RAM or SSD upgrade?

[Arika]

I recently pulled out an old laptop i used to have and am going to re-purpose it as a second screen and portable HTPC (steaming from a media server) to connect to one of 2 TVs in the house depending on which room im in instead of using the god awful setup i have currently. it doesnt have the greatest of specs these days but it was quite good back in it's heyday.

 

Its specs currently.

 

I3 330m @2.13Ghz

4GB DDR3 (dual channel at 1033MHz)

150GB 5400rpm Hitachi harddrvie

Generic whatever iGPU

 

it's not ....."slow" it's just not great, it takes appropriately forever to boot up and will occasionally hickup while browsing chrome with 3 tabs open or just doing a start search for programs

 

the i3 will only run RAM at 1033MHz so it would just be an upgrade to 8Gb as opposed to a higher freq

 

otherwise i could just get an SSD for those sweet boot times but not sure if it would do much else

 

i cant really justify both to my self give it's age. what would be more beneficial in the long run (well "long" until it eventually keels over and is taken by the Gods of Old to live in Valhalla)

[Levent]

get an SSD.

[3rrant]

2 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

I recently pulled out an old laptop i used to have and am going to re-purpose it as a second screen and portable HTPC (steaming from a media server) to connect to one of 2 TVs in the house depending on which room im in instead of using the god awful setup i have currently. it doesnt have the greatest of specs these days but it was quite good back in it's heyday.

 

Its specs currently.

 

I3 330m @2.13Ghz

4GB DDR3 (dual channel at 1033MHz)

150GB 5400rpm Hitachi harddrvie

Generic whatever iGPU

 

it's not ....."slow" it's just not great, it takes appropriately forever to boot up and will occasionally hickup while browsing chrome with 3 tabs open or just doing a start search for programs

 

the i3 will only run RAM at 1033MHz so it would just be an upgrade to 8Gb as opposed to a higher freq

 

otherwise i could just get an SSD for those sweet boot times but not sure if it would do much else

 

i cant really justify both to my self give it's age. what would be more beneficial in the long run (well "long" until it eventually keels over and is taken by the Gods of Old to live in Valhalla)

I usually upgrade ram+ssd at the same time, to open it up only once. 

 

8GB can help for streaming blurays or very high quality videos that might be slowing down significantly, other than that the SSD will provide a much more boost to the general experience, so SSD>RAM, but I suggest both upgrades.

[Arika]

Just now, ErrantNyles said:

I usually upgrade ram+ssd at the same time, to open it up only once. 

well the fun thing is it has a maintenance hatch for each individual part that could be upgraded. it's like an advent calendar, but instead of chocolate it's old electronics.

[SLCH]

SSD first, its great performance boost from hdd+4gb ram.

Dont forget to move virtual memory paging to ssd (if not making clear installation of OS).

But later do ram, at least to 8gb.

 

PS If you r on budget i'd wait till black friday. Got 750gb ssd for $100 last time.

[TVwazhere]

I'm in agreement with everyone else. SSD

[linkboy]

Go for the SSD.

 

When I got my new laptop, I went with the RAM first just because I already had a 500GB SDD from my previous computer.

 

While both are important, the SSD will have the bigger impact.

 

My computer currently has a 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM and it runs great.