Are MSI Laptops Upgradable: Simple Guide

Are MSI Laptops Upgradable? That is a question many MSI Laptop owners have.

Laptops have been around for quite a while, and over the years, they have evolved into one of the most complete gaming devices on the market. Why hunch over a desktop table when you can be comfy on your couch, right?

Laptops provide excellent versatility when it comes to the majority of tasks. Of course, one can use them for their daily work but there comes a point when you might feel them getting slower. Or their storage would be running out.

Not to mention how the gaming industry has evolved to offer us a more immersive gaming experience. Mesmerizing graphics, real-world physics, and entertaining storylines. However, this does require a more powerful machine.

Can You Upgrade Your MSI Laptops?

MSI laptops are popular for gaming. However, as new games come out, you might have realized that you need a more robust machine. Buying a new laptop, at times, doesn’t seem feasible as it requires a decent starting budget.

The good news is, there are still some ways you can increase the performance of your MSI laptops. And don’t worry, an inconsequential thing like a soldered CPU or GPU won’t be able to prevent you from upgrading your laptop.

As is the case in MSI laptops, their (soldered) CPU isn’t upgradeable, but GPU definitely is! Even if it is soldered onto the device.

Read on ahead to find out the top 2 ways you can upgrade your MSI laptops and 1 lesser-known way you can upgrade your soldered part – i.e., the GPU.

Disclaimer: Upgrading MSI laptops – for example, RAM or Storage – does voids warranties. So, make sure you know what you are doing or, just to be safe, contact MSI officials.

1.    RAM

Most games today come with a recommendation of at least 8GB RAM to even run the game. That too, at the minimum settings. Not to mention, how quickly Chrome chugs RAM, especially if you have multiple tabs opened.

Thankfully, you can upgrade your MSI laptop simply by increasing RAM size. Now, notice we mentioned “increasing” instead of “adding”. That’s because MSI laptops have only two RAM slots, which are usually occupied by 2 8GB sticks.

You can check the maximum RAM size, RAM speed, and the number of slots supported by visiting the official MSI website. Once on the website, simply put your model’s name (for example MSI GF75) in the search icon and click specifications on the loaded page.

You will be able to see RAM specifications in the memory section. Usually, MSI laptops would support up to 64GB of memory at 2,666 MHz RAM speed.

Adding more RAM to your laptop will prevent slowdowns and offer the ability to run more programs simultaneously. This means you can play a game, while being connected on Discord, run background music on YouTube, and much more at the same time.

While for gaming, more RAM means smoother gameplay. The FPS (frames per second) improves, and jerky lags reduce several times. With a memory upgrade, you will also notice that the images in your favorite game have become better and brighter as well.

2.    Storage

Most MSI laptops (e.g., MSI GN75 Thin) have one slot for M.2 SSDs and another for SATA SSD or Hard Drive – as both are connected via the same SATA cable.

Therefore, you have the option to upgrade the storage on your MSI laptops as well.

Faster Storage

The amount of speed you gain upgrading from a hard drive to a solid-state drive is amazingly great. Where the fastest hard drive would be able to copy a file up to 300 MB/s, SATA SSDs easily pull around 500 MB/s. NVME M.2 SSDs (that are plugged directly into the motherboard) hit speeds around 3,000 MB/s, on average.

If your MSI laptop has a hard drive only, you can give your laptop a serious performance boost by adding an SSD. To give you a perspective, hard drives on an older laptop could take up to a minute to boot up. On the other hand, an SSD would boot up in under 10 seconds.

(To see these speeds, you will have to use your SSD as the main boot drive – the drive in which windows are installed.)

Since your MSI laptop does have an M.2 slot, it’s highly recommended to make use of it. You can also replace your current HDD with another SATA SSD. However, SSDs tend to be more expensive than hard drives, especially regarding cost/GB. This is where the second upgrade type comes in for storage.

More Storage

We are bound to run out of storage on our devices. Whether it is pictures of our friends or families or videos of our favorite moments, we do want to keep them with us for a long time.

And what about gaming? Many games today, such as Assassin’s Creed or Mortal Kombat, take space upwards of 40GB. Not to mention Call of Duty Warzone, whose single update is 70GB.

Where you can upgrade your MSI laptops with a faster SSD, it is not practical to go down the same road for storage. This is where you upgrade with a hard drive.

A hard drive provides an extremely efficient cost-effective solution for a storage upgrade. They offer a much better cost/GB than SSDs and are frequently used in server PCs – where storage up to 1 Petabyte (1,000,000GB) is quite common.

There’s more good news here that you can enjoy the best of both worlds. More storage while having faster storage speeds as well.

Simply use the faster SSD as your boot drive, install your most-used laptop applications (and some games too) on it, and use the hard drive for every other thing on your MSI laptop.

3.    Upgrading The GPU On Your MSI Laptop

The GPU on MSI laptops is not upgradeable because it is soldered onto the motherboard. However, there’s still an easy way to upgrade your MSI laptop with more graphics and you won’t need to buy a new laptop with a better graphics card.

You can use an external GPU and connect it to the laptop via USB 3.0 or thunderbolt port. This will greatly enhance your laptop’s gaming performance and you can enjoy your favorite games at a higher graphic quality.

The lesser good part is external GPUs can be a little bit pricey. However, you can keep using them on your future laptops as well. Some can also be plugged directly into the motherboards of desktop PCs. So, the value is still cost-effective. And they are certainly a lot cheaper than new laptops with a better graphics card.

You are most likely going to be unaffected by the extra equipment and wire outside the laptop. This is because most of us laptop users are already used to using our laptops while they are charging. What’s another wire, right? Especially since it means a better gaming experience, so why not!

Conclusion

MSI laptops are some of the best devices on the market, which is why we like to consider upgrading them instead of moving to newer laptops. In addition, upgrading MSI laptops is cost-effective as well and new laptops require quite a starting budget.

With that said, MSI laptops are certainly upgradeable. Most laptops do void warranties when you try to upgrade them but considering upgrades (usually) come after the warranty period is over, so that’s not an issue. Especially when you have incredibly low-risk upgrade options such as upgrading RAM, storage, and even the GPU.

You can upgrade RAM up to 64GB in the two RAM slots available on MSI laptops. For storage, you also get two slots. One for M.2 SSD and the other for SATA SSD or Hard Drive. SSD will add faster speeds while the hard drive will offer storage at a better cost/GB.

The CPU and GPU are not upgradeable on MSI laptops because they are soldered onto the motherboard. However, you can add more graphics to your MSI laptop by using an external GPU. An external GPU will be more cost-effective since it is cheaper than a new laptop and also reusable on other devices as well. Visit our homepage for more tech guides.