Upgrading a 7 Year Old Laptop - On a Budget!

[SpencerHalse]

Hey there everyone, I want to share with you, how I upgraded a 7 YEAR OLD laptop, ON A BUDGET!

 

Ok, so this was actually quite easy, and did not require spending much money.

 

Some things you need to know:

My laptop is an Acer Aspire V3-571, with an i3 2.4GHz Processor, and only 814MB of INTEGRATED graphics.

So it wasn't good enough for me. Here's how I upgraded it!

 

Step 1:

Install More RAM

 

This only had 2GB RAM in it, and so I found a stick of 8GB DDR3 RAM, and installed that. Installing RAM is very easy, if you follow the instructions, and see below how to do it for yourself!

Step 2: 

Organise

 

My drive is only 500GB in capacity, and is a regular HDD, so I had to do something about it. Since i'm on a budget, I did not bother with buying expensive new SSD's. Instead, I worked out how to organise the drive. I removed things that I just don't need on it, and kept important things, like my Filmmaking on-board items. I put those other files on an easy-to-access external HDD that sits under my desk, meaning that I can simply plug it in whenever I need to transfer anything, and unplug it later. I also run full-system backups on this drive (of both laptops)

I use another laptop for video editing, as it is far more powerful, and is what I invest in.

 

Step 3:

Optimise

 

Organising the HDD is not the only step you should take to ensure maximum performance, you should defragment and optimise your drive. See below for a video that I found useful when learning how to do this.

Step 4:

Dedicated Graphics

 

Since my on-board graphics was always expanded to it's limit, I decided to try out something I saw on YouTube, as to "double your graphics performance for free". I did not think it was true, until I tried it, and was honestly blown away at the results. It may be the one thing that made me keep using this laptop for basic things. See the video below.

Step 5:

Uninstall Unneeded Programs:

 

Uninstalling unused programs can be one of the BEST ways to speed up your computer. Bloatware that comes with your device is NOT NECESSARY at all, and can easily be uninstalled, just like you'd uninstall any other program. Doing this will free up your HDD, and increase your overall performance yet again!

 

Step 6:

Final Optimisation:

 

What I mean by "Final Optimisation", is fixing the small things that slow down your device, to truly optimise it. By pressing CTRL, ALT & DEL, you enter the lock screen. The press "Task Manager". By looking through here, you can find the startup programs that activate on startup, and slow down your device. You can also see real-time specifications of your device, and also see the items that are constantly running, also, you guessed it! Slowing down your device. By disabling these, you can increase the overall speed and performance yet again!

 

So what now?

I am going to show you some before & after results, of playing a simple game called World of Tanks. It's free to play for the PC, Mobile (through an app called "World of Tanks BLITZ) and even recently the X-Box!

 

I was running the game at medium graphics for everything. This goes for both tests.

 

BEFORE:

I was getting an average of 18 FPS and my ping was jumping between 140 and 270ms. The lag was certainly noticeable, and it was awful, because every 5 seconds, it would periodically freeze. It was far from ideal, and made me question what I was even attempting to do.

 

But then I did the configurations, and this is what I found

AFTER:

I was actually getting an average of 32 FPS maxing out at 40 FPS, but still a bit jumpy, especially at the start. My ping had improved though, to only 130, and sometimes hitting 150ms. The lag was dramatically reduced, and I could tell it was a better experience. The game was not freezing every 5 seconds, and I felt like I could really play the game.

 

Overall, this upgrade will extend the life of your older devices, but doesn't beat an SSD upgrade and all that. If you can afford it, go ahead and buy an SSD, it will make things a whole lot better, but this still does a considerable job. And there's nothing to lose because your not spending anything!

 

I hope you have found this informative and helpful you you.

 

Edited July 10, 2016 by airdeano
Removed Referral Link

[imreloadin]

On 07/09/2016 at 11:40 PM, SpencerHalse said:

Hey there everyone, I want to share with you, how I upgraded a 7 YEAR OLD laptop, ON A BUDGET!

 

Ok, so this was actually quite easy, and did not require spending much money.

 

Some things you need to know:

My laptop is an Acer Aspire V3-571, with an i3 2.4GHz Processor, and only 814MB of INTEGRATED graphics.

So it wasn't good enough for me. Here's how I upgraded it!

 

Step 1:

Install More RAM

 

This only had 2GB RAM in it, and so I found a stick of 8GB DDR3 RAM, and installed that. Installing RAM is very easy, if you follow the instructions, and see below how to do it for yourself!

Step 2: 

Organise

 

My drive is only 500GB in capacity, and is a regular HDD, so I had to do something about it. Since i'm on a budget, I did not bother with buying expensive new SSD's. Instead, I worked out how to organise the drive. I removed things that I just don't need on it, and kept important things, like my Filmmaking on-board items. I put those other files on an easy-to-access external HDD that sits under my desk, meaning that I can simply plug it in whenever I need to transfer anything, and unplug it later. I also run full-system backups on this drive (of both laptops)

I use another laptop for video editing, as it is far more powerful, and is what I invest in.

 

Step 3:

Optimise

 

Organising the HDD is not the only step you should take to ensure maximum performance, you should defragment and optimise your drive. See below for a video that I found useful when learning how to do this.

Step 4:

Dedicated Graphics

 

Since my on-board graphics was always expanded to it's limit, I decided to try out something I saw on YouTube, as to "double your graphics performance for free". I did not think it was true, until I tried it, and was honestly blown away at the results. It may be the one thing that made me keep using this laptop for basic things. See the video below.

Step 5:

Uninstall Unneeded Programs:

 

Uninstalling unused programs can be one of the BEST ways to speed up your computer. Bloatware that comes with your device is NOT NECESSARY at all, and can easily be uninstalled, just like you'd uninstall any other program. Doing this will free up your HDD, and increase your overall performance yet again!

 

Step 6:

Final Optimisation:

 

What I mean by "Final Optimisation", is fixing the small things that slow down your device, to truly optimise it. By pressing CTRL, ALT & DEL, you enter the lock screen. The press "Task Manager". By looking through here, you can find the startup programs that activate on startup, and slow down your device. You can also see real-time specifications of your device, and also see the items that are constantly running, also, you guessed it! Slowing down your device. By disabling these, you can increase the overall speed and performance yet again!

 

So what now?

I am going to show you some before & after results, of playing a simple game called World of Tanks. It's free to play for the PC, Mobile (through an app called "World of Tanks BLITZ) and even recently the X-Box!

 

I was running the game at medium graphics for everything. This goes for both tests.

 

BEFORE:

I was getting an average of 18 FPS and my ping was jumping between 140 and 270ms. The lag was certainly noticeable, and it was awful, because every 5 seconds, it would periodically freeze. It was far from ideal, and made me question what I was even attempting to do.

 

But then I did the configurations, and this is what I found

AFTER:

I was actually getting an average of 32 FPS maxing out at 40 FPS, but still a bit jumpy, especially at the start. My ping had improved though, to only 130, and sometimes hitting 150ms. The lag was dramatically reduced, and I could tell it was a better experience. The game was not freezing every 5 seconds, and I felt like I could really play the game.

 

Overall, this upgrade will extend the life of your older devices, but doesn't beat an SSD upgrade and all that. If you can afford it, go ahead and buy an SSD, it will make things a whole lot better, but this still does a considerable job. And there's nothing to lose because your not spending anything!

 

I hope you have found this informative and helpful you you.

 

You do realize that your "Step 4" doesn't actually do anything right? It's called Performance MONITOR for a reason, it simply records the performance of the counters you specify for troubleshooting purposes. ThioJoe is a joke account created to take advantage of people who don't know about computers lol.

[kerbingamer376]

You seriously believed ThioJoe? Even the owner calls it a "tech comedy channel". It's just a thought thing.If you think your graphics have been improved, you start to realise how good they are, even if the improvement was fake (like it was)

[SpencerHalse]

I understand that ThioJoe's videos are "non-legit", although I saw some mild improvement once trying it. Otherwise I obviously wouldn't have posted it. Plus, I know lots about computers, and I tested the on-board dedicated graphics before and after. I know damn right that ThioJoe is not telling the truth, but to be honest, at this point, I would have done anything to increase the performance of this old device.

[Remixt]

On 8/4/2016 at 3:04 AM, SpencerHalse said:

I understand that ThioJoe's videos are "non-legit", although I saw some mild improvement once trying it. Otherwise I obviously wouldn't have posted it. Plus, I know lots about computers, and I tested the on-board dedicated graphics before and after. I know damn right that ThioJoe is not telling the truth, but to be honest, at this point, I would have done anything to increase the performance of this old device.

That is a very hypocritical post that does not follow logic.

[Jetfighter808]

If step 4 worked why didn't you try this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8unagKHPGt8