Old Laptop - New SSD Results with Pictures

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GMFan

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I finally got around to installing a SSD on my laptop and installing Windows 10.

Original Thread

I followed the advice of others in the original thread and I removed the fan/heat sink and cleaned it all up and applied new thermal paste to the CPU. The old paste was old and crusty.

I am very happy with the new performance of my laptop and I'm very happy I did not decide to spend a lot of money on a new laptop. I bought a PNY 240GB SSD from BestBuy on sale yesterday for $79.99. I went back to BestBuy this morning to grab some thermal paste and the drive is back up to $99.99. For the SSD, thermal paste and a can of compressed air I spent a total of $93.17. I upgraded to Windows 10 for free. I used the Lenovo recovery disks I created to restore my system with Windows 7. From there I ran the Windows 10 upgrade. I did not upgrade to 8GB of RAM as I think 4GB is enough for my use.

Pardon my ignorance here, but does my computer have a GPU? In device manager I see that I have 'Intel(R) HD Graphics' which I assume means it is integrated. From my research online folks also recommend replacing the thermal paste on the GPU but I did not see any other heat sink or fan. Are my graphics handled by the CPU? Should there be another chip elsewhere? I did not see anything inside that looked like a GPU.

Overall I highly recommend this upgrade. My 5 year old laptop runs great and the fan is quieter and it doesn't slow down as much with high load. I do believe my computer was overheating as I got freezing and blue screens before and the computer got HOT. By no means is the computer blazing fast but it is certainly a nice improvement. I'm confident I can get a couple more years out of this laptop. A new Lenovo at BestBuy with a new generation Core i5, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD I as looking at runs $799.

Pictures of Repairs
 
Originally Posted By: GMFan
By no means is the computer blazing fast


Where/when are you experiencing slowdowns?

P.S. - Great job on getting in there and doing the upgrades - excellent!
 
Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
Originally Posted By: GMFan
By no means is the computer blazing fast


Where/when are you experiencing slowdowns?

P.S. - Great job on getting in there and doing the upgrades - excellent!



I'm not experiencing any slow downs. I guess what I mean to say is that I did expect the computer to be a tad faster but then again it is a first generation Core i5. It does boot in about 15 seconds which is great. I have no doubts though that it is faster than a brand new $400 or $500 laptop with a standard hard drive. I should have performed this upgrade two years ago.

I did have a problem with Windows 10 where the drive was showing 100% activity. After some extensive Google searching I found a thread on reddit with advice that worked. I fixed it by going to settings, system, notifications, and turning off "show me tips about Windows." Windows 10 seems to have a few bugs. I also had issues streaming videos on YouTube which was solved by reinstalling/upgrading Adobe Flash.
 
I have the same ssd it's terrible I wish I wasn't in such a hurry the speed is abysmal. I highly recommend you return it and buy a Samsung 850 Evo off Newegg. I wish I had benchmarked the drive before I passed the return period.

http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/

Check out that website and run the benchmark and see how you compare the the Evo.

Either way if you are on sata 2 they top out under 300 mbs read/write.
 
Originally Posted By: GMFan
901Memphis,

Here are my results:

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/511351

Looks like my graphics are terrible. I am running the latest drivers. Not sure if there is anything I can do about that.


The drivers and performance aren't important unless you play video games or are having issues.

I can tell you have integrated graphics from the benchmark.

The big issue is the ssd like I said, you should consider returning it for one at the top of the list if you have the time/capabilities you will enjoy the faster drives
 
Integrated graphics are built into the CPU, with Intel they like to put the cores in a straight line from top to bottom so it's recommend to apply thermal paste like that for the best cooling however it's not required. AMD does four corners with their cores.

Intergrated graphics will always be very limited. It will work for videos but not much really beyond that even with Intel's 6th Gen Skylakes.

Intel isn't bad with intergrated graphics tho but I would give AMD the lead with their APU line. The APU could really be the future of processors. However they need to overcome low per core performance.
 
Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
Originally Posted By: GMFan
901Memphis,

Here are my results:

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/511351

Looks like my graphics are terrible. I am running the latest drivers. Not sure if there is anything I can do about that.


The drivers and performance aren't important unless you play video games or are having issues.

I can tell you have integrated graphics from the benchmark.

The big issue is the ssd like I said, you should consider returning it for one at the top of the list if you have the time/capabilities you will enjoy the faster drives


I gave up any type of video/computers games long ago so my integrated graphics will have to suffice. Well before purchasing the SSD I did read that on these old Lenovos most folks get only 200-250mb/s even with the Samsung EVO drives. I think because the computer is only SATAII? I saw recommendations to just get any old SSD for a good price because older machines can't take advantage of these new super fast SSDs. In any event from the benchmarks I've seen for my old drive I was getting about 30 to 50mb/s max. So I did get about a 5x speed improvement.

edit: I searched google and found that SATAII limits you to:

Max Read: up to about 285MB/s
Max Write: up to about 275MB/s

I'm hovering right around there.

Originally Posted By: 3800Series
Integrated graphics are built into the CPU, with Intel they like to put the cores in a straight line from top to bottom so it's recommend to apply thermal paste like that for the best cooling however it's not required. AMD does four corners with their cores.

Intergrated graphics will always be very limited. It will work for videos but not much really beyond that even with Intel's 6th Gen Skylakes.

Intel isn't bad with intergrated graphics tho but I would give AMD the lead with their APU line. The APU could really be the future of processors. However they need to overcome low per core performance.


Thanks. When I bought this computer I didn't spend a whole lot on it so no surprise it doesn't have a dedicated GPU or anything fancy. I did see two cores on the chip when I applied the paste (see pictures). Not sure if maybe on was the GPU core but I did apply paste to both.
 
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You could have probably done just as well with a hybrid drive. However for the price and it's size it wasn't a great deal. If your pleased with it however that's all that matters.

Be careful not to put to much. Really more is less and depending on the socket size a pea sized amount is enough. Some thermal compound is conductive and if you over apply it can cause damage to the CPU and or motherboard. However it's unlikely you got this type as its typically a good but more expensive.

Over applying can also have the opposite effect and insulate the CPU.
 
Yes you are correct about sata 2 limits but your around 230 mbs so there's some room for improvement if it matters to you, but probably not worth the effort of re installation.

FYI you have to register the PNY drive to get the extended warranty IIRC
 
Nice CPU Rand. My CPU is looking a little outdated for sure! I'm also assuming the mobile CPUs aren't as powerful.
 
I think you will be fine with the drive you have since it is a SATA 2 system. I put in a SSD in an old SATA 2 system couple years ago, and just bought the cheapest I could find.

I looked at the pictures, and you used way too much thermal paste, and the factory installation thermal paste had a lot of bleed out too. Here is a video that should help with the amount of thermal paste. I use the pea/dot method, and it never fails.
 
Originally Posted By: BigD1
I think you will be fine with the drive you have since it is a SATA 2 system. I put in a SSD in an old SATA 2 system couple years ago, and just bought the cheapest I could find.

I looked at the pictures, and you used way too much thermal paste, and the factory installation thermal paste had a lot of bleed out too. Here is a video that should help with the amount of thermal paste. I use the pea/dot method, and it never fails.


Yeah I figured I used too much. I've never applied thermal paste directly to cores like that. I used to build systems with AMD chips which had the metal plate on top. Maybe I will open it up, clean it and put less on. For what it's worth I did use the pea method at least.
 
Last edited:
If it is running right, I would just leave it alone. I don't know what type thermal paste you used. Pastes like Arctic Silver are thicker, and you have to use a little bit more because they don't spread as good. I like Arctic's Cooling MX4 or MX3 pastes because they spread good, and work just as good or better than the Arctic Silver paste, but that's nitpicking.

I use to be an AMD man especially when they had the mobile 2600 that would work in a desktop. AMD was king. Back then AMD did not use the heat spreader like they do now, and it was a pain to get the paste right on that little bitty die.

Anyway, enjoy your new machine because that SSD should help with battery life too.
 
Originally Posted By: GMFan
Originally Posted By: BigD1
I think you will be fine with the drive you have since it is a SATA 2 system. I put in a SSD in an old SATA 2 system couple years ago, and just bought the cheapest I could find.

I looked at the pictures, and you used way too much thermal paste, and the factory installation thermal paste had a lot of bleed out too. Here is a video that should help with the amount of thermal paste. I use the pea/dot method, and it never fails.


Yeah I figured I used too much. I've never applied thermal paste directly to cores like that. I used to build systems with AMD chips which had the metal plate on top. Maybe I will open it up, clean it and put less on. For what it's worth I did use the pea method at least.


Ok so I opened her back up, cleaned up the core (there was a little bit of leakage around the cores) and applied a lot less thermal paste.

Originally Posted By: BigD1
If it is running right, I would just leave it alone. I don't know what type thermal paste you used. Pastes like Arctic Silver are thicker, and you have to use a little bit more because they don't spread as good. I like Arctic's Cooling MX4 or MX3 pastes because they spread good, and work just as good or better than the Arctic Silver paste, but that's nitpicking.

I use to be an AMD man especially when they had the mobile 2600 that would work in a desktop. AMD was king. Back then AMD did not use the heat spreader like they do now, and it was a pain to get the paste right on that little bitty die.

Anyway, enjoy your new machine because that SSD should help with battery life too.


I just used the "house" thermal paste which is BestBuy branded Insignia.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-thermal-compound/3641012.p?id=1219092666136&skuId=3641012

I highly doubt BB actually makes the stuff so it's probably just Artic Silver in a re-branded tube.

At system idle my temps are around 37-43 Degrees C which is way better than before I started this whole ordeal.

Heatsink removed (with a little too much goop) and then reapplied thermal paste

Maybe I still put a tad too much but it's tough fine tuning the amount of this stuff. In any event I put 50% of what I put on before and I won't fuss with it anymore.
 
Last edited:
You did a fine job. Do you have the package that thermal paste came in? Just wondering if it's made in the USA? All I have ever seen at my local BestBuy is the Dynex brand, but I have not been there for a long time now.
 
I did this same type of upgrade to my old laptop 2 years ago. While it does enhance startup times, you're still limited by the old CPU and slower architecture. The upgrade extended the life of my laptop by another year or so, but eventually it was still too slow to run many apps. So I broke down and bought a new one (and swapped the new HD for my existing SSD).

There are other reasons to buy a new laptop besides the disk performance... Faster CPU, more energy-efficient CPU (longer battery run time), better screen.
 
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