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

RichSoansPhotos wrote in post #17657711
Seriously, get one of these SSD: Samsung 2.5-Inch 1 TB 850 EVO Solid State Drive, seriously fast, also, if your mobo can upgrade RAM do so to 16Gb, turn off paging files and if you know a bit about memory overclocking, do it

I just put this SSD in and it made a HUGE difference. I would suggest going this route. With the BIOS splash screen, my boot time went from a few minutes to about 15-20 seconds but I will be turning that off to make it quicker!. Plus, just being a clean hard drive will speed it up.

I use an Asus G74SX ROG laptop. I'm at 16gb of RAM and an i7. I got an enclosure and turned my old HDD into portable storage!

BlakeC wrote in post #17657721
I just put this SSD in and it made a HUGE difference. I would suggest going this route. With the BIOS splash screen, my boot time went from a few minutes to about 15-20 seconds but I will be turning that off to make it quicker!. Plus, just being a clean hard drive will speed it up.

I use an Asus G74SX ROG laptop. I'm at 16gb of RAM and an i7. I got an enclosure and turned my old HDD into portable storage!

My laptop went from a minute to two minutes, to a few seconds, no joke

RichSoansPhotos wrote in post #17657728
My laptop went from a minute to two minutes, to a few seconds, no joke

I know! It's crazy the difference an SSD makes! Now I just need to keep it clean and fast!

BlakeC wrote in post #17657732
I know! It's crazy the difference an SSD makes! Now I just need to keep it clean and fast!

Thanks to modern garbage collection routines and over-provisioning, most new SSDs don't slow down no matter how much junk you have on them.

BlakeC wrote in post #17657732
I know! It's crazy the difference an SSD makes! Now I just need to keep it clean and fast!

Brilliant improvement with my Samsung 850 Evo.

For me, from now on HHDs are purely for long term storage.

tytlyf wrote in post #17653999
I'd upgrade your Ram first to 16GB. I just updated my laptop today from 8g to 16g and lightroom doesn't slow anymore. Before LR would be using around 6-7gb of memory after running for a while and doing HDR merges etc, now after upgrading it's going up in the 12 GB range. I don't notice the slowdown anymore getting to that 'ceiling.'
A SSD is always nice, but if you do a lot of stuff in LR, I'd recommend the memory first. (memory will have more impact in LR than a SSD)

Not my uneducated experience. If you have 8 GB of RAM i.e. Enough, the the SSD in the key.

As you say more ram meant it "didn't slow down any more" - sure thats nice.
But a quick SSD will be as though someone put rocket fuel in it - and lit it!

Submariner wrote in post #17658364
Not my uneducated experience. If you have 8 GB of RAM i.e. Enough, the the SSD in the key.

As you say more ram meant it "didn't slow down any more" - sure thats nice.
But a quick SSD will be as though someone put rocket fuel in it - and lit it!

Basically, the way it works is this:
1. Data is loaded into RAM or is generated from whatever processing you're doing, usually the system tries to keep your RAM full at all times as it's faster to overwrite data than erase it.
2. If the system is running low on RAM, and there is no old data to overwrite, it pages (dumps) the data to virtual memory on your disk as a page file.
3. If that chunk of memory is needed again (you switch applications), then the data is swapped back into RAM, and other parts of memory are paged instead if there is no free space.
4. Having more RAM prevents the system from paging data out, which tends to be slow since your disk is usually orders of magnitude slower than DRAM.
5. Installing an SSD has the effect of alleviating the slowdown of paging since SSDs are much faster than spinning disks, but still an average of 100x slower than RAM in throughput alone.
6. The page and hibernation files on your PC have to be at least as large as your RAM capacity, as every time you put your PC to sleep, the contents of your RAM are dumped to your drive.
7. Paging and virtual memory are always important aspects of your PC's functionality, and turning these features off compromises application stability, even if you have 64GB of RAM.
8. Similarly to point 7, Adobe applications will make use of scratch space on disk regardless of how much RAM you have, so it still pays to have a fast SSD.

Kolor-Pikker wrote in post #17658379
5. Installing an SSD has the effect of alleviating the slowdown of paging since SSDs are much faster than spinning disks, but still an average of 100x slower than RAM in throughput alone.

Seriously am looking forward to what RAM SSDs will bring.
http://www.extremetech​.com …s-a-monster-in-some-tasks

It's gonna be meant for servers apparently at first from what i understand but that tech will trickledown to us eventually.

Bleufire wrote in post #17658734
Seriously am looking forward to what RAM SSDs will bring.
http://www.extremetech​.com …s-a-monster-in-some-tasks

It's gonna be meant for servers apparently at first from what i understand but that tech will trickledown to us eventually.

I think we'll sooner see Intel and Micron's new 3D XPoint technology hit the mainstream than waiting for RAM SSDs to get cheaper, as it had already been announced to be in production and will be out next year, at least for the enterprise. Certainly a fast turn around if I've ever seen one.

3DXP is basically ideal for scratch use as it is both 1000x faster and more durable than conventional SSD storage, while also being non-volatile, meaning it can store data without power. Price wise it will be somewhere between SSDs and RAM per GB, but most people probably don't need more than 20GB for active scratch even for 4K video editing.

Another interesting use would be in RAID controllers or NAS systems as it means that buffered data isn't lost if the power goes out - although you should have your system on a UPS anyway.

In other news, Toshiba and SanDisk have announced their own 3D stacked NAND SSDs as an answer to Samsung's 850 drives, but with new technology that will allow up to 8TB of storage per drive.