SSD or RAM first ?

[Ucan_101]

So im trying to upgrade my laptop from amd a4 9125 4gb 2133mhz ram + igpu with 256/512 gb ssd and replace the 4gb to 8 gb ram 2400mhz. 

 

Im going to use my laptop for : 

Excel 

Word 

browsing 

gmeet 

 

All of them already having a hard time to do, my ram is on 70% when i open just a browser but my hdd is even worse. its always 100% even when im not opening anything. When i turn on my laptop it took 10 Mins to turn on and it took another mins to open any app from there. Gmeet or zoom with camera on is imposible without not responding or crash. So i was thinking should i priotise ram first or ssd first for this. 

[Lord Szechenyi]

3 minutes ago, Ucan_101 said:

SSD or RAM first?

BOTH

 

On a more serious note, definitely SSD, but you desperately need more than 4gb of ram.

[Ucan_101]

4 minutes ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

BOTH

 

On a more serious note, definitely SSD, but you desperately need more than 4gb of ram.

okay thanks

[jaslion]

Id say ssd first as it can act as a virtual ram buffer. Keep in mind that the a4 is gonna severly struggle doing gmeet or zoom and anything else.

[Ucan_101]

3 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Id say ssd first as it can act as a virtual ram buffer. Keep in mind that the a4 is gonna severly struggle doing gmeet or zoom and anything else.

so it just gonna smoothen up excels and stuff like that ? even if i upgrade ram ?

[jaslion]

Just now, Ucan_101 said:

so it just gonna smoothen up excels and stuff like that ? even if i upgrade ram ?

It will allow you to have a bit smoother experience but any big calculation, multitasking,... anything that uses the cpu a decent bit will be still slow. You have to keep in mind that a dual core form 2004 is faster than that athlon. It's designed to be cheap and to be put in cheap devices.

[Ucan_101]

16 minutes ago, jaslion said:

It will allow you to have a bit smoother experience but any big calculation, multitasking,... anything that uses the cpu a decent bit will be still slow. You have to keep in mind that a dual core form 2004 is faster than that athlon. It's designed to be cheap and to be put in cheap devices.

So ram wont help much isnt it ? Id take an ssd as upgrade and call it a day than. Thanks 

[Kid.Lazer]

I know you already marked this as solved, but I thought I'd add this since nobody mentioned it.

 

Don't bother getting 2400 Mhz RAM if your current stuff runs at 2133. A low-end laptop will not have controls to change the RAM speed in the BIOS, so it will be a waste of money. (Assuming it costs more)

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, Ucan_101 said:

So ram wont help much isnt it ? Id take an ssd as upgrade and call it a day than. Thanks 

You can see what it gives but I think even ltt did a test with a a4 9120 and even after adding a proper ssd and 8gb of ram it still ran like crap during a zoom meeting + word open. But now they could have 4-6 tabs of text based content in chrome open alongside it because of more memory. But often the adds on the pages made the pc also slow to a crawl.

 

 

[Ucan_101]

2 hours ago, Kid.Lazer said:

I knon you already marked this as solved, but I thought I'd add this since nobody mentioned it.

 

Don't bother getting 2400 Mhz RAM if you're current stuff runs at 2133. A low-end laptop will not have controls to change the RAM speed in the BIOS, so it will be a waste of money. (Assuming it costs more)

Suprisingly, the 2400mhz is much cheaper thats why i pick that. But thanks

[Ucan_101]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

You can see what it gives but I think even ltt did a test with a a4 9120 and even after adding a proper ssd and 8gb of ram it still ran like crap during a zoom meeting + word open. But now they could have 4-6 tabs of text based content in chrome open alongside it because of more memory. But often the adds on the pages made the pc also slow to a crawl.

 

 

I see, seems putting a ssd is all i need than since i can still make it as external harddrive later on. Thanks 

[powertoys]

I helped someone else in a similar situation as yours. His laptop's CPU was a lot better than yours (8th gen i3) but it still had 4 GB RAM + 1 TB HDD. I chose SSD and it was by far the best choice. Laptop's booting time went from 6 minutes to ~20 seconds. Having the pagefile on the SSD also helps mitigate the low amount of RAM.

 

The SSD I chose was a cheap WD SN350, literally the cheapest from a brand I recognized. Worked just fine. His laptop is now running with 256 GB NVMe SSD as boot drive and the original 1 TB HDD for files.