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日本Inside Acer Aspire R13 – disassembly, internal photos and upgrade options
We had the pleasure of reviewing the refreshed version of the Aspire R13 a few weeks back and now we are going to take a deeper look into the internals and upgrade options of the device.
1. Removing the back cover
This is fairly easy. Just unscrew the bolts and use a plastic tool to detach the back. When you open it, you will see all the internals that you would need, including the SSD or two SSDs if you have the RAID 0 configuration.
2. Removing the motherboard
The only time you might want to remove your motherboard is when cleaning the fan, but you can also do it without removing all the hardware inside. However, this operation can be done without much hassle – just be careful when managing the cables since there are lot of them and they prevent removing the motherboard.
3. Upgrade options
The only thing you can upgrade here is the storage. This particular model comes with 256GB SSD manufactured by Kingston. It’s 80 mm long with “B & M” type key. If you didn’t buy the RAID 0 configuration, you have to buy the same type of M.2 SSD for the upgrade. There’s an option in the BIOS that enables normal usage of both SSDs (change RAID 0 to AHCI), but you will have to perform a clean install of Windows, because you will not be able to boot into the OS.
is there any option to upgrade ram? if computer hasssd 128gb is one or two 64gb disks?
Can’t upgrade the ram. One 128gb ssd
I bought this laptop in the normal configuration with only one 128 gb m.2 drive. Can i add another m.2 drive without using raid 0? I would like to keep all the contents of my current drive and use another one for extra storage.
yes you can
Which interface are the m.2 ssd slots compatible with, SATA or PCIe?
My R13 has an i7 6500. I’m trying to add a WD Blue SN550 NVMe SSD (500GB), but the computer does not see it. How do I get the R13 to recognize this 2nd SSD?
These use sata not nmve ssds. Get a MX500 or EVO 860.
I too have added an EVO 860 m.2 sata drive to the empty slot and it is not see by the OS. Shouldn’t it be auto-recognized?
If you can remove the motherboard (which presumably has the CPU built-in), why can’t you replace the motherboard with one that has a faster CPU?
Well that is what I did with my R13-372T (next version up from this 371T in the review). Mine came with an i5 and a ridiculous 4GB RAM. It is soldered on so it can’t be upgraded. I found a used replacement motherboard with the same CPU but with 8GB RAM and replaced it. It was stressful replacing the motherboard but there are YouTube videos to help. Now the laptop works great. I didn’t get a motherboard with an i7 because they were expensive and the benchmarks showed it was only about 3-5% faster than the i5. They really throttle… Read more »