Laptop Upgrading (Gfx Card, Harddrive...)

[romansamurai]

Hey guys. A couple of questions. I just got myself this laptop from best buy for 699$. I thought it was a good price. Now, i wasn't really buying it to play games on it, it's mainly for work. I do genetic testing and research, most of my work is done through excel and calculators and studying data when I'm not seeing patients. So Graphics card is not a big deal. But there was another laptop for 500$ more wth a dedicated GTX 650m.

1. My first question is how hard is it to install a graphics card into my laptop. I put together desktop PCs from scratch, but never had to deal with laptops.
2. My second question is I don't really like windows 8, but the guy said it's hardcoded into the HD so I won't be able to remove it, even if I install windows 7. I'll just have dual OS. Is it worth the bother? Or do you guys just recommend I stick with Windows 8.
3. My third question, is I would like to get another hard drive, or even replace this one with an SSD. All my Desktops boot up with an SSD and I'm used to that speed...How difficult is it? Should I bother?
4. Oh and fourth is, I just forgot. I want to expand Ram a little. Maybe to 16GB. I made sure the laptop was expandable for Ram. Which sticks should I get and how hard is it 😀

Thanks again all. You've always been the place to go to for my questions. <3

 

[jaguarskx]

1. Impossible, only a few select model of expensive gaming laptops gives you the option to upgrade the graphic card. They are few and far between and these laptops generally cost at least $1,500.

2. In experience with Win 8, but from what I gathered based on other posts it is very hard to downgrade Win 8 to Win 7. Additionally, since Win 8 uses a different file format system than Win 7 it may make dual booting very difficult to impossible.

3. You can clone the OS partition and copy that to the SSD. I believe many SSD come with some cloning software which allows you to do so. If the laptop has an empty HDD bay, then you can stick the HDD there for storage space. When cloning make sure the data on the C: drive is not more than the available space on the SSD. I cannot give you specific instructions as I have not gone through this process myself yet. I'm waiting to receive my next laptop.

4. The difficultly of installing RAM can vary from laptop to laptop. Some laptops have a specific panel on the underside of the laptop that hides the RAM RAM slots; so just unscrew and install. Some you may need you to remove the entire bottom of the laptop because there is no specific panel just for the RAM slots.

A more difficult situation is when on of the RAM slot is hidden under the keyboard. This will be like minor surgery. You need to partially take apart the laptop to remove the keyboard to get to the RAM slot. Best to take pictures and make notes while doing this process. That way you just need to follow the same steps in reverse to re-assemble everything.

 

[romansamurai]

Ok cool, thank you for the answers. I'm not very worried about the graphics card. No biggie there, but as expected. As far as downgrading, I figured that I would need to just get a new hard drive and install windows 7 on that nd remove the hard drive with windows 8...but I think I might just stick to windows 8 for now. I really don't feel like spending 150$ on a new OS.

Which SSD (250-500GB size) would you recommend for the laptop? I have the samsung SSDs for my Desktops atm. I'm not sure how different it is for a laptop. But, this is the one I was considering And which Ram would you advise? The next build I think I'm getting Corsair Vengeance. I was thinking to get this one for the laptop

 

[jaguarskx]

Based on research it would seem that Crucial M4 series and Samsung 830 series are the best and most popular. However, the 830 series has been discontinued and replaced by the 840 series.

 

[jaguarskx]

I am not too familiar with 8GB RAM modules. I generally buy either Crucial or Corsair RAM.

 

[romansamurai]

Ok great. Thanks so much for your help.

 

[Rragar]

What's this utter profanity of an OS being hard-coded into a hard drive? As if the bloatware wasn't enough already.

I'm thinking, you could use the device manager to acquire the serial code of your hard drive, and then use it to figure out the brand and model. Download that brand's suite of hard drive tools, and use it to wipe the drive clean. It's at least worth a shot, I truly do not believe that the OS thing cannot be undone. If formatting and resizing doesn't do the trick, a zero-fill most certainly should.

 

[romansamurai]

What's this utter profanity of an OS being hard-coded into a hard drive? As if the bloatware wasn't enough already.

I'm thinking, you could use the device manager to acquire the serial code of your hard drive, and then use it to figure out the brand and model. Download that brand's suite of hard drive tools, and use it to wipe the drive clean. It's at least worth a shot, I truly do not believe that the OS thing cannot be undone. If formatting and resizing doesn't do the trick, a zero-fill most certainly should.

I'm going to give that a shot, I'm upgrading to an SSD for sure because I'm spoiled by their boot up times. But I would like to still have the 750HDD for movies and music. So I'd like to be able to wipe it clean.

Thank you for that suggestion. I will give it a shot.

 

[Rragar]

What's this utter profanity of an OS being hard-coded into a hard drive? As if the bloatware wasn't enough already.

I'm thinking, you could use the device manager to acquire the serial code of your hard drive, and then use it to figure out the brand and model. Download that brand's suite of hard drive tools, and use it to wipe the drive clean. It's at least worth a shot, I truly do not believe that the OS thing cannot be undone. If formatting and resizing doesn't do the trick, a zero-fill most certainly should.

I'm going to give that a shot, I'm upgrading to an SSD for sure because I'm spoiled by their boot up times. But I would like to still have the 750HDD for movies and music. So I'd like to be able to wipe it clean.

Thank you for that suggestion. I will give it a shot.

You're welcome.

If it's a Seagate drive, then you want to download Seagate Seatools for DOS, burn the image to create a bootable CD, and then you can use that to wipe the hard drives. It's very easy to use, so don't worry about it.