Upgrading old Dell XPS

samr4560

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Jun 24, 2015
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Hi everyone,

I have an old Dell XPS 15 that's a good 9 or 10 years old now- it's an XPS 15 L501X I believe. A while back Windows starting giving me trouble (I could boot but things went south whenever I tried logging in... none of the recovery options worked). Anyway, I'm installing Ubuntu on it and doing a bit of experimenting. I was just wondering if the RAM and HDD could be upgraded despite it's age? This website seems to indicate it's possible:
https://www.crucial.com/compatible-upgrade-for/dell/xps-l501x
But I've never tried upgrading laptop components before... Also I know it's probably not really worth it as the machine is pretty old, but it's something I would just do for fun to mess around and develop a better understanding of how laptops are put together.

Thanks!

Sam.
 
Most "standard" laptops of this age can be upgraded with more RAM and SSD. Go to Dell support site, enter your laptop' serial number, and check what documents are available. There's good chance you will find service documentation with procedures.

But before you do that - download a program like CPU-Z, and check how many memory slots you have, and what memory you can put there.