SSD Laptop upgrade

richyb_safc · 28 Jan 2012 at 13:14

Hi All,

I seem to be in the mood for buying SSDs at the minute and as I can't justify buying one for myself (yet) I've managed to talk my Parents into thinking about upgrading their (my old) laptop.

It was decent when I bought it, which was only a few years ago and they only use it for web browsing and pobably the odd bit of Word etc if they're doing some work at home. Storage isn't really an issue so I was thinking of ordering this

Basically, I need to make sure they'll see some kind of benefit before I order it, and OcUK has never let me down yet when I need advice

Also, is there anything I need to look out for? I'm thinking motherboard connections etc. I've already upgraded it to Windows7 when it was mine so I've got the OS.

Thanks in advance,
Richy

N31L777 · 28 Jan 2012 at 13:22

As long as the laptop is SATA and not PATA then you're fine. Windows 7 will have drivers for it. You need to check what SATA operation mode you can use on your BIOS as it will be slower if it's not AHCI capable.

You'll still see an improvement from a standard spinning disk.

BunnyKillBot · 28 Jan 2012 at 13:34

Can you use something like CPU-Z and post back what chipset/southbridge it is running?

richyb_safc · 28 Jan 2012 at 13:45

chipset: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Rev A2
southbridge: NVIDIA nForce 410/430 MCP A3

Cheers for this!

BunnyKillBot · 28 Jan 2012 at 14:07

Yeah looks fine, definitely Sata II not III, so no point getting the more expensive new incarnations. Whats the CPU / RAM? Sometimes with old laptops there comes a question of whether its worth upgrading. For instance, the advantages of a processor with > 1 core can out weight the single core P4s

http://www.nvidia.com/page/gpu_mobo_features.html

SATA 3Gb/s
Take advantage of the latest SATA 3Gb/s hard disk drives, which double bus bandwidth and provides blazingly high disk performance. This technology provides easy-to-install, high-performance but low-powered hard drives.

edit: the wiki says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce4

There have also been data corruption issues associated with certain SATA 3 Gbit/s hard drives. The issues can often be resolved with a firmware update for the hard drive from the manufacturer.

But does not give a reference.... googling suggests its more an issue with Maxtor drives

richyb_safc · 28 Jan 2012 at 14:17

Thanks for that, very helpful!

The CPU is an AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile T-60 and there's 2GB of PC2-5300 RAM.

I'm thinking this might be a go-er, I like spending other people money

I'm off out now (to get a replacement charging cable for it) so I wont be on for a while but I'll check back some time tonight.

Thanks again people,
Richy

BunnyKillBot · 28 Jan 2012 at 15:47

Yeah definitely worth it. An SSD will breath a new lease of life in to it. The 5400 spin 2.5" hods are an incredibly slow bottle neck, and even if they start hitting the 2Gb RAM cap paging onto an SSD is much quicker. Thumbs up.

richyb_safc · 30 Jan 2012 at 12:23

Well...ordered today. I'l llet you know what I think once I've installed Windows etc in the next couple of days. There seems to be loads of threads asking if it's worthwhile and the majority of people seem to agree it is, but there are a few who say otherwise so I'm very interested to see what I think.

Bearing in mind I'm used to using my PC (i5 750 @3.4GHz, 4gb RAM and a velociraptor boot drive) if I think it's fast I'm sure they will when comparing the laptop before and after. Also, if it loads Windows/Word etc faster than my PC it may nudge me to upgrade next month.

I'm also installing a 128gb SSD in a friends new gaming rig this week (i5 2500k, 8gb, 6950 etc) so the effect on his Battleifeld 3 load times may also push me.

@BunnyKillBot Thanks again for the help, it's very much appreciated

Richy