Desktop Feels Slow - Upgrade Advice

choons

Hi guys,

I built a desktop over the last few years but it feels a bit sluggish, where would I get the most bang for buck in upgrading?

Current Spec:
AMD FX6300
8gb Dual Channel DDR3
128gb Samsung Evo 840 (& HDDs)
Nvidea 750ti OC by Asus

Use is mostly office work with some photography. I need to buy a laptop soon so weighing up buying a cheap laptop and upgrade the desktop or buy a good laptop!

drunkmonkey

It shouldn't, are the HDD holding your back. Move all to SSD?

choons

Yeah could possibly be a factor. I'll try shifting anything I work on to the SSD and trial it.

Should mention budget is up to 1500 for laptop and Desktop

Redfox25

Sell what you have and splash 500 into your desktop and 500 for the laptop.
You could build a savage system for 1000 but without more info about the programs your going to use it might be overkill

K.O.Kiki

Run CCleaner.

Have you tried cleaning the insides of dust? Maybe it's dirty & thermal throttling because it's overheating.

Also add another 8Gb of DDR3 (might as well, RAM is cheap).

Regarding laptop:
Avoid Macs. Their glory days of portable power are over.
Avoid anything with an Intel xxxx-U processor.
Avoid AMD.

Serephucus

Have you updated the 840 firmware? There was a big going around with them for a while of really bad read speeds on older data (data that hadn't been changed in a month or two), could be something like that maybe?

choons

Great advice guys, thanks.

K.O.Kiki - Will run CC cleaner and look at ram. I put everything in a new Aerocool 500 case and added the graphics card a few weeks ago so it is all clean.

Serephucus - Did not realise you could update SSD firmware, will try this!

choons

Quick update - I ran cc cleaner and removed a good bit of junk. Also downloaded Samsung Magician to update firmware and optimise performance. It definitely feels a bit snappier! Ordered another 8gb ram for the craic.

Regarding laptops I bought a second hand Dell XPS 15 L521X with good specs for 300. I'll add an SSD to this and that should be my computing needs sorted for the foreseeable future. Total cost around 400.

Thanks again.

wotzgoingon

Ordering the extra 8GB of RAM was a waste tbh. Unless you were doing high resolution video editing or something.

choons

Possibly so but happy to pay a bit extra for the headroom.

I cheaped out on the motherboard when building 3 years ago, would I see any improvements upgrading this or waste of money?

Full system is:
Processor: AMD FX6-6300 3.5GHz
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 (Sata 2, PCI Express 2.0, Ram 1600 max)
RAM: Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) Ballistix Sport DDR3 1333MHz
RAM on the way: Crucial (4GBx2) DDR3 1600
Graphics: Asus GTX750TI-OC-2GD5

Sata 2, PCI Express 2.0, Ram speed may be throttling other components?

Cuddlesworth

choons wrote: »

Sata 2, PCI Express 2.0, Ram speed may be throttling other components?

Not a chance. Without seeing the system in person, I would assume your hitting the pagefile with the 8gigs of ram based on your description.

choons

A follow up on this in case it may help someone. I did the following to speed up the computer without dropping any cash:

I had installed the RAM incorrectly and it was using single channel instead of dual channel - fixed this by installing in ram correctly.
Didn't bother with the extra 8gb ram but did find a spare 3gb I had lying around so added that in. 11gb total, not sure if dual now but I have 4 sticks in there.
Overclocked the processor to run at 4.2ghz - this was surprisingly easy and anyone can do it.
Changed the SSD drive to use AHCI instead of IDE in the bios, not really sure I understand the difference but it is definitely snappier!
Reluctantly changed to Windows 10 which boots and runs most things faster.

15 more months in college and then I'll treat myself to a new machine!