About to retool our old W530. Tips/tricks? Things to avoid?
We bought a W530 back in 2013/4, and lately the HDD have been acting funny. was long since time to upgrade anyway. we bought one of those t14s with amd cpu which went on sale a few days ago ($700 felt like a real steal) and now i get the enjoyment of upgrading this beast :)
I've got a nice PC i built a couple years ago so i don't "need" anything computer wise. but it would be good to have something that i can take when we travel so i dont have to use my phone for everything. my thumbs will be happy lol. i know its gonna be shit for modern gaming, will have to just play around with older games. and general home use so i can use it in other rooms, unlike main pc.
1. CPU--it's an i7-3740QM. obviously not much these days. is it worth the hassle trying to upgrade this cpu? as in, are there hardware limitations in other parts that make upgrading the CPU a bad idea, or impossible? id have to look into form factors/etc of course. it seems adequate for regular use like internet browsing/etc. i'll have to play around with game choices. the biggest issue i see is making sure any RAM i buy is compatible, will probably need to use really old RAM.
2. Memory--currently has 2x8 installed under keyboard, with 2 more slots available on the (much more accessible) bottom module. im not sure adding more RAM means much for this computer *unless* i do upgrade the cpu. the ram slots are DDR3-PC3 so will have to find that slot type.
3. Storage--i have zero memory of why i wouldve done this when ordering, but the laptop currently has two HDD at 500gb each, in a RAID0 array. one of them is in the optical drive through an adapter. this is definitely something i want to upgrade, so i can boot from solid state. As i said, i think the old HDDs are failing so i want to get rid of both of them. will probably get a 1TB boot SSD and leave the optical drive empty.
4. PCI Express/mSATA-- i was also thinking about an mSATA for boot drive, but im reading online that the mSATA in this model only has SATA II speeds, compared to SATA 3 for the two other drive slots. which, again...if i dont upgrade the CPU then i doubt the diffrence in speed between the drives makes a huge difference. but idk how this CPU is gonna handle windows 10/11, so maybe it will help? thats beyond my knowledge honestly.
5. im sure the wireless card could be upgraded to something MUCH faster, maybe in the unused pciE slot? however [this forum post](https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series-Mobile/W530-half-mini-PCI-Express-card-upgrade/m-p/2114967) makes me nervous about trying that. seems difficult.
6. CPU Fan--its never seemed to have much trouble cooling, though i definitely need to blow the dust out of the blades! again, if i upgrade the cpu i would probably upgrade the fan too. just to be fancy. if i keep same cpu, probably no need to reapply thermal paste, right? since its cooling ok?
7. Windows 7--looks like its an OEM license :( can those be carried forward onto a new boot drive? as long as the mobo is staying the same? i feel like ive had trouble making this happen in the past. plus i doubt the license would allow an upgrade to newer versions.
So that's my rambling ideas! Let me know if you have any suggestions. This is now a non-critical computer which means my only limits are time/willingness/money and how much of hassle it will be to do the work.