old business laptops

[Electroshadow]

i have always been adverse to laptops, but due to my pc being taken over and generally longer work hours i have been looking at laptops lately. i was surprised that basically most laptops under £1000 are pretty much useless compared desktops or are generally not made with very good components.

so i thought if that was the case i would just buy something dirt cheap £200 or less and hope that i can do general work duties and maybe world of tanks at lunch.... as i once had a HP Pavillion dm1 with the amd E450 which was capable for a cpu with a benchmark score of 700 lol. But being a HP its bios failed on its first update.

found myself looking at old business laptops for under £150! and picked up a Dell Latitude E5430 with an i5 3340M 320GB HD and 8GB of ram and windows 10.

i am surprised this thing is really quite quick and for the money i would class it a bargain. although the graphics are poor if you put in a SSD and 16GB of ram this would be a capable little laptop.

i highly recommend anyone looking for ultra cheap laptops to look at old business laptops if you dont need graphics for games.

the specs from dell say it will take 16GB but needs to be CFI?? Custom factory integration. Dose anyone know what this is??

 

[MG42Maniac]

I picked up two laptops this week. Both of them are Dell E5430. Both have i5 3320M, 1600x900 screen, 8GB, 500GB SSHD and Windows 10. I paid £132 for each of them and even without a fully fledged SSD, they are more than fast enough for the basic tasks they are required to do. I've yet to see the RAM above 3GB and the processor taxed much. Both of them hold about 1hr 45mins charge which isn't great but more than enough for our needs. I was under the understanding you could upgrade to 16GB RAM with any type of 1600MHz SODIMM.

 

[Electroshadow]

i have ordered some 16gb corsair vengeance ram so i will let you know if it works.

 

[Skeeter]

I ran a Dell D620 for years throughout Uni and beyond. A mate of mine bought one too and its still going as far as I know!

If you don't need graphics or a flashy screen then a decent CPU and RAM can see a laptop last ages. An SSD gives them a whole new lease of life.

 

[Electroshadow]

my E5430 only came with a 1366 x 768 screen pot luck though i was hoping for the 1600x900 one but i see they are a direct swap and only £30 for a new one so i might swap one in.

the CPU's on these are quite good i have been surprised that it runs 3d autocad very well even with only 8GB of ram powering my 24" screen through the HDMI port.

 

[loopylou]

Where did you find the laptop?

 

[Electroshadow]

on a well know auction its flooded with them, from all the major manufactures. most have 1st gen i5 and i7 but there are a few ivybridge chips on there.
the 3340M in this little laptop has a passmark score of 4142 which i wouldnt say is too shabby for a laptop seems as thought the last laptop i owned had a score of 700. even my desktop only has a score of 5800.

 

[loopylou]

Fab. I'm looking out for one now

 

[Electroshadow]

The 16gb of corsair Vengeance 1600mhz RAM fitted stright into the dell E5430 with no problems.

just need an ssd now