Latitude 15 3000 - Gaming system for $780? Too good to be true?

Hi everyone! This thread has been incredibly helpful in deciding which laptop to buy for college and some light gaming duties with great battery life. I have just a couple questions:
-Is the RAM upgradable with an additional stick of 4gb, or do I need to replace it with an 8gb stick? Can anyone recommend a product to do this?
-Are there any guides on how to replace the stock hard drive with an SSD? Or is it pretty self-explanatory?
Thank you!

 

You can plug another 4GB module, the laptop has two memory slots. It is better actually change both sticks to 1866MHz, since this laptop support that speed. Upgrading to SSD, it is relatively easy as well and if you need guide you can download from dell website the Latitude 3540 user manual.

 

Guys, this laptop was my best deal ever! The GPU is overclockable like hell, well over 8870M level. I actually do not even know where is the limit, because in MSI Afterburner I already pumped up the sliders as much as possible;



Result;
3272 3DMark11 points

 

Bahaha. I will have to try this!!

 

How did you get afterburner to OC?

 

OK so never mind, I had to download Sapphire TRIXX to get the GPU to overclock. Playing with settings now and I will get back to you all with results. At the end of this I will make a YouTube video on all of this with big thanks to Atom Ant as well.

 

One more very good thing what is possible to do for this laptop is to disable Intel Speed Step in the bios, than manually add the clocks all the way up to 2.4GHz in Throttlestop. This way the CPU will work at consistent frequency and that is good for games. Same time I get higher Phisics scores in 3DMark 11 than earlier. Try it and add this as well into your tweak video.

Ohh, and here is the guide how to use MSI Afterburner;

12. Settings --> Unofficial Overclocking mode: Without Power Play Support.

 

So, one more extra step is necessary to keep maximum frequency at CPU side and than it will hold 2.4GHz all the times, all games, near heavily overclocked GPU!



Throttlestop-->TPL-->TDP Level Control is must set to 2. Not sure what is this, but after you set there is no more cpu frequency drop;



As you can see near performance the temperatures are rised pretty well too! No more 70C temperatures, that is the side effect. Measuring power consumption from wall hits 75W. Before was between 50-60W.



Result,



Look at that Physics score too.

 

Yeah I had to do the same thing! This laptop is now running pretty good! DOTA 2 in 1080p settings running around 80 fps. CS:GO running at 50-60 FPS as well from the 40 and below that I would experience.Yeah, definitely going to have to make a video of this after my finals this week.

Thanks AtomAnt! I had originally given up on OCing or increasing the performance of this laptop anymore than what came stock. With your help I am able to push this thing much more! The next thing I have been trying to look into is if there are better keyboards for this thing, the shallow keys are decent for gaming but when you go and have to type papers or emails, it kind of sucks due to the short travel. I can say that I am getting more used to it than when I first got it. I would have to type very slow because of the way that the keyboard is shaped.

 

You must have gotten a good batch. Mine starts freaking out at 680 core.