Whats a decent spec for a home PC today ?
Discussion
Current machine is 2010 build - spec i3/550@3.2 with 4gb ram.
Its been really errtic of late and im thinking of replacing it viw PC specialist.
Standard sort of of home use really, with some photo processing via lightroom.
Id like the boot up speed of an SSD and dont ant to spend more than about £450.
Box only required.
Its been really errtic of late and im thinking of replacing it viw PC specialist.
Standard sort of of home use really, with some photo processing via lightroom.
Id like the boot up speed of an SSD and dont ant to spend more than about £450.
Box only required.
LordHaveMurci said:
Decent SSD, clean install & probably some more RAM & you're good to go for a lot less than your budget.
Ok, that sounds like a plan.My current OS came prebundled so I dont have a disc. Would I be able to DL W10 foc onto the ssd ?
And which SSD ?
eta - current set up is 250gb for programs with a secondary 500gb for data
Edited by Turn7 on Saturday 27th February 08:27
I've just upgraded to a 256GB SSD.
Cost about £63 for the drive, plus about £6 for a mounting kit to screw it into a 3.5" drive bay.
Download the free version of Macrium Reflect, which will copy the partition for you. Follow the instructions on this page. Create the recovery CD first, which gives you a bootable version of Macrium Reflect - I needed to run this after the migration to re-write the boot record of the new SSD.
The performance difference of the new drive is night-and-day. It used to take 5 minutes to boot, but now about 20 seconds. And it's not just a boot-up advantage: applications start much quicker too.
I would also put another 4GB memory in your computer. Upgrading memory is easy, and if you're lucky you'll find your existing memory is installed as a pair of 2GB DIMMs with a pair of slots free, in which case you can just bung another pair of 2GB of the same spec into the empty slots. If you're unlucky then you'll have four slots with a 1GB DIMM in each and no free slots, in which case you'd have to throw them away and buy a pair of 4GB DIMMs to achieve 8GB. Or keep two of the 1GB DIMMs for a total of 10GB.
Once you've done all that you could probably buy a bigger secondary HDD and still be within budget, because they're ludicrous cheap these days. I've just bought a 2TB HDD for £56.
Edited to add:
Shopping list for the disk drives...
Can't advise on memory because you need to match whatever is in your machine. Remove a DIMM and have a look at the sticky label.
Cost about £63 for the drive, plus about £6 for a mounting kit to screw it into a 3.5" drive bay.
Download the free version of Macrium Reflect, which will copy the partition for you. Follow the instructions on this page. Create the recovery CD first, which gives you a bootable version of Macrium Reflect - I needed to run this after the migration to re-write the boot record of the new SSD.
The performance difference of the new drive is night-and-day. It used to take 5 minutes to boot, but now about 20 seconds. And it's not just a boot-up advantage: applications start much quicker too.
I would also put another 4GB memory in your computer. Upgrading memory is easy, and if you're lucky you'll find your existing memory is installed as a pair of 2GB DIMMs with a pair of slots free, in which case you can just bung another pair of 2GB of the same spec into the empty slots. If you're unlucky then you'll have four slots with a 1GB DIMM in each and no free slots, in which case you'd have to throw them away and buy a pair of 4GB DIMMs to achieve 8GB. Or keep two of the 1GB DIMMs for a total of 10GB.
Once you've done all that you could probably buy a bigger secondary HDD and still be within budget, because they're ludicrous cheap these days. I've just bought a 2TB HDD for £56.
Edited to add:
Shopping list for the disk drives...
Can't advise on memory because you need to match whatever is in your machine. Remove a DIMM and have a look at the sticky label.
Edited by Dr Mike Oxgreen on Saturday 27th February 09:09
I'd recommend a clean install, not cloning your [erratic, you said] old OS onto a new SSD. You'll just bring the problems with you.
My suggestion:
- buy a 256Gb (ought to be enough) Samsung Evo SSD
- Buy Windows 10 64-bit
- unplug old hard drive
- plug in SSD
- clean install Windows 10
- plug in old hard drive as secondary drive and copy your stuff onto the SSD (pictures, docs etc)
- unplug old hard drive
- bob is your uncle
My suggestion:
- buy a 256Gb (ought to be enough) Samsung Evo SSD
- Buy Windows 10 64-bit
- unplug old hard drive
- plug in SSD
- clean install Windows 10
- plug in old hard drive as secondary drive and copy your stuff onto the SSD (pictures, docs etc)
- unplug old hard drive
- bob is your uncle
papercup said:
I'd recommend a clean install, not cloning your [erratic, you said] old OS onto a new SSD. You'll just bring the problems with you.
My suggestion:
- buy a 256Gb (ought to be enough) Samsung Evo SSD
- Buy Windows 10 64-bit
- unplug old hard drive
- plug in SSD
- clean install Windows 10
- plug in old hard drive as secondary drive and copy your stuff onto the SSD (pictures, docs etc)
- unplug old hard drive
- bob is your uncle
Why not format the old drive and leave it in for storage/backups?My suggestion:
- buy a 256Gb (ought to be enough) Samsung Evo SSD
- Buy Windows 10 64-bit
- unplug old hard drive
- plug in SSD
- clean install Windows 10
- plug in old hard drive as secondary drive and copy your stuff onto the SSD (pictures, docs etc)
- unplug old hard drive
- bob is your uncle
Monty Python said:
papercup said:
I'd recommend a clean install, not cloning your [erratic, you said] old OS onto a new SSD. You'll just bring the problems with you.
My suggestion:
- buy a 256Gb (ought to be enough) Samsung Evo SSD
- Buy Windows 10 64-bit
- unplug old hard drive
- plug in SSD
- clean install Windows 10
- plug in old hard drive as secondary drive and copy your stuff onto the SSD (pictures, docs etc)
- unplug old hard drive
- bob is your uncle
Why not format the old drive and leave it in for storage/backups?My suggestion:
- buy a 256Gb (ought to be enough) Samsung Evo SSD
- Buy Windows 10 64-bit
- unplug old hard drive
- plug in SSD
- clean install Windows 10
- plug in old hard drive as secondary drive and copy your stuff onto the SSD (pictures, docs etc)
- unplug old hard drive
- bob is your uncle
papercup said:
I'd recommend a clean install, not cloning your [erratic, you said] old OS onto a new SSD. You'll just bring the problems with you.
Not necessarily.I would recommend doing the copy first, which is fairly painless and can be done with free software. See how it goes, and if the problems have gone away then you've saved yourself the cost and hassle of reinstalling the OS and applications. On the other hand, if the problems are still there then you can go ahead and buy Win10 and do a clean install.
Turn7 said:
My current OS came prebundled so I dont have a disc. Would I be able to DL W10 foc onto the ssd ?
The activation key should be on the box, or can be extracted using key extractors.You should be able to download the correct version of your OS install from either microsoft or from a torrent site.
Turn7 said:
Just to update this...
I bought a Kingston SSD and mirrored my old hard drive onto it. Once up and running I upgraded to Win10.
PC now boots to desktop in less than 40 seconds.
It also seems a lot more stable.
Should take about 8 secs for W10 on an SSD. I bought a Kingston SSD and mirrored my old hard drive onto it. Once up and running I upgraded to Win10.
PC now boots to desktop in less than 40 seconds.
It also seems a lot more stable.
I'd format the drive and do a complete fresh install of W10.
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