Extra RAM to speed up PC

what else did you do?

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Intel® G41 /ICH7

No AHCI or RAID(hardware) support.

Look for ICH9 upwards.

Does your PC have a Celeron CPU or is it one of these? http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/product_detail/14450/Hi-Grade-Desktop-PC-E5400-Dual-Core-2-7GHz-2GB-250GB-Windows-7-Pro/


You are better off spending £40 on a half decent Dell Optiplex, 780 upwards, than spending more on the Hi-Grade.

Curiously, the PC that I use all the time has a 2.2 GHz core2duo CPU and is similar vintage to the HiGrade. It's fine for internet surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.

It was slowing down, but an SSD breathed new life into it. It's not a long term solution, but it's fine at the moment for these tasks.

misterthrifty, you could go to a command prompt, or Start > Run, or Win key + r and type msinfo32

The screen has a left and right half (2 columns). By default the top item on the left half is selected "System Summary" and leave this alone.

On the right half click "OS Name" it turns blue. It only turns blue and nothing else. Press Control-a (to select all) and everything turns blue. Press Control-c (copies he text on the screen)

in a nice new 'reply to thread' window on here press control-v. or right click mouse and paste.

This will inform the good people here to some extent on what they have to work with

and you get a post like this below

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.14393 Build 14393
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name DESKTOP-X24GTY7
System Manufacturer SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.
System Model 350V5C/351V5C/3540VC/3440VC
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU P09ABE

If you want to see if more RAM would be helpful, then open up Task Manager (right click on taskbar and select), and keep an eye on the RAM usage as you work.
If it's getting up to 80 or 90% usage then more RAM would alleviate that.

But find out the specs first. Especially whether it's a 32 or 64 bit system.

misterthrifty wrote: »

Hi

I have an old Hi-Grade PC running Windows 10 which is getting a bit slow. I carried out a check on the Crucial website and it currently has 2x 1GB DDR PC2 5300 memory sticks. My question is, would upgrading to 2GB sticks make a substantial improvement and what specification should I be looking for to upgrade for a reasonable price and where to look?

TIA
Mr T

Short answer is that there is plenty of life left in your machine if you are prepared to upgrade it but you may want to question whether it is worth spending the money when you can get more modern components or even a PC for the same or less money.

So like so much in this world it really comes down to money.

Assuming the monitor does not need changing there are 5 things that can be changed

1. Memory
2. CPU
3. NIC
4. Motherboard
5. Hard disk

Usually when people say they have a memory problem on here a load of people pile in and tell you to upgrade the hard disk to SSD or Hybrid SSD and this makes sense from a financial point of view as the SSD will have some value in any replacement PC. Investing in Memory or CPU for your current motherboard is usually a sunken cost, although you might recoup a bit by selling the upgraded Motherboard, Ram and CPU on eBay if you were lucky and knew how to price it.

From an Engineering point of view replacing the hard disk does not address the problem, despite the fact that it may feel more responsive; albeit that if it is the only component you change then the you will shorten the life of the SSD, as it will be doing loads of page writes rather than just caching your most used system files for reading.

PC performance is all about balance, sometimes if you improve one component you just move the bottleneck to the next weak point so you may end up having to upgrade more components. This is why it often becomes a financial decision.

You probably know that if you change the motherboard you will have to change the CPU and Memory, however, this can make financial and engineering sense, as current components are cheaper. For example to get your current mobo to 8gb could cost you £175.20 ( 2 x £87.60)

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-crucial-ddr2-pc2-5300

Now you might get away with spending £54 on a 4gb upgrade but if you wanted to upgrade to 8gb later you would have to replace the £54 memory as your mobo only has 2 slots.

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-(2x2gb)-crucial-ddr2-desktop-memory-kit-pc2-5300-(667)-non-ecc-unbuffered-cas-5-18v

Replacing the ram will not make your system run any faster as such, but it will stop it being slowed down by the current paging to hard disk. So adding an SSD will FEEL faster but it does not solve the engineering issue.

You have a lot of options to upgrade the CPU with Core™2 Quad or Core™2 Extreme which WILL make it run faster but at a price, it will use more power and increase your energy bill. Again does not deal with the engineering problem, in fact it may make it worse as it will push data faster and add pressure to slowest component.

So you could spend the money on Memory, CPU and an SSD as well to make this into a competent beast, but you could spend less money on a new Mobo, Ram and CPU. This would give you a cooler running system using less power. The memory for a new system would be substantially cheaper at £58 for a single 8gb DDR4 module or £33 for a single 4gb module.

A new Mobo could cost you between £50 and perhaps £400, but that £50 is for a half decent motherboard and £80 will get you a bells and whistles budget system. You would need to check your power supply was powerful enough, however, unless you are making a gaming beast chances are it will be fine.

A basic CPU for that Mobo could feel a lot faster even though it might be entry level and cost around £42.

So you are looking at throwing money away on old components from £54 to £175 plus the cost of an SSD or CPU if needed.

Alternatively you can spend £33+£50+£42=£125 to £58+£80+£42=£180 the difference is that this spend will not be a sunken cost, it could be further upgraded and have years of life in it.

At the same time you can pick up new PC's that were returns to places like Argos on Ebay at prices from £140. So bear that in mind.

Now the "SSD solves everything" brigade can pile in as being usable beyond the life of this PC, but as I said if you use it in this way all that page swapping that is slowing down your system will still happen and will reduce the life of the SSD unit.

Still if you want to go down that route, you have two choices, a legacy 3.5inch SSD drive will cost you around £93

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/p5qpl-am/CT8444744

or you could stick in a 2.5inch small one just for windows for around £53 or a Hybrid (SSHD) is a cheaper option.

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/hard-drives-ssd/1510/1851/2375

Here are crucials other upgrade options for your mobo

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/compatible-upgrade-for/ASUS/p5qpl-am

You do not say what your current CPU and hard disk capacity is, if you post back your CPU I can let you know what modern CPU will be a bit faster.

At this point in time if you do not have much money then the £53 SSD is a quick and dirty fix, but I would not do that.

If I was on a tight budget I would buy a reconditioned but newish PC, without monitor these can cost from around £140 on eBay and are as new (e.g. Acer Aspire), or I would do the Mobo, CPU and Memory upgrades listed above.