Calling Computer Wizards: Is It Worth Upgrading?

[Paul]

I'm thinking of upgrading my son's desktop PC (again), but wonder if anyone with a greater understanding of these things than I have can tell me is it worth it? In short, will upgrades have enough effect to be worthwhile?

It's an HP desktop used predominantly for minecraft, roblox etc but can be slow to boot. I'm thinking of upgrading the CPU from Intel Core i3 3220 (LGA1155 socket 0) to an early version i5 or i7 which are compatible and adding an SSD for the boot partition. This can be done for about £50 for the i5, a bit more for the i7.

I have already upgraded the power supply (500w), ram (8gb DDR3) and graphics (nVidia gtx 560) for him over the years.

[Smoggy]

For boot time the ssd will make a big difference.

[Helian]

Yes a SSD will make a huge difference, all I would question is, is it worth upgrading if you have such an elderly CPU. Perhaps better to buy a recon desktop with a later i5 or i7 CPU? These appear currently available more reasonably than recon laptops. You could then upgrade to a fast SSD if necessary. In essence I'm not sure I'd put money into a system that has such a elderly processor.

[750XL]

Personally I'd bite the bullet and get a whole new PC, there's only so much you can upgrade.

You can get 'gaming' PC's quite reasonably priced these days 

[Bikertov]

I am reading that the gaming your son does is low end, eg Minecraft etc, rather than COD and other graphics intensive games.

I reckon you could easily get another year or two out of the current system with simple upgrades.

If you are knowledgeable enough to upgrade the processor to an i5 or i7 on the existing motherboard, and the motherboard can take it, then do that.

Definitely add an SSD - you don't need a top of the range one to see a good increase in speed.

The graphics and memory should be fine for existing use, and will run browsing, MS Office etc, without any issue.

For comparison, my company still runs Core2Duo processors, 4-8GB RAM, 128GB SSD's and no special graphics, without any real issues, as there is no graphics intensive work or large local storage requirements. My home PC is similar spec and does everything I need it to do.

If you do feel a new PC is needed, ask yourself (and your son) what you are trying to do on the current PC that is not working as you would like it to. Work out what performance it is you are short of, and get something to suit that need.

To often, people are persuaded (by high street shops) to buy computers far more powerful, and expensive, that is needed for most peoples use.

But when the time does come to get something new, have a look at the Dell Outlet, as they have returns and 'scratch and dent' systems at very good prices that look like new. Often there are discount codes available, especially for students. I've bought probably 10-15 desktops/laptops over the years from their Outlet, and been happy every time.

Oh, and do keep the old PC as a spare browsing/office machine - it will be usable for a good while yet.

[Smoggy]

I usually upgrade when the company upgrades, the old ones that can be blagged are plenty quick enough once all the company domain crud is taken off, last new work pc I got the first thing I did was to clone the ssd to another spare hdd and do a factory reset on the cloned hdd so when it next gets changed there is a fresh install free of crud ready to clone back across, of course my guvnor don't know this.....

[oldgregg]

The SSD is a dirt cheap upgrade so I'd do that first. Ebuyer had a 1TB one for £65 the other day.

It will improve I/O so much that it will feel like a new computer for a while.

[FairTmiddlin]

Yes just bought a new laptop with 256gb ssd. Immediately ordered a 1tb ssd 3.5 to fit inside the 256 is just the boot disk. to keep it blisteringly fast at startup.

Crucial ssd from amazon on offer £68.

[grendel]

most of my computer equipment is old and worn out, the first upgrade that gets done however is to an ssd hard drive, i have one old laptop, its about 15 years old now, and I upgraded it to SSD and a Linux operating system, it boots up and I am usually downloading emails, before my ultra fast works laptop has managed to get to the security question prior to boot up.

[JawsOrca]

The only things I would ever do is certainly pop in an SSD although reinstalling windows can be a pain. Also increase the RAM, I certainly wouldn't bother with upgrading processors and boards, if you are looking at that then it's really a new machine.  

Sadly capacitors fail so before upgrading a machine make sure they look normal and not bloated on the board.

I've brought a few really good "refurbished" machines via ebuyer and they are very reasonable specs for a really good price, worth a look.

[Smoggy]

1 hour ago, JawsOrca said:

although reinstalling windows can be a pain.

I use mini-tool partition wizard and clone rather than re-installing for a ssd swap, the version before v12 has disk copy in the free version and works for most partition formats.

I think I still have the version 11 setup file saved somewhere.

[Bikertov]

I had an issue trying to use a partition manager with an onboard eMCC SSD, to replicate it to a new M.2 SSD.

Could not get it to work because of different sector sizes I think it was, and in the end had to a different SSD as the orignal was not compatible.

[Paul]

thanks, that's certainly food for thought. 

I upgraded my laptop with a 240gb SSD some time ago. It has two sata HDD enclosures so the other runs a 1tb HDD which I use to store media and for a restore partition. I had thought about doing the same with Jim's desktop but might instead put a 1tb SSD in my laptop to run everything then keep the HDD as a back up drive. 

Then I can reuse the SSD that comes out of my laptop as a start up drive for Jim. 

The mobo has a list of supported processors on the website, so I can swap out his i3 3220 for an i5 2500k or an i7 2600k or 2700k. The i5 is often to be found for under £20 and using the cpubenchmark seems to offer 95% or more of the performance of the i7 which are notably more expensive, plus the i5 will run with the existing cooler whilst the i7 would mean a cooler swap too. If that website is to be believed the i5 quad core at 3300ghz is far superior to his current i3

[Bikertov]

So then I would suggest first go with your thought of swapping out the SSD, and great that you are looking to upgrade your laptop for a 1TB and re-use the old one.

If you get a useful performance increase after that, then consider the i5 CPU upgrade. Have a look at CeX https://uk.webuy.com/boxsearch?stext=intel i5, as they have a wide range of CPU's for sale. At least it will give you a benchmark price for any given model.

Both those should give the machine a new lease of life for a while yet, for little investment in case it doesn't work out as well as you hope.