Revitalizing A Laptop

[Sazexa]

Hey everyone. So I have a Dell XPS 14 (L421x) from around 2012. When I bought it, I just wanted something that was nice build quality, had good battery life, and was over-all pretty premium just for school work. Which, this laptop accomplished all of that. The specs of it are the following:

14" screen (13.3 bezel) 1,600 x 900
Intel i5-3317U (1.7GHz, dual-core, 3MB cache, 17W)
Integrated graphics
4GB DDR3 1,333 MHz memory
500GB 5.4k RPM drive
32GB mSATA

As you'd all guess, it's starting to show it's age. In a way where, I can't even stream games from my console to the laptop without the iGPU causing issues. So, recently I've been thinking about revamping it. I've found some refurbish boards, and even "new" boards with some fairly better specs. I'd also be buying some RAM and using a spare SSD to bring some life into. My main concern is, I've got two CPU options to choose from, and was wondering what the better option to go with is. The two CPU options are either an Intel i7- 3517U (1.9GHz to 3.0GHz turbo, dual-core, hyperthreaded, 4MB cache, 17W) OR an Intel i7-3867U (2.1GHz to 3.3GHz turbo, same specs else wise.) Both of these CPU's would come with a NVidia GT630m on the board, I think a 2GB model. I'd upgrade to 8GB/1600MHz RAM. And then of course put an SSD in.

The main use will be some light gaming, which I figure it could still handle at least for another couple of years. All in all, it would cost either around $120 for the lower clocked i7. Or, about $160 for the higher clocked i7. I'm just trying to figure out if the slightly higher clock is worth it or not. Also, not entirely sure what I can expect for game performance. 

What do you guys think?

[8-Bit Ninja]

Are the coolers the same on both your xps and the one with the dgpu? 

The photo bellow is of the xps 14 with a dgpu, you can see the two heat pipes with one running to the cpu and the other to the gpu:

 

[Sazexa]

Just now, 8-Bit Ninja said:

Are the coolers the same on both your xps and the one with the dgpu? 

The photo bellow is of the xps 14 with a dgpu, you can see the two heat pipes with one running to the cpu and the other to the gpu:

 

They are different, but, I've found where to get the proper heatsink as well.

[8-Bit Ninja]

Just now, Sazexa said:

They are different, but, I've found where to get the proper heatsink as well.

and the physical frame of the laptop is identical? Only other question would be how much are you spending in total (Inlcluding ssd, ram? mobo, cpu and gpu combo 

[Sazexa]

Just now, 8-Bit Ninja said:

and the physical frame of the laptop is identical? Only other question would be how much are you spending in total (Inlcluding ssd, ram? mobo, cpu and gpu combo 

Yeah, so, I've already taken mine apart to look inside it. Everything is the same as far as fitment, the only difference is mine has the i5 specs and where the GPU would be there's an open spot on the PCB with no NVidia chip on it.

All in all it's around either $120 for the 1.9GHz i7, or $160ish for the 2.1GHz i7.

Gaming on the device itself wouldn't happen too too often. Most likely just streaming from my console or PC, which it can't really do now, and some of my photo work I do on it as well, so the i7 and SSD and RAM will all benefit that as well.

[8-Bit Ninja]

Just now, Sazexa said:

Yeah, so, I've already taken mine apart to look inside it. Everything is the same as far as fitment, the only difference is mine has the i5 specs and where the GPU would be there's an open spot on the PCB with no NVidia chip on it.

All in all it's around either $120 for the 1.9GHz i7, or $160ish for the 2.1GHz i7.

Gaming on the device itself wouldn't happen too too often. Most likely just streaming from my console or PC, which it can't really do now, and some of my photo work I do on it as well, so the i7 and SSD and RAM will all benefit that as well.

as long is you keep it sub $300, i would say you have a solid laptop, as for gaming, ehhhhhhhhh looking at the benchmarks, 1080p is nope, and 720 is possible with 30fps at mid-low settings (on older games like skyrim). So while you could game on it, don't expect much at all 

[Sazexa]

Hmm. Seems reasonable. The only laptops I'd really like to replace it with would likely be another XPS line. And I don't feel like dropping $1,500+ so, this is likely what I'll do. Maybe I'll do some performance benchmarks before and after and see how far the money went. Perhaps something like this is a good video idea for Luke or Linus to attempt one of these days.

[Sazexa]

So, I bit the bullet and ordered some parts. I didn't benchmark the laptop because I figure benchmarks with still rather low specs won't mean much, but rather evaluate the laptop on how it feels to use it now. Everything is installed, I'm just waiting for the new heatsink to arrive.
 

 

So, I found a new (I'm assuming refurbised) motherboard for the system on eBay. It came quickly, the seller was great. The new board features an i7-3687U processor, which runs at 2.1 GHz base, turbo to 3.3 GHz. Dual core, hyper-threaded, and has 4MB of cache. The motherboard now also has an NVidia GT630m 2GB dedicated GPU instead of running off the integrated graphics. I was able to talk the seller down to $100 for the board, instead of their $130 asking price. There was an alternative available which was basically the same board, but with a i7 running at 1.9GHz/3.0GHz, for $80. For the extra $20, I opted for the more expensive one.

I also bought a single RAM stick since the board only sports one memory slot. I upgraded from some generic branded 4GB 1,600 MHz chip to an 8GB chip made by Kingston. This chip also runs at 1,600 MHz, and is CL9 latency, so that might help performance as well. This cost about $40.

I reused the old WiFi chip, added in the old WiFi chip as it worked well before, and replacing the parts was relatively easy. Aside from needed a very small Torx bit, disassembly is/was easy. Though not entirely necessary, for ease of work, I removed the laptop's battery (as shown below, it's relatively close to the board), which also involved removing the speakers. I did this to just give me more working clearance. I also removed the audio/mSATA daughter board inside the laptop as well, to clean it. 



The picture above, not mine, shows the base configuration of the laptop. As you can see, the stock heatsink doesn't cover the dedicated GPU, so, I had to search for and find one of those. Luckily I did, and it only cost around $10.

Lastly, though I have an SSD laying around somewhere, it was a bit older, and I wanted something nice if I was spending my time on this. So, I decided to purchase a 250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD. I got it for around $60 new. All in all, we're about $220 in. I'm considering getting another 850 Evo, but in an mSATA flavor, to match with the one I bought. But I don't know if the board has a limitation on the mSATA compatibility. I'd imagine I could get a much higher capacity to work regardless, so, if I find myself needing more storage, I'll replace the 32GB mSATA when the time comes. More information soon to come. 

Funny, Luke dabbled on this topic today! I'd like to see him try something more like this next time.

[Sazexa]

So, I the heatsink came in early. It was exactly the one I needed which is great. I did run into two small issues, but I over-came them easily.

The first issue was that I, without really thinking about it, wasn't anticipating needing thermal pads. Which I should have expected.

As you can see below, the heatsink doesn't make full contact on two parts of the dedicated GPU.


 

So, after some digging, I found some spare thermal pads that were an extra set from a GTX 980 waterblock. Thanks EKWB! They just so happened to be the perfect size for the chips, and no cutting was required either.

 

 

 

 

After that, I had just re-assembled the laptop. Here's the result of the laptop being pieced back together.

 

After attempting to boot, on the first try, I was greeted with a blank screen and 3-beeps repeating. After restarting from that, a BIOS error popped up, from the 32GB mSATA drive being used as RAID before, and that needed to be cleared. I cleared the drive and RAID profile, and the booting into the Windows installer. I'm installing software and drivers now.