# No Optical Drive / Lag (Dell Inspiron)



## OnyxCross (Oct 29, 2011)

Hi all, :smile:
I have recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 15-3521 (500GB HDD, 4GB RAM) running on Windows 8.1 and thus far I am not totally impressed... The first day upon receiving this laptop, I noticed lag for nearly everything... It came with McAfee, which I detest. So, of course, I uninstalled and installed Avast, instead.
Something is eating up my CPU/Memory/Disk. Only new things that I have installed were Avast, Chrome, Ventrilo, TP-Link (wifi adapter/boost), Steam and Ghost Recon Online/Phantoms.
Then, I realized that there is no bluetooth capabilities (not that big of a deal..) and no optical drive (CD drive?) There is, however, I assume, a slot for such a drive.
Had I not been hasty in my decision to buy this laptop (starting college in the fall, living on a budget), and realized that this computer would not meet all of my expectations, I may have waited to get something a little better...I would return, but I ordered from Amazon and threw out all the boxes and packing stuff that this laptop came with... :nonono:

Anyway...
My *first question* is, is there any way that I could possibly get this laptop to stop lagging?
*Secondly*, is there any way that I could install an optical drive? If possible, which drive should I use? Would this cause any problems for the computer? And lastly, what problems may I incur? 

Thanks so much in advanced...:thumb:


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## OnyxCross (Oct 29, 2011)

*EDIT*!
So sorry, I misread the model.
This laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15-3531.
Here is a picture of the side where the optical drive "slot" is.


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## Panther063 (Jul 13, 2009)

Unfortunately it's a case of you get what you pay for.
Having only a dual core Celeron Processor you can't expect this system to be snappy, and Dell don't even offer any upgrades for this model :nonono:
Apart from an external optical drive the only other thing you could do is see if the fascia can be removed from the optical bay and buying a drive to suit a similar Dell model.


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## OnyxCross (Oct 29, 2011)

Panther063 said:


> Unfortunately it's a case of you get what you pay for.
> Having only a dual core Celeron Processor you can't expect this system to be snappy, and Dell don't even offer any upgrades for this model :nonono:
> Apart from an external optical drive the only other thing you could do is see if the fascia can be removed from the optical bay and buying a drive to suit a similar Dell model.


To clarify, you're saying that it _might_ be possible to install an optical drive?
Also, would it be possible to change the processor? Would this pose any issues or prove to be problematic?


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## Panther063 (Jul 13, 2009)

It might be possible to install a drive, as Dell use a base motherboard across a range of laptops with different options.
the only way to tell is to remove the fascia and see if the connection is inside for the drive to push on to, it will either be a SCSI (not common) or most likely a SATA connection.
Changing a Processor is always a risk you must be willing to take, if you don't have the experience it's best left to a professional, and then there is no guarantee it will be supported by the BIOS.
But as I said, Dell generally use one Motherboard across a range, which includes differing Processors, Ram, Hard Drives, Graphics.....


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## OnyxCross (Oct 29, 2011)

Panther063 said:


> It might be possible to install a drive, as Dell use a base motherboard across a range of laptops with different options.
> the only way to tell is to remove the fascia and see if the connection is inside for the drive to push on to, it will either be a SCSI (not common) or most likely a SATA connection.
> Changing a Processor is always a risk you must be willing to take, if you don't have the experience it's best left to a professional, and then there is no guarantee it will be supported by the BIOS.
> But as I said, Dell generally use one Motherboard across a range, which includes differing Processors, Ram, Hard Drives, Graphics.....


Alright, thank you, hun. I will see what I can do.
If push comes to shove, I may reach out to my brother...He's an IT. I just hate bothering him. :ermm:


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## Panther063 (Jul 13, 2009)

The drive bay will most likely contain a blank, such as Dell Inspiron 3521 3K2PG Optical DVD Drive Blank AP0ZK000700 | eBay
and might fit a unit such as Dell Inspiron 15 3521 Tray Load 8X3MD DVD RW UJ8C2 Optical Drive S7 | eBay


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## OnyxCross (Oct 29, 2011)

Thanks, again!


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## dell3531user (Sep 12, 2014)

Hi OnyxCross,

Have you managed to insert a DVD drive? 
I own the same model and, as far as I could tell from just peeking into the drive bay without completely dissasembling the laptop, there were no SATA connectors visible. I wonder if the motherboard supports another SATA at all or if there are just pins without a connector soldered onto.


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