PC Very Slow and Laggy - Build a new PC?

BaileyB

Hi guys,

I'm looking for a little advice.

I have a Dell E520 machine that i bought 2.5 years ago, i have done some upgrades to it from when it came. But these is the oringal spec

Intel® Viiv technology - Intel® Core 2 Duo E4300 processor (1.80GHz, 800MHz, 2MB cache)
1024MB Dual Channel DDR2 533MHz [2x512] Memory
160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst cache
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3000
Integrated Audio with Dolby Digital 7.1 capability

I ahve upgraded the following:

I now have 4GB of Ram
I have upgraded to Windows 7
The HDD is the same but i only use that now for W7 and have 1 500gb internal and 1TB as external.
I have upgraded the graphics card to GeForce 8800GS
I have also upgraded to PSU to a 700W one.

Now i'm finding my PC latley very laggy so did a brand new clean install of Windows 7 and am still finding it a little slow to responed from some tasks.

Now i'm thinking of upgrading the PC. I wont need a monitor as have a 24" Dell one, also i have a good ish graphics card and a good PSU.

Now all i'm looking to upgrade is
The case
Motherboard
CPU and Fan
Maybe the ram to support Quad?

Any help and advice and is it worth me doing this rather than just getting a new PC?

jpwjpw

The CPU is almost certainly the limiting factor here. You can add a quad core Q6600 or Q6700 to your existing machine.

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/18501972.aspx

4GB memory is more than enough for most people, so I wouldn't worry about that.

When you say its laggy, what is exactly?

OneADay

Well I have the e520 (from April 2007) as well but with different spec

Came with 512MB - I upgraded to 2Gig myself memory
Hard disk 160gig
CPU P4 Dual Core 2.8 Ghz

Vista ultimate been running fine on this - I tried win7 (hated it and removed but it worked ok as can be expected from any new OS).

The core difference from your spec to mine is the cpu it would seem.

Possibly you might just get a new cpu and plonk that in and away you go? Assuming the board allows it - as I have same model e520, it should (hopefully) be same board.

If you cant do that - I would not bother building own pc (used to build my own but not any more) - just get another dell (with higher spec this time). You can put linux on your existing machine and it will run fine. But look at cpu first.

Antispam

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Your better off getting a faster dual core than quad as there is very little achieved with getting quad

BaileyB

Thanks everyone, so there is no need to upgrade the Motherboard then just the CPU?

It's laggy in everything really but only in the last few months, when i am typing this out for example the letters are sometimes 2/3 strokes behind to what i'm typing. Youtube videos are slow and always buffing. I cannot really do alot more than 3 things on the PC at the same time.

It's not the BB speed as that is 17mb.

OneADay

Cant tell what specific model cpu I have - but if you can work out what the max cpu you can put in and get it confirmed, you should be able to pick up a new cpu relatively cheap now.

As for slowness, might be worth doing spyware, virus checking, reduce the number of crap that starts up automatically.

BargainGalore

I run a Intel core 2 @ 2.13ghz with 2GB ram and using windows 7 build 7100 and a cheap Nvidia graphics card and it runs fine, although I dont run games on this pc

You have done well upgraded a Dell so far I thought Dells wasnt eay to upgrade particularly the psu as they normally quite small and not very powerful

Mobeer

I have to second OneADay on this - your PC is not a slow PC for typing a letter on, so consider spyware, viruses, unwanted software etc - maybe even a clean install if you have backups or original disks of all your files.

BargainGalore

Whats you windows 7 ratings

from top to bottom mine is

5.2, 5.2, 3.5,5.1,5.8 overall 3.5

BaileyB

I have done a clean install only 4 days ago and run a virus check yesterday all was fine.

Ratings are
4.7
4.8
6.7
6.7
5.5
Overall 4.7 (which i thinks takes the lowest one anyway)

BaileyB

I have now read it could be the drivers for the chipset, i installed windows 7 but did not install any drivers for it. I have been to the dell but cannot find any drivers for windows 7.