How can I upgrade my Laptop without voiding it's warranty

[GameMinister]

ok, so I bought an Asus laptop like an year ago (it had 2 years warranty) and it has a 1 year of warranty left, however, I want to upgrade it with an SSD. Since I dont live in the US getting it fixed by someone else void my warranty. And there's no Asus service centre in my city. I contact them they go like.... you can go to the city where our service center is located which is literally on the other side of the country. So what should I do?

[Zmax]

Try and external SSD.

[RollinLower]

yeah sadly your only way of doing this upgrade is voiding your warranty. so sorry to say that you are either stuck with an external SSD or a upgraded SSD but without warranty.

[Daniel644]

in the USA it's illegal to void a warranty over someone doing what you describe just do it and don't worry about it, sounds like making a warranty claim would be more expensive then just making any repairs yourself if you gotta travel cross country to get repairs done.

[DVA]

External ssd, nothing wrong with that. Plus if you ever get a new PC, you already have your OS and games pre-loaded

[GameMinister]

12 minutes ago, DVA said:

External ssd, nothing wrong with that. Plus if you ever get a new PC, you already have your OS and games pre-loaded

My laptop doesn't have a USB-C port, so the external SSD will probably be connected via the USB 3,0 interface, don't you think that will affect the speeds?

[DVA]

1 minute ago, GameMinister said:

My laptop doesn't have a USB-C port, so the external SSD will probably be connected via the USB 3,0 interface, don't you think that will affect the speeds?

USB-C is considerably faster.

I personally haven't tried an external ssd into a 3.0 slot, but hey, seems like your best shot right now

 

Someone else may have a better solution. Let's wait on the community =]

[Alex Atkin UK]

Generally the best idea is to do it yourself and if at some point the laptop breaks, put the old HDD back in before claiming on the warranty.

 

They'd have a pretty hard time arguing you broke something and I have seen screws worn even from the factory so its not proof of tampering.  AFAIK most if not all laptops do not have warranty stickers so they can't use that argument either.

 

Granted I'm in the UK, but I have never had warranty problems from replacing hardware.  As long as it arrived to them visibly undamaged with the original hardware they should have no argument.

[MimigaKing]

5 minutes ago, GameMinister said:

My laptop doesn't have a USB-C port, so the external SSD will probably be connected via the USB 3,0 interface, don't you think that will affect the speeds?

Sata SSD maximum throughput is lower than USB 3.0 Maximum speed so it wouldn't matter really. 

 

I have personally tested a Kingston A400 240GB recently on a USB 3 Docking Station and was getting upwards of 450MB/s read. 

 

I'd recommend you try it, probably wouldn't notice than much of a difference from Internal or External

 

 

[Daniel644]

2 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Generally the best idea is to do it yourself and if at some point the laptop breaks, put the old HDD back in before claiming on the warranty.

 

They'd have a pretty hard time arguing you broke something and I have seen screws worn even from the factory so its not proof of tampering.  AFAIK most if not all laptops do not have warranty stickers so they can't use that argument either.

the MSI units have a sticker, but it's more to tell them someone opened it, it doesn't say "warranty void" it's more of a "factory seal" to tell them it's been opened before. came across this on a new laptop we got for a customer where it was cheaper to buy the laptop then do some upgrades then to buy the upgraded model, I swapped the 1TB HDD for a 500GB SSD and added a second 8GB stick of ram, MSI should rethink there designs, no reason should exist to have to split the shell in 2 pieces AROUND the ports to do basic upgrades, just put an access panel for the harddrive and ram areas like everyone else.

[Zmax]

If warranty is a problem, go with the external solution. You can always use it as a back up option, if you change your mind later. or you can also put games on it.

 

Just do a clean install of Windows and format all drives during installation.

 

 

[Daniel644]

6 minutes ago, MimigaKing said:

Sata SSD maximum throughput is lower than USB 3.0 Maximum speed so it wouldn't matter really. 

 

I have personally tested a Kingston A400 240GB recently on a USB 3 Docking Station and was getting upwards of 450MB/s read. 

 

I'd recommend you try it, probably wouldn't notice than much of a difference from Internal or External

 

 

the Sata3 interface is technically a faster interface, but not by much (about 20% faster then USB 3.0) but either are well beyond the average SSD so that part isn't to much a concern, the issue comes in configuring a "portable" version of Windows that can be installed and booted off of USB, which is doable, i've done it before with a HDD and having to constantly use up a USB port whenever you want to use the computer #DongleLifeForever

 

honestly if nothing has failed in the first year it becomes exponentially less likely for something to go wrong in the second year, outside of the HDD (which the OP would be replacing) every other part in the modern laptop is a purely electronic part those either fail right at the beginning or years later (see the "bathtub curve").

[YellowJersey]

Do you have an optical drive in your machine? Another option would be to pop out the optical drive, get an adapter, and slot your SATA SSD in there, then install your OS and then boot from that drive. I do this for one of my laptops.

[genexis_x]

Just do it. I break the sticker and I still get warranty service for a few times. Even the technician says it doesn't matter