Latitude 7490 upgrades

[Kingfish999]

Bought a cheap reman Dell Latitude 7490 awhile ago and compared to my ancient almost 16 year old Insperon E1705 its a huge improvement. But we wouldn't be overclockers if we didnt try and upgrade everything to max potential, right?

For this laptop having a 512gb SSD with no startup programs, it feels slow to boot. Atto shows the SSD has a read/write speed of 515mb read and 450mb write which is pretty decent compared to the Sata-III SSD im used to but slow for what it should be. But im assuming these use a M.2 SSD correct? will upgrading to a better SSD help or are they limited in speed like Sata-III? Id hate to buy a new SSD and not gain any speed

the CPU is an i7 8650U which im assuming is pretty decent CPU for a factory laptop. BUTTTTTT is there any worthy upgrade for it? Or is it about the max there is? Is it even replaceable?

not too worried about RAM. it has 16GB DDR4 which is more than id ever need. Dont know what speed it is but doubt i can go too much faster other than lower timings

 

[don256us]

Looking at Dell's manual, it appears that you can install an NVMe.

Primary Storage:

• 128 GB M.2 2280 SATA 2280 SSD
• 256 GB M.2 2280 SATA 2280 SSD
• 512 GB M.2 2280 SATA 2280 SSD
• 512 GB M.2 2280 SATA SED 2280 SSD
• 128 GB M.2 2280 PCIe SSD
• 256 GB M.2 2280 PCIe SSD
• 512 GB M.2 2280 PCIe SSD
• 1 TB M.2 2280 PCIe SSD
• 256 GB M.2 2280 PCIe SED SSD
• 512 GB M.2 2280 PCIe SED SSD

The numbers you produced for your current SSD are really slow compared to what an NVMe can do. A quick google search to confirm my thoughts. You have a SATA SSD and NVMe is PCIe bus. Day and night. You'll go from ~500mb to over 5000mb.

The manual I linked above will give you better information.

 

[Kingfish999]

so im way behind on tech still rockin my ol X79 system i love.

whats the difference between M.2 Sata and M.2 PCIe? obviously PCIe will be faster and im assuming i have Sata since im limited to Sata3 speeds. will a PCIe M.2 go right into place or is it a different slot? i will have to transfer data anyways so i hope its a different slot

seems like i got the fastest CPU avalible for these laptops. just wasnt sure if there was any others that swap in to do an upgrade.

DDR4-2400 seems pretty nice. kinda funny my gaming PC is running DDR3-2400 and it has be be OCed to run it

 

[don256us]

Keeping things simple, M.2 is a connector type. For storage, there is PCIe and SATA. The M.2 will be keyed in such a way that it will only allow the type (SATA or PCIe) to connect. Some will do both but for this discussion, you want PCIe. Depending on the generation of PCIe, the speeds will be faster. I got into NVMe in gen3. I have some gen4 but I do not have any gen5. NVMe can use up to 4 PCIe lanes. I suspect in a laptop most of the finer points are moot. My guess is that you have a gen3 x4 meaning third generation and 4 lanes. Read the manual to see if that's right.

Once you know what generation your PCIe is (thus you M.2), find a NVMe drive in that range. If you go lower you lose speed and if you go higher, you might lose money depending on costs. Going with a higher gen NVMe will work but it will not go faster than your generation of PCIe.

Clear as mud? I hope not. Hit me back if I did a poor job explaining this.

TL;DR NVME is WAAAAAAYYYYyyy..... faster than SATA.

 

[Kingfish999]

ok im just wasnt sure if this laptop supports it.

whats the recommended brand to use? Samsung still? Crucial?

 

[don256us]

ok im just wasnt sure if this laptop supports it.

whats the recommended brand to use? Samsung still? Crucial?

I've used Samsung, PNY, HP, Western Digital. Find a brand you like that meets your needs. I like to search by capacity, speed and price. Brand only creeps in after I've narrowed down my choices.

 

[Kingfish999]

alright i ordered a WD 500gb pcie 4th gen as it was cheaper than a Samsung 3rd gen. also a usb adapter so i can transfer data

 

[JLK03F150]

alright i ordered a WD 500gb pcie 4th gen as it was cheaper than a Samsung 3rd gen. also a usb adapter so i can transfer data

Great imaging program free to use if at least one of the drives is WD.

Install and Uninstall Acronis True Image for Western Digital on Windows

Find detailed answers to your support questions for your Western Digital, SanDisk, WD_BLACK, or WD storage product.

support-en.wd.com

 

[Kingfish999]

got the SSD in. the cheap usb m.2 adapter i used worked fine despite WD program saying it cannot be done. the WD program itself worked but was VERYYY laggy some reason making the laptop unresponsive for several minutes for every step, cloned it fine tho once it started. dont think it was an issue with the USB adapter

SSD speeds are a major improvement. going from 500mb to 3gb will be very nice.


laptop still seems slow to boot however. must be the processor. wonder if i can increase the minimum multiplier or something. dont want it to kill battery life too bad but 1.9ghz is kinda painful

 

[don256us]

Check this link to determin what your M.2 port is.

M.2 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

They still sell SATA M.2 SSDs which will not be any faster than a SATA III connection. PCIe (NVMe) is the fastest interface for storage now and if your machine can use it; use it.

 

[Kingfish999]

the new SSD is working fine. like i said its now reading 3gb read/write speeds instead of the old 500mb so its working great.

i think the cpu is the next bottleneck. 1.9ghz base speed, 4.2ghz turbo speed. was wondering if theres a way to set it so the minimum cpu multiplier is higher so base speed would be higher. my old laptop i used a program that can manually set the cpu multiplier because the cpu i swapped in was too fast for the mobo

 

[don256us]

the new SSD is working fine. like i said its now reading 3gb read/write speeds instead of the old 500mb so its working great.

i think the cpu is the next bottleneck. 1.9ghz base speed, 4.2ghz turbo speed. was wondering if theres a way to set it so the minimum cpu multiplier is higher so base speed would be higher. my old laptop i used a program that can manually set the cpu multiplier because the cpu i swapped in was too fast for the mobo

Dell is more than pretty good at blocking those kinds of things. Additionally, I personally won't OC a laptop (if I could) because I don't think that the formfactor is conducive to doing so. Too much heat too little cooling.

I'm happy to hear you got such a great speed boost with the NVMe.

 

[EarthDog]

+1...

... and you simply CAN'T overclock MOST laptops in the first place. First and foremkst, unless it has a desktop-class cpu, the chips are locked. You may be able to raise boost clocks to all cores/threads, but thats about it.