Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Decade Old Laptop is in its healing era 🤕
Welcome to this new video series where I make an effort to take electronics that would otherwise be trashed to being smash again! Join me as I show you how to repair and upgrade old or broken devices for little to no cost. From smartphones with cracked screens to slow laptops, we'll transform these discarded electronics into fully functional, often way better, devices.
The Acer E1-531 with an Intel Pentium B960 certainly wasn't state of the mind technology when it came to market in 2012. Can it be lifted to higher standards so we can at the very least use this device for light tasks? The answer is a big YES! Thanks to the power of a 20 euro RAM upgrade, an older SSD I had lying around and a WiFi card that can connect to 5GHz WiFi.
Note: I've considered doing a CPU upgrade since this laptop does have a socketed CPU after all. But from my research, this chipset will shut the device off after 30 minutes of use when an unsupported CPU is detected. Sadge 😔
Parts used:
RAM: Silicon Power SP008GLSTU160N02 DDR3L 204-pin SO-DIMM 8 GB 1600 Mhz
SSD: Samsung 860 EVO 2TB SATA
WiFi card: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260
Display: Equivalent to LP156WH4 on website ViaDennis
Link to the BIOS update: archive.org/details/Acer-E1-531-V2.2-UEFI-BIOS
Music used:
Pixelate - pixelated dreams Music by thatlofishow from Pixabay
Chiptune Ending Music by Nicholas Panek from Pixabay
BAKA! - DigiTV-HD 3.7.10 crk
Celebration Technica - Psychronic Music by Douglas Gustafson from Pixabay
"Cruising for Goblins" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This song was not changed and is used as background music in this video.
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:12 It brokey
2:14 Screen test
2:59 Screw post did an ouch
3:20 Reassembly and more pain
7:16 Replacing the RAM an Battery
8:12 Firmware Flash
8:51 HDD speed tests
11:26 HDD to SSD cloning
13:55 SSD speed tests
14:56 It's Linux time
16:05 Linux speed tests
17:26 WiFi upgrade
19:25 Summary
20:09 Cringe edit
Website: nostalgiarealm.com
Decade Old Laptop is in its healing era 🤕
Welcome to this new video series where I make an effort to take electronics that would otherwise be trashed to being smash again! Join me as I show you how to repair and upgrade old or broken devices for little to no cost. From smartphones with cracked screens to slow laptops, we'll transform these discarded electronics into fully functional, often way better, devices.
The Acer E1-531 with an Intel Pentium B960 certainly wasn't state of the mind technology when it came to market in 2012. Can it be lifted to higher standards so we can at the very least use this device for light tasks? The answer is a big YES! Thanks to the power of a 20 euro RAM upgrade, an older SSD I had lying around and a WiFi card that can connect to 5GHz WiFi.
Note: I've considered doing a CPU upgrade since this laptop does have a socketed CPU after all. But from my research, this chipset will shut the device off after 30 minutes of use when an unsupported CPU is detected. Sadge 😔
Parts used:
RAM: Silicon Power SP008GLSTU160N02 DDR3L 204-pin SO-DIMM 8 GB 1600 Mhz
SSD: Samsung 860 EVO 2TB SATA
WiFi card: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260
Display: Equivalent to LP156WH4 on website ViaDennis
Link to the BIOS update: archive.org/details/Acer-E1-531-V2.2-UEFI-BIOS
Music used:
Pixelate - pixelated dreams Music by thatlofishow from Pixabay
Chiptune Ending Music by Nicholas Panek from Pixabay
BAKA! - DigiTV-HD 3.7.10 crk
Celebration Technica - Psychronic Music by Douglas Gustafson from Pixabay
"Cruising for Goblins" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This song was not changed and is used as background music in this video.
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:12 It brokey
2:14 Screen test
2:59 Screw post did an ouch
3:20 Reassembly and more pain
7:16 Replacing the RAM an Battery
8:12 Firmware Flash
8:51 HDD speed tests
11:26 HDD to SSD cloning
13:55 SSD speed tests
14:56 It's Linux time
16:05 Linux speed tests
17:26 WiFi upgrade
19:25 Summary
20:09 Cringe edit
Website: nostalgiarealm.com
