Is there a fix for the mistake of a laptop I bought 6 years ago?

[BRO90X]

Well high school me thought it was a great idea to buy an alienware m14x. Well Ive never been happy with it, it runs wow on medium with 30-40 fps if that (back then maybe a little more, but it was an upgrade from my crappy $300 dell).

My question is what can I do to speed this thing up because obviously its not up-gradable being a laptop. I want to be able to run wow and be able to surf mmo-c without having to wait 5 mins for a page to load...(no its not my internet).

Im not as tech savvy as yall on here so if you need more info tell me how to find it and I will get it for you.

Specs:
Intel i7 2630QM @ 2ghz
4gb ram
Intel hd 3000 gpu/ nvidia geforce gt 555m
Windows 10

Also my fan noise is ridiculous so any help on that would also be appreciated.

[Speaker]

Yeah, you can't upgrade a laptop, which is why most people don't buy them. They just aren't cost effective. You need to buy/build a new system from scratch.

[Chickat]

Buy a new one. Laptops are not meant to last 6 years..

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You could spend 400 dollars and get something twice as good as that or more. I say save up 600 or 700 dollars and build a budget gaming pc.

[QuiksLE]

You probably don't have a SSD, start there and maybe your ram is upgradable. But other than that, you need to buy a new comp

[BRO90X]

Buy a new one. Laptops are not meant to last 6 years..

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You could spend 400 dollars and get something twice as good as that or more. I say save up 600 or 700 dollars and build a budget gaming pc.

Yea was trying to avoid it like the plague if I could. I have the budget and am in the market for a new one, but I just want to salvage this one.

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You probably don't have a SSD, start there and maybe your ram is upgradable. But other than that, you need to buy a new comp

no I do not have an ssd. And ram was obviously the one thing Id start with as its cheap and easy to do. How are the external SSDs?

[Speaker]

Yea was trying to avoid it like the plague if I could. I have the budget and am in the market for a new one, but I just want to salvage this one.

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no I do not have an ssd. And ram was obviously the one thing Id start with as its cheap and easy to do. How are the external SSDs?

An SSD or RAM aren't going to increase your fps though... Only a new GPU, or CPU, which you can't replace in a laptop.

[BRO90X]

An SSD or RAM aren't going to increase your fps though... Only a new GPU, or CPU, which you can't replace in a laptop.

Understood. But it would load faster and multi task better wouldnt it?

[Speaker]

Understood. But it would load faster and multi task better wouldnt it?

Yeah it would, I would personally just save up for a new comp though.

[Fascinate]

I bought this a few months back its the best value on the market:
http://www.amazon.com/Asus-F555LA-AB...eywords=laptop

1080p screen for under 400 bucks with an i3, snappy lil bugger and even plays WoW on medium 30-40 fps.

[Deleted]

First off, it's not normal that a page takes 5 mins to load on a machine with that hardware, you might want to look inot that first cause it sounds like a faulty HDD to me.

If you really want to upgrade that thing, the biggest impact on loading times is gonna come from putting an SSD in it. Otherwise on hardware performance, the GPU is the bottleneck for gaming, and it's going to be near impossbile to replace it, as in laptops they are hard-soldiered onto the motherboard. You could run an external GPU but i advice against it as that laptop does not have a thunderbolt connection, and running external GPU on USB is really the last thing you want to do.
Upgrading your RAM is not going to increase your gaming performance much on that machine.

You could try to run Linux instead of Windows 10, you'll probably get a lot better OS performance at least with that hardware. If you have some minimal tech knowledge, you can run WoW on Linux also. If you want to have a "windows-like" experience look into Mint Linux, it's a Ubuntu derivative that is created to give a Windows look and feel.

[Chickat]

Yea was trying to avoid it like the plague if I could. I have the budget and am in the market for a new one, but I just want to salvage this one.

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no I do not have an ssd. And ram was obviously the one thing Id start with as its cheap and easy to do. How are the external SSDs?

Maybe you can get like 100 dollars for it. Idk though. Id just sell it and use that money to help build a new one. How much are you looking to spend? If possible can you wait until June-August for new cards? If you want performance the 1070 or 1080 will be great in late may/early June, but I believe the new amd cards are going to be less powerful but all about price/performance, so you may want to wait and spend like 200 dollars on one of those.

[BRO90X]

Maybe you can get like 100 dollars for it. Idk though. Id just sell it and use that money to help build a new one. How much are you looking to spend? If possible can you wait until June-August for new cards? If you want performance the 1070 or 1080 will be great in late may/early June, but I believe the new amd cards are going to be less powerful but all about price/performance, so you may want to wait and spend like 200 dollars on one of those.

Yea if I were to build one Id wait for the new cards or get a cheap one off craigslist for now.

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First off, it's not normal that a page takes 5 mins to load on a machine with that hardware, you might want to look inot that first cause it sounds like a faulty HDD to me.

If you really want to upgrade that thing, the biggest impact on loading times is gonna come from putting an SSD in it. Otherwise on hardware performance, the GPU is the bottleneck for gaming, and it's going to be near impossbile to replace it, as in laptops they are hard-soldiered onto the motherboard. You could run an external GPU but i advice against it as that laptop does not have a thunderbolt connection, and running external GPU on USB is really the last thing you want to do.
Upgrading your RAM is not going to increase your gaming performance much on that machine..

The 5 mins loading time is a exaggeration lol. Now WoW loading times, 5 mins is about right haha. What would happen if I did run an external GPU just out of curiosity?

[Deleted]

The 5 mins loading time is a exaggeration lol. Now WoW loading times, 5 mins is about right haha. What would happen if I did run an external GPU just out of curiosity?

If you run an external GPU on USB you will hit the bandwidth limit, especially see-ing as that is probably USB 2.0 on a 6year old laptop.
It's entirely possible that you will get even worse performance than with the built-in GPU that way.

[Rad1um]

Get an SSD, then get 16gb of RAM, you will see a significant different.

This being said, dont ever game on a laptop. Even if its a super duper awesome amazing expensive one, it isn't worth it. Invest in a PC that can be upgraded later.

[Chickat]

Whats your budget?

[Deleted]

Get an SSD, then get 16gb of RAM, you will see a significant different.

This being said, dont ever game on a laptop. Even if its a super duper awesome amazing expensive one, it isn't worth it. Invest in a PC that can be upgraded later.

16GB of RAM is not going to make a difference as opposed to 4GB on that system. In fact anything above 8GB of RAM does not make any difference at all in any rig for gaming, save a few games like TW3. Upgrading to 16GB ram is throwing away money, on any rig, unless you are into video editing or run virtual machines or something alike.

http://www.techspot.com/articles-inf.../Gaming_01.png

http://www.techspot.com/articles-inf.../Gaming_02.png

http://www.techspot.com/articles-inf.../Gaming_03.png

Thumbnails please!

[BRO90X]

Whats your budget?

$800-1k Lower the better.

[Chickat]

$800-1k Lower the better.

Do you need a monitor/peripherals/OS? What about a gpu. Do you want to get something like a 950 for 120 bucks to last until this summer?

[BRO90X]

Do you need a monitor/peripherals/OS? What about a gpu. Do you want to get something like a 950 for 120 bucks to last until this summer?

Yes monitor/keyboard/no preference on OS but will need one

[Chickat]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($244.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($24.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170 Pro4S ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($112.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($34.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($46.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 950 2GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0 Video Card ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($83.89 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: BenQ GL2460HM 60Hz 24.0" Monitor ($139.00 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Cooler Master CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $947.67
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-14 18:03 EDT-0400



Idk if you are in the US, and if you wanted to use integrated graphics until this summer you could shave off 120 dollars. Tbh, even with integrated graphics it would still get you more framerate then that laptop. So if you did that Im sure someone on here could get it close to the 800 dollar mark. Im not great with choosing parts, but thats a rough draft.

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Btw, I have that monitor and its pretty good. Its not 2k/4k, or 120+hz but its good bang for buck.