Upgrading low budget old (2011) Laptop

[Jhon4LTTForum]

Hello,

 

My cousin will get an old low budget Laptop, an Toshiba Satellite c660d-19x psc1ye-01u00mgr 

(AMD E-300, 320 GB Sata2 (3GBit/s) HDD, 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM - PC3-8500 - 1066 MHz).

 

And I'm planing to help him getting it a bit up to speed. 

 

I was thinking about getting a bit more RAM and an SSD, as you do. The Ram I can get from Ebay, but here my first question starts. The CPU has a single channel memory controller, but the notebook has two Slots. I know that there can be issues with incompatible RAM and/or using two different sizes (only a problem in multichannel?). But as it has only single channel anyway, could I buy any 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (sodimm)? Is it feasible to buy a 4GB  Module and try for 6 but have at least 4 or is it more sensible to buy 2 GB and try to have 2 (original) + 2 extended? How much RAM do you need on a system this old? I certainly couldn't live with less than 8 anymore, but I don't think it would profit that much from tons of RAM...

 

Next thing is the SSD. I'm thinking about the Kingston A400 (funnily the same LTT used in the cheaper gaming PCs) 120 or 240 (because it's 22€ vs 30€)

It's a Sata2 connector. I found a few forum posts in German, which I will not bother to link, according to which the random read/write should be about the same. But then again, this CPU (weell, apu or whatever) is really quite weak chested. So I'm wondering whether it is worth the bother?

 

This is my first post. I wasn't really sure where to post this if I got it wrong, please let me know. Also if I got anything completely wrong, please tell me, I'm always eager to learn.

 

Thanks a lot for your help!

Jhon 

[Hold-Ma-Beer]

Buddy we are kinda on the same boat, I have a Lenovo Flex 10(2013) with Intel Celeron N2807 @ 1.58GHz, Intel HD graphic (Bay Trail) kindoa the lowest one can get, 2GB DDR3 Sodimm Memory.

So listen here,

I recommend you contacting the customer care or looking for the other models (based on your serial number) which will help you to find if there were any 4/8 GB ram models or not. Mine too shows "slot: 1 used of 2" in the ram section, but better be safe than sorry right? I asked Lenovo customer care and they said mine had siblings with 4 and 8 gig ram configuration (Which means my cpu supported it!) Do this much OR I should say I'm a noob and I dont know and further than this.

Hope it some what helped!

Cheers!

[Jhon4LTTForum]

I had already looked that up, there are variants with up to 8 GB of RAM. But I don't know how much I should aim for. Is it sensible to get  more than 4 GB? 

What's your experience been like?

 

Haha, the AMD Chip has 4x the TDP but effectively gives only about 80% of the performance XD. (on the other hand it's an 'APU'...) - I don't think I have seen any kind of 'good' AMD Notebook Chip Prior to Ryzen.

 

Thank you for your answer