Budget upgrade advice please.

Rev

Hoping someone can help me decide on what if any upgrades to get.

Desktop isn't as quick as it used to be. Pretty sure the CPU is a core2duo E4400, has max memory for motherboard.

Seems to struggle multitasking, takes hours to convert videos when it used to be quite quick. I have reformatted and don't have anything I don't use installed.

Ideally I'd love to replace the CPU, motherboard, memory and get an SSD. But I don't think I can afford it.

What would those in the know suggest I upgrade to? AMD, intel?

Only have around £200 to play with so I'm guessing intel is out of budget.

Jamie_Cortez

SSD out of the question in reality.

CPU
http://www.dabs.com/products/amd-phenom-ii-x4-965-3-4ghz-black-edition-am3-socket-l2-l3-8mb-6B0X.html

Motherboard
http://www.dabs.com/products/asrock-990fx-extreme3-am3--amd-990fx-ddr3-atx-7XNH.html

RAM
http://www.dabs.com/products/g-skill-8gb--2-x-4gb--ripjaws-x-ddr3-pc3-12800-1600mhz-cl9-7Z4V.html

£204.97

bluesnake

while the cpu is not the only bottleneck, I'd fist look around here and then in my purse to decide

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+E4400+%40+2.00GHz

also keep and eye on https://www.hotukdeals.com

Livingthedream

Rev wrote: »

Ideally I'd love to replace the CPU, motherboard, memory and get an SSD. But I don't think I can afford it.

Not going to advice on AMD or Intel, leave that problem to yourself to sort out.

But what I do when I want to upgrade an item in my computer is flog the old items on Ebay and use the paypal payment to purchase the new items off Ebuyer or any other online retailer that takes paypal, at the moment these retailers are cheaper than buying the upgrades off Ebay.

banger9365

what about upgrading one off the slowest parts off the pc ,hard drive to an SSD ,you can get them for less than £50 now and keep hdd for storage

GunJack

Rev wrote: »

Desktop isn't as quick as it used to be. Pretty sure the CPU is a core2duo E4400, has max memory for motherboard.

Seems to struggle multitasking, takes hours to convert videos when it used to be quite quick. I have reformatted and don't have anything I don't use installed.
.

I can assure you it shouldn't be slow, flippin'eck it's a higher spec than any of my machines.

Follow the speedup sticky and then enlist a little help from one Mr blackviper for some serious tweaking of your OS:-

http://www.blackviper.com/

almillar

I don't know how old or slow the hard drive is, but I think that SSD is overkill, I guess the mobo has SATA, but is it 1,2 or 3, and can it take advantage of the SSD's speed.
Here's a freebie for you before you go spending money, give your files a good cleanout, backup 'My Documents' and reinstall Windows. Sounds like you've got a 'bogged down' computer, rather than a slow one.

Cisco001

I would suggest you go for AMD A8-3870K + AMD A75 Mobo + 2 x 4GB RAM

Rev

Thanks for the replies. Looks like for my budget AMD is the way to go.

Thanks, but I don't need follow the speed up threat, I use ccleaner every week, have only whats needed running at startup (firewall, av) and I don't really want to start tweaking the OS.

It's a fresh install and I never keep anything besides windows on the c drive, not even documents, they're all on the d drive and backed up weekly. Will double check everything again but I'm pretty concious of not 'bogging it down'.

The mobo has SATA 2, was thinking only of getting an SSD if I upgrade to one with sata 3, and I'd probably wait till there was one posted up on hotdeals.

closed

which firewall/av.

If it really is slower than it used to be, and struggling at multitasking, when it didn't previously, then the probable cause is
software.

ccleaner doesn't speed things up.

bluesnake

just a thought, have you tried removing the internet connection, then disabling the antivirus s/w before converting to see if it is faster?