Full Upgrade Aspire TC-780

ZakS

Hi,

Can any please help with upgrade options for Aspire TC-780

Current configurations are;

7th gen Intel i7
Nvidia GeForce GT720 2GB
1TB HDD 256GB SSD
8GB DDR4 Memory
801.11 Wifi 5

Ideally I would like to upgrade to below without mucking up anything

 Graphics card to 4 or 6GB

1TB SSD

32GB Ram

Wifi 6

Since it is a stock pc from Aspire, I understand there are limitations but any help with links to suitable components dor above would be highly appreciated.

Cheers

ttttt

@ZakS

Here is a link other people trying to do upgrade for TC-780:

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/560869/acer-aspire-tc-780-kbl-motherboard-documentation-does-this-exist

Since your motherboard uses 7th generation CPU, you can upgraded to i7-7700 only(U.S. $330), the performance is close to i3-10100 (U.S. $120) nowadays.

Your PC has the M.2 slot, people used a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVme SSD and achieved 5,000+ MB/S performance, this is the most meaningful upgrade. From a 2.5" SATA3 SSD (~ 500 MB/s) to 3,400+ MB/s is really meaningful

Feel free to upgrade to 32 GB RAM if you want.

If you want to use more powerful graphics card be sure to upgrade the PSU to meet GPU requirement
Your existing GPU (GT 720), it is not fast at all. Don't you have on-board graphics? I believe the on-board graphics will be faster.

To use Wi-Fi 6 card, be sure you have a Wi-Fi 6 router, otherwise you won't take advantage of it.

All the upgrades adding up, you can get a new entry level PC for the cost.

StevenGen

ZakS said:

Hi,

Can any please help with upgrade options for Aspire TC-780

Current configurations are;

7th gen Intel i7
Nvidia GeForce GT720 2GB
1TB HDD 256GB SSD
8GB DDR4 Memory
801.11 Wifi 5

Ideally I would like to upgrade to below without mucking up anything

 Graphics card to 4 or 6GB

1TB SSD

32GB Ram

Wifi 6

Since it is a stock pc from Aspire, I understand there are limitations but any help with links to suitable components dor above would be highly appreciated.

Cheers

Hey ZakS, this is only my opinion but, the upgrade of the Aspire TC-780 as you want can be done but ideally its dependant on your budget and if the upgrade and expenditure is worth it or a new PC would be a cheaper and/or a better option? The first thing that you have to consider is the power supply as the TC-780 came with 3x different PS’s 220W, 300W and 500W as the 500W is the only one that would be suitable to your upgrades. Your CPU can't be upgraded if you have the i7-7700 as the top spec OEM, if you don't and you have either the low spec i3 6100 or the i5 6400 you can upgrade it to the highest spec i7 7700. To answer your questions this is what I would do:

1. Your GPU slot is a PCIe x16 slot (PCIe V3.0) and you can upgrade the GPU to either a 4GB OEM that Acer fitted to the TC-780 which was the “VGA CARD NVIDIA GTX745 DDRIII 4GB ATX UEFI DVI-I HDMI BL 288-1N249-X04A8 part #: DA.74511.001”. If you want to go one up from the GeForce 700 series then go to the GF 900 series of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti (btw, this GPU requires a 600W PS) that has 6GB and will give you at least 120% better performance than your OEM GeForce 700 you have now.

2. With the SSD’s both M.2 or 2.5” I prefer the Samsung drives, your TC-780 has SATA-3 @ 6GB/sec for 2.5” drives and a 1x M.2 SATA-3 @ 6GB/sec at B&M end key type M.2’s, it does not support the speeds of the x4 NVMe M.2 drives as its a x3 type max.

3. The OEM suggested RAM is at DDR4-2133MHz and the type fitted is either a Samsung or a Hynix, one of the OEM is the “SAMSUNG UNB-DIMM DDR4-2133 16GB M378A2K43BB1-CPB LF+HF 1024*8 25NM MONO-part #: KN.16G0B.016” you could upgrade to the DDR4-2400MHz 288-pin, 1.2V UDIMM at 2x 16GB to max it at 32GB total into its 2x slots as that would be the max speed as DDR4-2133MHz is pretty hard to buy if not impossible.

4. The WiFi Gen 6 is not supported in the TC-780 as your M.2 WLAN connector does not handle the speeds that a Gen 6 WiFi generates, it can only handle a gen 5 max which one of the TC-780 OEM WiFi/BT cards the "WIRELESS LAN & BLUETOOTH BOARD WLAN INTEL WLAN 7265.NGWG.W D0 STONEPEAK M.2 2X2 AC + BT 2230-part #: KI.STN01.008" is, so leave it alone you cant upgrade to a Gen 6.

All in all and if you look at the cost of. upgrade to GTX980Ti + 1TB M.2 drive + 32GB DDR4-2400 kit + 600W PS the total cost will be about + or - US $925 that's without an i7 CPU upgrade as that is another US $200 for the i7 7700, so is it worth it? It depends on you as that is your choice? But for me and as a new Acer desktop PC is about the same price my choice would be a new PC. Good luck and hope this helps 

billsey

As others have said, you are already pretty much at the max for processor with your 7th gen i7. The GPU upgrade is going to be somewhat dependent on your PSU. The TC-780 came with either a 220W or 300W PSU and most of the newer cards require more. Luckily you have a standard ATX supply, so you can bump it pretty much as high as you'd like. I'd likely look at the 20xx and 30xx NVIDIA GPUs, but there are lots of options, mostly gated by your wallet. The SSD is also easy, you just clone the existing drive to the new one (1TB, 2TB NVME x2 are the best price/performance right now for your MB, which doesn't support x4). As mentioned above even though the block diagram says NVMe x2, specs say SATA 3.0 for the M.2 slot, so YMMV. Be sure to pick up and external case for the cloning process, then use it to allow your old drive to be used as an external data drive. Memory is easy, your MB supports 32GB using two 16GB DDR4 1.2V 2133 unbuffered DIMMs. WiFi 6 is also easy, though you only have two antennas so the highest speeds won't be easy. Use an M.2 card for the 802.11ax and the existing antennas will give decent speed, if your internet is a 1Gb pipe or higher then start looking to see if anyone is doing 4x4 instead of 2x2. Those cards will need four antennas IIRC and may not be available yet.