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Laptop Upgrade/build help

D

devarinti

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 15, 2009
Messages
74
I am not actually trying to build a laptop. I have this laptop at home and its a fairly old Compaq. The thing has an AMD Sempron 3000+ running at 787 MHz and I'm going to guess the actual number is 800. It also has 224 mb of ram which I'll guess is really 256. It takes fairly long to start up and do anything and it has Windows XP on it. So, I figure I want to make this thing useful but will upgrading the RAM to a gig help?? And I want to put windows 7 on it if that'll speed it up. But windows 7 needs one GHz at least.

So any suggestions. Should I get a soldering gun and start working on that processor or should I just resort to buying a used laptop that is more up to modern standards?? Should I just jack up the RAM and will it be good enough for modern standards or what?? any suggestions?? I've built PCs but not much knowledge about laptops..
 
Find a more modern laptop. I don't believe that it's worth the effort to overhaul something that old, especially when you can find something decent for under $500.
 
Is Cool N Quiet enabled or something? I ask because all AMD Sempron 3000+ CPUs have a clock speed of 1.8Ghz. Might want to find what exact CPU you have. Use CPU-Z to find out.

However, unsoldering the CPU and putting in a new one might not work at all if the laptop's BIOs never supported that new CPU in the first place. Not to mention that it'll more than likely be rather hard trying to find a compatible CPU for that laptop at a reasonable price.

RAM wise, an upgrade to 1GB of RAM will be pretty helpful. With that said, some of those older laptops only supported up to 512MB of RAM. So might want to find out how much RAM you can actually put inside that laptop. Now assuming that 1GB of RAM is possible, a single 1GB stick of RAM costs $40 off Newegg.

Now while a RAM upgrade will help, considering the age of the laptop, you probably have an old and slow IDE 2.5" hard drive. So even with a 1GB RAM upgrade, the PC will still be slowed down by that hard drive. The cost of a hard drive upgrade is about $55.

If you can get the RAM upgrade and HDD upgrade for under $75, it might be worth the effort of an upgrade IF you can figure out what CPU you have exactly. But in the long-run, you're better off with newer laptop. Hell you can find a Netbook for $280 these days and those will demolish that Sempron
 
So you guys both think I am better off with a more modern laptop. Thats what I was thinking too and I guess you guys are right. I can get a stick of 1 gig laptop ram from newegg for about 21 and free shipping btw. But I guess it still doesn't help the processor situation or the harddrive situation. Honestly, I don't know why the Sempron is at 787 MHz, I was a little surprised too. Maybe I can turn off that cool and quiet crap and maybe it is on. I thought it was supposed to be faster too considering my damn cellphone now has a 533 MHz processor. haha.

Anyway, I guess I can just get a used laptop off of craigslist for about 200 so I am probably better off doing that considering those are dual core at least.

Thanks anyway guys.
 
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