How To Upgrade Your Gaming Laptop - The ULTIMATE Guide!
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 16. 06. 2024
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đŹ Chat with me and the community in Discord and get behind the scenes videos! / jarrodstech
This is the ULTIMATE guide to upgrading your gaming laptop!
EVERYTHING I USE:
đ» My Current Laptop - geni.us/JarrodsLaptop
đ„ïž My Current Desktop PC - geni.us/JarrodsPC
đ„ My Camera Gear - geni.us/JarrodsStudio
đ My Smart Ring - geni.us/oFfTMJ
Stuff mentioned in video:
Tools I use for opening laptops: geni.us/eT3n
Metal laptop stand: geni.us/metal-stand
How to allow 6GHz Wi-Fi band in Windows 10: dongknows.com/wi-fi-6e-6ghz-i...
Honeywell PTM 7950: www.lttstore.com/products/ptm...
LTT guide to applying PTM 7950: âą Reddit told me to buy ...
LTT laptop screen change: âą Gaming Laptop Screen U...
List of ASUS laptops with liquid metal: shorturl.at/3wqcX
Timestamps:
0:00 Upgrade Your Gaming Laptop!
0:18 1. Warranty - Do Upgrades Void Warranty?
0:56 2. How To Open Your Gaming Laptop
1:15 2.1 Watch Out For This Annoying Stuff
1:35 2.2 Important - Track Your Screws!
1:49 2.3 Which Screwdriver Bits You Need
2:17 2.4 Using Pry Tools to Open Laptop
2:38 2.5 More Silly Stuff to be Aware ofâŠ
3:03 2.6 Putting Laptop Back Together
3:07 2.7 Laptop Not Powering on After Opening?
3:15 3. Identifying Internal Components
3:22 4. Battery - You MUST Do This Before Other Upgrades
3:45 4.1 How to Unplug Battery
4:05 4.2 Can You Upgrade Your Battery?
4:57 4.3 How to Upgrade Battery
5:07 4.4 Battery Upgrade Results
5:19 4.5 Swap Degraded Battery for New Battery
5:33 4.6 How to Identify Battery Model & Buy New
5:43 4.7 Removable Batteries
6:05 5. Storage Upgrades
6:15 5.1 M.2 Slots - How Many do you Have?
6:51 5.2 M.2 Drive Sizes
7:12 5.3 Make Sure Bigger Drives Fit Your Laptop!
8:20 5.4 SSD Coolers
8:36 5.5 PCIe or SATA for M.2 SSD?
9:06 5.6 M.2 Socket Key Differences
9:55 5.7 SATA/PCIe Gen 3, 4 & 5 Speed Differences
10:27 5.8 Can You Upgrade the PCIe Version?
10:46 5.9 Gen 4 Doesnât Always = Faster Than Gen 3
11:09 5.10 Backwards Compatibility
11:27 5.11 Everything to Consider When Picking a New SSD
11:59 5.12 How Much Disk Space to Choose?
12:30 5.13 How to Install M.2 SSD
13:10 5.14 Clone Existing OS, or Reinstall Fresh?
13:32 5.15 Important - Beware of Automatic Bitlocker Encryption!
15:00 5.16 2.5â Drives, SSD or HDD?
15:32 5.17 How to Install 2.5â Drive
15:45 6. Memory (RAM) Upgrades
15:47 6.1 How Many RAM Sticks Does Your Laptop Support?
16:18 6.2 How Much RAM Capacity is Enough?
18:04 6.3 DDR4 or DDR5 Memory?
19:17 6.4 Memory Speed Depends on Your Processor
20:30 6.5 Important - Why to Use 2 memory Sticks
21:11 6.6 Memory Banks, Ranks & Timings
21:57 6.7 Why Choosing RAM is Hard
22:20 6.8 Everything to Consider When Picking New RAM
22:38 6.9 Ideally Use Same Memory Stick Capacity
23:07 6.10 How to Change RAM Sticks
23:33 7. Wi-Fi & Ethernet Upgrades
23:49 7.1 Fast Wi-Fi is Relatively Cheap
23:58 7.2 How to Check Current Wi-Fi Version
24:09 7.3 Which Wi-Fi Version to Upgrade to?
24:47 7.4 Wi-Fi Card in its Natural Habitat
24:56 7.5 Which Wi-Fi Card Types Fit in Your Laptop? Understanding M.2 Keys
25:47 7.6 Watch Out For Intelâs Proprietary CNVio!
26:52 7.7 Why AMD Laptops Donât Use Intel Wi-Fi, But you can Upgrade to it
27:25 7.8 Wi-Fi Speed Differences - Why Intel is Recommended
27:52 7.9 Best Wi-Fi Card for Most People?
28:11 7.10 Windows 10 Users Need More Work for Wi-Fi 6E
28:21 7.11 Limited Wi-Fi 7 Options (For Now)
28:39 7.12 How to Change Wi-Fi Card
29:00 7.13 Install New Drivers - Download a Copy Before Upgrade
29:53 7.14 Soldered Wi-Fi? Try This
30:28 7.15 Ethernet Upgrade?
30:41 8. Cooling Upgrades - Why Heat = Bad
31:03 8.1 Why Most Laptop Thermal Paste is Bad
31:42 8.2 How Often to Change Paste?
32:31 8.3 Important - Liquid Metal - Watch Out!
33:45 8.4 Which Thermal Paste to Use?
34:08 8.5 How to Remove Cooler
34:36 8.6 Cleaning Off Old Paste Residue
35:07 8.7 Applying New Thermal Paste
35:31 8.8 Jarrod Rants at Years of Thermal Paste Comments
36:02 8.9 Honeywell PTM 7950 Application
36:08 8.10 Thicker VRM Paste, I Replace With Thermal Pads
36:21 8.11 Putting Cooler Back
36:40 8.12 Temperature Differences
37:01 8.13 Cooling Pads & Stands - An Easier Alternative
37:40 8.14 Liquid Cooling Upgrades đŠ
38:06 9. Screen Upgrades
39:30 9.1 A Better Alternative
39:55 10. CPU & GPU Upgrades
40:05 10.1 Why Most Laptops Donât Support This Upgrade
40:44 10.2 Laptops With Upgradeable CPU or GPU, & Why They Arenât Great
41:18 10.3 Is This The Future of Upgradeable Laptop CPUs & GPUs?
41:36 10.4 Secret Stuff Coming SoonâŠ
41:53 10.5 Thunderbolt External Graphics (eGPU) âUpgradeâ?
42:42 10.6 Thunderbolt 5 Might Change Things Soon
43:04 Make Your Upgraded Laptop Last Longer
Disclosure: Purchases made through store links above may provide some compensation to Jarrod'sTech - VÄda a technologie
đ” Save money on your next gaming laptop with our daily deals: gaminglaptop.deals - we just added support for India, Germany, UK, Canada and Australia!
Hey Thanks for adding support for India ! Cheers
@@itsArka No problem!
â@@JarrodsTechPlease review Lenovo legion 9i 14th gen.
Step 1: make sure to buy a laptop that isnât soldered on like a macbook
Basically
Just had a friend in trouble with a Macbook. Water damage on logic board, storage soldered in. A nightmare and expensive to troubleshoot.
Step 2: Research laptop model THERMALS
I mean, the title does say 'gaming' laptop. ;)
Me, having 16 GB soldered RAM... đ
The 2020 legion 5 upgrade video nostalgia hitting hard
Haha, it still gets a lot of views from people that don't even have a Legion, so I wanted to do an updated one covering as much as I could.
I was thinking this was that same video! Time flies.
â@@JarrodsTechI still have my 2020 legion 5 kicking hard. Props to Jarrod's Tech, with the help from that video, I upgraded the SSD. Love this channel
Exact same experience here! â@@nades1858
this is why I clicked this video :)
2:55 âitâs a crap designâ. Jarrod unfiltered is the only Jarrod for me.
Bro is at his best when comments feel "off the cuff" XD
But how else can they connect those RGB lights?
@@jivewig Mount them to the chassis, like every other manufacturer and every other model. Do not mount them to the bottom cover.
Just to share, I reapply thermal paste for you and cpu on 2022 Asus rog zephyrus 16 with ptm7950 and the changes was day and night. Liquid Metal on cpu was oxidised and thermal paste on gpu was dried out after 1.5 years of use. After replacing with ptm, I got more than 15 degree diff on gpu and similar cpu temp as Liquid Metal. Ptm for the win as itâs very good in thermal performance and easy to apply!
Nice improvement there
My Katana GF76s cpu has always run hot, this video is inspiring me to try and re-apply the paste, see if it helps (i12700h cpu)
Your comment is always helping to inspire, bro. Ty =)
~a random canadian subscriber dude
Did you ever consider Thermal Grizzly KryoSheet ? my lenovo legion 5 pro with ryzen 7 7745hx run a little too hot for my liking and is only 6 or 7 months old like 92 degrees ++ is relatively demanding games even though I limit the fps and all that stuff but still gets quite hot even on a cooling pad so I ve been considering opening it up and changing it to that or the ptm not sure yet still considering if its worth the hassle or it will just keep running as hot
can ya link it down as there are many counterfeit pads there saying honeywell
Really glad you made this video. It'll come in handy in the future.
Awesome video, you covered everything in depth đđ»
thank you for this thorough guide
Excellent work! Will save this for later!
Wow. 43 minutes... I will definitely save this for later! thanks for quality videos and also the time stamps in this case !!
Props for the right teardown method by the way!
Thanks for so much hardwork. Really appreciate the video. Got everything that's needed to disassemble a laptop. TY
Glad it helped!
Thank you for the detailed guide
Very helpful video Jarrod. Thank you!
Of course you make this video right after I upgrade my laptop, would have been very useful, especially for the precautions
i love this channel said back when u had 90k subs and ill say it again, you should be over a million subs long time ago, keep up the good work đ„
Hell yeah Jarrod great video!
Excellent advice!
God if only there was a desktop equivalent of this video.
As per usual, a rock solid video đ
Great video bro đ
very practical â€â€â€
I just bought laptop legion 5 just 2 hours ago and this video. Omg the timing can't be more accurate.
1:35 i lost more screws than i could even imagine
I still have 2 screws in my driver kit from unknown source. They make me happy to keep, for some reason
Just *slightly* longer than your previous upgrade guides but I'm not complaining!
23:36 lol đ
"movies"
He knows us *too* well
Great guide, like Mr Js format
Crazy amount of laptop information, Jarrod raises the standards significantly
This is appreciated
Thank you so much.
Hi! Awesome video. The only thing i missed is that id would've loved of you spoke about the keyboard, how to change them and the real options you hace when they dont work or some keys don press right, as with the battery, you would've had more than one important point to discuss
This is definitely the best guide on yt. Thank you so much!
I am pondering upgrading the RAM in my legion 5 2021 because of the video you made explaining how the stock RAM is really slow compared to the average DDR4.
I might also change the wifi card too but the one that came with my Legion 5 is a Gigabit one, idk if its worth the upgrade to an intel one.
(These are the specs of the card I believe)
Gigabit Ethernet, 1x RJ-45
802.11ac 2x2 Wi-FiÂź + Bluetooth 5.1, M.2 Card âą Wi-Fi 6, 802.11ax 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 5.1, M.2 card
This is the perfect time for a video like this I live in India and am getting a Lenovo legion slim 5 14" from the USA for 1050$ which I chose after watching your videos
Thanks đ
25:47 - CNVio and CNVio2 WiFI cards have caught out the unwary for sure! Great to see it mentioned here
That sucks, people need to know!
Jarrod "Always the Best"
Love your IN FLAMES T-SHIRT đ„
đ€
In Flames shirt again! Three of my favorite songs are Lunar Strain, Only for the Weak, and Colony! đ€đ
Your website is the best thank you â€â€â€
Glad you enjoy it!
Legendary video aside, that t-shirt is kinda đ„
Great video, a bit long but it's the ultimate guide.
Won't be surprised if this gets about 50M views over time. This looks like a laptop update dictionary. Thanks Jarrod!
This is soooo completeeee
I really appreciate HP for always posting a removing & Replacing parts even before the model goes on sale.
HPs are notoriously unreliable.
Why would you buy that junk?
Can you make a guide for cleaning laptop fans?
Jarrod, can you also show how you test your laptops, at least in terms of thermal and speeds, so those of us who purchase the laptops you reviewed can test them in the same way as well?
Great T-shirt and music taste \m/
đ€
Sometimes when you've done the upgrade and repasted properly and have been using your laptop for about an hour or a month, the motherboard will just die on you for no reason... it just happened to me, hehehe, so just accept it and either move on a) get it repaired and suck it up on the cost or b) buy a new one and sell defective unit at a price you will need to accept, either way, do back-ups.
But yeah, depends on your country, you can't even get to clean the fans because of the warranty stickers. Some companies and service centers have made money off of laptop owners by doing this, which is a sad truth. But when they screw up your unit, all they'll do is automatically quote you for replacement.
Finally, yeah, a lot of people have been thermal paste aficionados... defending their application patterns, brands and pads but to what point.
Great video, Jarrod!
Wow that's gonna be really useful for people, good job!
Hope so, thanks!
Bro it's making me wanna redo thermal paste for my hot AF lappy, so anecdotally, here's a guy being helped by Monsieur J
~a random canadian subscriber dude
Ayy my 2003 gateway had a removable battery! Way ahead of the curve đ
You should have mentoined about liquid metal application too. For someone who is looking forward to get a legion pro, it is essential to know how to change liquid metal since legions have it.
This isn't a guide. It's a tech tip.
Thank you for the WiFi recommendation. It is leaps and bounds better than my original one (which was a Realtek Wifi Card that is so crappy, I threw it away).
About RAM:
I have an Acer Predator (etc., etc.) with 2, 16GB Dual Rank so-dimms working Dual Channel.
I have an Acer Aspire 5, with 20 GB of RAM. 1 4GB so-dimm soldered in and 1 16GB so-dimm in the only RAM slot. Both So-dimms are Single Rank. They function in "asynchronous" dual channel. (The 4 GB so-dimm and the first 4 GB of the 16 GB so-dimm work in Dual Channel.)
I have the same legion 5 with 4800h gtx 1660 ti, I did change the thermal paste twice since I bought it, because sometime the CPU temp reached 99c and when replacing the paste became like new 87c.
I used arctic mx-6.
Hey jarrod since you're talking about laptop upgradeablity guide. Can I ask what current laptop are you using? And how often do you upgrade your laptop? Thanks
You are the best laptop reviewer Jarrod, so in-depth as always. Btw, I want to ask your opinion on disabling turbo boost for gaming because I virtually cannot see the performance difference but with much lower CPU temp. For only day-to-day use (Gaming/Office/Videos) and no 3d Design or rendering works, are there any downsides on disabling turbo boost?
Amazing job!
Thank you!
i seen that you got a bigger battery but to be fair, i was doing a repair for a friend for some cash and there was an empty hdd slot with no sata cable, so i bought one and added in a drive
Awesomne video as always! But here's my take on the thermal issue
Regarding your point about not having any changes to temps when repasting, I believe this could just be a sign that the heatsink cannot transfer anymore heat out, i.e the heatsink does not have enough mass and it reached the maximum possible about of heat it could wick away and the issue would lie in the fans being able to move enough cool air to cool the actual exhaust fin arrays. Then this also falls on the laptop feet being too small to give enough clearance for air to move at full efficiency into the system fans. The gap between the base and the surface its on is just too little!
This is probably why in some of ROGs thinner machines with LM, temps are still super high, meaning the LM is doing its job of conducting as much heat from the chips as possible into the heatsink but there just is not enough mass in the actual heatsink to fully take advantage of the extra heat conductivity of LM
32:30 you can minimize the risk of liquid metal by applying tg shield around the cpu/gpu it will prevent conductivity even if the liquid metal leaks a little
the one im using is thermal grizzly tg shield and i think they are the only one making it
Used to be you chose between and SSD and HDD for your 2.5 inch bay because one offered speed, the other offered space. Now that HDDs in 7mm form factor top out at around 2TB, but SSDs can go up to 8, and even 16TB, the only time i would put an HDD in a laptop is if it is meant as a file server or something, because laptops are meant to be moved around, hard drives are not, and with a 2TB SSD costing around $100 for a mid range, there is no reason to go for a $70 HDD, the SSD will almost certainly last longer, and probably end up costing you less in power in the long run.
14:02 I encountered the same problem, but I thought and thought and found a solution, which is to put the storage in another device and use it as a second storage, and the system will recognize it, and when you click on it, it tells you Administrator. Click Yes, and your files will appear.
Hey Jarrod can you make a video for battery optimization in legion 5 the no of softwares are really frustrating
if youre on a budget then walmart also has a kit of tools. that i would argue is a bargain is for the amount of bits and tools
Love the new 2024 guide, 26:54 Iâve also heard someone else from IT for a very large company say from their contacts at HP, Intel was the one that blocked AMD laptops from using Intel WiFi, so I guess this is a case of the 2 pointing fingers at each other
Also if you have a Legion, DONT bother with thermal paste, they already use the phase change material stuff, I remember upgrading the paste for my 2022 Legion 5 Slim only to realize it performed worse
Jarrod, if i replace the SSD, which has the OS installed in it, from one slot to another of the same Motherboard (PC or Laptop), will we have to reinstall the OS and other programs all again?? And also what about the Data in it??
Could you recommend cloning software as I want to upgrade my 512GB PCI Gen 4 M.2 to 2TB PCI Gen 4 M.2? I am going to buy an enclosure, probably a USB 4 one as I have thunderbolt 4. But I want good easy to use cloning software. Im ok to purchase a stand alone copy. Great video as always. Thanks for making such great content.
When I first bought my X1 Extreme gen4, I put a 2TB 970EVO SSD, and 64 GB RAM just because I can
if 32GB of ram was standard, I would say it's actually a good thing to use soldered on memory. Since LPDDR is typically way faster, slightly more power efficient, and allows for the internal space to be used better. Especially for smaller laptops
17:55 a computer using the SSD as overflow RAM space can kill an SSD rather quickly, i had a pair of samsing 970 EVO in my file server that i used as a write cache on this machine that had a stupid firmware limit of 16GB of total system RAM, one drive died in about 6 months, so i switched over to Optane, sure it was only 118GB VS 1TB, but it is WAY faster at sustained writes, way lower latency(about 1/2 way between a high end NVME and the DDR4 RAM in that system) and the endurance is crazy, i think i've already written 200TB to them because after swapping to Optane the performance significantly increase so i ended up using that thing for more than just a backup for when my main server was busy.
Watching this on a phone, dreaming on having a gaming laptop huhu
I wonder how you find out those hidden screws in the first place without breaking the laptop. Sometimes they're hidden under the rubber feet instead of a dedicated spot where it's meant to help cooling so we don't really expect that there are some there.
I am planning on getting the Legion 7i White in the near future. If I do happen to install an extra SSD into the extra space, how would I go about organizing them both in terms of storage, cache, and uses?
According the "specs" how much (MAX) storage of the drive(s) can the laptop handle? Either one drive it larger than the other or both drives have the same about of bytes.
Hey thankyou for the video I was really looking to upgrade my legion and had no idea about ssds having chips on both side or about wifi cards having such a thing also is that a subwoofer 40:51 in that laptop đŹ damn never seen a laptop like that
Can you make a detailed video on ryzen 8000 series...you haven't unboxed any....I really want to see performance of ryzen 7 8840hs of lenevo loq
Have you tried Thermal Grizzly's KryoSheet or Carbonaut in a laptop instead of thermal paste? I wonder what would be the difference if any, aside from (theorically) not having to think about it ever again.
I updated Wi-Fi card
FROM: Intel Centrino N-2230
TO: AX210HMW ( its AX-210 analog for Mini PCI-E slot )
Nice one :)
Please Jarrod review the new MSI stealth ai stealth .
I want to see if there goodđđ»
1:21 me to đ„
sad memories. But I gained experience
How can some laptops like last year Legion 7 pros list that it supports up to 6000mhz ram when i9 processor inside supports only up to 5600mhz?
Thank you for your content ! I'm from France, can I buy from your websit, if yes how ?
Do you have an idea what kind of thermal solution Lenovo used on the Legion 7i (2024 Model)? Is is Liquid Metal or regular thermal paste?
This video is a gem for anyone's library
Truly eh
Hello, im trying to upgrade my legion slim 5 14 inch's storage what ssd do you recommend, and do i need heatsink?
Hey, your thoughts on USB C chargers for these laptops (Legion, etc). Can't figure out which one to buy đą!...
will you test the upcoming snapdragon laptops?
What was the thing that got removed with the first battery here, 5:03 ? Is it important? does anything happen if not returned?
Bro
Can u make a video on Lenovo LOQ
CPU :- i714700HX
GPU :- RTX 4060
I am a big fan of your channel
I'm wondering with Tuf A15 2023 model, is it necessary to remove the battery before upgrading the ssd and ram, i have seen many guides online saying the tuf a15 has an issue when removing the battery connector and trying to put it back in, and that there's a detector when you remove the back cover and it will stop it from using energy.
Jarrod legion pro 5i vs rog strix g16 vs hp omen these three of them have same specs i7 14650hx rtx 4060 2k resolution which do u think will be a better buy
Hi Jarrod, Lenovo legion have a feature in bios: disable building-in battery, so that means i donât need to unplug the battery physically?
Please do a upgrade video on Asus rog strix g16 with 64 whr battery to a 90 whr one and many more
I recommend to discharge the power on the device after removing the battery in order to release the stored electricity on the capacitors. All you need to do is press the power button after you disconnect the battery.
is there still any residue charges left after removing battery even on power button ? also is it really worth to have a anti static brush to clean of dust ?
Upgraded my 2015 alienware from 16GB 2133MTps to 32GB 2667MTps, swapped out old nvme and sata ssd with nvme, upgraded from killer 1535 to ax210 and ultimate thermal upgrade from thermal paste CM maker gel nano with TG carbonaut and added graphite thermal pads on gtx 980. Now CPU is slow. For battery always disable it from BIOS for Lenovo or asus. Always check the voltage and current rating for standard and express charger with hwinfo. Alienware battery always dies with standard charging which will charge at 65W till 100% and had to change to express charging seems to be correct with charging to 80% with 65W then 10W till 95W and finally 1W till 100%
Whatâs the laptop with the best temps on cpu and gpu?
27:18 my delta 15 came with intel ax210 that is rare i suppose
Good info, as always but REALLY long winded. Cheers!
Thanks for thr video
But I read that Kryonaut , nt-h2 and mx-4(mx-6 too) are not recommended for Laptops despite performing very well on Desktops because they pump out quickly due to high laptop heat
How true is that?
1:45 sad memories 2
hhhhhhh this happened to me too
Can you review the new acer 18 helios with mini led 14th gen 4090 250hz?
Is there any meaningful difference between 4800, 5200 and 5600 MHz RAM for laptop Zen 4 CPUs? Assuming anything above 4800 is supported.
Hi... Good Morning... Bro... Can you please tell me... If i take Scar 15.6 2022 with RTX3080 in this year... Is it worth it?
The only upgrading I feel safe enough to do is added RAM. However, I don't know enough about brands, etc about what to get. I also don't know if its even worth doing. Legion pro 7i gen 9 4090.. does it even help with VRAM? would you recommend doing anything?
nvm think that got answered at 15:50. thanks for being thorough