Upgrade my CPU or go from HDD to SSD?

[Richard I]

I can only afford to upgrade one on my toaster laptop. I'll post my specs when I get back to my laptop

Also: I cannot get a desktop because the college I am going to does not allow it. You can bring a personal laptop but that is it.

And my specs: AMD E2-7110 APU with AMD Radeon R2 Graphics, 1.80 GHz, 64 bit processor and 4gb RAM

[Omega]

You probably can't upgrade the CPU in your laptop.

Laptops with upgradable CPUs are uncommon.

[Cloudy]

Originally posted by Exaotic:

I can only afford to upgrade one on my toaster laptop. I'll post my specs when I get back to my laptop

Can't upgrade a laptop's CPU... Your best option is sell it and get a desktop tower.

[kcducttaper]

An SSD is, by far, the best bang for the buck in terms of loading speed, responsiveness, etc! I dropped an SSD in my laptop when I was in college (~8 years ago) and was amazed how fast it suddenly became! Heck, I still use that laptop to this day for general laptop duties and it still doesn't feel slow or laggy. For normal browsing, opening documents, etc, it feels just about as fast as my ~3 year old work laptop with an i7, 32G memory, quadro video card, etc! Grab yourself a nice SSD and you'll be amazed how much snappier it will be!

If you can, I'd look into bumping up the memory a little bit as well.

[[☥] - CJ -]

An SSD will only slightly help, the entirety of that laptop is lacking.
Upgrading the RAM to 8GB if possible would probably be more worth while

[kcducttaper]

"Slightly help"? Try 3 times as fast?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85eDWwPzOSo&

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

OP there's not much you can do other than change / upgrade storage, and memory. If you want a laptop with better CPU & GPU or better APU, then you need to get a whole new laptop with those better specs, as that's the downside when it comes to laptops.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

The laptop is terrible even for basic internet usages, save up and buy a newer laptop with an 8th Gen i5 or better, or build a desktop

[kcducttaper]

To the OP:

Keep in mind the type of people that frequent these forums. Many of them are gamers who upgrade their hardware every 2-3 years to play the latest games and can throw silly amounts of money into it. Personally, I'm more of a value person and, for me, the value just isn't there to upgrade all the time.

My personal laptop is an HP ENVY Ultrabook CTO 6t-1100 with a 3rd gen i5 processor, 6GB memory, and I upgraded the hard drive to an SSD in college (HUGE improvement just by upgrading the SSD). It's not going to play games at crazy settings or compile movie edits lighning fast, but for browsing the interwebz, doing homework, compiling programs (Computer Science major), streaming videos, etc... It is perfectly fine to this day.

I remember my college days well and I know that the budget is super tight (which is something a lot of people on these forums don't understand). Heck, I lived on peanut butter and bread for a while while being a full-time student and working 30+ hours/week. Not fun. In my experience, if you drop in an SSD and have a local computer guy clone your current HD to your new HD, I'm sure it'll last you at least another couple years.

[Autumn_]

Originally posted by kcducttaper:

To the OP:

Keep in mind the type of people that frequent these forums. Many of them are gamers who upgrade their hardware every 2-3 years to play the latest games and can throw silly amounts of money into it. Personally, I'm more of a value person and, for me, the value just isn't there to upgrade all the time.

My personal laptop is an HP ENVY Ultrabook CTO 6t-1100 with a 3rd gen i5 processor, 6GB memory, and I upgraded the hard drive to an SSD in college (HUGE improvement just by upgrading the SSD). It's not going to play games at crazy settings or compile movie edits lighning fast, but for browsing the interwebz, doing homework, compiling programs (Computer Science major), streaming videos, etc... It is perfectly fine to this day.

I remember my college days well and I know that the budget is super tight (which is something a lot of people on these forums don't understand). Heck, I lived on peanut butter and bread for a while while being a full-time student and working 30+ hours/week. Not fun. In my experience, if you drop in an SSD and have a local computer guy clone your current HD to your new HD, I'm sure it'll last you at least another couple years.

I'm quite poor, don't have the money to spend on new parts all the time.
So yes, I know all about budgets, and value for money, since it's part of my every day life.

An SSD won't help you much, it will only help your computer boot faster, and load games slightly faster. (And making file browsing on your computer much faster.)
Beyond that, there is no use for it.

If you want something for gaming, it's honestly better to just save for a new laptop. You can get pretty decent hardware for pretty cheap prices on the used market.
It's pointless strapping an SSD into a POS like that, it's hardly going to make a difference, it's better to put money toward something with some actual use.

[kcducttaper]

Originally posted by Autumn:

I'm quite poor, don't have the money to spend on new parts all the time.
So yes, I know all about budgets, and value for money, since it's part of my every day life.

An SSD won't help you much, it will only help your computer boot faster, and load games slightly faster. (And making file browsing on your computer much faster.)
Beyond that, there is no use for it.

If you want something for gaming, it's honestly better to just save for a new laptop. You can get pretty decent hardware for pretty cheap prices on the used market.
It's pointless strapping an SSD into a POS like that, it's hardly going to make a difference, it's better to put money toward something with some actual use.

I guess the OP didn't specify gaming vs college duties, but then neither did I. For gaming, I agree. My HP can't really run any modern titles worth a hoot - or at all and I would be better off buying a whole new machine if I were to try to do any sort of gaming on it. But, for college duties where you're loading up programs, submitting online homework/quizzes, taking notes, watching lectures, etc, an SSD will make load times much quicker and should suffice quite well at least for quite a while.

[_I_]

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Puma/AMD-E2-Series%20E2-7110.html

Socket: BGA (FP4)

bga = ball grid array, its soldered to the board not a removable socket

[UKN ME BRO]

buy a gaming pc labtops are not meant for gaming and they are not upgradable

[Autumn_]

Originally posted by 駭客:

buy a gaming pc labtops are not meant for gaming and they are not upgradable

....

Originally posted by Exaotic:

Also: I cannot get a desktop because the college I am going to does not allow it. You can bring a personal laptop but that is it.

[_I_]

very few laptops have cpus in sockets that can be easily upgraded
even fewer have gpu(s) in pci-e slots that can also be upgraded

[[☥] - CJ -]

Originally posted by kcducttaper:

"Slightly help"? Try 3 times as fast?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85eDWwPzOSo&

You are missing the point
Yes an SSD is faster than the HDD in the laptop
But the laptop itself is WEAK and isnt comparable to your laptop

I think more RAM would be more helpful than an SSD in this case, especially if higher clocked RAM affects the performance like it does for Ryzens Integrated. 4GB isnt a lot to work with when Win10 itself normally uses around 2GB normally and then all the RAM that browsers end up using.