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I've had this Dell Inspiron 15 7510 for a couple of years now. It has an Intel Core i7-11800H (8C/16T) and an RTX 3050 Mobile (4gb) and 16GB of RAM with a 512GB NVME SSD. It's served me well but it's been really niggling me as of late:

• The i7 runs HOT for whatever reason and the fans will go loud because of this, while doing light work (it's doing it right now and I've only got FF open).
• The plastic that holds the hinge in place finally snapped so I need to replace the entire top lid.
• The battery will only last for 2Hrs (and that's as long as it has ever lasted)
• F*ck NVIDIA on Linux

Whatever I decide to do I'm going to need to replace that lid.

Is it worth trying to sell it (after repairing it) and using that to offset a Framework laptop (which might be cheaper in the long run)? Or should I just keep using it for the next couple of years to get full value from it?

I don't need a really powerful laptop anymore since I've bought a Dell (I know right) T7910 second hand which I've upgraded to 64GB of RAM and an RX Vega 56 which is more than enough for any of my gaming and high performance computing needs (I study Computational Science and Physics at university). The main thing that matters is Linux compatibility

Almost 2 months ago I posted here with a question about a GPU upgrade. I got some awesome answers (thanks again everyone!) and ended up doing a couple of upgrades at once, and now have a much better system! I went from

Zotac Gaming GTX 1650 (4GB) > Gigabyte RTX 3060 (12GB)
16GB (2x 8gb) > 32GB (2X 16GB) DDR4 RAM
500GB WD Blue M.2 NVME SSD > 2TB SanDisk EXTREME M.2 NVME SSD
2TB Seagate Barracuda > 8TB Seagate Ironwolf PRO HDD

I didn't end up upgrading the CPU, so am still rocking my Ryzen 5 3600. I'm not super happy with its performance in certain games, particularly the more CPU intensive games like Transport Fever 2 (with large, well developed maps), and NIMBY Rails, but I can hold out for now. All of my roomates moved out, so I've also taken the fairly ugly approach of running CAT6 ethernet cable down the hallway and under my door to my PC, so I've got a nice internet speed boost as well. This isn't permanent though (planning running proper cabling underneath the house in the coming months).

With a good dusting, and a new application of thermal paste, my PC is now feeling quite snappy and runs a lot better. I've been thinking about the upgrade path, and I think next year I'll make my final upgrade to this system and upgrade CPUs to a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, as it's currently considered to be the best (at a reasonable price) AM4 CPU on the market. Then, hopefully, I can rock this system for a fair few years before needing to upgrade again. I may possibly upgrade to a 40 or possibly 50 series (if the 3060 needs an upgrade by the next upgrade time) GPU prior to switching over, even though my components likely won't be able to take full advantage, just so that it's one less thing I'll need to buy when I take the next big leap (afaik there's no upgrade path after a 5800X3D, and switching to am5 will require a new motherboard and ddr5 ram)

When the time for another upgrade does come, I'm strongly considering building my own system. This was a pre-built, as I'm not very confident in messing around with it. Through reapplying thermal paste, and the upgrades I've done to this system, I've learnt the basics, and think that a quick YouTube tutorial should be able to get me through the rest.

Thanks once again everyone for all the advice, it was very useful!

So a while ago I managed to damage one of my GPUs fans (wifi card fell out of the PCI slot and hit the fan). Although still usable (and probably fixable), it struggles with a few of the games I play. I mostly play games like cities skylines and transport fever 2, and from what I can tell, I think I'm being bottlenecked primarily by a lack of 3D performance and dedicated GPU memory (both of those reach 100% in task manager)

I tried to ask the people at centrecom, but they told me I wouldn't notice any performance increases with an upgrade as my CPU and mobo aren't fast enough to notice a difference. But they never actually asked me what CPU or mobo I have, so I can't tell if that's actually the case or if they're just trying to get me to upgrade the rest of my components too. I'm new at all of this and my PC is a pre-built, so I don't entirely know what I'm doing in any case.

I currently have a Zotac GTX 1650 (4GB) but want to upgrade to an MSI RTX 3060 (12GB). I have an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 Core) CPU and an MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX motherboard. I checked compatibility with PCPartPicker and it seems everything will be compatible, and I do plan on upgrading CPUs and possibly motherboards eventually anyway, so upgrading GPUs won't necessarily be a waste of money, even if the rest of my PCs components can't make full use of the additional power, right?

Also, how do I go about checking space constraints? Is it just a case of taking a tape measure to the area around my GPU?

As I said I'm completely new at this and am not entirely sure I know what I'm doing... So any help is much appreciated!

If you want a 100% efficient computer like me, all you have to do - and it's very simple!

Count all of the noise and heat as useful work.