New Desktop Advice Please

jamesd

It's not that there's anything wrong with the one you linked to, it's just that the one you have is also entirely decent if a bit of work is done on it. My own main machine has been a tablet with 64GB of storage, 4GB of RAM and a moderately slow CPU for a few years and I recently spent more than £1200 on a monitor for it so it's by choice because it's fine, not lack of money.

A solid state boot disk makes a huge difference in slower operations and it's really cheap and usually easy to add, particularly if you can get troubleshooting or planning help here. Some options, not looking for best price or deal, just what Amazon turned up first:

£25.49 Kingston SSDNow A400 240GB SATA 3 Solid State Drive (SA400S37/240G) Ample for a boot disk
£38.03 Crucial BX500 480 GB CT480BX500SSD1-Up to 540 MB/s (Internal SSD, 3D NAND, SATA, 2.5 Inch), Black (other capacities available)
£74.99 Crucial MX500 1 TB CT1000MX500SSD1-Up to 560 MB/s (3D NAND, SATA, 2.5 Inch, Internal SSD), Black (other capacities available)

You'll probably get free software from the maker by download to move things over to the new drive, though if you're using a lot of the space that won't work on the smallest size without moving some things elsewhere. Sizes don't have to match, just has to be enough total space for what's actually used.

RAM from ebay is likely to be even cheaper.

If you wanted to keep the spend down it'd cost you maybe £35-45 combined and it'd be fine for Windows 11 once you override one of its requirements (it probably doesn't have a required type of protected storage). Not that you're missing much or anything by not having Windows 11.

If you do buy something else, it is worth checking that it meets all of the Windows 11 requirements, though.

jamesd

While you wrote about trying the usual things, here are some less usual things that you can try first.

MyDefrag is my preferred disk defragmenter for spinning disks and after a few boots the system disk monthly choice normally produces a significant increase in boot times but helps at other times too. I currently use it on a 14TB external drive. Don't even think about waiting for it on the first run, it'll probably take all night first time.

As long as it's using a spinning hard drive it's worth considering using the Windows ReadyBoost feature and a thumb drive. Up to 16 or maybe 32GB of thumb drive ideally with an A1 speed rating can be useful for this. A2 is more costly and the computer probably won't have the required support for it. With no A rating it's A0 and still likely to be of some use, but the A1 guarantees random access rates and that's handy for this use. Not really worth buying something new, though, if old and small is available. Nothing spectacular will happen.

If space is short you can also do the things I describe in this post. Nothing there will do any harm.

greyteam1959

GDB2222 said:

Are you running 64 bit windows?

Yes I am.

GDB2222

greyteam1959 said:

GDB2222 said:

Are you running 64 bit windows?

Yes I am.

Just checking. There's no point adding RAM if you are on the 32 bit version.

Even with 64 bit windows, I would not want to spend much on DDR2 RAM. It just seems like pouring money down the drain.

I'd be inclined to upgrade the present machine with a SSD. You may well be pleasantly surprised how much difference it makes. I'd be inclined to buy a large one, so that most of the stuff you use every day is on the SSD. If you then decide you need a new machine, you can use the SSD in that.

jamesd

8 gigabytes of RAM is enough to eliminate most swapping in typical use, 4 often isn't, except for the lightest use - mine's at that at the moment with just a few browser tabs open. An SSD will mask that very well compared to a spinning disk but it's not able to mask it all.

OnlyTheBestWillDo

getmore4less said:

For that age a SSD and more memory will bring back some life

I run older and very usable
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core2-Quad-Q8400-vs-Intel-Core2-Duo-E4500/m1663vsm65

Second hand memory is the way to go for DDR2


https://uk.webuy.com/boxsearch?stext=ddr2

or ebay, if lucky a local CEX may have some

The memory is a sunk cost the SSD will be reusable if you upgrade to something better

Stick a smaller SSD for IOS and heavy used files  keep the HDD for the rest.


I have been looking at maybe upgrading mine 

liking the look of i-5/8500 machines like the ones that pop up in this search

https://uk.webuy.com/boxsearch?stext=i5-8500
(filter in stocksale)

Still under £200 but 8th gen and 3/4 years old

or there are some 9th gen  version in the £200-£300 range even an A grade(Like new) micro dell at £285

https://uk.webuy.com/product-detail/?id=sdesdel3070mi5256a

be good for another 5-10years

I concur

OnlyTheBestWillDo

£10 for 2 x 4GB and perhaps £30 for a 250 GB SSD for the Windows boot drive( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX500-CT250MX500SSD1-NAND-Internal/dp/B0781VSXBP/ref=pd_lpo_1?pd_rd_i=B0781VSXBP&psc=1  or  https://uk.crucial.com/ssd/mx500/ct250mx500ssd1 ) ; utilising the 1 TB as secondary storage.

If not, then an 8th Gen device, as suggested above.

If going for the upgrade; grab the SSD firstly, as the price is good. 

You see a significant improvement, especially with a clean install to the SSD.

jamesd

OnlyTheBestWillDo said:

jamesd said:

8 gigabytes of RAM is enough to eliminate most swapping in typical use, 4 often isn't, except for the lightest use - mine's at that at the moment with just a few browser tabs open. An SSD will mask that very well compared to a spinning disk but it's not able to mask it all.

Nonsense. I often have up to 100 tabs open on 4GB of RAM and an 120 GB SSD.
With an SSD, he won't notice any swapping. 
This is where someone tries to tell that it cuts down on the life of the SSD; whereupon everyone starts laughing until the whole thing is forgotten.
I think my cheap Integral 120 GB SSD is at least 5 years old now. 
SSD first priority, RAM second.

You're telling someone who checked task manager before posting on a 4GB RAM machine that what they saw is nonsense. There's swapping and at the moment I have 4.3 gigabytes committed. With me using nothing but a browser I'm seeing around 100 kilobytes per second of reads and 2.4 megabytes per second of writes from System. Process Monitor shows that I'm using about 5% of the space I've allocated to page files and at maximum since last boot used just under 20% of it.

The SSD will mask it to a great extent compared to a spinning disk for swap but it won't eliminate all of the performance cost. Solid state storage is first in priority, though.

You too could have provided data to try to refute my point, as I just did to support it. At least you were agreeing with me that SSD comes first, followed by RAM because the SSD will eliminate the bigger portion of the effect.

OnlyTheBestWillDo

jamesd said:

OnlyTheBestWillDo said:

jamesd said:

8 gigabytes of RAM is enough to eliminate most swapping in typical use, 4 often isn't, except for the lightest use - mine's at that at the moment with just a few browser tabs open. An SSD will mask that very well compared to a spinning disk but it's not able to mask it all.

Nonsense. I often have up to 100 tabs open on 4GB of RAM and an 120 GB SSD.
With an SSD, he won't notice any swapping. 
This is where someone tries to tell that it cuts down on the life of the SSD; whereupon everyone starts laughing until the whole thing is forgotten.
I think my cheap Integral 120 GB SSD is at least 5 years old now. 
SSD first priority, RAM second.

You're telling someone who checked task manager before posting on a 4GB RAM machine that what they saw is nonsense. There's swapping and at the moment I have 4.3 gigabytes committed. With me using nothing but a browser I'm seeing around 100 kilobytes per second of reads and 2.4 megabytes per second of writes from System. Process Monitor shows that I'm using about 5% of the space I've allocated to page files and at maximum since last boot used just under 20% of it.

The SSD will mask it to a great extent compared to a spinning disk for swap but it won't eliminate all of the performance cost. Solid state storage is first in priority, though.

The key point to your post is that you're still trying to ridicule those who know more than you. Or less, for that matter. You really should cut that out. You too could have provided data to try to refute my point, as I just did to support it.

It's particularly silly because you were agreeing with me that SSD comes first, followed by RAM.

I am not going to bother to argue with you; especially as "you know more than me" 

I can imagine a few wry smiles at your comment.

I'll just suggest to you that "Committed" doesn't mean that it is actually in use. 

Moving on....the OP won't notice any swapping nor any performance hit once the Crucial SSD has been fitted. Theoretical is nice; but average Je won't notice. More RAM is always nice; but fitting the SSD will make by far the biggest difference. 

I don't think that I have agreed with you at any point in this thread. Why would you make such a claim? Perhaps you meant that you agreed with me with regard to SSD being the most important upgrade.

OnlyTheBestWillDo

jamesd said:

It's not that there's anything wrong with the one you linked to, it's just that the one you have is also entirely decent if a bit of work is done on it. My own main machine has been a tablet with 64GB of storage, 4GB of RAM and a moderately slow CPU for a few years and I recently spent more than £1200 on a monitor for it so it's by choice because it's fine, not lack of money.

A solid state boot disk makes a huge difference in slower operations and it's really cheap and usually easy to add, particularly if you can get troubleshooting or planning help here. Some options, not looking for best price or deal, just what Amazon turned up first:

£25.49 Kingston SSDNow A400 240GB SATA 3 Solid State Drive (SA400S37/240G) Ample for a boot disk
£38.03 Crucial BX500 480 GB CT480BX500SSD1-Up to 540 MB/s (Internal SSD, 3D NAND, SATA, 2.5 Inch), Black (other capacities available)
£74.99 Crucial MX500 1 TB CT1000MX500SSD1-Up to 560 MB/s (3D NAND, SATA, 2.5 Inch, Internal SSD), Black (other capacities available)

You'll probably get free software from the maker by download to move things over to the new drive, though if you're using a lot of the space that won't work on the smallest size without moving some things elsewhere. Sizes don't have to match, just has to be enough total space for what's actually used.

RAM from ebay is likely to be even cheaper.

If you wanted to keep the spend down it'd cost you maybe £35-45 combined and it'd be fine for Windows 11 once you override one of its requirements (it probably doesn't have a required type of protected storage). Not that you're missing much or anything by not having Windows 11.

If you do buy something else, it is worth checking that it meets all of the Windows 11 requirements, though.

It's worth noting that the first two SSD you have listed have no DRAM. If you are concerned about swapping then you should be concerned about recommending cheap SSD with no DRAM.

There is good reason why they are usually guaranteed for three years; against 5 years for SSD with DRAM.

Of course I don't need to tell you this if you know more than me.