I Got A Dell

[TPFanatic]

Last year a friend of mine gave me their old Dell Inspiron N5110, and i remembered it existed yesterday. Honestly it’s the sort of laptop i wanted when it was new, a fairly priced consumer laptop with good performance and upgrade potential, it’s actually quite charming for a plastic laptop.

My upgrades:
750GB Hitachi spinner -> 160GB Intel SSD
6gb DDR3-1333 -> 8gb DDR3-1600
802.11n 1x1 -> 802.11ax 2x2
i5-2450m -> i7-2630qm
Windows 7 Home -> Windows 10 Pro N

Following ifixit instructions to disassemble the entirety laptop to replace the HDD was laughable but easy enough. Much easier than building a DIY T25.

Considering getting an MPCIE GDC Beast cable so i can hook up my egpu to the second MPCIE slot. No expresscard on this model. Currently it holds the original 6150 WiMax card which is good for nothing in my area.

The motherboard is capped at 1366x768 output so the original glossy TN is going nowhere.

Battery life is actually pretty good, at least 2 hours estimated on the OEM battery. There’s a “QuickSet” to manually tell the battery to stop charging until the next reboot.

The speakers are better than any of my thinkpads, even P71 and A31. This thing is LOUD!!

I rather take this laptop about and risk it getting stolen than any of my thinkpads. With the 2630qm it’s plausibly faster than my T470 for some apps. It’s nice having a Dell.

[axur-delmeria]

Following ifixit instructions to disassemble the entirety laptop to replace the HDD was laughable but easy enough.

That's just like my brother's N4110. I can't believe Dell actually made a 15.6" laptop that needs to be completely disassembled like the Aspire One A150 netbook just to replace the HDD.

[David C]

new laptop new feeling

[kfzhu1229]

Last year a friend of mine gave me their old Dell Inspiron N5110, and i remembered it existed yesterday. Honestly it’s the sort of laptop i wanted when it was new, a fairly priced consumer laptop with good performance and upgrade potential, it’s actually quite charming for a plastic laptop.

My upgrades:
750GB Hitachi spinner -> 160GB Intel SSD
6gb DDR3-1333 -> 8gb DDR3-1600
802.11n 1x1 -> 802.11ax 2x2
i5-2450m -> i7-2630qm
Windows 7 Home -> Windows 10 Pro N

Following ifixit instructions to disassemble the entirety laptop to replace the HDD was laughable but easy enough. Much easier than building a DIY T25.

Well as a Dell person, to be honest the Inspiron N series are fairly cheap laptops. It may depend on the condition of the laptop and your luck but seems like yours is working great, in which case tune it up nicely and give it a second life.
You should consider tightening the hinge bolts and stuff as the plastic laptops are much less tolerant to loose hinge screws and stiff hinges but otherwise the hinge will hold up fine.
Personally I would neither put a quad core nor would I consider any of the dGPU mobos, these mobos have fairly basic VRM design and overstressing it can result it being fairly failure prone. I believe these only have the basic 2+1 phase VRM while the big boys like the XPS L502x below has 3+1.
Also, these laptops should be capable of 1600Mhz RAM even on an i5, but only on old BIOS revisions.
I found the XPS version of that laptop in the thrift store, the XPS L502x, and that thing did not disappoint. I am always a bit weary of aluminium lids with plastic frame inside but that held up fine, and the bottom casing of that thing is lined up with thick magnesium frame just like the "roll cage" of T500/10/20/30 thinkpads. My entry level GT 520M version is a bit underwhelming (my 13 inch Acer TimelineX has GT 540M) and the i7-2670QM upgrade struggled for cooling somewhat, but that thing's got a fairly nice subwoofer and good build quality (and a higher selling price than I anticipated)

And for an absolute beater laptop I have an Acer Aspire 5733 with Pentium P6200 upgraded to i5-520M and all that. It's a functional, lightweight (hollow on the inside) but kinda ugly laptop that actually deterred would be thieves once.

[TPFanatic]

In my teardown i found the right upper hinge mounts were already disintegrated, but the bottom still works. Left hinge has a metal brace part of the palmrest that assists the left hinge, so it has held up.

[kfzhu1229]

In my teardown i found the right upper hinge mounts were already disintegrated, but the bottom still works. Left hinge has a metal brace part of the palmrest that assists the left hinge, so it has held up.

Well that seems like a typical problem. The good news is it is perfectly fixable on these and after dealing with half a dozen Acers each with these kinds of issues, I've brushed up on my technique on gluing the thread back on with superglue and then Q-bond resin, and I can do it so well these days that everything sits perfectly flush and you wouldn't know it's there except that the hinges are much more durable than it would've been. These when done right would be perfectly enough to all my acer laptop hinges perfectly strong again. I suppose I can write my personal guide on that if it comes to it.
These are non-problems on the XPS L502x because hinge screws into the magnesium roll cage.