poster
BrizzleC said:
Had laptop built in Dec 2012 and won’t to know whether I can upgrade or whether to shift this off to Laptop Heaven and get a new shiny one.

Being honest, id go for a newbie any day, except in Covid times and pay cuts it’s difficult to rationalise this when I may be able to upgrade.

I am currently working from home with some large spreadsheets and a lot of multi tasking and quite frankly I’m losing the will to live on a daily basis as it’s all far too slow.

Plus, using my laptop in anger everyday has revitalised my inner gamer once again and most of the latest stuff (and even the older games) are failing on startup.

Any advise, suggestions, support is great.

Original spec below, upgraded to Win 10.

Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 15.6" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor i7-3630QM (2.40GHz) (Special Offer)
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (1 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
1st Storage Drive
500GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD5000BPKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Power Cable
1 x UK Power Lead & 120W AC Adaptor
Battery
Optimus Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N-135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH
USB/Thunderbolt Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Keyboard Language
INTEGRATED UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 8 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
Office Software
FREE 60 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 2010 Professional Edition
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1.3 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days
Click to expand...
honestly the only upgrade that will help is HDD to SSD and RAM from 4 to 8. probably the biggest bottleneck is that relic of a CPU. you cant upgrade that, nor the GPU which bottlenecks your games more than the CPU.

maybe upgrade RAM and storage but i doubt it will change your experience significantly. that CPU is ancient.
(I'm assuming your Chassis can take 8gb RAM and SATA SSD. I dont have much knowledge on computers from that era, i was a tiny tot at the time)
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
If you log on to your PCS account there is a page for upgrading past orders, that will tell you what is possible. SSD should be fine but would not want to guess at anything else.

To be honest, as good a machine as the Optimus is, I loved mine, it is old and spending much on it would be a waste, an SSD is fine as that can be swapped out to a new machine but the RAM is DDR3 so no use to anything new.

What software are you using. This is not guaranteed but running a lightweight Linux distro on and older machine can give it a new lease of life. Libre or Open Office have good spreadsheets and will save so can be opened on Windows machines.

Dual-booting will give you an idea but it has to be an install, the "try" distro option is good for looking at them but as it runs from a USB stick is slower than a proper install.
 
T

Tony1044

Prolific Poster
To echo others, I'd suggest putting in an SSD first.

I've had friends and family with old kit do this and the difference is quite astounding.

And the beauty is, if you were to change the machine later, if you get one that has a SATA interface as well as an m2 (the newer, faster interface for SSD's in modern machines) then you could reuse the SSD.

You can also still take advantage of Microsoft's Windows 7/8 - 10 free upgrade path if you wanted to.
 
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