Pentium G6951 and Windows 10

[Mathieu9836]

So my mother in law owns an old PC with an Intel G6951, a 2 cores 2 threads high performance 2.8GHZ beast with an incredible 4GB of 1366Mhz of DDR3...... The actual OS is Windows 7 and is running very very slowly, i bought her a 2TB HDD and planning to install Windows on it. How do you think it will run? Better then the actual Windows 7? Is Windows 10 heavier to run?

 

Not sure if it's OS or Hardware related, move if needed.

[Slottr]

1. Why not get an SSD?

2. Have you considered a lightweight, user friendly OS? Windows 10 will be fine, but if you wanted other options

[aisle9]

The CPU won't be an issue. I've run W10 on less. The RAM will be. 4GB of DDR3 will be dirty-ho cheap, and I strongly recommend taking it to 8GB total. 4GB is the very bare minimum for W10 and won't be enough if your MIL does anything more than read email and complain about where her Solitaire button went.

[Mathieu9836]

4 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

The CPU won't be an issue. I've run W10 on less. The RAM will be. 4GB of DDR3 will be dirty-ho cheap, and I strongly recommend taking it to 8GB total. 4GB is the very bare minimum for W10 and won't be enough if your MIL does anything more than read email and complain about where her Solitaire button went.

She already asked how to add a shortcut for the 2TB drive on the desktop, so i guess thats her level of knowledge on PCs.

I told her that she will need soon a couple new parts, thinking about building a 2200G with 16 GB of RAM in a couple months.

[GoldenLag]

Why an HDD? Thats gonna slow the system more than the 4GB of Ram.

[Mathieu9836]

1 minute ago, GoldenLag said:

Why an HDD? Thats gonna slow the system more than the 4GB of Ram.

Because she had a fully loaded 500GB HDD and she needed place for her 1,234,145,235 photos, and cheapest storage devices is still the HDD.

[GoldenLag]

8 minutes ago, Mathieu9836 said:

Because she had a fully loaded 500GB HDD and she needed place for her 1,234,145,235 photos, and cheapest storage devices is still the HDD.

Add a 120GB SSD then. 20$. Massive upgrade. Then get a used stick of DDR3

[paddy-stone]

Yeah, I would at the very least add 4GB RAM and a 120GB SSD.... and possibly run linux on that instead of windows, depending on WHAT exactly she does on the PC. If she's amenable to trying out linux, then you might be fine with the 4GB RAM anyway. But definitely get the cheap SSD, for $20 it's a massive improvement over an HDD, feels much snappier.

[aisle9]

@Mathieu9836, the fastest way to break an old person's brain is to tell them that their princess is on another drive. This comes from years of experience building and fixing PCs for old people who immediately died upon realizing that their family pictures require an extra click to get to. If she's specifically complaining about slow boot times, then an SSD is in order. If she's complaining about how overall slow it is, save your money on the SSD and put the extra RAM in. Hell, that Pentium is LGA 1156. Skip the SSD and put in an i5-750 if overall sluggishness is the issue. My order of operations would be:

1. Add 4GB RAM

2. Update CPU to a first-gen i5 or i7

3. 120GB SSD

 

If your intent is to build a new system for her, then skip everything but the RAM.

[Mathieu9836]

I got to mention the 2TB HDD is already in the system, i may buy a small SSD if she decide to buy new hardware. I will stay aware and tell here that 4GB of RAM is very little for windows 10, she is afraid of windows 10 since she had to learn 7 work.... so might wait another year before she want to build a new PC or at least replace the motherboard, ram and CPU.

I'm not sure if replacing the CPU for a 1st gen i5 is worth it, ill buy to buy RAM and a CPU for around 150$ CAD and the CPU combo is about 280.

[Mathieu9836]

4 hours ago, aisle9 said:

@Mathieu9836, the fastest way to break an old person's brain is to tell them that their princess is on another drive. This comes from years of experience building and fixing PCs for old people who immediately died upon realizing that their family pictures require an extra click to get to. If she's specifically complaining about slow boot times, then an SSD is in order. If she's complaining about how overall slow it is, save your money on the SSD and put the extra RAM in. Hell, that Pentium is LGA 1156. Skip the SSD and put in an i5-750 if overall sluggishness is the issue. My order of operations would be:

1. Add 4GB RAM

2. Update CPU to a first-gen i5 or i7

3. 120GB SSD

 

If your intent is to build a new system for her, then skip everything but the RAM.

Thinking about going the CPU and 8GB Additional RAM way, the i5-760 is about 25CAD and i could get 2 Ram stick for about 60-70, so its cheaper then an all new build and probably will perform about the same as the 2200G

Edit: Just realized the i5-760 doesn't have integrated graphics, so i'm back to adding memory to the current system or making a new build.

[aisle9]

4 hours ago, Mathieu9836 said:

Thinking about going the CPU and 8GB Additional RAM way, the i5-760 is about 25CAD and i could get 2 Ram stick for about 60-70, so its cheaper then an all new build and probably will perform about the same as the 2200G

Edit: Just realized the i5-760 doesn't have integrated graphics, so i'm back to adding memory to the current system or making a new build.

Crap, forgot about that, and the Allendale i5's with onboard graphics are all dual-core. I'd just throw in the RAM for now and save the SSD for when you build the Ryzen setup (assuming that's a sooner rather than later thing).

[Mathieu9836]

11 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Crap, forgot about that, and the Allendale i5's with onboard graphics are all dual-core. I'd just throw in the RAM for now and save the SSD for when you build the Ryzen setup (assuming that's a sooner rather than later thing).

Yeah, i guess that's the only two options, RAM or a new Ryzen build. Thanks guys for the answers.