SSD or more RAM? (Linux Mint)

[zcacogp]

Chaps,

A quickie. I've just been given a (very cute) little Samsung NC10 netbook by my folks. They bought it at my suggestion a few years back and have replaced it for something with Win8 on it, and passed the old machine on to me. It's beautiful!

It's beautiful, but limited. OK, it's also small, very portable and has a decent battery life. However, to increase the amount of pep I can install an SSD and install some more memory. Interestingly, these both have a similar price tag (around £30), which is pretty much what I want to spend on the thing. So, which will make more difference? Upgrading the memory from 1Gb to 2Gb (or more), or slotting in a small SSD? The chip is an Intel Atom.

The cheapest SSD I can find is this: 60Gb's worth of Corsair SSD for £33. (Can anyone recommend these things? I've never used them before, but had superb results with the Crucial M550. This is smaller and cheaper.)

Memory seems to be about the same price. £18 from 'Mr Memory' (are they any good), or something similar but by Crucial from Amazon and costing twice as much.

(And, as an aside, this machine will probably end up being used as a day-to-day replacement for a Thinkpad X61, which also has an SSD in it but whose battery is completely kippered. The IBM is the more up-market machine but much much older. Which will do better in the performance stakes, if the memory and drive type are the same? One option would be to rob the SSD and memory from the IBM for the Samsung, but that would ruin my beloved old IBM!)


Oli.

[malman]

depends on usage but generally speaking a spinning disk is the biggest bottleneck in a machine so getting rid of that first will give the biggest gains.

[ZesPak]

If it's the 1gb, a RAM upgrade should be your priority. SSD s are a tremendous upgrade but having enough RAM is more important.

[zcacogp]

Great - two replies, one saying SSD and one saying Memory!

Anyone else?

For what it's worth, it trips along fairly happily but takes an age to get itself fully up and running. Mind you, that is possibly because I am used to the Thinkpad with an SSD, which not starts quite briskly.

Thanks for your help.


Oli.

[bsdnazz]

zcacogp said:

Great - two replies, one saying SSD and one saying Memory!

Anyone else?

For what it's worth, it trips along fairly happily but takes an age to get itself fully up and running. Mind you, that is possibly because I am used to the Thinkpad with an SSD, which not starts quite briskly.

Thanks for your help.


Oli.

More RAM first. RAM is much much faster than SSD access and *SO* much faster than HDD it's not funny.

Linux (and Windows) will use secondary storage (SSD or HDD) as page/swap space if it's short of RAM. First try to make sure the system is not short of RAM before looking at secondary storage.

[zcacogp]

Thanks, looks like RAM it is (which is what I was suspecting).

Has anyone used Mr Memory memory? I always rely on Crucial and Kingston - is the Mr Memory stuff worth the saving?


Oli.

[eltawater]

SSD.

I have a samsung n150 which is very similar to yours, and the ssd has made a massive improvement to startup times of windows 7.

I am running 2GB ram but that's mainly because windows 7 is such a memory hog. I was running opensuse for a bit and that was perfectly happy on 1GB.

The atom chip is prone to being sluggish, don't expect miracles. That said, I do have a USB 2 video adapter connected as well for triple monitor fun

[The_Doc]

I have that machine, running Linux Mint and upgraded to 2 of RAM when it was a windows machine.

The limiting factor for usability is the chip. That Atom chip is never going to be happy playing HD vidoes or similar tasks.
That said its so small and cute I do use it frequently on business trips.

I wrote a book on it too, but the keyboard is quite small.

My vote, get more RAM, but don't expect it to rival a proper Intel i5 machine, even with Linux Mint.

[AB]

Do 'em both you minge bag

[zcacogp]

AB said:

Do 'em both you minge bag

At last, a sensible answer!

I've actually decided to do neither ... at least for now. I tried to use the machine in anger last night and it was so unconscionably slow I gave up and reached for my trusty IBM X61s instead. It seemed to freeze while running Chrome, and took an age to unfreeze. Whether this is a dodgy build or simply a product of the machine I don't know, but it doesn't make for a usable machine.

I'l try it again when I have some more time, but it's put on hold for now.

Thanks again for the suggestions.


Oli.

[ZesPak]

zcacogp said:

At last, a sensible answer!

I've actually decided to do neither ... at least for now. I tried to use the machine in anger last night and it was so unconscionably slow I gave up and reached for my trusty IBM X61s instead. It seemed to freeze while running Chrome, and took an age to unfreeze. Whether this is a dodgy build or simply a product of the machine I don't know, but it doesn't make for a usable machine.

I'l try it again when I have some more time, but it's put on hold for now.

Thanks again for the suggestions.


Oli.

I've had this machine for quite some time, and did a lot of stuff with it.
Just upgrade the ram to at least 2GB, it'll make all the difference.
The RAM deficit was always it's biggest problem, even Linux mint isn't great on 1GB.

Oh and don't get me started on Chrome in terms of memory use.

It's not because Mint is "only" using 900MB it won't take advantage of more, it might well just use that amount because it wants to keep a bit free for various reasons.

But, as mentioned above, it'll never be a quick machine. It's small, functional and very cost effective, but not a powerhouse to say the least.

[Foliage]

Buy the ram

Take the SSD out of the of the x61 and see how it gets on with an ssd, purchase a new SSD later if you like it and want the x61 to still work too, or stick a cheap spinny drive in the x61.

Also Id recommend if it has a SD card slot a nice big SD card as storage (64gb will be about £20) or a flush fit usb memory stick or maybe a flush fit usb microSD card reader (about £2 last time I bought one) and a micro sd card.

Im good at spending your money for you aren't I lol

Edited by Foliage on Tuesday 24th March 09:44

[zcacogp]

ash73 said:

You're not going to bother with the upgrade to speed it up, as it's too slow?

Yes!

ZesPak said:

I've had this machine for quite some time, and did a lot of stuff with it.
Just upgrade the ram to at least 2GB, it'll make all the difference.
The RAM deficit was always it's biggest problem, even Linux mint isn't great on 1GB.

Oh and don't get me started on Chrome in terms of memory use.

It's not because Mint is "only" using 900MB it won't take advantage of more, it might well just use that amount because it wants to keep a bit free for various reasons.

But, as mentioned above, it'll never be a quick machine. It's small, functional and very cost effective, but not a powerhouse to say the least.

Thanks. RAM it is then ... if anything ...

Foliage said:

Buy the ram

Take the SSD out of the of the x61 and see how it gets on with an ssd, purchase a new SSD later if you like it and want the x61 to still work too, or stick a cheap spinny drive in the x61.

Also Id recommend if it has a SD card slot a nice big SD card as storage (64gb will be about £20) or a flush fit usb memory stick or maybe a flush fit usb microSD card reader (about £2 last time I bought one) and a micro sd card.

Im good at spending your money for you aren't I lol

Swapping the SSD over is an idea I had thought of, but the X61 is built just as I like it and I'd not want to trash that. I guess I could build it in a new partition though. I still have the spinny drive from the X61 if I want to leave the SSD in the netbook.

I know I'm not comparing apples with apples, but the difference in performance is quite astonishing - particularly given the relative ages (X61 - 10 years old, NC10 - 4 years old, or less.) The IBM has a Core 2 Duo at 1.6Ghz, the NC10 an Intel Atom. Yes, there is a difference in Hard Drive as mentioned and the X61 has (I think) 2Gb RAM. How much of the difference in system performance is down to the difference in RAM and drive type, and how much down to the chip? (Or, putting it another way, if I was to up the RAM and put an SSD in the NC10, will it ever be a patch on the X61?)

Thanks,


Oli.

[eltawater]

zcacogp said:

(Or, putting it another way, if I was to up the RAM and put an SSD in the NC10, will it ever be a patch on the X61?)

Simple answer, no.

I'm typing this post on my N150 at the moment, and even with 2GB RAM and an SSD, Windows 7 still has nice little stuttering phases for no obvious reason whatsoever. It's particularly prevalent when loading pages with lots of flash adverts etc.

I bought mine for remote access during my oncall period, the small form factor and lack of weight were key factors.

I'm currently putting up with it for working from home as my old Core 2 duo laptop died a few weeks ago. Plugged into a couple of monitors, USB keyboard and Bluetooth it's working perfectly fine as a remote access terminal. Wouldn't want to open too many chrome tabs in it though

For the money you'd be throwing at it, you may as well save your pennies and pick up a refurbished i3/i5 from ebay which comes with 2GB/4GB RAM and sometimes a 128GB SSD. There's an ebay seller down the road from me who has similar spec machines for between £130 and £170. The NC10 and its brethren are never going to compare.

[zcacogp]

Chaps,

OK, I'm going large on this and will order both!

Please can people confirm:

- Is this the right memory to buy? 2Gb DDR-2 667mhz PC2-5300. Is it worth seeking out the PC2-6400 memory or won't that make any difference given the motherboard?

- Can I use any 2.5inch SATA2 SSD? Like this one?

Thanks,


Oli.

[ZesPak]

zcacogp said:

Chaps,

OK, I'm going large on this and will order both!

Please can people confirm:

- Is this the right memory to buy? 2Gb DDR-2 667mhz PC2-5300. Is it worth seeking out the PC2-6400 memory or won't that make any difference given the motherboard?

- Can I use any 2.5inch SATA2 SSD? Like this one?

Thanks,


Oli.

1. Be sure you order the spec that's already inside, in that case you have 2+1 = 3GB instead of just 2. And you can't "overbuy" on spec. There's a couple of tools online that'll tell you what's already inside.
2. Yes, any 2.5" disk will fit. Newer laptops will only fit SSD's as they are thinner, but yours still holds a HDD, which is bigger.

One more thing, depending on how big your current disk is, get one of these: https://www.ebuyer.com/482877-xenta-2-5-usb2-0-ext...
The benefit is two fold:

1. It'll be very easy to copy data once your new disk is in the laptop
2. You'll have a nice 160GB external drive for a fiver

[zcacogp]

ZesPak,

Thanks. There is only one slot in the machine so I will be moving the 1Gb card out in favour of the new 2Gb card. If the specs of that one work then I'll buy it.

That external enclosure looks interesting although the machine will spend 99% of it's time on a network with oodles of storage, so it shouldn't be necessary. However it's a shame not to buy it, eh?


Oli.

[dtmpower]

NC10 has an SD card slot on the front.. how about trying to install the OS or the SWAP partition on an SD card...

[zcacogp]

dtmpower said:

NC10 has an SD card slot on the front.. how about trying to install the OS or the SWAP partition on an SD card...

Nice idea, thanks, I'll give it a go.

In the meantime, does that memory I linked to a while back work in the NC10?


Oli.

[ZesPak]

zcacogp said:

ZesPak,

Thanks. There is only one slot in the machine so I will be moving the 1Gb card out in favour of the new 2Gb card. If the specs of that one work then I'll buy it.

That external enclosure looks interesting although the machine will spend 99% of it's time on a network with oodles of storage, so it shouldn't be necessary. However it's a shame not to buy it, eh?


Oli.

I wouldn't take the risk of buying anything else than what was in it, for the possibility of the marginal gain.


Yes, for a fiver it's a no brainer to chuck it in your order imho .