Upgrade recommendations

mossy464

Hi

I'm looking to upgrade a PC I built ten years ago. It's become pretty dog slow to boot etc. I no longer use it much myself but want to upgrade for the mother who uses it.

Current specs.

Motherboard: MSI 760GM E51
CPU: AMD ATHLON II X3 440
8GB DDR3 RAM
1TB HDD

I'm thinking of getting 16gb ram and replace HDD with SSD should give a nice jump in performance.

Or would I be better off just upgrading the board and CPU as well given they are so old.

Not looking to spend too much.

It's only used for browsing, email etc.

Thanks

djan

For the use case you have mentioned, I'd get the cheapest ssd you can find on say amazon at your preferred required size and pop it in. A fresh installation of windows on it and it will be a massive difference in operation.

There's no need to waste money on extra ram as 8gb is more than enough for normal browsing.

K.O.Kiki

djan wrote: »

For the use case you have mentioned, I'd get the cheapest ssd you can find on say amazon at your preferred required size and pop it in. A fresh installation of windows on it and it will be a massive difference in operation.

There's no need to waste money on extra ram as 8gb is more than enough for normal browsing.

Disagreed.

A modern processor can still have a noticeable increase in browsing snappiness.
And some sites run like crap on older CPUs.

Get an older desktop e.g.
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/dell-3010-i7-ssd-8gb/20047348
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/dell-optiplex-990-ssf-i7-16gb-ram/14294251
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/hp-workstation-z220/16906617
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/dell-optiplex-990-sff-intel-i7-w10-pro-ssd/15800008
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/dell-optiplex-7010-intel-core-i7-pc/19966788

Reuse your RAM & HDD as necessary.
Stick a 250Gb SSD in & clone the OS to it.

Better experience than a 10yo budget CPU can provide.

Or even better, reuse the case/HDD and build a new budget system:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/MQRf4n

CPU: AMD Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor (£42.90 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock A320M-HDV R4.0 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£33.47 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: ADATA SU630 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£30.96 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair VS 350 W ATX Power Supply (£37.50)
Total: £184.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-20 09:33 BST+0100

For €200 that's a bargain.

*not to forget, power draw!
The Athlon II X3 440 will consume 98W at idle (i.e. doing nothing) while the modern Athlon 200GE consumes 18W at maximum load!

Homelander

No need for 16GB of RAM but honestly but a £20 120GB SSD will make a huge impact.

CPU is old but should still be fairly OK for casual use and the SSD will feel like a huge performance upgrade.

djan

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Disagreed.

A modern processor can still have a noticeable increase in browsing snappiness.
And some sites run like crap on older CPUs.

Get an older desktop e.g.
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/dell-3010-i7-ssd-8gb/20047348
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/dell-optiplex-990-ssf-i7-16gb-ram/14294251
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/hp-workstation-z220/16906617
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/dell-optiplex-990-sff-intel-i7-w10-pro-ssd/15800008
https://www.adverts.ie/desktops/dell-optiplex-7010-intel-core-i7-pc/19966788

Reuse your RAM & HDD as necessary.
Stick a 250Gb SSD in & clone the OS to it.

Better experience than a 10yo budget CPU can provide.

Or even better, reuse the case/HDD and build a new budget system:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/MQRf4n

CPU: AMD Athlon 200GE 3.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor (£42.90 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock A320M-HDV R4.0 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£39.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£33.47 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: ADATA SU630 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£30.96 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair VS 350 W ATX Power Supply (£37.50)
Total: £184.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-20 09:33 BST+0100

For €200 that's a bargain.

*not to forget, power draw!
The Athlon II X3 440 will consume 98W at idle (i.e. doing nothing) while the modern Athlon 200GE consumes 18W at maximum load!

I'm not saying there won't be a difference, but to a user of the aforementioned profile, an ssd will be plenty. At the very least it's worth a shot as even if you do eventually go down the route of full upgrade, you can keep the ssd.

The ssd upgrade comes in at 25 odd euro. Your upgrade option costs 200.

I have an old Intel Core2Duo (similair performance to your processor) system with an ssd and use it occasionally, for office use and browsing it is quite snappy with all sites loading fine, including YouTube etc. at 1080p

scamalert

its an old system, so ssd does make sense as it will clearly show in speed improvement, ram 16gb is overkill, 8gb is more then plentiful.


as yes ssd is something that can easily be transferred to new build and maybe salvage the case but if not doing new build, a bit pointless to spend more then needed.

mossy464

Thanks to all for suggestions. I'd like to do a full upgrade to give a quieter, less power hungry system and 200 is quite good but for now I'll start with an SSD and go from there.

Thanks a mill

mossy464

Got the SSD and put a clean install of Windows on it. It's like a new machine. 30 seconds to boot and instantly responsive.

djan

mossy464 wrote: »

Got the SSD and put a clean install of Windows on it. It's like a new machine. 30 seconds to boot and instantly responsive.

Nice! I'd argue that SSDs becoming more affordable have really been one of the biggest developments for the average user in the past decade.

djan

mossy464 wrote: »

Got the SSD and put a clean install of Windows on it. It's like a new machine. 30 seconds to boot and instantly responsive.

Nice! I'd argue that SSDs becoming more affordable have really been one of the biggest developments for the average user in the past decade.