Wireless card, SSD & Ram upgrade - SVF1521P2EB

[DaniiCEO]

Hi,

I recently purchased a Sony Vaio SVF1521P2EB from Currys and I'm not too impressed with its performance.

The laptop takes quite a long while to boot up and it freezes quite a lot at times, not what I would expect from an i5.

I am planning to replace the current HDD with a 256GB SSD and I am also planning to increase the ram to 8GB, (12GB if possible, not too sure whether 8+4 would work well with each other).

SSD and Ram upgrades are fairly straightforward however the wifi seems to be a really big issue. I have 60 Meg internet and a dual band router but my Sony isn't able to pick up the 5G signal therefore can only achieve maximum speeds of around 30meg over Wifi. 

Is it possible to replace the existing wifi card for a dual band card? If so does anyone know what card will be compaitable with the laptop ? 

Thanks in advance ! 

[DaniiCEO · Accepted solution]

I'm guessing there are no techies here.

I increased my ram from 4gb to 8gb using 2 4GB sticks from Crucial.

I managed to clone my HDD to a Samsung 840 SSD and the PC is so fast!

I also managed to replace the ****ty wireless card and swap it for an Intel Wireless 7260 AC with Bluetooth and I now get blazing fast WiFi speeds.

All in all, cost me £180 to upgrade the laptop, laptop was a refurb from currys for £410 so I now pretty much have an Ultrabook with an i5, 8GB ram, SSD and all for under £600. 

Reason for replying for my own post is if any one has any similar questions then hopefully this should answer them. 

[siegmund10 · Accepted solution]

I've also performed the afore-mentioned upgrades for my Vaio SVE1713M1EB and I strongly recommend them as the results are simply astonishing !

My only mistake was replacing the main HDD with a Samsung SSD 840 Pro of only 128 GB capacity instead of at least 256. Now I need to remove programs and other stuff as the capacity keeps on decreasing after the continuous Windows updates. Take care not to fall in the same trap !

Need to add that I had no problem from the beginning with the wireless card because I didn't use WiFi for this machine. I use ethernet cable to connect my router because the specific "laptop" is quite big to be considered as a laptop and very inconvenient to carry around. In fact I bought it for desktop and haven't regretted it !