I have an older Acer Nitro AN515-53-52FA that is still in good physical condition, but its hard drive is constantly running at 100% utilization, making the system extremely slow and difficult to use. The laptop supports an NVMe SSD and additional DDR4 memory. An NVMe upgrade would cost around $110, and laptop RAM is relatively inexpensive. For general use and some gaming, would upgrading the storage and RAM be a better value than buying a new laptop, especially with current hardware prices?
3 Answers
Replacing the spinning hard drive with an NVMe SSD should make a dramatic difference in boot times, app loading, and overall responsiveness. Since the model supports the upgrade, it is a fairly inexpensive way to extend the laptop's useful life.
If the laptop still meets your needs otherwise, upgrading it makes more sense than replacing it. Add another 8 GB of RAM and install an SSD. You can use a 2.5-inch SATA SSD to replace the hard drive, or an NVMe drive if you want to keep the existing drive for extra storage. The NVMe option uses a separate slot on this model.
For everyday use and non-demanding gaming, an SSD and a RAM upgrade should be enough. There is no strong reason to buy a new system unless you also need a major improvement in graphics performance, battery life, or CPU power.
I may end up doing both. I do not see much benefit in keeping a spinning hard drive inside a laptop that gets carried around and bumped regularly, since SSDs are more resistant to that kind of movement.