Solved! Upgrading an older laptop [SOLVED]

[rustedmetal]

I have a Toshiba Satellite C55-B5356 and i'm looking to upgrade it's ram amongst other things. This laptop is about four yrs old and I only use for casual things so no gaming or anything taxing. But anyway that doesn't mean I don't want to upgrade it as much as possible.

So I belive can upgrade it to 16 GB max from the 8 that I currently have. Please, can you guys suggest the best possible upgrades to this laptop to make it run faster? The laptop doesn't have any issues I just mainly want to do this as a pastime as it can be extremely entertaining.
Thanks in advance.

 

[helpstar]

Only upgrade the HDD to a SSD. More RAM than 8GB doesn´t impact the performance

Eventually the CPU I5-4210U could be replaced to something better (not proved that it will run a better CPU, depends on BIOS compatibility, also if you chose to upgrade the CPU, you should chose one with up to 15Watt and use fresh thermal paste while installing):
http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/CPUs/Intel/Core_i5_Mobile/i5-4210U.html

 

[rustedmetal]

So i'm assuming that more ram won't help it in this case because ram doesn't improve typical pc usage? An SSD is something I wasn't thinking about because I've been under the impression that is mainly an advantage to open up programs faster like Word, Excel..etc and not something for faster web surfing; am I correct ? Also, an I5 is what i'm running currently in the laptop...so, I guess the one you suggested is a better version...? Excuse my ignorance btw. Thank you

 

[helpstar]

SSD:
quicker for following things:
-boot up time, shutdown time
-opening apps
-copying, moving, deleting files

web surfing would not improve, but the browser would open up faster

How fast is your internet bandwidth?

I had another look at the CPU and it´s not replacable. It´s soldered to the motherboard.

 

[rustedmetal]

Sorry for the late reply. Well, I'm getting an SSD for sure then since it helps with start up and opens the browser quicker. Thank you. As far a my bandwidth i'm not sure but I stream movies through the PlayStation store and Netflix without any issues and my signal in all my electronics always reads as very strong.

So, I actually change the thermal paste today and noticed that the fan wasn't plugged in to the connector. No wonder it always got a quite bit hot right above the heatsink, I thought this was normal . Thank god I don't play any games on the laptop. Anyway, now with the fan plugged in it doesn't get anywhere near as hot on that area when I touch it.

On a side note now that I mention the fan--when I first got this laptop (about four yrs ago as an open item) it would emit this very strange smell whenever I would turn it on. I opened it and replaced the thermal paste and after I put it back together the smell was gone, well as I mentioned earlier I guess I left the fan unplugged unconciously from the connector and so it would never kick in, hence, there was no strange smell coming from it. Now that I plugged it in the strange smell is back when it kicks in. So, I think I have a somewhat defective fan and would like to change it. How do I know what different brand is compatible with my laptop?

 

[rustedmetal]

Never mind about the fan, I guess I can research that myself. thx

 

[helpstar]

Thanks for the feedback anyways
Hopefully it´s only the fan and not something else cooking what´s around the fan

 

[rustedmetal]

it's a very chemically smell.

 

[helpstar]

ususally such chemical smell could be an ELKO (capacitor) on the motherboard or the battery of the laptop