There might be various reasons why you cannot upgrade to a new PC / Laptop and enjoy high end performance on recent games. You may not have enough money to buy a new one or no matter what it may be. Here’s how to optimize your low end laptop for gaming.
Upgrading to A SSD
Improve Loading Times of your Laptop
SSD is, to me, an absolutely necessity in a modern computer. I honestly would choose a slower processor + SSD over a faster processor and HDD. I bet if you were on the verge of throwing away your slow laptop and upgraded it to a SSD you would surely love the loading times. Let it be turning on your laptop, opening programs, etc, it will feel like you have brand new laptop again.
Once the game is loaded, there’s miniscule difference, but given how a SSD can increase snappiness of your laptop its surely worth it.
SSD’s come in different form factors like 2.5 inch or M.2. Laptops powered by a Hard Disk can be swapped with a 2.5 inch SATA SSD while if you have a M.2 Slot you should surely prefer it as the HDD in the laptop can be used for data storage purposes.
Note : Sometimes its best to open the back panel and check the availabilty of your laptop’s SSD port. My HP laptop does have M.2 Port and you can find nowhere about it, the guides or the forums don’t mention it
Upgrade Your RAM
Increasing in-game FPS
The mssion of loading games faster is accomplished now it comes to upgrading the RAM in your laptop. You have to check whether your laptop has a single slot or a dual slot for RAM.
Please don’t use task manager to check this since they have been notorious showing dual slots for single slot RAM laptops. If you don’t want to open the back panel of your laptop you just need to note down your laptop’s model number.
Finding Compatible Upgrades using Crucial’s Website
Go to https://www.crucial.in/upgrades
In the Manufacturers area choose your laptop brand and then model of the brand. After your selection you will be shown the available and compatiable RAM and SSD for your laptop.
Tips While Choosing A Ram for your Laptop
- Dual Channel Ram is better then SIngle Channel
- Lower the latency of the RAM the better performance
- If you are getting a higher frequency RAM which has same no. of pins and double data rate, at a lower price you can buy that. ( Eg: You can use a 2666Mhz DDR4 RAM in a laptop that supports 2133Mhz while having the same number of pins )
Using Intel XTU
Intel® Extreme Tuning Utility
Using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility allows users to overclock/ underclocking your CPU for gaining optimal performances.
On low end laptops the Intek XTU can be used to downclock the CPU to a sweet spot that allows having optimal performance while dissipating less heat by the CPU of your laptop. Hence we can get rid of the thermal throttling issues.
Suggested Reading
