Gaming Laptop Small upgrade

It's a mid-life spruce-up time for my ASUS TUF laptop...

It's a fact of computing life (with Windows OS) that after a while of heavy use and many system updates that your computer starts to slow down and even have a few minor glitches. In my case, my ASUS TUF DY was horrendously bloated, it's small internal capacity for full and it's basic 8GB RAM was slowing everything down.

On top of this, and probably the worst part, was that consecutive and regular updates of Windows system and the  AND Radeon graphic card was starting to take a toll and when some of my favourite games began to refuse to play I decided it was time for action!

Upgrading on the Cheap

In a prefect world I would have loved to had been able to afford to max out the RAM to a maximum 64GB, replaced the M2 boot drive with something bigger and added a huge internal SSD 'D' drive. But in these belt tightening days I had to just undertake the bare minimum upgrade that would make a different.

So, I started by buying a single 8GB memory chip and just one 1TB bottom of the line internal SSD drive. 😕 That's all I could afford.

Cracking Open My Laptop!

The scariest bit for me was actually the opening up of my laptop as the pictures I'd seen on the ASUS's innards looked really intimidating and complex. However, forearmed with a good YouTube walk through of the process - and having bought a set of proper laptop repair tools - I tackled the job a little more confidently!

If there's one big tip I should relate it's this - keep the screws you removed organised so that you know exactly which screw to put back where and in which order! Honestly, it's important!

Other than that, the upgrade was pretty straight forward (thank you YouTube)!

A Clean Slate

Having completed the physical upgrades (and tested them *before* closing the case back up), I did a rigorous spring clean and backed up all my important document files to external storage. This actually took the better part of a morning but resulted in some breathing room for my 'C' drive but still highlight just how much 'mysterious' and unaccountable crap I still had on there!

Neither did it help with the core glitches and slow downs that I was suffering from, so time for some drastic action - a system wipe!

Now, I'll be honest, in the bad old days this was definitely a act of last resort because of the stress it brought on thinking about whether or not you could remember all the critical drivers that you would need to reinstall and whether you could find them. But, luckily, these day the process of a clean sweep is pretty painless and, in fact, the process is built into Windows itself and Windows is - these days - pretty good at finding most of you required drivers itself!

Job Done! And a Success...

OK, much to my surprise - I managed this minor upgrade without spilling tea in the machine, losing any screws or socking up the reinstallation of Windows!

In fact, the improvements - minimal as they were - were instantly noticeable.  Not only was Windows starting up quicker, but there were none of the slow down in operations and no glitches with the system ( I suspect that some of the issues I was having is because I had Windows 11 patched on top of an already dodgy version of Windows 10, which now I have a proper Win11 system cleanly installed).

And the proof of the pudding was that some of the games that had stopped working were now starting up and playing speedily (like Borderland's Tiny Tina's Wonderland, which repeatedly crashed out on start up)!

The bonus to all this - and the addition of the 1TB internal SATA drive - was I could now have several of my favourite games installed at the same time (no more uninstall/swapping of games) and also have plenty of room for my graphics and video projects at the same time...

HUZZA! A success! 😁