Janky Laptop Upgrade

[smadi]

Hello All.
I was looking into buying a new desktop for my shack (Austrailian for beach shanty house). I already have a beast setup at home but but would like another one as I dont realy want to lug that around. I do alot of simulation work and mild gaming along with a fair share of video conference calls. So naturally I looked into purchasing a new laptop.. But new laptops are super $$$. Then I realised I already have a laptop, sure it is 5 years old, sufferes from severe overheating, has no disk space and the webcam is super grainy. but these are all things I can fix right. 

My notebook is an Acer Aspire V5-571G has 8gb of ram and a nice onboard graphics card.. but thats it.

So heres my plan..

Purchase new 120gb ssd for OS and such
Remove disk drive bay and replace with a caddy to hold the current 500gb drive. (nobody uses cds anyway)
Buy a bigger battery pack. as the current batteries are dead.
Portable Usb powerd screen for the light weight dualscreen sensation.
Usb mounted webcam to replace the crappy onboard one.
Usb powered Air Vac cooler to help cool the thing.

 

Here's a picture describing what I want to do.

Has anyone tried anything like this before and can offer any advice? Am I better off buying a chep laptop instead? General thoughts?

[Radium_Angel]

Spend all that time and money upgrading.

Watch body of laptop die in 1 month.

 

That'd suck wouldn't it?

 

[smadi]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

Spend all that time and money upgrading.

Watch body of laptop die in 1 month.

 

That'd suck wouldn't it?

 

Thanks for replying.
I think it would only end up being around 200Aud for the whole shibang as I already have a spare ssd. Not really worried if the body gets tattered any worse than what it is currently like. My laptop is already never used and sits in a box in my shed, just thought that if it works I could save myself alot of bob. Do you think the body would die as in from the mechanical stress or the extra power demands?

[Radium_Angel]

10 minutes ago, smadi said:

Thanks for replying.
I think it would only end up being around 200Aud for the whole shibang as I already have a spare ssd. Not really worried if the body gets tattered any worse than what it is currently like. My laptop is already never used and sits in a box in my shed, just thought that if it works I could save myself alot of bob. Do you think the body would die as in from the mechanical stress or the extra power demands?

It's not so much the upgrades, but your comment about it being 5 years old and suffering from severe overheating. That to me (and my decades of experience) says it's ripe for failure in a very short period of time.

I know you're down under and things might be different there, but in USA-land Acer products are not the highest quality around.