2nd ever laptop

[KGohr2k19]

I got my 2nd ever laptop in the form of a dell inspiron m5040. It has windows 7 and I believe its around 10 years old. It has an AMD e-450 APU with Radeon HD graphics at 1.65GHz and 4GB of RAM. Im pretty sure thats not good for decent gaming as I've been wanting to get into PC gaming but don't have money to do so. Whats worth upgrading on this laptop or should I save up and buy something that can actually game? Any help is greatly appreciated

[Slottr]

You won't be upgrading anything in a laptop that will be worth your time unfortunately

 

Most productive thing you can probably do is sell it for a few bucks 

[AndreiArgeanu]

Nothing really. To my knowledge the CPU is soldered so you can't change it meaning that you can't really do much about it. You're better saving at least 200-300$ to get something that can game.

[doomsriker]

2 minutes ago, KGohr2k19 said:

I got my 2nd ever laptop in the form of a dell inspiron m5040. It has windows 7 and I believe its around 10 years old. It has an AMD e-450 APU with Radeon HD graphics at 1.65GHz and 4GB of RAM. Im pretty sure thats not good for decent gaming as I've been wanting to get into PC gaming but don't have money to do so. Whats worth upgrading on this laptop or should I save up and buy something that can actually game? Any help is greatly appreciated

One does not simply upgrade a laptop except for like ram and poping in an SSD. Most laptop parts are non modular and very specific to the model and year and make of the specific laptop. Especially considering that most people should be staying at home when possible during this pandemic, I would say a used desktop would be the best budget option for most. 

[pythonmegapixel]

6 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

the CPU is socketed so you can't change it

I think you mean soldered?

If it was socketed you would be able to change it (though you might have difficulty finding a compatible CPU)

[KangUsapEmenq]

28 minutes ago, KGohr2k19 said:

I got my 2nd ever laptop in the form of a dell inspiron m5040. It has windows 7 and I believe its around 10 years old. It has an AMD e-450 APU with Radeon HD graphics at 1.65GHz and 4GB of RAM. Im pretty sure thats not good for decent gaming as I've been wanting to get into PC gaming but don't have money to do so. Whats worth upgrading on this laptop or should I save up and buy something that can actually game? Any help is greatly appreciated

I personally did use an E-350 (basically kind of the 'little brother' of E-450, it's only 50 MHz difference) with 3 GB of RAM since 2011 and it's not even a decent experience to game on it. It can only got Dota 2 at maximum 30-ish fps, with average of 15-20 fps, tried Battlefield Bad Company 2 and it won't even past 13 fps. Upgrading it won't help at all on gaming experience, unfortunately, except if you're just using it for normal laptop use cases THAN gaming. I rather to sell it than bother to game on it. Yes, you can still game on some old games, but the experience won't even be good at all as it's only a netbook APU.

 

If you wanna game, I suggest to get some secondhand PC if your budget's not much.

 

24 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

To my knowledge the CPU is socketed so you can't change it meaning that you can't really do much about it.

Well, some laptops (like one of the old ones) are actually got replaceable CPU and GPU but it's kind of very rare to find one now. I did stumble on an old Ivy Bridge/Sandy Bridge (can't remember) i5 laptop and one Pentium dual core and both CPU are actually replaceable.

 

Sorry to correct you, it's 'soldered' not 'socketed' if you meant the one that's non-replaceable CPU.

 

But in his case with E-450, it's definitely soldered, so yeah I agree he can't do anything to it.

 

17 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I think you mean soldered?

If it was socketed you would be able to change it (though you might have difficulty finding a compatible CPU)

AMD E-series are soldered, unfortunately.

[doomsriker]

16 minutes ago, doomsriker said:

One does not simply upgrade a laptop except for like ram and poping in an SSD. Most laptop parts are non modular and very specific to the model and year and make of the specific laptop. Especially considering that most people should be staying at home when possible during this pandemic, I would say a used desktop would be the best budget option for most. 

To be clear OP I am not saying there is anything wrong with saving an old laptop from going to the landfill. If you are content with an older laptop than more power to you. I only suggested a tower style PC might be a better fit for you because you seem to want to game on a budget and that is were you get the most bang for the buck. My last daily driver for about 2 years was a 2010 ASUS laptop that I got for like 3$ on Craigslist and fixed up and I still use it from time to time. Maybe think about trying some emulators or maybe some classic PC games. Or you can check out LowSpecGamer on YouTube to try to get some newer games to run on your older hardware. Possibly the best investment when buying an older laptop is getting a quality charger (assuming it did not come with one) and a new battery, both of which should be cheaply obtainable on Amazon from third party manufacturers (just check the reviews before buying). Good luck PC padawan and have a great day!!

[AndreiArgeanu]

36 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

I think you mean soldered?

If it was socketed you would be able to change it (though you might have difficulty finding a compatible CPU)

Yeah, my brain's not fully functioning at the moment.