I’m not even that tech illiterate, but I almost did that… My laptop was being slow, and I still had like 4k€ in overtime hours that I could buy Hardware from at work (it’s a great deal because I neither have to pay VAT on the hardware nor income taxes on the money from the overtime), so I was like, eh, might as well get a new laptop.
So then I read up on what laptop brands are out there, found out about Framework, and when I excitedly told my electrical engineer husband about it he was like “You knooow that you can easily replace parts in any laptop, right?”
Well, I didn’t know that (just kinda assumed laptops were more like phones than they are like desktop PCs), so I ended up just ordering a new SSD and new RAM for my laptop. It’s back to being butter smooth, but I have a hunch that cleaning the dust from the fans while I was in there was a very large factor in that haha
I used to work at a locally run computer store, and one of the biggest upgrades for most people was going from a mechanical hard drive to an SSD. Made a night and day difference.
Ooh, totally! I did have an SSD in there before, but it was only 256GB, so I had to store most files on the HDD and be extremely selective about what to install to C:. Going up to 8TB felt very liberating, I no longer have to fear that an npm install might crash my whole machine! (at least not due to space constraints, npm will figure out how to crash it for other reasons)
If the crashing stopped by replacing the SSD probably the SSD is end-of-life. SSDs basically wear down with each write action and when they reach their terabytes written limit they can start crashing the system during read and write actions. Also the smaller the SSD the lower the terabytes written limit is. 256GB drives are on the low end, so not surprising that you reached that limit.
That might be the case too! I do believe it was more of a skill issue in my case because I was booting Linux Mint from a 40GB partition (couldn’t free any more space than that on the old SSD) and enabled too many system backups (they recommended 2 daily and 2 on boot, and I just followed the recommendation without thinking about the space implications). Those alone put me at around 35-38GB of used space, and an npm install is usually around 1 GB, but log and temp files can sometimes balloon up when things go wrong. So it wasn’t really a crash per say, just Mint’s “shut down the system when you run out of storage space” protection triggering haha
I’ve been pretty much upgrading my own desktop PC regularly since the 90s (though I did buy a brand new one 6 years ago).
In my experience the upgrade that’s more likelly to improve it the cheapest is RAM, then a graphics card if you’re a gamer.
Upgrading the CPU has always been something that happens less often and also it doesn’t help that the CPU can only be upgrade up to a point without having to replace the motherboard (which then forces replacing the RAM and possibly even the PC box).
However there were two transition periods were the best upgrade by far was something else: the first was back in the day when hardware 3D accelerator boards were invented (Quake with a 3dfx was night and day compared to software rendering) and the other one was the transition for HDD to SSD, both being massive jumps in performance.
I think there’s still a pretty big asterisk on that, because laptop parts are generally not built to be swappable… So I don’t think you can swap the CPU without the rest of the mainboard, and some parts like the CPU cooler are probably tied to the specific variant of mainboard and need to be swapped together if you want to switch CPUs.
They do let you swap out parts that are reasonably swappable, so it’s pretty much a guarantee you’ll be able to upgrade storage and memory, and even where you can’t swap to different parts they make sure you can replace broken parts more granularly, so it still seems like a good deal.
The logic board has the CPU built in, that’s true. However, the Framework 16 has a swappable GPU and all models make the ports independent of the logic board through a USB-C-based expansion module system. So that’s even a few parts other manufacturer might consider unreasonable.
(Also, to be fair, I forgot one other thing most laptops let you swap: The WiFi/BT card, if only because it’s cheaper to have that on a swappable module.)
Wow that’s an amazing amount of dust. I think that’s the most I have seen in a computer and my only source of laptop used to be old things from recycling centers
Could be explained by the fact that my favorite position to program is on my bed, like a teenage girl from a mediocre 2000’s movie writing in her diary. The laptop fans get a taste of all that good good bed sheet fiber.
I use mine on a sofa (for gaming, even!), but I get around the issue a bit by having a pad under the laptop. It’s literally just a hard plastic board with a beanbag attached underneath, I think I got it from IKEA. It isolates the laptop a bit from dust and improves airflow + lets it heat up without burning my knees + the one I have is just large enough that I can also use my wireless mouse on it when I push my laptop to the left.
That’s why I will nab computers out of the trash if I see 'em. Most of them still have perfectly functional modern parts. A lot of the time, the only thing that even needs replacing is the PSU.
The majority of people I know who have major computer problems solve them by buying another computer
I’m not even that tech illiterate, but I almost did that… My laptop was being slow, and I still had like 4k€ in overtime hours that I could buy Hardware from at work (it’s a great deal because I neither have to pay VAT on the hardware nor income taxes on the money from the overtime), so I was like, eh, might as well get a new laptop.
So then I read up on what laptop brands are out there, found out about Framework, and when I excitedly told my electrical engineer husband about it he was like “You knooow that you can easily replace parts in any laptop, right?”
Well, I didn’t know that (just kinda assumed laptops were more like phones than they are like desktop PCs), so I ended up just ordering a new SSD and new RAM for my laptop. It’s back to being butter smooth, but I have a hunch that cleaning the dust from the fans while I was in there was a very large factor in that haha
I used to work at a locally run computer store, and one of the biggest upgrades for most people was going from a mechanical hard drive to an SSD. Made a night and day difference.
Ooh, totally! I did have an SSD in there before, but it was only 256GB, so I had to store most files on the HDD and be extremely selective about what to install to C:. Going up to 8TB felt very liberating, I no longer have to fear that an npm install might crash my whole machine! (at least not due to space constraints, npm will figure out how to crash it for other reasons)
If the crashing stopped by replacing the SSD probably the SSD is end-of-life. SSDs basically wear down with each write action and when they reach their terabytes written limit they can start crashing the system during read and write actions. Also the smaller the SSD the lower the terabytes written limit is. 256GB drives are on the low end, so not surprising that you reached that limit.
That might be the case too! I do believe it was more of a skill issue in my case because I was booting Linux Mint from a 40GB partition (couldn’t free any more space than that on the old SSD) and enabled too many system backups (they recommended 2 daily and 2 on boot, and I just followed the recommendation without thinking about the space implications). Those alone put me at around 35-38GB of used space, and an npm install is usually around 1 GB, but log and temp files can sometimes balloon up when things go wrong. So it wasn’t really a crash per say, just Mint’s “shut down the system when you run out of storage space” protection triggering haha
I’ve been pretty much upgrading my own desktop PC regularly since the 90s (though I did buy a brand new one 6 years ago).
In my experience the upgrade that’s more likelly to improve it the cheapest is RAM, then a graphics card if you’re a gamer.
Upgrading the CPU has always been something that happens less often and also it doesn’t help that the CPU can only be upgrade up to a point without having to replace the motherboard (which then forces replacing the RAM and possibly even the PC box).
However there were two transition periods were the best upgrade by far was something else: the first was back in the day when hardware 3D accelerator boards were invented (Quake with a 3dfx was night and day compared to software rendering) and the other one was the transition for HDD to SSD, both being massive jumps in performance.
I see you used to have an HDD in there. That alone would’ve made it painfully slow in Windows especially, but even with Linux.
Now it should stay fast for longer.
If you’re a half-decent person you doged a bullet there:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/14/framework_linux_controversy/
I mean, asterisk. Most laptops let you swap the storage and RAM and many let you swap the battery. Beyond that it usually gets difficult.
Framework let you swap everything, which is a major difference. But of course you pay for that privilege; modular design has its costs.
Still, good on you for getting a cheap upgrade. No need to throw away a perfectly good laptop if you can make it work fast again with a new SSD.
I think there’s still a pretty big asterisk on that, because laptop parts are generally not built to be swappable… So I don’t think you can swap the CPU without the rest of the mainboard, and some parts like the CPU cooler are probably tied to the specific variant of mainboard and need to be swapped together if you want to switch CPUs.
They do let you swap out parts that are reasonably swappable, so it’s pretty much a guarantee you’ll be able to upgrade storage and memory, and even where you can’t swap to different parts they make sure you can replace broken parts more granularly, so it still seems like a good deal.
The logic board has the CPU built in, that’s true. However, the Framework 16 has a swappable GPU and all models make the ports independent of the logic board through a USB-C-based expansion module system. So that’s even a few parts other manufacturer might consider unreasonable.
(Also, to be fair, I forgot one other thing most laptops let you swap: The WiFi/BT card, if only because it’s cheaper to have that on a swappable module.)
Wow that’s an amazing amount of dust. I think that’s the most I have seen in a computer and my only source of laptop used to be old things from recycling centers
Could be explained by the fact that my favorite position to program is on my bed, like a teenage girl from a mediocre 2000’s movie writing in her diary. The laptop fans get a taste of all that good good bed sheet fiber.
My back hurts thinking about this.
I use mine on a sofa (for gaming, even!), but I get around the issue a bit by having a pad under the laptop. It’s literally just a hard plastic board with a beanbag attached underneath, I think I got it from IKEA. It isolates the laptop a bit from dust and improves airflow + lets it heat up without burning my knees + the one I have is just large enough that I can also use my wireless mouse on it when I push my laptop to the left.
Ah I see you keep your laptop well fed. I try to keep mine anorexic lol
I’ve told those kind of people about how easily I could format/reinstall the OS, and they looked at me like some kind of lunatic witch doctor.
That’s why I will nab computers out of the trash if I see 'em. Most of them still have perfectly functional modern parts. A lot of the time, the only thing that even needs replacing is the PSU.