XPS M1530 Upgrade Information

Well as stated in the title, I would love to know if there is something I can upgrade.

I've always wondered if the M1530 does support more than 1333MHz RAM? And the maximum ram it could come with was 4GB, which can (and will) be upgraded to 8GB.

Is it worth throwing a SATA-II 3Gbit/s SSD in there? It has one of the slowest boot in the world, the only available drive it came with was a HDD @ 5400 RPM.. which is slow, really slow, at least now a days, precious seconds wasted. So I was considering throwing a 500GB Hybrid drive in there... but a SATA-II SSD seems as a better option
You could ofc buy a SATA-III drive and put it in there but its a waste of speed when it cant handle it. I've thought, several times actually, about removing the ODD and getting using the current HDD as the slave drive could also be a possibility, I am currently highly considering it.

Well, beyond that, is there anything else you can upgrade?
The GPU? With the current mobo, it seems stupid and the screen is extremely useless vs. the new ones on the market right now, not to talk about the battery power.

So guys, any ideas or tweaks (hardware ones) that could improve the M1530 significantly?

+ Check my signature for the specs!
+ How To Disassemble Laptop (Dell XPS M1530)
+ Reserved..

Best regards
- jaug1337

 

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Please don't make multiple threads about the same topic.

That being said, the M1530 cannot take DDR3, and will not run DDR2 faster than 667MHz. You can install and boot with 800MHz or the rare 1066MHz DDR2, it just won't actually run at full speed. You can go up to 8GB, though.

You shouldn't have any issues with any of the aforementioned HDD/SSD upgrades, though.

I would nonetheless not recommend sinking anymore money into a 1530 due to the Nvidia BGA issue.

 

My bad, really, wasn't really trying to make the these threads about the same topics, but I can see what you mean, my bad.

I was under the impression that it could run 1333MHz that is indeed sad.. The RAM upgrade wouldn't be worth it then. I guess the HDD/SSD update could be worked out yes. Thought I haven't yet encountered any crashes or problems with my nVidia, although I've heard a lot about it.. Thanks Commander

 

Faster RAM has no real world benefits. Also do you need 8 GB RAM? Most people are fine with 4 GB which is relatively cheap. And yes PM/GM965 is restricted to 667 DDR2 speeds.

Just cause it doesn't happen to your machine, doesn't mean yours won't die. All Napa/Santa Rosa laptops with Nvidia are ticking time bombs.

 

I'm pretty sure the XPS M1530 maxes out at 4GB of RAM. The SSD upgrade might be worth it if you plan on using it in your next laptop too. Otherwise I would agree that it is not worth it to upgrade the M1530 at this point.

 

Yeah I imagined so... not even worth using the time to install a SSD.

I overclocked my GPU and CPU and have increased the speed of the machine by quite the margin thus far maybe a SSD will do.. haha, thanks for the answers guys!