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Breathing new life into old Dell Laptop, advice needed

DennisCohle
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Hi community, first post coming in. Hope to find some help here 🙂

 

I recently bought a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, it replaces my old Dell inspiron 7537.

 

The Dell aged pretty gracefully in my opinion and i want to use it as a secondary mobile music recording unit.

 

Problems:

-Over the last few years the laptop became very loud, hwmonitor shows about 65°c for the cpu and gpu while doing nothing. It gets hot real fast under load.

 

- the laptop sometimes immediately shuts down after pressing the power button, sometimes it freezes while booting up.

what could be the cause?

 

 what can i do to make it a little less noisy and stay more cool? I'm thinking about replacing the thermal paste. Can you guys recommend?

 

I also thought about upgrading the ram and the 2,5 ssd. currently only got 250gb of storage, heading for a 500gb ssd. does ram degrade over time?

I know pretty stupid novice question, but last time i worked with pc's and played games was when a GeForce 6800 was top of the line ... so a long, long time ago... 

 

What other measures can you recommend to breath life into an old laptop ?

 

before i forget, current specs:

CPU: Intel i7 4500U

GPU: Geforce 750M

Ram: 16gb DDR3 @ 1600 mhz

storage: 2,5 sata 250gb

 

 

Have a great day !

 

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12 minutes ago, DennisCohle said:

Over the last few years the laptop became very loud, hwmonitor shows about 65°c for the cpu and gpu while doing nothing. It gets hot real fast under load.

sounds like it's got bone dry thermal paste indeed. Some cheaper stuff will be fine like the Arctic MX-4 or Noctua NT-H1. Could be used on your current laptop too since factory stuff arent usually as good as it could be.

 

12 minutes ago, DennisCohle said:

- the laptop sometimes immediately shuts down after pressing the power button, sometimes it freezes while booting up.

what could be the cause?

No idea on this one, hopefully a fresh install of an older OS (Windows 7 is probably better for stability) can solve it.

 

12 minutes ago, DennisCohle said:

I also thought about upgrading the ram and the 2,5 ssd. currently only got 250gb of storage, heading for a 500gb ssd. does ram degrade over time?

Not really, RAM either works or doesn't.

 

12 minutes ago, DennisCohle said:

What other measures can you recommend to breath life into an old laptop ?

Cleaning the interior from dust

CPU: i7-2600K 4751MHz 1.44V (software) --> 1.47V at the back of the socket Motherboard: Asrock Z77 Extreme4 (BCLK: 103.3MHz) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 RAM: Adata XPG 2x8GB DDR3 (XMP: 2133MHz 10-11-11-30 CR2, custom: 2203MHz 10-11-10-26 CR1 tRFC:230 tREFI:14000) GPU: Asus GTX 1070 Dual (Super Jetstream vbios, +70(2025-2088MHz)/+400(8.8Gbps)) SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (main boot drive), Transcend SSD370 128GB PSU: Seasonic X-660 80+ Gold Case: Antec P110 Silent, 5 intakes 1 exhaust Monitor: AOC G2460PF 1080p 144Hz (150Hz max w/ DP, 121Hz max w/ HDMI) TN panel Keyboard: Logitech G610 Orion (Cherry MX Blue) with SteelSeries Apex M260 keycaps Mouse: BenQ Zowie FK1

 

Model: HP Omen 17 17-an110ca CPU: i7-8750H (0.125V core & cache, 50mV SA undervolt) GPU: GTX 1060 6GB Mobile (+80/+450, 1650MHz~1750MHz 0.78V~0.85V) RAM: 8+8GB DDR4-2400 18-17-17-39 2T Storage: HP EX920 1TB PCIe x4 M.2 SSD + Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD, 128GB Toshiba PCIe x2 M.2 SSD (KBG30ZMV128G) gone cooking externally, 1TB Seagate 7200RPM 2.5" HDD (ST1000LM049-2GH172) left outside Monitor: 1080p 126Hz IPS G-sync

 

Desktop benching:

Cinebench R15 Single thread:168 Multi-thread: 833 

SuperPi (v1.5 from Techpowerup, PI value output) 16K: 0.100s 1M: 8.255s 32M: 7m 45.93s

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I'd say repaste the CPU and GPU, do the SSD upgrade, and do a fresh OS install. RAM isn't expected to degrade. There may be a few rare exceptions if the RAM was binned badly from the factory, but it's usually not something to worry about. The biggest issue you'll face is driver support for that GeForce 750M. Laptops with dedicated graphics tend to age pretty poorly in that regard. 

lumpy chunks

 

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Thanks you both, i will definitely replace the thermal paste then and upgrade the SSD. good to hear i can leave the ram as is, saves me a few euros. of course i will do a fresh OS install. 🙂

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That computer is only from 2014. It's still quite modern, and should be perfectly capable of modern tasks. I'd definitely give it a good cleaning, and also replace the hard drive with an SSD. 16GB of RAM is more than enough, and it should be fine. 

Phobos: AMD Ryzen 7 2700, 16GB 3000MHz DDR4, ASRock B450 Steel Legend, 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070, 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT 1030, 1TB Samsung SSD 980, 450W Corsair CXM, Corsair Carbide 175R, Windows 10 Pro

 

Polaris: Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2, 32GB 1600MHz DDR3, ASRock X79 Extreme6, 12GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, 6GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, 1TB Crucial MX500, 750W Corsair RM750, Antec SX635, Windows 10 Pro

 

Pluto: Intel Core i7-2600, 32GB 1600MHz DDR3, ASUS P8Z68-V, 4GB XFX AMD Radeon RX 570, 8GB ASUS AMD Radeon RX 570, 1TB Samsung 860 EVO, 3TB Seagate BarraCuda, 750W EVGA BQ, Fractal Design Focus G, Windows 10 Pro for Workstations

 

York (NAS): Intel Core i5-2400, 16GB 1600MHz DDR3, HP Compaq OEM, 240GB Kingston V300 (boot), 3x2TB Seagate BarraCuda, 320W HP PSU, HP Compaq 6200 Pro, TrueNAS CORE (12.0)

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