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    Best laptop for upgrading

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by supertreat, May 22, 2011.

  1. supertreat

    supertreat Newbie

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    I'm looking at buying a new 14" laptop and I've noticed that many times it's cheaper to buy minimal upgrades and then upgrade the RAM, hard drive,wireless card etc. yourself. I have a couple questions - what components are easily upgraded and worth doing and what is the best "bare bones" system in terms of build quality to use this strategy - thanks.
     
    supertreat, May 22, 2011
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  2. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    Really depends on what you are getting..

    Brands like Sager rebrand Clevo, and everything is pretty much upgradable..

    ASUS stuff is for the most part upgradable, minus their reverse engineered MXM.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, May 22, 2011
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  3. supertreat

    supertreat Newbie

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    Is it possible to upgrade processor or should you buy the best you can afford? How about USB 3.0 - should that be purchased or is that upgradable? Also in terms of build quality do any stand out from the others?
     
    supertreat, May 22, 2011
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  4. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

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    ThinkPads are usually fairly easy to work on and are well built. Lenovo will even show you how to. You should note however, any time you upgrade a part that is not a CRU(customer replaceable unit), your warranty will be suspect.
     
    ZaZ, May 22, 2011
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  5. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    Unfortunately, the better build notebooks are business and they aren't exactly the most easy to upgrade unless you buy a 3000 dollar mobile workstation laptop.

    Lenovo does put BIOS restrictions for WLAN cards unless you want to do a BIOS hack. Also AFAIK they might whitelist CPUs. Many also BGA soldered so no upgrading (x series). IMO I don't think if you want the ultimate upgrade laptop is to buy a ThinkPad unless you get a W70x series laptop.

    USB 3.0 is still not integrated into the chipset, so most use a 3rd party chip (NEC, etc). Pretty much you have to buy that up front or have a laptop with ExpressCard to get 2-4.
     
    Tsunade_Hime, May 22, 2011
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  6. ZaZ

    ZaZ Super Model Super Moderator

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    That has not been my experience with regard to ThinkPads at least.
     
    ZaZ, May 23, 2011
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  7. naton

    naton Notebook Virtuoso

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    Same with the Dell Latitude Series.

    Generally speaking you can upgrade CPU, RAM, HDD, Wifi in most laptops. Laptop using low voltage CPUs cannot have their CPU upgraded as their CPUs are often soldered directly into the motherboard. Graphics cards cannot be upgraded in 90% - 95% of the cases.
     
    naton, May 23, 2011
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  8. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    Clevo / Sager FTW! Warranty is valid, you can work on it all you want, they just won't warrant the replaced component of course. Took me all of ten minutes to reapply thermal paste to my CPU and GPU. Take an extra two minutes to change out the CPU and GPU.
     
    HTWingNut, May 23, 2011
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