Upgrades

DLM_012 · June 30, 2014

So on my dad's PC I've noticed it being a little less snappy. No viruses, unwanted software, maint utilities ran to verify my findings etc... Basically it's clean as a whistle. Now keep in mind this is a PC I built for him nearly 3-4 years ago on a meager budget for basic browsing (see specs below).

The build as it currently sits:

AMD Sempron 140 (unlocked to dual core at stock clocks)

4GB of RAM

ASRock FM2+ motherboard with onboard video

160GB Western Digital Caviar Blue HDD

The RAM seems to never peak 100% usage even with it being shared with onboard graphics. However, the processor does float around there with roughly 4 windows open and running scans, browsing, updating etc

So my question LTT is should I pop in a SSD or is his system due for a more extensive upgrade? The SSD route is the cheaper option as I'd be going with a 250GB 840 series which is $140 on Amazon. If I bought a FM2+ board and a FM2 quad CPU I'm looking at close to $250.

What should I upgrade?

D3MON · June 30, 2014

get him a crucial m500 240gb ssd for his apps, will make a world of difference.
i know somone who games on an athlon x2 215 (unlocked sempron effectively) and its okay for gaming so for web works its perfectly fine, rams fine, looks like you've/hes got used to the speeds of normal drives, maybe you have an ssd and have noticed (i now hate waiting for hard drives)
maybe throw in a toshiba 2tb, they're super cheap now.
$110-http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-240GB-2-5-Inch-Internal-CT240M500SSD1/dp/B00BQ8RM1A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404089900&sr=8-1&keywords=m500
2tb around $84

ForsakenLive · June 30, 2014

So on my dad's PC I've noticed it being a little less snappy. No viruses, unwanted software, maint utilities ran to verify my findings etc... Basically it's clean as a whistle. Now keep in mind this is a PC I built for him nearly 3-4 years ago on a meager budget for basic browsing (see specs below).

The build as it currently sits:

AMD Sempron 140 (unlocked to dual core at stock clocks)

4GB of RAM

ASRock FM2+ motherboard with onboard video

160GB Western Digital Caviar Blue HDD

The RAM seems to never peak 100% usage even with it being shared with onboard graphics. However, the processor does float around there with roughly 4 windows open and running scans, browsing, updating etc

So my question LTT is should I pop in a SSD or is his system due for a more extensive upgrade? The SSD route is the cheaper option as I'd be going with a 250GB 840 series which is $140 on Amazon. If I bought a FM2+ board and a FM2 quad CPU I'm looking at close to $250.

What should I upgrade?

The SSD will bring back many of the snappiness and even more, it's a great upgrade, and not that expensive. Adata Crucial, Samsung, Kingston and Seagate make good drives, that have accessible prices.

If you want another speed upgrade, the CPU can get replaced too, don't need to change the mobo. An APU or a Athlon X4 will do the job if you think you need the extra speed. I believe the SSD is all the upgrade you need.

I had an old sempron (dual core 1.6hghz) , that was peaking 100% quite a bit, it was running heavy games and game servers, the hard drive I was using degraded quite a bit, and was causing lag and this massive CPU workloads. After swapping the HDD out, the CPU was not having this much of a problem. I believe it was thanks to the many data exchanges it had to load from the ram to the drive, which was failing quite a bit. This happened to me, and It may not be happening to you, so take this as possibility, but not as a solution.