What makes the pc Slow? Ram,storage or CPU?

[Blazepoint5]

Alright random citizens, my beloved pc has an

 

*I5 2500 (non K)

*A no brand 3.5" hdd 5500rpm 

*A hitachi 2.5" hdd 7200rpm 

*Ddr3 4gb ram ( planing to upgrade to 8) 

*Rx 570 8gb gigabyte.

*win 10

 

The OS runs on the 3.5" hdd, the pc is crapy slow not laggy just slow, i monitor my usage with task manger while doing normal task and my ram and cpu dosent get maximised or utilities for me to conclude and say my cpu is slow( it is slow and old lmao) but you know what i mean, my ram on idle is around 1.8-2gb. something is telling me my harddrive is the mastermind but i want to make sure it is so i wont change it in the future and the pc would still be the same. 

 

My 2.5" runs way faster than the 3.5" because i have played some games on both drives and saw i get alot more pauses and longer loading times on the 3.5".

 

I used to have a laptop with i5 6300u and when i did some comparison with the i5 2500 i saw that the 2500 is about 40% fatser. The laptop had an nvme sata ssd and it is wayyy faster than what i have now.

[Poinkachu]

3 minutes ago, Blazepoint5 said:

Alright random citizens, my beloved pc has an

 

*I5 2500 (non K)

*A no brand 3.5" hdd 5500rpm 

*A hitachi 2.5" hdd 7200rpm 

*Ddr3 4gb ram ( planing to upgrade to 8) 

*Rx 570 8gb gigabyte.

*win 10

 

The OS runs on the 3.5" hdd, the pc is crapy slow not laggy just slow, i monitor my usage with task manger while doing normal task and my ram and cpu dosent get maximised or utilities for me to conclude and say my cpu is slow( it is slow and old lmao) but you know what i mean, my ram on idle is around 1.8-2gb. something is telling me my harddrive is the mastermind but i want to make sure it is so i wont change it in the future and the pc would still be the same. 

 

My 2.5" runs way faster than the 3.5" because i have played some games on both drives and saw i get alot more pauses and longer loading times on the 3.5".

 

I used to have a laptop with i5 6300u and when i did some comparison with the i5 2500 i saw that the 2500 is about 40% fatser. The laptop had an nvme sata ssd and it is wayyy faster than what i have now.

General usage? Loading time? Install time? Change to SSD.

Even changing to a SATA SSD is enough to feel like you've moved to heaven.

[Kilrah]

An SSD for the OS drive has been the first upgrade to do for as long as SSDs have been a thing, massive difference.

But yeah the rest isn't far behind. 4GB of RAM is unusable today, will cause swapping, and that to an HDD... well it's terrible.

 

The 2.5" drive is likely not faster, just that it doesn't have to deal with the OS and swapping in addition to whatever you're doing from it like the OS drive.

[Blazepoint5]

Just now, Poinkachu said:

General usage? Change to SSD.

Even changing to a standard SATA SSD is enough to feel like you've moved to heaven.

Sensation on another level, alright man. 

[-rascal-]

Loading into Windows, loading applications, games, etc.

That is on the storage drive.

Spinning HDD's are snail slow compared to modern SSDs - even a SATA3 2.5" SSD.

[Blazepoint5]

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

An SSD for the OS drive has been the first upgrade to do for as long as SSDs have been a thing, massive difference.

But yeah the rest isn't far behind. 4GB of RAM is unusable today, will cause swapping, and that to an HDD... well it's terrible.

 

The 2.5" drive is likely not faster, just that it doesn't have to deal with the OS a

5 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

The 2.5" drive is likely not faster, just that it doesn't have to deal with the OS and swapping in addition to whatever you're doing from it like the OS drive.

nd swapping in addition to whatever you're doing from it like the OS drive.

 

I did though of that and it makes sense now.

 

Yess 4gb is unusable i can tell, played days gone and that thing runs like crap, 50-60 fps for now and 1sec later it dips into the 10s amd freeze for a second or 2.

[jaslion]

2 hours ago, Blazepoint5 said:

 

I did though of that and it makes sense now.

 

Yess 4gb is unusable i can tell, played days gone and that thing runs like crap, 50-60 fps for now and 1sec later it dips into the 10s amd freeze for a second or 2.

Get an ssd (mx 500, wd blue, samsung evo 860/870 EVO NOT THE QVO THAT SUCKS!!!!)

 

On ebay get 16gb of ram its dirt cheap like 15$ DO NOT GET ECC

[Pasi123]

Windows 10 (and 11) is extremely slow on hard drives, the last one that worked fine on HDDs was Windows 8.1 but even then the speed difference between SSD and HDD was huge.

The 4GB RAM makes it even worse because the OS can't cache things in to RAM when there's barely enough RAM for the OS and programs. And when the system is out of physical memory it uses the page file on the slow HDD.

 

SSD is a must for modern operating systems and so is 8GB RAM. For more modern PC's I'd say 16GB is the absolute minimum.

 

Even though the i5-2500 is now 13 years old it should still be powerful enough to not feel slow doing normal tasks. Though of course it won't be as snappy as decade newer CPU's

[Mark Kaine]

On 2/28/2024 at 10:07 AM, -rascal- said:

Loading into Windows, loading applications, games, etc.

That is on the storage drive.

Spinning HDD's are snail slow compared to modern SSDs - even a SATA3 2.5" SSD.

im playing a lot from just an old Samsung external 2.5 drive its fine honestly,  i basically notice no difference,  im just sometimes surprised how fast and smooth things are. last game i played was bright memory (ahem) i don't know if that's an demanding game but it sure looks all kinds of janky, but despite that it runs buttery smooth from (external) hdd.

 

that said, i agree with the solution, nothing OP could reasonably do would have more impact on performance on such an old system than having at least the OS on a decent SSD! Especially on older systems that makes indeed a huge diff.