E6420 Upgrade planning, is this possible?

[LucasDerpYT]

So, this christmas I have about $150 to put into a new laptop if I pull together all of my funds. I plan to get a Dell Latitude E6420 for about $160 which I can save up to easily. I have done some looking around and now want to ask if it will be possible in my configuration.
My plan is to upgrade it from a I5 2410M to an I7 2670QM, aside from battery and power adapter, will this be possible on the stock motherboard. I also want to go from 4 GB RAM to 8, then to 16 when I save up more money, yes I do know it is dual DIMM. From 1366X768 to a 1366X768 or 1600X900 touchscreen, upgrade the keyboard to be backlit, put in 2 500 GB 7200RPM hard drives in RAID, and finally but definitely not least, an external graphics card solution through the express slot, preferably putting in a GT 1030 or GTX 1050.

 

[jaslion]

So, this christmas I have about $150 to put into a new laptop if I pull together all of my funds. I plan to get a Dell Latitude E6420 for about $160 which I can save up to easily. I have done some looking around and now want to ask if it will be possible in my configuration.
My plan is to upgrade it from a I5 2410M to an I7 2670QM, aside from battery and power adapter, will this be possible on the stock motherboard. I also want to go from 4 GB RAM to 8, then to 16 when I save up more money, yes I do know it is dual DIMM. From 1366X768 to a 1366X768 or 1600X900 touchscreen, upgrade the keyboard to be backlit, put in 2 500 GB 7200RPM hard drives in RAID, and finally but definitely not least, an external graphics card solution through the express slot, preferably putting in a GT 1030 or GTX 1050.

By the time you have the final laptop you have quite possibly spent more than just saving up for a actuall good laptop that is better at around 800$.

You get a cheap laptop because:
You need a backup pc
You need something portable that will sometimes be used
You need it for a specific low end usecase
,...

You are getting a low end laptop for all the wrong reasons.
Either save up for a good one, buy it and use it till you can buy a good one or waste a bunch of money and get a pretty crappy laptop in the end still.

Also the screen on those is really bad and expressslot bandwith is slow and will heavily throthle even a gt 1030.

 

[psoohoo]

the i7 draws 45w vs 35w for the i5. not sure if the heat sink is able to provide sufficient cooling.
you best option here really if you are going this route is upgrade the RAM to max and put in an SSD (not sure if the BIOS supports RAID) and replace the LCD is you really want to higher res. You cannot upgrade the graphic.
but you are looking at around $300 of upgrades that would probably be better putting it into a more modern machine.

I would get it to use, i would not get it if you plan to do significant upgrades.