Computer Act!ve - UK (2022-05-11)

68

Problems Solved

The Razer Core

X Chroma can

add an external

graphics card to

a laptop

Is it worth

upgrading my

laptop’s processor?

Q

Would it be cost-effective

to upgrade the processor

on my ageing HP laptop?

At 77, I’m learning to do more photo

and video manipulation and it’s really

struggling. I can’t afford a new laptop

and thought that by upgrading to a new

processor with better integrated

graphics, things might be a little

faster. Currently, it has an Intel Core

i5-7200u CPU with 8GB of memory.

Suggestions, and rough cost, would be

really appreciated.

Chris Lyon

A

Upgrading a laptop processor is

almost always practically

impossible, so we’re afraid this

idea is just a non-starter.

Enclosures to attach a modern external

graphics card to a laptop do exist,

like the pictured Razer Core X

Chroma (around £380, http://www.snipca.

com/41651), but they are themselves

expensive – and still require you to

buy and fit whatever graphics card

you want, itself likely to add hundreds

more to the price.

Moreover, these external gadgets

require a Thunderbird 3 or 4 port to

connect, which we’d be amazed if

your particular laptop has.

So, there’s not a lot of good news here.

You could replace your laptop’s boot

(startup) drive with an SSD. This would

speed up everyday operation plenty, but

not graphics processing. It is at least

affordable and easy to do.

To learn how, see the detailed guide

we published in Issue 626.

Q

I’m confused! I have an HP

Spectre 360 convertible laptop

with an Intel Core i7-8550U

processor, running at 1.8GHz. I also

have an HP Envy all-in-one desktop

PC. This has a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-

7700T processor. Both are around four

years old. The laptop has happily

updated to Windows 11. However,

Microsoft’s PC Health Check app tells

me the desktop’s processor isn’t

currently supported. Could you explain

why this is, as both have a Core i7

processor – and the processor in the

desktop is faster than the laptop!

Frank Hays

A

The reasons why Windows 11

refuses to install in any given

PC tend to revolve around a

handful of similar themes, but that

doesn’t make them any less confusing.

Intuitively, it seems obvious that the

faster of two Core i7 processors

shouldn’t be a stumbling block when

Windows 11 has happily installed on a

PC that has a slower version of the

same chip. But, really, they’re not the

Why can’t my computer run Windows 11?

same. The numbers that follow the Core

i7 part of the model name contain a

multitude of information about the

processor, which Intel explains at http://www.

snipca.com/41534.

Here, the problem is that your

desktop’s processor is an older 7th-

generation chip, while the laptop

has an 8th-generation processor.

Running Windows 11 on a PC with

Intel processors older than the 8th

generation is not supported. Microsoft

has attempted to explain why, at http://www.

snipca.com/41535.

Microsoft won’t stop you from

manually installing Windows 11 on your

7th-generation machine, and you can

do that by downloading the ISO file

from http://www.snipca.com/41536. Chances

are that it’ll work just fine.

However, Microsoft might one day

update Windows 11 in a way that

makes it incompatible with

unsupported processors – so proceed

at your own risk.

If you want to know why your computer

can’t upgrade to Windows 11, ask us and

we’ll explain in this box every issue

The numbers that

follow i7 indicate

what generation the

Intel processor is

11 – 24 May 2022 • Issue 631