speed question

[xwrench3]

this summer, i rebuilt my 10 year old HP desktop, and i am quite happy with it. my daughter however is still surfing around on a compromised core 2, that is about as fast as an anchor. i would love to build her one like mine, but finances will not allow it. so i am looking at refurbished i5 and i3 computers for her. most of what she does is social media browsing, with some school homework thrown in from time to time. so she does not need a real beefy computer. i don't know which would be better a slower i5 quad core, or a faster dual core i3. i suspect since most of what she is doing is surfing, not real processing, the i3 would make for a faster computer for her. but i am not sure. there is also a little bird screaming in my ear that the real limitation is the internet (including our hardware), and that most any properly working desktop would work fine. but i try to swat at that little pest, as its rather annoying.

[WkdPaul]

-moved to New Builds & Planning-

 

Not sure what your C2D problem is (might need help troubleshooting it?) but I have an old Optiplex 760 (C2D 2.4Ghz with 4GB DDR2) that I use as a HTPC, and all I had to do to give it another life was to throw an old 60GB SSD in there. Might be worth a look at

[done12many2]

8 minutes ago, xwrench3 said:

this summer, i rebuilt my 10 year old HP desktop, and i am quite happy with it. my daughter however is still surfing around on a compromised core 2, that is about as fast as an anchor. i would love to build her one like mine, but finances will not allow it. so i am looking at refurbished i5 and i3 computers for her. most of what she does is social media browsing, with some school homework thrown in from time to time. so she does not need a real beefy computer. i don't know which would be better a slower i5 quad core, or a faster dual core i3. i suspect since most of what she is doing is surfing, not real processing, the i3 would make for a faster computer for her. but i am not sure. there is also a little bird screaming in my ear that the real limitation is the internet (including our hardware), and that most any properly working desktop would work fine. but i try to swat at that little pest, as its rather annoying.

 

I built a rig for my daughter with a Core2 Quad CPU.  I used a SSD drive and 8 gigs of ram and it turned out to be a decent and snappy little setup for her.

 

If your daughter's PC doesn't have a SSD, give that a try first.

[xwrench3]

i am not sure what the problem is either. i do suspect it is in the hard drive. i bought the computer for my son's first computer, refurbished. and of course he did so much downloading and deleting it was not even funny. the hard drive is small, i think 80gb. and even after a couple of attempts of total system rebooting, there is still some information on that disk that can not be erased.

[xwrench3]

can we keep using the existing window 7 pro license if we replace the hard drive?

[done12many2]

Just now, xwrench3 said:

can we keep using the existing window 7 pro license if we replace the hard drive?

 

Yes.

[m0k]

RAM:
either you dont have enough, or youre pc is using up too many resources

HDD:
usually the biggest bottleneck in old pc's
 

my brother still uses a core2duo e7500 and its plenty fast for daily usage. he added an ssd and it was even better

[Quaker]

Personally, for your daughter, I would do what I did for my wife - I put together a very basic machine using an AMD A8-7600 APU in a older SFF case I had kicking around with a proprietary 300watt PSU and just a re-purposed 120Gig SSD (no HDD) and re-purposed 8Gigs of DDR3 RAM.

I think the AMD APUs are just perfect for this sort of machine. They don't need much computing power, but the graphics in the APUs are much better than the IGPs in Intel CPUs.

Also, this sort of machine doesn't really need much more than a 250Gig SSD. Not that long ago the average computer came with a 160Gig hard drive - and consider how much storage the average tablet has.

So, you could easily get away with an A6/A8/A10 APU, 4-8Gigs of DDR3, a 250-500Gig SSD or HDD, and any old case your daughter doesn't mind the look of, with a basic 300 watt (or higher) power supply.

 

The existing Windows 7 Pro license can be re-used if it's the retail version. If it's the OEM version, you can re-use it as long as you don't change the motherboard that it's tied to - it's not tied to the hard drive. Even then, you can usually call the support number and, if you ask nicely, they will usually authenticate it.

[xwrench3]

11 minutes ago, mok said:

or youre pc is using up too many resources

this could be a distinct possibility. i do not have the knowledge to know what should be going on inside there.

 

 the windows 7 pro license is for the REFURBISHED computer. and is says for refurbished computers only. /  this computer used to only have 1gb of memory. i added another gb this summer (that came from my old computer parts), but doing that made no perceivable difference.

[xwrench3]

GEESH! i guess i never realized how much faster an ssd is than a hdd.  the first one i looked up is 45 times faster than the new hdd i put in my computer this summer. i can not believe my son is not SCREAMING for one for his gaming rig.

[xwrench3]

so this just popped into my head. if i buy an ssd for her computer, and do a fresh install of the o.s. (which would be required), then EVERYTHING in the computer would be operating as if it were a new machine, right? (meaning if something was using to many resources, it would get reset).

[xwrench3]

25 minutes ago, xwrench3 said:

GEESH! i guess i never realized how much faster an ssd is than a hdd.  the first one i looked up is 45 times faster than the new hdd i put in my computer this summer. i can not believe my son is not SCREAMING for one for his gaming rig.

nope, i got messed up with the specs. the ssd has a read speed of 270Mbs (0.26 Gb/s), which i did not catch right off the bat. the hard drive interface is 6 Gb/s. but it does not say exactly how fast it can really read and write.

[m0k]

25 minutes ago, xwrench3 said:

so this just popped into my head. if i buy an ssd for her computer, and do a fresh install of the o.s. (which would be required), then EVERYTHING in the computer would be operating as if it were a new machine, right? (meaning if something was using to many resources, it would get reset).

yes, although you could also use a cloning software like Acronis to transfer your OS from your HDD to SSD

and 2gb still seems kind of low
im assuming your OS is 32bit

you can start by disabling startup programs and services from automatically runnign when you boot the computer, a lot of programs you dont need could be using up ram



 

[m0k]

2 minutes ago, xwrench3 said:

nope, i got messed up with the specs. the ssd has a read speed of 270Mbs (0.26 Gb/s), which i did not catch right off the bat. the hard drive interface is 6 Gb/s. but it does not say exactly how fast it can really read and write.

because the core2 platform only supports sata2 3gbp/s
and new ssd's are sata3 6gbp/s

i think its safe to say that a newer ssd thats usually rated for 500mb/s would top out of 250mb/s on your pc

[done12many2]

Just now, xwrench3 said:

nope, i got messed up with the specs. the ssd has a read speed of 270Mbs (0.26 Gb/s), which i did not catch right off the bat. the hard drive interface is 6 Gb/s. but it does not say exactly how fast it can really read and write.

 

Don't get too caught up in sustained read and write speeds.  The HDD drive is much slower because it can't handle the smaller files very well.  Those smaller files are what your OS and software access throughout the day.  Sustained read and write speeds only come into the picture when you are transferring large files.  A SSD is much better in both categories. 

[xwrench3]

17 minutes ago, mok said:

because the core2 platform only supports sata2 3gbp/s
and new ssd's are sata3 6gbp/s

i think its safe to say that a newer ssd thats usually rated for 500mb/s would top out of 250mb/s on your pc

that is good to know.

 

21 minutes ago, mok said:

yes, although you could also use a cloning software like Acronis to transfer your OS from your HDD to SSD

and 2gb still seems kind of low
im assuming your OS is 32bit

you can start by disabling startup programs and services from automatically runnign when you boot the computer, a lot of programs you dont need could be using up ram

it is actually a 64 bit system. it does have one of the newer core 2 duo processors. the speed of it was way faster than my old one. / i made a typo on the memory, i transferred the 2gb from mine into hers, giving hers 3gb of ram total. i am not sure how much memory (which i think is ddr2) an old system like that can realistically use. as far as using acronis, i think i would rather use the system restore disk that came with the computer. that way i would not be transferring what ever junk that we could not get rid of to a new drive.  //  

 

29 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

Don't get too caught up in sustained read and write speeds.  The HDD drive is much slower because it can't handle the smaller files very well.  Those smaller files are what your OS and software access throughout the day.  Sustained read and write speeds only come into the picture when you are transferring large files.  A SSD is much better in both categories. 

i kind of get how an ssd works especially as compared to a mechanical hard drive. how it RETAINS the data, i haven't a clue.  the numbers are really all i have to go by, but i do get how and why an ssd is faster. it seemed like about a year or so ago i did some checking, and there were 2 basic speed ranges in ssds. one was way faster than the other, and just as much more expensive. with all of that being said, i think i will get an ssd ordered. if it does not fix her computer, i can always use it in mine. as long as my son does not catch wind of it. because i think if he does, he will grab it for himself.