PC getting Slow - Where should I spend my limited funds?

Hello everybody.

I've got a PC that is getting a little long in the tooth and getting a bit slow to be fair
It's a Asus P7P55D-E LX with an Intel i7 870 @ 3200, 8gb of RAM
Hard drives are -
Primary Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (contains OS and Program Files, Lightroom Catalog)
Secondary Western Digital WD20EARK 2TB (With Photos, Videos Etc)

when I run the windows Experience it appears that the Hard Drives are my weakness Scoring only 5.9 while everything else is between 7.2 and 7.9

Would it be worth upgrading my Hard drives to get a bit more performance? I mostly use it for Web Browsing, Photo Editing in Lightroom and watching the odd Movie

Thanks

Jason

Well, the P55 is already running just about the fastest CPU that it can, so the only way to speed up the computer without having to replace the CPU and Mobo is to get a new SSD drive for the boot volume.

As to which SSD... pick any recent model made by Intel, Samsung or Crucial. Generally speaking, the larger the capacity of the drive, the faster it will be and the longer it will last. MLC type drives are also better than TLC for longevity, but cost more. As of right now the Samsung 850 Pro is the pinnacle of speed and durability as far as SATA3 goes.

Upgrading to something like the 4690K and a cheap motherboard will set you back around $300, which is about the same as you can expect to spend on a really nice SSD, but I think that the system will still be bottlenecked by a lack of drive speed.

Kolor-Pikker wrote in post #17608742
Well, the P55 is already running just about the fastest CPU that it can, so the only way to speed up the computer without having to replace the CPU and Mobo is to get a new SSD drive for the boot volume.

In many years of working in IT, I can tell you that for any given machine there likely isn't anything that will have impact like moving to an SSD. You can often turn 2 minute boot times into 10 to 15 second boot times.

You only have 8gb of Ram... max out your ram first. If you are maxed out, then time to move to a new computer.

I went and looked, you can go to 16GB, that will help until you decide on your next computer.

ksbal wrote in post #17608918
You only have 8gb of Ram... max out your ram first. If you are maxed out, then time to move to a new computer.

I went and looked, you can go to 16GB, that will help until you decide on your next computer.

I edit 51MP files from a medium format camera on my 2011 iMac, which has basically the same CPU and 8GB RAM as OP's PC, and while it would have been nice to have more RAM at times, I also tend to run a LOT of applications simultaneously. I think that what he has is enough for at least a while longer.

Take Windows Experience with a grain of salt.

Plugging in an SSD to hand OS/Application/Cache will do wonders.

I tossed a Samsung 250GB 850 EVO SSD into my FIL's laptop and he loves it. He was on the verge of replacing his 3-4 year old laptop and I told him to let me try something. So the SSD I was going to put in my machine (finally) i decided to put in his. Totally worth it.

It's so fast and works well that he thinks I fixed his network speeds as well. (don't tell him please)

Another vote for moving to SSD, it made my crappy Acer desktop feel like a brand new machine.

Yep 250GB SSD best improvememnt you can make. OS and programs all on SSD.
and 16GB ram

I store working files on SSD so LR and PS get them as quick as poss.

Chip and board is as fast as they come even today.

Yes, you get great improvement in responsiveness of most any PC due to reduction of wait times to retrieve data from a harddrive, but -- in truth -- PC 'performance is a multi factored consideration and NOT a simplistic assessment, as it is made out to be via the responses so far!

1. If your PC is slow in processing such as local brush changes in LR, the computer processor could be the bottleneck, and increasing the processor speeds could help. Your i7-870 has a fundamental 2.93Ghz clock, but it has a Turbo upgrade capability of 3.6GHz!
   
2. If your PC is slow because you are asking it to do multiple things at the same time, changing the number of cores could be the way to increase performance because one core (processor) is devoted to each task. But if you use only LR and nothing else is going on, increasing number of cores may do nothing (unless LR is designed for multiprocessing -- to use multiple processors to divide the tasks up to work in parallel). You have an i7 which has 4 cores, not much more you can do here.
   
3. If you have insufficient RAM and you are working with massive datasets (e.g. 50Mpixel images), having more RAM to have larger 'memory' space would eliminate reading/writing the data to harddrive virtual memory. You have 8GBytes, you can increase to 16GB on your motherboard.
   
4. Any time to have to read/write data from harddrive, increasing the speed of the read/write tasks -- whether via use of 7200rpm harddrive, or via use of a solid state drive -- is going to improve performance. Your Samsung is already 7200rpm, but your WD is 5400 rpm.
   

Lots of nice feedback here guys, I think the SSD will be the way to go, if I then have to upgrade my Mobo/processor at least I will be able to switch the SSD over to the new gear.

If I do get a new SSD is it an easy task to transfer the OS over from my old HDD?

Anyone know about this "SanDisk Ultra® II Solid State Drive"? Model #SDSSDHII-240G-G25

it's a 2.5 inch 240GB ssd that I can get for $150 New Zealand Dollars

Milutiche wrote in post #17609309
If I do get a new SSD is it an easy task to transfer the OS over from my old HDD?

I used an application called Macrium Reflect and it's free. Some SSDs come bundled with cloning software already.

Also consult a few how-to guides on migrating to SSD, it will make the process relatively painless. One example is below:

http://www.howtogeek.c​om …7-to-a-solid-state-drive/

Moving an install from one system to another can work, but honestly I've found that it is usually far less painful in the long run to just install a fresh copy of the OS and start from scratch. Also gets rid of all the random little junk files that add up over time anyway.

I am a huge fan of starting from scratch if you have never done it before. Win 7 makes it a jokingly easy from XP. I haven't tried installing 8 or 10 but i can probably imagine that it is just as easy.

Otherwise I believe some SSDs will ship with a cable and application that will image it over to the new SSD from the HDD.

Thanks guys, I've installed windows fresh many times I was just wondering if it would be easier to put my existing files onto the new SSD so I don't have to find all of my install files for various programs I run.

I keep a google docs spreadsheet with all the apps I actually care about, and links to their websites. That way when I go back to install stuff I can just pull clean updated installers as needed.

I've cloned windows installs over in more than a dozen machines, and nine out of ten appear to be working just fine out of the box, but eventually there will be some random hangup somewhere along the line that will cause more of a headache than a clean install of the OS and installing each app as you need it likely would have been.

If I know I'm going to be reinstalling everything soon then I'll start pulling the larger downloads onto a bulk storage drive so they're ready to go as soon as the OS is installed. (I keep an old 500GB drive kicking around for temp storage like that.) I do have a 1.5TB drive dedicated to Steam games that I try to keep up to date, but that is just because I have a massive collection of titles, which I never seem to get time to play anyway so it probably doesn't actually matter.