Questions About ASUS Laptop Lifetime

So I've owned an ASUS laptop for quite a long time. It was originally intended as a portable gaming machine since I had no permanent home. But what with game requirements going up I'm not sure how long it's going to work with the same old specs.

My laptop is an ASUS N71JQ that I had bought roughly five years ago, following are a few specs:

http://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/N71Jq/specifications/

Only difference is that I have 4 GB RAM, W7 basic, 500 GB storage and Non-blu ray optical disk drive.

So my particular question is, how long does this machine have before it stops working completely and beyond all repair. Also what all can I upgrade in this machine at this point if anything, even RAM?

 

With 4GB of RAM (max 8GB), W7 Basic (Even older than your notebook and worse than Win7x64Pro) and the 'horrible'*** Intel® HM55 Express Chipset/Arrandale platform (which decimates performance for any SSD you can install), this platform is already obsolete, imo.

How long it lasts is another matter. That depends on luck and how much you baby your systems.

Even with Win8.1x64Pro, 2x 4GB 1600MHz SoDimms and a modern/current SSD of ~500GB or larger, this system will still feel dated and slow and there will be no guarantee that the other components won't fail either after this cash, effort/time and technology infusion is completed.

While the system can accept 8GB RAM total, I don't think that the limitations of W7 Basic make it worth it to upgrade even this relatively inexpensive (hard cost + time to upgrade) part.

To do a complete and proper upgrade will cost somewhere north of $600 and at least two days worth of your time to manually setup the system properly to a usable state again (if you did do this, I would recommend taking it apart fully and cleaning out the dust and re-applying the TIM on the cpu and gpu too at that time, but - I do not recommend this upgrade on this platform in any event from a bang for the buck perspective anyways).

That can be ~$600 towards a new system where the performance (especially in gaming) will be in whole multiples increases (vs. some small percentage over where you are now, even with all the recommended upgrades above).

See:
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=10531103058&vpn=K550JK-DH71-CA&manufacture=ASUS

For ~$400 more, you can have the linked system instead (or better; I spent 2 seconds searching for that example). And the upgrades you are able to do on your current system will be worth to do on a more modern platform (along with the ability and benefits of 16GB max RAM too).

Even better, if you can wait or need to save some cash before you buy a new system, the Skylake based platforms should be what you are aiming for this September. Even if you don't buy a Skylake platform - the prices of the last gen products will still be lower than today (remember to check out back to school sales starting in August, of course).

Hope some of this helps.

Good luck.

 

Here's my take I doubt it will cost 600$ to upgrade...redoing the thermal paste will go along way to keeping your system cool and working as well as memory and SSD will keep it running with more recent games. With SSD coming down in price and DDR3 hard or easy to find you can get some decent prices on them since there is no DDR4 laptop RAM yet. So the system is old but since it is a Gaming laptop will still out perform Consumer laptop any time of the day. I would say get Windows 7 x64 Pro SP1 that will do alot to rejuvenate your laptop to working specs. I would rather upgrade a Gaming laptop then a consumer laptop and that is what I am doing for the money it is worth it will still run circles around Consumer laptop for gaming.

 

Actually the basic is 64 bit. It says so in the dx diag. tool. I'd say that's trustworthy enough.

As for upgrades, well I knew it'd be bad. Just needed confirmation. However, I'm stuck with this machine for at least another 2 years and I'm only looking to make games playable if only for a little longer. Everything was working fine until Shadow of Mordor released. After that some releases have not worked on my computer and what with games outright stating that even minimum requirements have to be at least around 6 GB RAM, I don't think any of these newer releases would work either. Insufficient RAM means games might outright crash whereas insufficient CPU, GPU requirements just means lower performance.

Can you give me an estimate of how long my machine has? Nothing particularly accurate. I understand it isn't a particularly predictable value. I'm not sure I would stick to a mobile platform in the future, so the upgrades may not be worthwhile if I have little time left with this machine.

Also if I choose to go ahead with a fair upgrade to maintain playability with newer games NOT perform to the level of more recent gaming computers, how much would it cost me?

I'm assuming that in case the options mentioned by you guys may be too expensive and I start looking for a dirt cheap upgrade, I would go for a RAM only upgrade, right? Where I am (India), mobile 2 GB RAM sticks start at as low as ~20$ and it goes upwards from there for larger amounts of RAM.

 

Up the RAM to 8GB, about $50, get SSD, I've seen 250 GB bellow $100, most important: clean inside and repaste and do fresh install of Windows, (if basic works for you, why not). Windows accumulate a lot of garbage, if you didn't clean it properly over years and some of it is very hard to do, you may be surprised how snappy the laptop will become. As for the games lower the resolution and settings and you should be fine. Not the best solution but the least expensive. it should work another year or 2. BTW very likely you could reuse SSD in your future new computer, so net cost of upgrade would be just RAM.

 

All right, thanks guys. One more thing I would like to know, is how many RAM chips can the motherboard support. Also I am assuming that if I replace the HDD with an SSD, I won't be able to use data from the HDD, is that right? Would it be possible to use my current HDD as an external HDD somehow after the replacement?

 

N71jq can take 2 SODIMM and depending on what is already installed, you may only need to buy a single 4GB SODIMM. For the HDD, all you need to do is buy a SATA to USB enclosure and you can access the data from the old HDD from any computer.

 

As for using your current HD after replacing it with a SSD, you can do a couple things I can think of.
1.) Buy an external enclosure for about $10-$20. Put your old HD in there and you can access it as an external HD via USB.
2.) You can replace your optical drive with a second HD caddy (aftermarket, for about $12 to $20). Put your old HD in there and you can access it as a second internal drive. You will have to get an external optical drive if you need to play music, videos, data, etc from optical media.

Hope this helps...
Cheers.

 

If you are like me, I don't really use optical media any more so having that extra bay can come in really handy for storage as suggested by grescinos, just make sure you get a caddy with a changeable face plate (and move over the one on your optical drive) so that it sits flush with the casing.

 

Those suggestions are really helpful. I never even realized half of the stuff you guys mentioned was possible with an HDD what with the way the actual HDD looked when I opened this laptop last time. Though how exactly would replacing the optical media drive for another HDD work?

Also, anybody have particular brand/model recommendations for the RAM, SSD and SATA to USB enclosure? I'd like to keep my upgrades as cheap as possible but not to the point of getting something that doesn't work on my motherboard, doesn't work up to specs or has limited and terrible warranty. And I may just do something that stupid if I go out on my own to make these purchases while trying to get stuff as cheap as possible.

Another reason that I need to keep it cheap (and I didn't mention earlier so that I could get relatively unbiased posts) is that I still live under my parents' care and seeing as somehow most electronic goods acquire a price of at least 1.5 times more outside of US/UK/Canada/Australia/etc., and how even a $20 figure can seem astronomical what with it being equivalent to roughly Rs. 1274 here in India, it may dissuade them from allowing me to make the required purchases. I may even only end up getting 1 4 GB RAM stick and nothing else.

But don't let that stop you from making all the suggestions you can. I only ask that you make those suggestions as cheap as you possibly can with them having the most bang for buck as possible without having a high probability of negligible/terrible functioning and/or company services.

 

All right so I did some checking for the cheapest of SSDs and RAMs on a local version of Amazon-esque site and most of the cheap ones seem to be in the same price range with a few exceptions. Tell me what you think. And in case you need to convert inr to usd/gbp/euro/etc., just type in inr to usd/euro/gbp/etc. into the google search bar in case you need an idea of what the cost is like.

RAM:

http://www.junglee.com/Patriot-Sign...8537&sr=1-142&keywords=ram#productDescription

http://www.junglee.com/Kingston-Val...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433098808&sr=1-172&keywords=ram

http://www.junglee.com/Kingston-Tec...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433098808&sr=1-175&keywords=ram

http://www.junglee.com/Crucial-DDR3...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433098808&sr=1-174&keywords=ram

http://www.junglee.com/Kingston-Tec...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433098808&sr=1-173&keywords=ram

I don't know why the product page lists a different price but the search page has listed prices for the last two around the same range as the first three.

SSD:
http://www.junglee.com/ADATA-Premie...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433099105&sr=1-160&keywords=SSD

http://www.junglee.com/Liteon-S900-...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433099105&sr=1-166&keywords=SSD

http://www.junglee.com/Apacer-M4-M-...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433099181&sr=1-169&keywords=SSD

http://www.junglee.com/Premier-SP31...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433099181&sr=1-178&keywords=SSD

http://www.junglee.com/SanDisk-Read...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433099181&sr=1-181&keywords=SSD

http://www.junglee.com/ADATA-Premie...&ie=UTF8&qid=1433099181&sr=1-187&keywords=SSD

Tell me what your opinions are on these products.