[NoOne]

loud noises: mechanical and suprisingly less likely need to afull replacemnt, if you want to kick the can down the road. cpus, mobos and ram don't make noises when tehy go bad.. -> no moving parts.

likely a fan or the HDD is going on you. fan is obviously a cheap part, but wouldn't cause any slowdowns unless it's overheating.. (in that case, if it's long-term damage may need to replace whole thing as better path -- if it's never shutdown on it's own or gave an alarming noise before doing so, probably fine)... new storage device will run ya $50-100 for a cheapie (SSD would be ~100, mechanical-50).

a bad hdd cna be found using a free software like CrystalDiskInfo. it checks the S.M.A.R.T. feature of th drive.. it will tell you if there's a major problem before wasting money on a new drive. no adware, freeware if i recall... or find some freeware if they changed their business model.

storage devices are super easy to install.. only fits one orientation and the laptop wil have 2-4 screws for where the hdd is located. unscrew, remove, pop in... screw back togeterh.. all done in 2 seconds.

make sure to have a windows usb/cdrom handy before you do this, of course... the same product ID that's adhered to the laptop somewhere can be used. download any drivers that are necessary, like for the network/wifi card. with that you can get thre rest after you re-install.

new laptop -- alwys nice to get new hardware... can't argue that route either. look into building it yourself (serious it's for dummies nowadays), or a website that allows for mass cusomization.. you will get 10x better parts and pay roughly the same amount as buying an acer or hp etc.

can always google CPU's and model#'s and find benchmark comparisons to competition in market. avoid "benchmarking" software tests.. find somethign that uses real life situations and compares "time" or FPS of a 3d video game etc.

benchmarking software is can be cheated... some chips are partly designed to do so. it's like contrast ratio on a tv.. what you read on the specs is total BS if it's higher than ~12000:1 (ie 1,000,000 or infinite.. simply not true or possible with current tech wihtout cheating the rules/system of the test.) panasonic used to list a native contrast ration of ~10k:1 and it was better than any of the 1M, 4M or infinite BS. you'd see blotchy patches on other tvs and better clarity on their plasmas. (even looking at it, many would still take the better specs without any real thought)