Revive old dell laptop?

[BAcon]

I have a 13 yr old Dell laptop that is in need of some tlc, it is of the following specs:

Dell L702X XPS 17"
I7-2630QM
GT550M (may be a gt555m)
6GB DDR3 (2gb and 4gb)
256GB SSD and a 500gb hdd

The screen hinge/bezel etc is cracked on one side of the screen, the vertical bar that supports the screen and attaches to the hinge is snapped and the lid itself which the hinge screws into is broken as a result. Additionally the 9 cell battery is completely dead and requires plugging in to operate at all times.

So my thoughts process is basically surrounding whether this old thing is worth repairing to a low standard in order I can keep it going and using it as a laptop to an extent, or whether I call it a day.

Repair cost:
Epoxy the hinge to the snapped mounts on the lid or replace lid £20 (used and a bit scruffy but structurally looks good)
Hinge bar £20
Replacement battery £15 (cheapest junk) or £70 OEM
Total cost £35 to £110

I Won't be worrying about cosmetics, but that would get it operational as a laptop.

Additionally it could do with
Memory 2x8gb ddr3 £20

So cheapest solution is epoxy the lid, replace the hinge bar, cheapest battery and memory upgrade to 16gb, should be around £55.

Given the specs, is this old dog worth keeping going? Or is the spec going to struggle against even some basic micro pcs that cost as much as these repairs!

 

[BAcon]

Yeh just taking it apart at the moment, 13yr old thermal paste on the CPU and GPU are pretty crusty. Surprisingly clean inside otherwise though, considering how loud this has become.

Will replace the paste now and put it back together, ready for my screen repair option of choice.
You're probably right on the battery, perhaps not worth it. Was just thinking if the power cable ever comes loose at least it wouldn't just instantly power off!

 

[BAcon]

Ordered the lid and hinges, same seller had both.

Seems my arctic silver 5 was all gone....must have used it all sorting out a couple of ps4s a little while back

Seems I'm massively out of date with thermal paste as nobody uses AS5 anymore!!
So I've done a little research and ended up with some Arctic MX4 on the way. Seems like a reliable long lasting paste, so refitting the cooler is delayed a little. But that will give time for the lid to arrive. Will get 16gb of memory to go with it too.

I've been dual booting it through last few years, windows 10 and Ubuntu, but I'll check out some other distros before I commit this time.

 

[BAcon]

Good point. Will take a look, this one is completely dead so can't make it any worse

 

[BAcon]

Yeah it has the 1080p display, was a reasonably well specced laptop at the time.

Worst case my son can use it for Minecraft

 

[BAcon]

Interesting and I will defo give this a go. Thank you

 

[BAcon]

I tried the battery trick but to no avail, might pick one up at some point. But for now it is running great, cleaned it up, dropped 16GB of memory into it and sorted the hinge. It's running Windows 10 very well.