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Laptop Upgrade Path

T

Tbirdkid

Diamond Member
I have a toshiba A105-S4054 with the core solo, and with 1 gig of ram. I am looking to up the speed of it a bit and want to know where I am going to get the biggest bang for my buck. Hard drive, cpu, or memory? I am currently running xp sp2 and the notebook runs great for most of my stuff, but I want to do a bit more dvd compression, and things like that. What do you guys think?

Also, if its a cpu, what should I get? I dont know laptop sockets, so I would probably need a bit of help with that. Thanks!
 
You could probably upgrade to a Core Duo processor, bump the RAM up by a 512MB to 1GB. Hard drive should be fine unless you need more space. If it is a 4200RPM drive, definitely upgrade it to a 5400RPM drive (much faster). BTW, a high density 5400RPM drive will be just as fast or faster than a lower density 7200RPM drive (difference greater than 20GB). Of course, the 7200RPM drives will win when they are equal or larger in size.
 
Just add more RAM for a total of 2GB - if your chipset can support it (some Intel 915 chipsets would support only 1GB of RAM).

I would not attempt to replace a CPU in an OEM laptop - it might not be as easy as the BIOS update, but check if your model line has used any other CPU's.

Good luck!
 
Well, the notebook will support a c2d with just a bios update. Also, the hard drive I am not sure of the speed, but I can dig that up. Im just wondering what would be the biggest bang for my buck...
 
Easy. For DVD compression a CPU will make the most noticeable difference. However, as justageek pointed out, the upgrade path isn't cheap, nor easy (also take your manafacture's warranty into account).

Upgrading your RAM from 1 to 2GB is probably the easiest and cheapest way to see a performance increase. A 2gig kit can be had for well less than $100 these days, and is easy enough to do.
 
An Intel Core Duo will do wonderous things for, say, DVD encoding, but be warned: Upgrading a laptop's CPU is tricky, tricky, tricky. Some laptops (for example, the Macbook) have the CPU soldered to the motherboard, but even if it is socketed, prepare for a great deal of work in getting the old one out and the new one in.

More important, however, is the RAM. Upgrading to 1GB will cost you maybe $40 tops on the for sale/trade forum, and the resulting speed boost may be larger than you expected. As an added bonus, upgrading RAM is really, really easy.

Also, if you have a 4200rpm drive, a 5400rpm/8mb cache drive may make a noticable difference in load times. Toshiba laptop hard drives are, in my experience, kinda crappy.
 
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