Monday, January 21, 2013

Upgrade Dell Studio 1558

Upgrade Dell Studio 1558
A number of people have asked me what changes I made to my 1558 to describe it as “one killer system” (in a comment replying to a poster in the antenna entry). Here’s what I can think of, off the top of my head:
Upgrade CPU from Core i5-450M to Core i7-740QM
Upgrade DVD burner to Blu-ray burner (UJ-235A, Panasonic UJ130, Panasonic UJ130A Panasonic UJ130AS)
Upgrade memory from 6GB to 8GB (system limit)
Upgrade display from glossy 720p to matte 1080p
Replace 320GB HD with 256GB Crucial C300 SSD
Upgrade keyboard to backlit model
Replace lid with one that has all the antennas and which matches the color of my race car
Upgrade wireless LAN card to Intel Ultimate-N 6300
Install Bluetooth 365 module
Install 5620 mobile broadband / GPS card
Use a nice Targus “Unofficial” 16″ slipcase to carry the system
Upgrade battery from 6-cell to 9-cell (genuine Dell)
Make the power supply more sleek – replace the “hammerhead” power cord with a normal one and remove the rubber strap (I use Velcro cable ties to manage all of my cables)
Install Windows 7 Ultimate x64 instead of Home Premium x64
As configured, it gets a Windows Experience Index of 4.9 (yuck!), but that’s due to a poor desktop graphics score from the Mobility Radeon HD 5470. [Of course, the integrated graphics option would probably be a lot worse - if you have a score for that, let me know in the comments.] The lowest of the other scores is a 7.3 and the hard disk (SSD) scores a 7.7.

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