Laptop Upgrades Cheaper Than Buying A New Computer

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Feeling the need to get a new laptop if your current one doesn’t run as smoothly as it did before makes sense — but you don’t have to dig deep into your pockets if you don’t have the budget or replacing it isn’t an immediate priority. You can give your laptop a new lease of life and make it run smoother by making a few upgrades at a fraction of what it would cost you if you decided to go for a new unit.

You can buy replacement parts (brand new or used), do a little bit of basic self-repair, and you’re good to go. Some of the upgrades you can do include RAM, SSD, and some software tweaks, among many other upgrades that you’re going to learn a lot more about below. Here are 11 upgrades to consider to make your laptop run like it’s new instead of taking the expensive new laptop route.

If you feel like your laptop struggles when you have multiple tasks running at the same time, the first and easiest upgrade you can do is get more RAM. 8GB usually suffices for basic everyday use, and 16GB should be the minimum for more demanding applications. For multitasking, more is usually better. For this reason, if your laptop has removable RAM sticks (many older laptops do), getting more RAM is a no-brainer and cheaper than getting a new laptop just to handle multitasking better. You can swap out RAM yourself in minutes without any specialized tools. However, modern laptops have soldered-on memory. In this case, upgrading RAM won’t be an option unless done by an expert, which can be expensive.

Before buying more RAM, be sure to check the maximum amount of RAM your laptop supports and the type of compatible RAM module. A quick internet search should do the trick here. Performance improvement should be noticeable when working with multiple tabs, development environments, creative apps, or frequently switching between applications. If your laptop is 8GB or less, you should upgrade to at least 16GB RAM for multitasking improvement to be noticeable enough.

If for some reason your aging laptop still runs on a hard disk drive (HDD), swapping it out for a solid-state drive (SSD) will be one of the most impactful upgrades you can make. The main difference comes from how these two types of storage work. The older HDD runs using spinning magnetic disks, which are significantly slower than flash memory on SSDs. The latter will provide noticeably faster file reading speeds, and slash a huge chunk of boot-up time (as much as minutes to seconds), giving your old laptop new life.

The good thing about older laptops is that you can easily upgrade your HDD to SSD yourself with no more than a screwdriver or even no tools at all. Some laptops even have the storage slot easily accessible by just opening up the bottom panel. Before making the swap, we recommend cloning your existing drive if you want your data or operating system untouched. If you don’t mind losing your files, you can always perform a fresh OS install. Pair this up with a RAM upgrade, and you may not have to worry about getting a new laptop for a couple more years, especially if you’re a moderate to light user.

If your laptop shipped with a 256GB, 512GB, or even 1TB SSD but you’re running out of space, you have options. Some laptops come with at least one extra SSD slot to allow you to mount a second drive without having to remove the first. These slots are usually M.2 SSD slots, allowing you to get more storage while keeping your operating system and old files intact. Even if you don’t have this extra slot, you can always clone your SSD onto one with more storage, and you have more space to work with.

Getting a 1TB, 2TB, or larger M.2 NVMe SSD will cost far less than going for an entire new laptop. Before you grab one, check your manual or do a quick online search to know whether your laptop has extra M.2 slots and pinpoint exactly where they are located on your motherboard. Also, check for the compatible form factor: Though most laptops require M.2 2280 (80mm), some may need smaller dimensions.

Your laptop battery is definitely not as good as it used to be if you’ve been using it for more than a couple of years. Lithium-ion batteries, which are what most modern laptops use, typically see between 300 and 500 charging cycles before capacity loss becomes noticeable. Most batteries will retain at most 80% of their factory capacity at this point. For instance, if your battery used to last you 10 hours, now it only runs for 4 hours before you have to scamper for your charger. Fortunately, replacing the battery is straightforward on most laptops.

You first have to buy the correct battery for your laptop. Once ready, turn off your laptop, unplug the charger, open the bottom panel, remove your battery, and then install the replacement. For some laptops, you’ll have to open a few screws, disconnect the keyboard from the motherboard, and then have access to the battery. Batteries will set you back anything between $30 and $150, depending on your laptop model.

Other signs besides reduced screen-on time that you need to replace your battery include sudden shutdowns despite being fully charged, slow charging, and failure to charge to full capacity. If you move around with your laptop, a battery upgrade will definitely give your device a new life. Please note that battery upgrades are easier on older laptops; many modern laptops make changing your battery a bit trickier.

If your laptop uses older WiFi technology like WiFi 5 or WiFi 6, you can significantly improve it by upgrading to WiFi 6E or WiFi 7. According to Tom’s Hardware, upgrading a WiFi 6E card to WiFi 7 can deliver as much as 50% and 31% connectivity and speed improvement on the 6GHz and 5GHz bands, respectively. With this in mind, you should get even bigger performance boosts if you’re coming from WiFi 5 or 6.

Theoretical speeds on WiFi 7 and WiFi 6 are around 40 Gbps and 10 Gbps, respectively. That translates to about 2.4 times faster real-world performance by the newer WiFi card. These improvements are significant, especially if your workflow involves moving large files or streaming 4K video, or is susceptible to network congestion.

So how do you go about upgrading your WiFi card? It’s easy but a tad bit more technical than swapping out your RAM or M.2 SSD. You’ll need to locate and open your laptop’s WiFi compartment, disconnect the antenna wires, take out the old card, replace it with the new one, and reconnect the antennas. Also remember to do these checks before purchasing a WiFi 7 card. Sounds like much, but if you’re comfortable with laptop disassembly, this should be an easy upgrade and will cost you anything between $25 and $100. A USB WiFi adapter is an even cheaper option if your laptop has an outdated WiFi chip.

Many ultrabooks and M-series MacBook Airs sacrifice ports to achieve their thinness. This can be frustrating when you need to connect devices like monitors or even basic external drives. I had this issue with my tiny HP Elitebook X2. Getting a USB-C hub was one of the best things I ever did for my setup, since the laptop has just two ports (USB-C and USB-A). This allowed me to get extra ports for my keyboard and mouse, power delivery, SD card, and HDMI for my monitor.

The good thing about making this upgrade is that you simply buy the USB-C hub, plug it into your laptop, and everything is ready to go whether you’re on Windows, macOS, or Linux. If you’re unfamiliar with USB-C hubs, there are many high-quality options available, but this $20 Anker 5-in-1 USB-C Hub is a good place to start. If you regularly move between different office setups, this small gadget will always come in handy.

Reducing the workload on your laptop is one of the ways of ensuring you get better performance out of it. One of the major culprits when it comes to resource hogging is Google Chrome, especially on older laptops. It eats up significant chunks of your laptop’s RAM and CPU cycles. For this reason, it’s high time you switched browsers if Chrome is your daily driver. There are many Chrome alternatives available.

You can give Brave a shot since it blocks ads and trackers, which alone can boost its efficiency on your laptop’s resources. Microsoft Edge is another Chromium-based Chrome alternative you should consider since it also takes up fewer resources while seamlessly integrating with Windows if you use the operating system. If you have extremely old or limited hardware, QuteBrowser is an ultra-lightweight browser meant for such systems. It trades some conveniences for raw performance, making it ideal if you’re working with less than 4GB RAM. This upgrade is completely free and should take you less than 10 minutes — just download your new browser of choice.

For older gaming laptops, Lossless Scaling is an affordable upgrade you can make without needing to purchase new hardware or leaving your desk – $6.99 on Steam. This program combines frame generation and spatial upscaling technologies to make heavy games playable on modest computers, laptops in this case. It works by rendering your favorite game at a lower resolution, and then intelligently upscaling it to match your display’s native resolution. The end result is improved frame rates on modest hardware while maintaining decent visual quality.

The good thing about Lossless Scaling is that it works with most games you throw at it, including those without NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR native support. If your laptop is from the past 5-7 years, this tool should bring you significant frame rate improvements. The final result depends on how aggressive you set your scaling to be. Loss scaling is particularly important if gaming is your laptop’s primary purpose and you don’t have the budget for a replacement.

Many laptops come with manufacturer-preinstalled software (bloatware), most of which you may never need to use. These programs usually eat into your RAM, storage, and processing power quota, and removing them immediately gives your laptop a breather. You’ll have more RAM available for multitasking, your laptop will be more responsive and you’ll have a little bit more storage for your files.

If you’re on Windows, go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps and uninstall any unrecognizable app or one that you rarely use. Most of the time, the culprits are trial antiviruses, games, promotional apps, and manufacturer utilities. While at it, be careful not to accidentally remove any critical software like core Windows drivers. As always, do a quick Google search when in doubt.

You can go further by looking for and deleting any files you’re certain you don’t need. Clear your Recycle Bin too to make the freed-up space available for new files. Clearing your laptop’s cache is also another way of getting rid of unnecessary files. If you don’t fancy doing the cleanup manually, tools like Bulk Crap Uninstaller and Microsoft PC Manager have you covered. You won’t have to spend money cleaning up your laptop and will get a slight performance improvement once all the junk is gone.

Thermal throttling will make your laptop slower than it should be, and one of the main causes of this is dust accumulation in the vents and fans. Cleaning these parts (plus your laptop insides in general) and reapplying thermal paste will reverse thermal throttling in most cases since heat will be managed better. This upgrade is a little bit more involved; if you fancy doing it, you have to open your laptop’s bottom panel and take out the heatsink. You will need a screwdriver and some patience to execute it.

Once everything is open, you’ll need a compressed air duster to dislodge trapped dust from the heatsink and fan. For the thermal paste, you’ll need to apply isopropyl alcohol and clean it off using cotton swabs. Once everything is clean, a pea-sized drop of new thermal paste on the GPU and CPU before you reattach the heatsink should do the trick. Thermal paste is cheap (under $10), making this yet another pocket-friendly yet effective upgrade you can pull off if you can DIY.

Older laptops usually struggle running Windows 11 even alongside the other upgrades we’ve mentioned due to the operating system’s aggressive requirements. And since Windows 10 isn’t an option anymore, Linux is the most realistic way to run older hardware smoothly, and it’s free. Most lightweight Linux distributions will run fine and smoothly with as little as 4GB RAM.

Linux distributions are many, but after using more than 20 distros, Ubuntu and Linux Mint XCFE are the starting points I’d recommend if you’re new to the open-source OS world. Ubuntu comes with mainstream Linux features and has a familiar interface friendly to any Windows user looking for a smooth transition. Linux Mint XFCE is perfect if you’re working with particularly old hardware, since it’s built to run on limited RAM and older processors (this is my daily driver on a 2016 laptop with an Intel Core m5 processor). Software compatibility is excellent on these two platforms thanks to Ubuntu’s package manager, which offers mainstream browsers, office software, creative tools, and programming environments.

The only trade-off is that if you switch to Linux, running some Windows-specific software and games will need a workaround. However, if you mostly rely on web applications and open-source software, you won’t miss out on anything. Running Linux will transform your sluggish old laptop into a responsive computer. Linux installation is free, and you can always go back to Windows easily if it fails to impress you.