Re: Upgrading.....Frugally

In the last post, I talked about the Z61m that I picked up to fix up. Today, I'm going to talk about the "nuts and bolts" aspects of how to upgrade, "on the cheap". So, we'll start with the end product: I always ask people what they want to do with the end product. I figure, if you don't know your goal; how do you know what to shoot for?

Here is what I'd LOVE to have on that machine, other than fixing up the things that are not right, like the messed up screen and the shiny keyboard (I hate shiny keyboards). I'd love for the CPU to be one of the Intel "T7xxx" series Core 2 Duo processors that have 4Mb of cache and run at 2ghz or better speed. I'd also love to have one of the Seagate Momentus XT "hybrid" hard drives that have a big platter-based disk, along with 4Gb of SSD, PLUS 32Mb cache. I'd love to have a matched set of 2Gb RAM modules making it have 4Gb total that can run in "dual channel" mode. Let's see: $70 or so for the CPU, $100 for the drive, $50 or so for the RAM, making the total for those parts to run $220....if I'm lucky! And that doesn't include the amount that I'm going to spend to replace the screen (?), and about $25-30 for the keyboard which in all probability, is going to put my total outlay NORTH of $300!

I don't like the sound of that one bit! So, lets look at how we can get out of paying that much without giving up a bunch of capability.

1. First the CPU. Apparently for the C2Ds that this machine can run, there were the T7xxx and the T5xxx (the second number must be even, and the other two must be zeros). The difference is that the T7s have 4Mb of cache vs. the 2mb of cache for the T5s, at similar clock speeds. So for double the cache, the apparent extra costs is double the price- something like $25-30 vs. $50-70.
2. Although the price of the "XT" drives have come down by about $25 recently, $100 is still a "chunk of change". Recently, though, Newegg had a special on some Hitachi 320Gb HDDs, that spin at a respectable 5400rpm, one of which I bought 2 weeks ago for a client computer for $35. I think I'll wait for another sale.
   
3. RAM, that's a complicated one. Really, the price isn't too bad right now for DDR2, but you guys know how I am on spending money! So here is my plan: get it for free. That's right, get 4Gb of RAM (in 2 modules) for free. How am I going to do that? OK, here is how it works. On a regular basis, I'll have folks ask me to find them a laptop for about $250-300, and for that budget, I can find Dell Latitude D620/630 any day of the week for about $200-225. So I tack on my $50 fee (I do more than just find it) and Voila', I sell a computer. What does this have to do with free RAM? I generally quote a client a D620, with an 80Gb HDD, XP, and 2Gb of RAM. If I'm careful, I can usually find them with 3Gb of RAM on board (surplus companies that sell these things don't care about the difference). So, I pull the 2Gb module out and replace it with a 1Gb module that I typically have on hand and there you go. If I'm patient, I can pick up 2, 2Gb modules for little or no costs.
   

So, if you add that up, I end up at around $65-70 "all-in" for all the upgrades that I'd like to do. Yes, granted, it's not "top of the line", but from a daily use standpoint, the differences will be difficult to detect. Hopefully, then, if I'm lucky and/or industrious in looking, I should be able to even do the screen and everything for less than $150. And that sounds much more frugal than $300+!