Just be sure you buy an SSD that actually fits in your laptop. Instead, you can find more information about purchasing an SSD in our buying guide and our comparison between SSDs and traditional hard disks. Since this is not a buying guide, we won’t recommend specific SSDs here. JIPEN/Shutterstock How to pick the right SSD If you have both items ready to roll, you can get started.

You can upgrade most laptops on a kitchen table using just a screwdriver. That makes a PC feel much faster.īetter still, an SSD isn’t difficult to install. Instead, it improves the speed at which software loads and the speed at which software juggles data. It doesn’t change how quickly software runs - that’s all on the CPU. Typically, the only components you can manually upgrade are RAM and storage.Ī good way to improve your laptop’s performance is to swap out its mechanical hard disk drive (HDD) for a solid-state drive (SSD). If one component fails, you can’t simply swap it out - you’ll need to replace the whole trio, which can be timely and expensive. In many cases, the processor, motherboard, and video card are installed as a one-package setup.

Laptops are difficult to upgrade in a meaningful way.