Laptop performance degradation?

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
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Has anyone else had experiences with laptops slowing down or performing worse after time? I’m aware that all computers will slow down eventually, but as someone who primarily uses Desktops, laptops always seem to perform worse faster.

Even after checking for malware/viruses, testing the RAM/HDD/SSD, I never find a culprit. Even after a clean wipe of the drive, it never seems to be as fast as it was out of the box.

I primarily ask this, as, a family member asked for advice on purchasing a laptop, and while I grasp what the components are and how they perform, that performance has never held for long (at least for me). As such, I’m always concerned about whether my recommendations are valid as even I feel unsure of the longevity of the ascribed performances.

Is this just laptops degrading faster due to something, or is it just me and horrible luck.

2

Continued Windows updates tend to reduce performance over time, especially on older hardware.

Also, you need to make sure your cooling system is in good order; clean out the vents. Often, clogged up vents will cause CPU and GPU temps to rise and thus throttling performance.

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On top of this, it also helps to reinstall plain Windows 10 straight from Microsoft without any of the manufacturer crud. Often removing the crud manually isn’t enough. It’s a personal policy of mine to never use the OS installation a machine ships with or to ever restore to it.

Another thing that can happen with some devices (android phones too) is that storage can degrade due to bad management by the OS/firmware, reducing access speeds. Google Pixel phones are notorious for this issue, but I’ve heard of it affecting Windows laptops as well. There’s not much that can be done about this, unfortunately.

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Thank you for the replies. I assumed that it was just the nature of the beast, and how hardware becomes old quickly but I figured I’d ask anyway.

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What are the specs?

Oh, it’s in general.

In general physically they don’t hold up. Unlike desktops, they tend to get jostled, daily.

Often it is thermal. Some guys open up the cooling system and apply liquid metal and this helps the CPUs to stop throttling

6

Really depends on how often you move it, and the like.

My Mid-2012 MacBook Pro is still going strong and performs quite well as my daily driver (it was, mind you, a top-end SKU at the time with the i7-3XXX that Apple was using, so 4 real cores + HT for 4 cores/8 threads). I keep the thermal solution clean and its a real workhorse.

PC laptops… really depends. If it wasn’t a high-end SKU from a relatively well-known manufacturer (Lenovo, ASUS, Acer, etc), then its probably got a fairly sub-par thermal solution to begin with, and if you’re not keeping it clean, itll heat up fast and throttle.

And it might have had middling-powerful hardware to begin with - a LOT of laptops even now ship with 2 core/4 thread CPUs, until you get into the 600+$ range.

So couple middling hardware that is now aging, with thermal throttling if you aren’t keeping it clean (and maybe a low amount of RAM unless you upgraded it) and it can all add up to a slow, slow machine.

An SSD would speed up system response times, and you could carry it forward to a new computer later, more RAM might help if you’re only packing 4GB (or only packing 8GB and heavily multitask)… and a good cleanout might help a ton.

Or, it might be time to upgrade.

Also, since this is for a family member…

What are they doing with this laptop? They may not need to shell out a lot of money for what they -actually need-.

For the average person, for what they actually do on the go (and for a lot of people literally EVERYTHING they do regularly), a good Chromebook (in the 350-400$ range) will more than do what they need. ChromeOS is so lightweight that the less powerful hardware doesn’t really bog it down.

I bought my son a Samsung Chromebook Plus (the first gen)… and its a pretty baller little computer. QHD+ screen, vibrant color, good keyboard, USB-C charging, comes with the S-pen, and supports Linux apps and Android apps.

Nothing he does on it slows down or bogs down, even with 5+ tabs open and the Android Discord app running in the background. Also flips into a tablet and the screen response with the S-pen is quite good.

Theyre only 400$ brand new and you can often find them on sale or used. I got his used for 200$. Worth every penny.

The newer model also swapped from a six-core ARM chip to a 4 core Intel chip, but they perform about the same, and for a little more money (another 100$) you can step up to the Chromebook Pro, which has an actual Intel laptop i5 in it, and more RAM. I have to imagine that thing, since it is running ChromeOS, is probably faster than all get out.