I really appreciate you going through the steps required to upgrade this laptop. I bought one 3 years ago, and since this spring have upgrade to Samsung 850EVO SSD, I bought a 8GB stick of Crucial ram from Amazon, and will be upgrading the processor to an Intel Pentium 2020M this weekend. I also hope to add a newer 802.11 AC wireless/bluetooth adapter pending discovery of what adapter it may be able to accept. Getting good use out of this old thing, and it gets easier to disassemble by the 3rd & 4th time.
Yes. I actually titled this video wrong. This model I am working on is the RGN4. The GN means green. Yes a DVD can be added. I put a link in the description to an external DVD drive you can buy for this. Thanks for watching!
I did open the top keyboard before to see where things were but not actually access the hard drive or RAM. Through the magic of editing and numerous shoots, it looked like I had done this before but not really. In this video I actually forgot 1 screw and plugged the wireless cables in wrong. That is why I added the annotation at that step lol. Thanks for watching!
I do not have any problems with my keyboard...yet. I hope I don't later one though. I can't say that I would trust any place to upgrade my stuff. I have never taken any thing in before in my life. You can try Geek Squad but I recommend buying the RAM from the link in my description and taking it to them. If you buy it from them it will be overpriced. Thanks for watching!
I don't have it anymore and that RAM was not compatible with this notebook. I put links in the description to a compatible RAM. Sorry for the late reply and thanks for watching!
That's a really hard laptop to upgrade.. what a job. Great thanks for showing this man! Will be buying this laptop soon. Glad you had the guts to do it and show this so I could simply follow. :D
I know this is a REALLY old video. You helped me a bit, though. I still have this laptop and am using it. It started to make crazy sounds. Through your dismantling I was able to fix it. Thanks from the future.
You should be able to download the Kaspersky program from the web and apply whatever serial you have on paper to the downloaded program. They also sell an external DVD drive you can use with the USB port. I will put a link to an affordable on in the description. Thanks for watching!
Sorry for the late reply. I like the OCZ Agility series. If you have the cash, the Samsung 830 256GB model is a top choice. There have been a lot of sales lately for SSD so be on the lookout. Thanks for watching!
Great question. Yes it does because it has the Mobile H70 Chipset from Intel. I am putting a link in the description to the specs of the chipset and it states support for SATA3 6Gbps speeds. Your question is very valuable to me because I am learning to include info like this in my videos. Thank you very much and thanks for watching!
Good eye my friend. The partition on there had nothing but the stock Windows Home Premium and I have the license for Professional so I wanted to install the Windows that I own. I also did not have my SATA to USB adapter on me because I loaned it out to someone. Thanks for watching!
I had that one in mind and when I saw the link on your video was like a confirmation.It was really easy to install. I also installed Windows 8 and when I shut down and started it again I couldn't believe when it showed me the lock screen in 8 seconds.
Yes it will. I am pretty sure the process will be the same as in this video. It would cost them more to make the case of this laptop totally different so the chances are good that it would be exactly the same because it is cheaper to make and use the same parts as much as possible. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the great HowTo. I bought a refurbished X401U. Only downside is RAM soldered in and not upgradable past 4G. I did swap out the HD with a Samsung 250G SSD so it at least boots quickly. Asus also sets up weird partitioning scheme with OS/Data. I Ghosted just the OS partition and restored to the whole SSD. Only hitch, had to run DiskPart to make the partition active.
I installed the Samsung 830 on my Asus x401. It boots from cold in 9 seconds. Amazing. Your video helped a lot and made things a lot easier. Now I got the best "ultrabook" for this price. $350 Laptop + $200 SSD 256GB = Total $550 for a blazing fast ultrabook. Thanks for this video.
I had a problem with the 8GB I had installed but I was not sure if it was because the chip was faulty because I used cheap RAM. I did not try a better set of RAM in it yet. Let me know how yours go. Thanks.
Where did you get the ISO from to create your Windows 7 Installation thumb drive? It could be that you are using an old version of Windows 7 installation disk and it does not contain the needed drivers to recognize the rest of the hardware from the laptop.
Thank you very much, this video was just what I needed to do the ram and ssd upgrade for this model laptop, which I did succesfully while occasionally referring to parts of this video on my ipad.
Maybe I got lucky googling, but the mere fact that I found this video so easily is quite surprising given that this process doesn't look very easy nor straightforward (I mean for novices)! Thanks a lot!!!!!
The only things that really matter are 1.Dont rub balloons all over you and around you while your taking it apart 2. Avoid carpets.... actually just think of all the things that usually shock you and how often you get static shocked, which for me is very rare but what I’m getting at is that you’d basically have to force static all over you and try to purposely fry the pc (it’s just not happening) 3. The spudger like he has is one of those cheap plastic iPhone repair kit ones, but a butter knife would easily work fine, Just take pictures of how it looks before, and don’t tear the thin ribbons. Which honestly that’s the only thing that really matters is Don’t tear the ribbon wire.
i did it with my x401a, just changed the hdd with an ssd, if you are just going to change the hdd you don´t need to remove the keyboard cables, , just put it carefully over the screen (don´t scratch the screen) and do the work actually it was easy, the killing part is trying to open the laptop, removing the keyboard from the case, it sound like you are breaking things thanks a lot for the vid, laptop is awesome
Excellent video. Very watchable & easy to follow along with you as I replace a bad hard drive. TH-cam PC folks should take a cue from you on how you made this tutorial. Thanks for posting this, and I hope to find your videos for my next project!
I bought this laptop in October... b970 cpu... I just finished installing Seagate Momentus XT 750GB 7200rpm drive as well as 8GB Kingston KVR16S11/8 ram...Absolutely no issues whatsoever did a fresh factory reinstall because I didn't feel like cloning drive and presto... The 750 Momentus is 9.5 mm thick ... That is as thick as you can go. Start to finish it took me 12 minutes for the hardware change.
The speakers are good. It is clear but I can't tell you what loud is. To me loud might not be that loud to you. There is not a lot of bass I know that. It sounds two times louder than an iPad. That is the best I can say. Thanks for watching!
Thank-you so much for posting this video, Windows 8 screwed up so I needed to remove the hard drive to fix the laptop. With how annoying it is to get to the hard drive in this laptop I am just going to switch the OS so I don't have to do this again any time soon, lol.
You probably do but I don't know how they would know I did that. If I needed to claim something, I would need to put back everything else before sending it back. Thanks for watching!
Yes it does void the warranty. But I can not tell or find a way that they would know that you opened it. Of course if you claim warranty and you send it to them with 8GB of RAM and a different hard drive, then yes they will know you voided the warranty. I am not saying you should lie, just saying, I don't know how they would know. Thanks for watching!
I am not sure what CPU he used. I would assume it was a mobile i3. It also depends on the BIOS and how much power is being supplied to the CPU. The BIOS in the laptop now does not have any options to adjust the amount of voltage to the CPU. So even though it would physically fit, you would need a CPU that requires the same amount of power as the B970. Thanks for watching!
You can boot from USB, Enter the bios then switch to “Boot” and set “Launch CSM” to Enabled. Then switch to “Security” and set “Secure Boot Control” to Disabled. Save the settings and exit then on restart press ESC to bring up the boot menu and select your USB, make sure it's the one that doesn't say UEFI.
Dang. Now I have to get an SSD for mine. BTW, did you happen to get the Samsung 830 after watching my video about it or did you already have that one in mind? Thanks for watching!
Thx dude, awesome video! Successfully replaced my HDD. Also, I've repaired awfully responsible spacebar button by myself. As you can see at 10:19 the keyboard cable runs just from spacebar location. You just need to slack off a bit that mess by unsticking those stickers from top side.
Thanks for instruction. I just decided not to remove the whole MB - there's quite simple to change the RAM using a gap while raising MB. Now SSD 256 and 8gb ram :)
I don't think it would be worth it and I don't think it would work because of the amount of voltage being supplied to the socket. An i-anything might require more power and I don't see anything in the BIOS to adjust the voltage. Where can you buy a mobile CPU?
thanks for this vid! Planning to get this and up the ram and add an SSD but damn, just damn. Hatin Asus now since almost all of their new laptops are almost upgrade-proof.
Assuming you have the USB device plugged in right now you go to the Boot tab and for boot option 1 you press enter and you should have the option for your usb device. Highlight your usb device and press enter. Then save and exit and your USB device should now boot. When you unplug your usb device it should automatically default back to the next bootable device. This is also on page A-5 of the manual. E_eManual_X301_401_501A_VER7169.pdf
I have one of these, they are NOT upgrade friendly at all. Also, when you were disconnecting the keyboard and track pad cable, you can flip it up with your finger. It's easier.
When I upgraded the HD to Momentus 750, I had also put in an 8gig ram card with absolutely no problems what so ever... its been running strong now for 6 months..
Can the HDD of my ASUS X402C laptop be upgraded to an SSD ? How will the smaller SSD fit in the HDD space ? Is there some tray that will hold it in place ?
i hope that people who looking for upgrading X401"U" stop able to see this video on their search since the X401"A" and the "U" have different motherboard to each other. If any one looking for X401"U" upgrade, the only thing that we can upgrade for that is the hard drive which can be upgrade as same as A models, but apart from that, nothing more can do.
Increase the RAM and hard disk have really boosted performance? I used this computer with Photoshop, Skype, Word, and Web. I hesitate to do this. (I've already managed to open it to clean it without problems). Also, no problem to get the Windows 10 license after changing the hard drive?
Yeah, it took me a hour before I realized that too, Win 7 doesn't have native USB 3.0 support so you have to format the hard drive and put the driver on the hard drive before you install Win 7, after that you just point it to the C: drive for the driver when it can't find it!
I only have a problem with the mouse being hard to pickup my touches. I use a mouse anyways. I am pretty sure the touch pad is defective. It is a cheap piece of painted plastic.
![ตีสิบเดย์ [FULL] | นางเอกหมอลำเงินล้าน "อุ๋งอิ๋ง เพชรบ้านแพง" & ไฮโซสาวสุดฮอต "ลิลลี่ เหงียน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jPxQS_EgrJ4/mqdefault.jpg)
I really appreciate you going through the steps required to upgrade this laptop. I bought one 3 years ago, and since this spring have upgrade to Samsung 850EVO SSD, I bought a 8GB stick of Crucial ram from Amazon, and will be upgrading the processor to an Intel Pentium 2020M this weekend. I also hope to add a newer 802.11 AC wireless/bluetooth adapter pending discovery of what adapter it may be able to accept. Getting good use out of this old thing, and it gets easier to disassemble by the 3rd & 4th time.
Yes. I actually titled this video wrong. This model I am working on is the RGN4. The GN means green. Yes a DVD can be added. I put a link in the description to an external DVD drive you can buy for this. Thanks for watching!
I did open the top keyboard before to see where things were but not actually access the hard drive or RAM. Through the magic of editing and numerous shoots, it looked like I had done this before but not really. In this video I actually forgot 1 screw and plugged the wireless cables in wrong. That is why I added the annotation at that step lol. Thanks for watching!
I do not have any problems with my keyboard...yet. I hope I don't later one though. I can't say that I would trust any place to upgrade my stuff. I have never taken any thing in before in my life. You can try Geek Squad but I recommend buying the RAM from the link in my description and taking it to them. If you buy it from them it will be overpriced. Thanks for watching!
I don't have it anymore and that RAM was not compatible with this notebook. I put links in the description to a compatible RAM. Sorry for the late reply and thanks for watching!
That's a really hard laptop to upgrade.. what a job. Great thanks for showing this man! Will be buying this laptop soon. Glad you had the guts to do it and show this so I could simply follow. :D
As a matter of fact, it fits a 9.5mm because right now I have the momentus xt 500gb. I needed a bigger drive for video editing. Thanks for watching!
I know this is a REALLY old video. You helped me a bit, though. I still have this laptop and am using it. It started to make crazy sounds. Through your dismantling I was able to fix it. Thanks from the future.
Jay glad it worked out.
Man, the top cover is tough though
Oh damn, I spelled the link wrong lol. It is fixed now. But yeah, you can find the drivers on the website. Thanks for letting me know!
Link is now up. Thanks for watching!
I have another video on how to clone your hard drive. You would need an adapter if you want to clone it. I explain that in the video. Check it out!
You should be able to download the Kaspersky program from the web and apply whatever serial you have on paper to the downloaded program. They also sell an external DVD drive you can use with the USB port. I will put a link to an affordable on in the description. Thanks for watching!
Sorry for the late reply. I like the OCZ Agility series. If you have the cash, the Samsung 830 256GB model is a top choice. There have been a lot of sales lately for SSD so be on the lookout. Thanks for watching!
Correct. I didn't really mean throw it away. I usually re-purpose it form something else or give it to someone else. Thanks for watching!
Good luck and thanks for watching!
wow... thanks for the work on this. A monster compared to any other laptop I've ever worked on.
It is individual drivers. Thanks for reminding me I forgot and will do it later tonight when I get home. Thanks for watching!
Great question. Yes it does because it has the Mobile H70 Chipset from Intel. I am putting a link in the description to the specs of the chipset and it states support for SATA3 6Gbps speeds. Your question is very valuable to me because I am learning to include info like this in my videos. Thank you very much and thanks for watching!
Good eye my friend. The partition on there had nothing but the stock Windows Home Premium and I have the license for Professional so I wanted to install the Windows that I own. I also did not have my SATA to USB adapter on me because I loaned it out to someone. Thanks for watching!
Glad it worked out. Thanks for watching!
I had that one in mind and when I saw the link on your video was like a confirmation.It was really easy to install. I also installed Windows 8 and when I shut down and started it again I couldn't believe when it showed me the lock screen in 8 seconds.
Glad it worked out for you. Thanks for watching.
Thank you for your time to share this with us !
Really helpful
I have replaced the ancient HDD with an SSD.
Brand new and they are on sale at Best Buy now for $329.99. Thanks for watching!
Did you put an 8GB in there? Did it work? Thanks for watching!
Yes it will. I am pretty sure the process will be the same as in this video. It would cost them more to make the case of this laptop totally different so the chances are good that it would be exactly the same because it is cheaper to make and use the same parts as much as possible. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for the great HowTo. I bought a refurbished X401U. Only downside is RAM soldered in and not upgradable past 4G. I did swap out the HD with a Samsung 250G SSD so it at least boots quickly. Asus also sets up weird partitioning scheme with OS/Data. I Ghosted just the OS partition and restored to the whole SSD. Only hitch, had to run DiskPart to make the partition active.
I installed the Samsung 830 on my Asus x401. It boots from cold in 9 seconds. Amazing. Your video helped a lot and made things a lot easier. Now I got the best "ultrabook" for this price.
$350 Laptop + $200 SSD 256GB = Total $550 for a blazing fast ultrabook. Thanks for this video.
Thanks for the tip and for watching!
I had a problem with the 8GB I had installed but I was not sure if it was because the chip was faulty because I used cheap RAM. I did not try a better set of RAM in it yet. Let me know how yours go. Thanks.
Where did you get the ISO from to create your Windows 7 Installation thumb drive? It could be that you are using an old version of Windows 7 installation disk and it does not contain the needed drivers to recognize the rest of the hardware from the laptop.
It did not boot. It might not be upgradable to 8GB unfortunately. Thanks for watching!
Thank you very much, this video was just what I needed to do the ram and ssd upgrade for this model laptop, which I did succesfully while occasionally referring to parts of this video on my ipad.
I ended up using a 256gb SSD and I love it. Thanks for watching!
Maybe I got lucky googling, but the mere fact that I found this video so easily is quite surprising given that this process doesn't look very easy nor straightforward (I mean for novices)! Thanks a lot!!!!!
pablo jacome it’s just tedious honestly
The only things that really matter are 1.Dont rub balloons all over you and around you while your taking it apart
2. Avoid carpets.... actually just think of all the things that usually shock you and how often you get static shocked, which for me is very rare but what I’m getting at is that you’d basically have to force static all over you and try to purposely fry the pc (it’s just not happening)
3. The spudger like he has is one of those cheap plastic iPhone repair kit ones, but a butter knife would easily work fine, Just take pictures of how it looks before, and don’t tear the thin ribbons.
Which honestly that’s the only thing that really matters is Don’t tear the ribbon wire.
Yes it can. Thanks for watching!
I am not sure why it does not show up in the BIOS. Sorry.
i did it with my x401a, just changed the hdd with an ssd, if you are just going to change the hdd you don´t need to remove the keyboard cables, , just put it carefully over the screen (don´t scratch the screen) and do the work
actually it was easy, the killing part is trying to open the laptop, removing the keyboard from the case, it sound like you are breaking things
thanks a lot for the vid, laptop is awesome
Absolute fantastic guide mate. Really helpful!
I was on an anti static mat that reminds me to add a link to it. Thanks for watching!
Could I upgrade this laptop to i7?
screw driver to unscrew the screws and some type of hard plastic to pry it open. You can use a guitar pick if you have one. Thanks for watching!
i just bought this laptop yesterday and so far so good!
Not possible. You have to dismantle the entire board from the chasis. Thanks for watching!
Excellent video. Very watchable & easy to follow along with you as I replace a bad hard drive. TH-cam PC folks should take a cue from you on how you made this tutorial. Thanks for posting this, and I hope to find your videos for my next project!
Not sure. I have not seen the x401u series. Thanks for watching!
I don't think so and I don't know anything about GW2. Thanks for watching!
I bought this laptop in October... b970 cpu... I just finished installing Seagate Momentus XT 750GB 7200rpm drive as well as 8GB Kingston KVR16S11/8 ram...Absolutely no issues whatsoever did a fresh factory reinstall because I didn't feel like cloning drive and presto... The 750 Momentus is 9.5 mm thick ... That is as thick as you can go. Start to finish it took me 12 minutes for the hardware change.
The speakers are good. It is clear but I can't tell you what loud is. To me loud might not be that loud to you. There is not a lot of bass I know that. It sounds two times louder than an iPad. That is the best I can say. Thanks for watching!
Nice! Thanks for watching!
Thanks for sharing the way how to open the harddisk. I need this.
Glad it worked out. Thanks for watching!
Not yet. Some day I might. Thanks for watching!
It is a kit from a website called ifixit. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for your input.
Thank-you so much for posting this video, Windows 8 screwed up so I needed to remove the hard drive to fix the laptop. With how annoying it is to get to the hard drive in this laptop I am just going to switch the OS so I don't have to do this again any time soon, lol.
It si not faster than a SSD. The XT is a hybrid drive and I would recommend the 750GB model. Thanks for watching!
You probably do but I don't know how they would know I did that. If I needed to claim something, I would need to put back everything else before sending it back. Thanks for watching!
Yes it does void the warranty. But I can not tell or find a way that they would know that you opened it. Of course if you claim warranty and you send it to them with 8GB of RAM and a different hard drive, then yes they will know you voided the warranty. I am not saying you should lie, just saying, I don't know how they would know. Thanks for watching!
that is a good question and most likely socket 1155. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for watching!
I am not sure what CPU he used. I would assume it was a mobile i3. It also depends on the BIOS and how much power is being supplied to the CPU. The BIOS in the laptop now does not have any options to adjust the amount of voltage to the CPU. So even though it would physically fit, you would need a CPU that requires the same amount of power as the B970. Thanks for watching!
I agree with you about Apple. Thanks for watching!
Great video! Makes things a lot easier. Just what I needed.
i have this laptop and it's actually not bad i only bought cause i watched your review and seemed not bad and it isn't, thanks!
Super video. My Asus x451m is still brand new so I'm scared to try this.
oh damn, I did not realize that! Thanks for the tip!
You can boot from USB, Enter the bios then switch to “Boot” and set “Launch CSM” to Enabled. Then switch to “Security” and set “Secure Boot Control” to Disabled. Save the settings and exit then on restart press ESC to bring up the boot menu and select your USB, make sure it's the one that doesn't say UEFI.
Dang. Now I have to get an SSD for mine. BTW, did you happen to get the Samsung 830 after watching my video about it or did you already have that one in mind? Thanks for watching!
Thx dude, awesome video! Successfully replaced my HDD. Also, I've repaired awfully responsible spacebar button by myself. As you can see at 10:19 the keyboard cable runs just from spacebar location. You just need to slack off a bit that mess by unsticking those stickers from top side.
You know this man!
Thanks for instruction. I just decided not to remove the whole MB - there's quite simple to change the RAM using a gap while raising MB. Now SSD 256 and 8gb ram :)
Thank you so much for your great help! I just fixed my spacebar problem by following your instruction :-)
I don't think it would be worth it and I don't think it would work because of the amount of voltage being supplied to the socket. An i-anything might require more power and I don't see anything in the BIOS to adjust the voltage. Where can you buy a mobile CPU?
Thumbs up thanks man,your a real life saver bro it works.
thanks for watching!
thanks for this vid! Planning to get this and up the ram and add an SSD but damn, just damn. Hatin Asus now since almost all of their new laptops are almost upgrade-proof.
MY GF JUST DID IT WATCHING YOUR VID ! THAT MEANS YOUR TUTORIAL IS REAL MATE!
Assuming you have the USB device plugged in right now you go to the Boot tab and for boot option 1 you press enter and you should have the option for your usb device. Highlight your usb device and press enter. Then save and exit and your USB device should now boot. When you unplug your usb device it should automatically default back to the next bootable device. This is also on page A-5 of the manual. E_eManual_X301_401_501A_VER7169.pdf
I have one of these, they are NOT upgrade friendly at all.
Also, when you were disconnecting the keyboard and track pad cable, you can flip it up with your finger. It's easier.
johnnythegeek1 saves the day once again!
When I upgraded the HD to Momentus 750, I had also put in an 8gig ram card with absolutely no problems what so ever... its been running strong now for 6 months..
and again Johnny, well done!!
subscribed i got stuck on the KB lift off had to make sure ..plastic tool idea was handy thank you
very nice video and helpfull i'm ready to upgrade my and ur video helped me a lot to get started thanks
Can the HDD of my ASUS X402C laptop be upgraded to an SSD ? How will the smaller SSD fit in the HDD space ? Is there some tray that will hold it in place ?
yo man, I want to upgrade the RAM. The recommended RAM is 4gb in the website. Did 8gb RAM improved your performance? Thanks
How do you get the bluetooth to work on this? I upgraded to an SSD and Windows 8.1 but haven't been able to use bluetooth since
i hope that people who looking for upgrading X401"U" stop able to see this video on their search since the X401"A" and the "U" have different motherboard to each other. If any one looking for X401"U" upgrade, the only thing that we can upgrade for that is the hard drive which can be upgrade as same as A models, but apart from that, nothing more can do.
great video sir , its loud and clear :)
Shit, my bad. I misspelled the link. It is fixed now. Thanks for letting me know.
johnnythegeek1 thanks for this and other video. guess I already made my mind what to buy.
Increase the RAM and hard disk have really boosted performance? I used this computer with Photoshop, Skype, Word, and Web. I hesitate to do this. (I've already managed to open it to clean it without problems). Also, no problem to get the Windows 10 license after changing the hard drive?
yes, the ram is soldered as well as CPU, his model is the A model with intel CPU and a sodimm slot so it is upgradable.
I think you have to change it to boot legacy hardware. But you can also create a USB install drive that will boot with a UEFI BIOS.
You save my Slimbook, thanks for the video.
Do you have any idea how to fix the same laptop of it randomly shuts down during use? Please help
I don't remember exactly but you can get into the BIOS to set it to boot the USB.
Yeah, it took me a hour before I realized that too, Win 7 doesn't have native USB 3.0 support so you have to format the hard drive and put the driver on the hard drive before you install Win 7, after that you just point it to the C: drive for the driver when it can't find it!
I only have a problem with the mouse being hard to pickup my touches. I use a mouse anyways. I am pretty sure the touch pad is defective. It is a cheap piece of painted plastic.
Thanks!
Are you in the BIOS?