Acer Aspire 7537-5020 laptop ugrade(s).

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dudeh8109

New Member
I purchased my ACER 7535-5020 laptop almost 3 years ago. I have noticed that it seems to be running slower than usual and I've decided to upgrade it rather than buy a new laptop.

The components of this laptop are:
ACER JM70PU motherboard
AMD Turion x2 mobile RM-70 2.0GHz dual-core cpu
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
320GB Hitachi 5,400rpm HDD (149GB available)
ATI Radeon HD 3200 Integrated Graphics w/256MB DDR3 memory
4GB (2GBx2) 667MHz pc2-5300s DDR2 SDRAM (Nanya Technologies)

I have set aside a budget of $400 for the parts I'd like to get for this laptop.
I have been (and will be) using this laptop for watching movies, listening to iTunes & internet radio, and surfing the web. I do have Skyrim & FS2004 on here, but they're the only games I play on this laptop.

I do have several questions regarding some stuff.

1-I've checked the manual that came with this laptop and found that the max supported ram for my laptop model is 4GB (2GBx2) of pc2-5300 SDRAM. I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping to go with at least 8GB of SDRAM. Anyways, am I stuck with only 4GB max SDRAM and can't, let's say install 2 4GB laptop memory cards? Or does it have to be only 4GB of ddr2 pc2-5300 SDRAM? (I have noticed that every time my laptop is running, I only have an average of about 250-550MB of usable ram.)

2- I have been wanting to try out a solid state drive because I like how people say they make windows start faster. I am currently leaning on getting either a 120GB or 240GB Corsair Force Series or OCZ Agility 3 solid state drive. (I don't really want a SSD much larger than 240GB since all I will be doing is watching movies, listening to music and surfing the web. How much faster would my laptop be with a SSD compared to my 5,400rpm HDD?)

3- How much less RAM does XP Pro use compared to Windows 7 (32-bit or 64-bit)? I have been wanting to switch back to Windows XP since my new desktop build has Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I do understand that if I do decide to go with a 32-bit operating system for this laptop that only about 2.87GB of my RAM would be usable. (Yeah I know..... why would anyone want to go back to XP right?..... I miss XP, didn't really have as much problems as I've had with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.)

4- Are there any blu-ray drives that I can install into my laptop? My desktop has one but I don't like running a pc with a 850 watt power supply just to watch a blu-ray movie.

Any help regarding my upgrade questions would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
4 gb ram is plenty for windows 7 and what you do, a 240 gb ssd will do wonders for this system and you can get an external blu ray player for less than $150 to play blu ray movies.

This laptop can't play games good due to the video chip you have. you can't upgrade that. so I would just get a ssd and external blu ray player you will see quite a different performance. you might also need to do some house cleaning by delete some unneccersary browser tools add on and other programs.

Cheers.
 
paulcheung said:
4 gb ram is plenty for windows 7 and what you do, a 240 gb ssd will do wonders for this system and you can get an external blu ray player for less than $150 to play blu ray movies.

This laptop can't play games good due to the video chip you have. you can't upgrade that. so I would just get a ssd and external blu ray player you will see quite a different performance. you might also need to do some house cleaning by delete some unneccersary browser tools add on and other programs.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

I looked further into what kind of ram I could use for my laptop and found, for my laptop model (7535-5020), that 4GB (2x2GB) is the ABSOLUTE MAX ram I can use for my model. I can live with that I guess.... and it doesn't hurt to close certain tasks using task manager when Windows boots to desktop.

I did decide to go with a 240GB OCZ Agility 3 SSD and picked up an external blu-ray player for $100. I think I'm gonna get an external 500GB 7,200rpm HDD since it's only $35.97 from my local store too. And just for the hell of it, I'm gonna use Windows XP Professional 32-bit as my operating system. (Found my VERY old XP Pro disk stashed away far back in the closet.) And on an interesting note, I took note of cpu temps when using Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on my Hitachi 320GB HDD, which idled at 45-55 Celsius and maxed out at up to 95 Celsius. (Average temp when running programs like iTunes, Internet Explorer and watching movies, Yikes!!!!) Then I took out the old hard drive and installed a Seagate Momentus 250GB 5,400rpm HDD with Windows XP Professional 32-bit... installed FS2004 using very high settings and noticed that after about an hour and a half, that the cpu temps maxed out at 68 Celsius and idled at 40-50 Celsius. Why is that?

I always take apart and clean the laptop every now and again, just struck me as odd that the cpu temps would be lower on Windows XP Professional 32-bit than on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Thanks for your suggestions.
 
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I don't know why the temp is different, but Windows 7 is better for ssd. so I think you should use windows 7 on the ssd.
Cheers
 
Well..... I might as well use the Windows 7 Ultimate disk that I already have and save the XP Pro 32-bit OS for when I get bored and want to build an "old-school" desktop. (I have been wanting to do a Pentium 4 670 build with possibly a 9800 GX2 and a "massive" 80GB HDD. Man I miss my old pentium 4.)

Thanks.
 
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