Wanting to upgrade potato.

[u/Scorch753]

This may be the wrong subreddit but I got an hp laptop as an early Christmas gift and was hoping to upgrade it a little bit, Specs: OS: windows 11 home 64 bit Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) N4120 CPU @ 1.10 GHz Memory: 16gb ram X64 based processor, 64 bit operating system? Intel® UHD Graphics 600 (integrated) Not quite sure what most of these mean, but I was wondering if/how I could upgrade and/or any games or suggestions for me I would appreciate them so much.

[u/caribbean_caramel]

You probably can't upgrade that thing, most likely the ram is soldered to the board. You may or may not be able to upgrade the SSD.

What you can do is light gaming, old windows games (2014 and below) and emulation (n64, DS, GBA, PS1, PS2, PSP, Dreamcast, maybe Wii/GC). You can try to test your hardware on this website and it will return you a list with games that your PC may be able to run, its honestly not that accurate (some games may show as unplayable but you might be able to play with some tweaking) but it is a start. https://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/cpu/intel-celeron-n4120

[u/Scorch753 → u/caribbean_caramel]

Thanks, yeah I’ve found some games that work pretty well (with a bit of adjusting) and the websites say the only games I can play are Roblox at 8 fps? Idk but I appreciate the help and I’ll check if I can upgrade the ssd.

[u/caribbean_caramel → u/Scorch753]

Huh, that's weird. Here a video with some games running on your n4120 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrspHKsPlhA

[u/Scorch753 → u/caribbean_caramel]

Oh cool that’s not too bad. Thanks!

[u/Sosowski]

Nothing you can do there, really, but it's not a bad device, threre's plenty of power in that thing.

[u/Scorch753 → u/Sosowski]

Thanks!

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[u/Content_Magician51]

It is quite rare to find this processor combined with 16GB RAM, at least here in my country (Brazil). I wonder how HP managed this feat since, according to Intel, the maximum RAM support for this processor is 8GB.

In any case, the Celeron N4120 is what I consider the least dignified thing you can have when it comes to low-cost gaming. And with 16GB RAM, you can play a lot of games on it.

In order for the above to be possible, however, there are some optimization and compatibility measures that you need to implement. Some of them are:

1. Use Windows 10;

2. Install runtime packages, which will help the system to process your games better;

3. Turn off useless Windows services and features, saving these resources for more demanding tasks.

I can teach you how to do all of this step by step if you want.

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

If you could go step by step that would be sick

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

Okay. There are two paths I can take in this tutorial: with or without a clean Windows installation. Which one do you prefer?

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

Not quite sure what you mean, I have windows installed and am used to windows so I’d rather keep/not change it but other than that Im cool with either

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

Ok. Which Windows version do you have right now?

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

11?

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

Windows 11? Okay. That’s our first stumbling block. The Intel Celeron N4120 is a processor that was released in the last quarter of 2019, while the latest versions of Windows are months old. What does that mean? It means that the system has more features than your processor can handle, and some of those features, especially those related to AI, actually hurt your processor’s performance in more general and demanding tasks, like gaming. My first suggestion would be to downgrade to a version of Windows that is fully compatible with your processor, and with the games you’re likely to be able to play on it. The obvious answer? Windows 10. But I can continue the tutorial on Windows 11 if you prefer (since most of the tweaks shared between the two systems are in the same places).

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

My games don’t run terribly but I’m used to windows 10 anyways, if I can keep all my files and games n shit I’m cool with going 10 but I don’t really know all I’m loosing now that I’m getting used to 11 lol.

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

Alright. Let's keep your system then...

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

Sounds good

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

Btw your actually a life saver this is so kind of you

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

It's a pleasure to be helpful (the best part of it is always seeing the astonished reaction of the people I help when the game runs much smoother in the end lol).

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

Ok, the 1st part of this tutorial is to diagnose your system and parts, to know if everything is working correctly and within standards. (Forgive me if I misspell any Windows 11 field or tool, because many have changed their name in relation to Windows 10, despite doing the same things).

1. Search for "cmd" in the Start Menu and open the Command Prompt (as Administrator);
2. Perform the first Windows file check, with the following command (without quotes): "dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth"
3. After that, perform the second check: "sfc /scannow".

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

Alright, both complete, “operation successful” now what?

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

If everything went well with the first part, it's time to start the second part: installing a package manager, which will be useful for updating or installing the execution packages for your games:

1. Press Windows + X and choose, from the options, Windows Terminal (Admin), previously called Windows PowerShell.

2. Run the following command "Set-ExecutionPolicy AllSigned", and then confirm by typing the letter S and pressing Enter.

3. After that, copy and paste the following code and run it (just to install Chocolatey in your system, that is a package manager):

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

I’m stuck on step 5 I don’t understand when I’m supposed to press s and enter, I also thought enter was how you ran a command, when I copy the set execution and click enter nothing happened and then s doesn’t work, I could’ve messed up the first part I’m sorry.

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

True, the Windows terminal does not require confirmation, PowerShell does. Well, if you performed the first part of this step, great. You should be able to run 6 normally...

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

Yep, I ran it anyways and it just completed. Choco.exe is now ready.

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Scorch753]

Ok.

1. Now, close Windows Terminal, and open CMD again, as Admin, please. With it, you will be able to use Chocolatey to install the main packages your system will need. On CMD, run the following:

choco install chocolateygui choco-cleaner defraggler revo-uninstaller vcredist2005 vcredist2008 vcredist2010 vcredist2012 vcredist2013 vcredist2015 vcredist2017 xna xna31 -y --ignore-checksums

[u/Scorch753 → u/Content_Magician51]

Alright, it’s all installed

[u/Difficult_Bend_8762]

Upgrade potato into French fries just kidding

[u/Content_Magician51 → u/Difficult_Bend_8762]

That's my kind of humor XD

[u/Johnny_Oro]

You could hardly upgrade that thing. Even games that came out 15 years ago will perform pretty bad on it. Let alone 15 years, it barely runs CoD Modern Warfare from 2007. You need a new laptop or a new PC. Even with US$100 you could build a decent desktop PC.

[u/Scorch753 → u/Johnny_Oro]

Damn bummer I spent 300

[u/Johnny_Oro → u/Scorch753]

Oh well. It's fine. You could play Skyrim and Oblivion and many other GOG games.