What gives the most upgrade bang for your bucks?

I have an old 8088 I'm retrofitting with a flux capicitor. 88 MHz baby...

All kidding aside, buy as much RAM as you can afford and that your motherboard will handle... and keep your BIOS updated. I had an old machine I refurbed for my wife (and cause we poor) that was only capable of 2 gig... the BIOS update allowed it to address 4 gig, and it works like a champ. I hope so, she is writing her new book on it. Daddy needs a Caddy

I built my machine about a year ago and it still flies. Yet, my only bottle neck is my HD and video card when playing certain games. Here are my specs:


AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition Thuban 3.3GHz
ASUS M5A97 EVO MB
HIS H679F1GD Radeon HD 6790
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W
ASUS 24X DVD Burner
Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3
Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Case
HANNSPREE HF225 21.5" x 2
Windows 7 Ultimate 64

I also installed an after market CPU cooler which dropped my CPU temps about 20 degrees and really helped with the speed if was running.

My PC boots in about 20 seconds with a Seagate mechanical as the boot disk. Not lightning fast but not too shabby. I don't mind a little lag here and there as long as nothing is going slower than constipation.

It does take a lot of time to move a ton of files between hard drives but an SSD isn't going to solve that and if you have a lot of data, you still need the huge mechanical drives. The only reason I'd bother with the SSD for the moment is if I didn't have any mechanical drives. The sound of them spinning all the time just about drives me nuts. When they have TB size SSDs for reasonable prices and I'm not reading horror stories about them all the time, I'll consider them. Or, I might consider a 60-120 gig SSD or something if my boot disk dies. It's probably about 3-4 years old by now so it could go at any time, I guess.

I agree. To make it even faster get a second SSD and run them in a RAID 0. DO your backups though because you are doubling the chance of HD failure. Personally I have been using RAID 0 and have not ever had an issue with a SSD failing.
Biggest performance increase for me was moving from SATA2 to SATA3 while running RAID 0.
I also have a 6 gigabyte RAM drive for the swap file and all the TEMP files. Booting into win7 desktop takes seconds.

Nice machine BTW.

If people want to get an SSD just big enough for windows (30gb held it on her Windows 7 with no problem, until games got added), it will work ....but I'd strongly recommend anyone take the little bit of time to learn the steps for making a 'windows install package' that sets things like Default directories, at the time of installation.

This reminded me of a setup I did a while back that was blazing fast even at the time it was mechanical hard drives.
I had the Windows installation set to C:
I had a separate hard drive for the %program files% directory set as P:
The swap file had its own drive set as S:
This was XP at the time and I also assigned the %Documents and Settings% location with its own hard drive as D:
It was a fast system. I might even try it again with SSD for my next upgrade.

i love coming to ats to read this stuff you lot have me all geeked up now i have got a lot of old computers in for the winter to play about with loading o/s and all that and would like to know what is the best book to get to learn how to fix/ build computers .

and what is the best freeware for a tablet computer as i have just picked up a old compaq tc 1000 from ebay for $40 the whole lot docking station and all but it has a single core processor and is sloooow but it will be a good play thing to find out how to so what is the best ubuntu/linux os for handwriting on a tablet .

me i am on a old dell with 1 gig of ram never shut the thing off just put it to stand by and it boots in 10-15 seconds and it does me .

but by the end of the long scottish winter i hope to be a lot better on computers and guess where i will be coming to find out more yip ats

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


So..

have they got the drivers stablized enough where it's not a massive headache to just install and run ?? Also, does/Can XP run SSD (obviously win7 is a better choice) but for budget sake .. can / does it?

Because my wifes PC also runs her business, which I know is not the best idea at all, but it's getting to the point where I have to do something to secure her data for her business and the house.. mostly for the business.

Issue I'm having right now is .. I can't put win7 on her PC because a program she uses won't recongize win7, thus won't run, which she needs for her sewing business.

I guess it's a 2-pronged question,

1) should I get another HDD or try and go with SSD on XP?
2) Does XP reconginze SSD if so, is it reliable ?

I built an 8350 system earlier this year, hands down a great processor for the price! the price to performance ratio blows anything that Intel is offering out f the water. I noticed in the specs for your machine that the HDD isn't the only thing they cheaped out on though. It appears that they have installed a 970 chipset mobo in your rig. If I were you I would look at picking up a 990FX mobo. You can a nice gigabyte 990fxa UD3 relatively cheap, I had this board worked great. I found a deal that I couldn't refuse on an ASUS 990FX Sabertooth, this board is truly a BEAST! Just my .02 cents, congrats on your new rig!

reply to post by Komodo


I can't give you a definitive answer on XP and SSD. I can tell you I have run it on SSD. I can say the XP Core on Win 7 that I paid the extra to get, for 100% full and true XP compatability (I never had anything fail to work) functioned fine with SSD.

It's recognized like any other drive and runs like any other drive. It's just so much faster than a mechanical/magnetic drive, it'll really leave you stunned at first.

I simply won't 100% commit to saying it will work for you, in your box on XP because I have spent 98% of my time since getting my SSDs on Win 7 and then Win 8. XP has and is something I've got available ...but frankly, it's so gimped and far behind for what I've now come to take for granted as having stock with my O/S, I might as well be loading ME or 98 for the feel of being out of date. (I know some LOVE XP...swear by it..and I hope all goes well when MS finally ends all support of it in the not too distant future..but nothing lasts forever, right?)

I'll tell ya what I'd do in your position. If you have the money to buy an SSD and end up using it as a Cache/Storage drive on the off chance it doesn't work for some strange reason? Go for it... I will likely never buy a magnetic drive again outside use as a backup to the SSDs. They are THAT much faster and it's like going from Cable Internet to Dial-up in some ways to use a magnetic boot drive now. slooooooooooow.

If money isn't there for the chance, then I'd simply get verification in a way that supports return/refund from the store you get one from.

Sorry I can't say more and personally? I wouldn't hesitate a moment to buy it and do the drive swap. SSDs have never given me the least hassle for recognition and operation. It's not me tho..and your computer to be absolutely 100% certain of before spending for upgrades.

reply to post by Komodo

Komodo
Issue I'm having right now is .. I can't put win7 on her PC because a program she uses won't recongize win7, thus won't run, which she needs for her sewing business.

Have you looked into using either Windows XP Mode or a Virtual XP machine within 7?

Also sometimes you can resolve program compatibility issues using Google...

Which application is it?

XP Mode shouldn’t be your first choice in running older software. Instead, try to install your older software normally in Windows 7. (Most programs run fine.) If you do have trouble, try Win7′s compatibility mode to see whether you can get the software working directly, without the overhead of launching an entirely separate operating system. (See the Microsoft Help & How-To, “Make older programs run in this version of Windows.”)

XP Mode is best reserved for those few programs that simply can’t be made to work in Win7 by other, simpler means. (Note: XP Mode won’t help keep older, Win7-incompatible hardware working.)

Another gotcha: XP Mode isn’t set and forget — it’s a whole separate operating system, and it needs to be kept up-to-date and otherwise maintained just as if it were installed on a standalone system. For example, it should have its own malware protection. (I installed Microsoft’s free Security Essentials). windowssecrets.com...

Windows 7′s XP Mode: what it is, how it works, who it’s for

How To Setup XP-Mode on Win 7 Home, Basic, or Premium

Can Virtual XP be run on Windows 7 Home premium?

Does XP reconginze SSD if so, is it reliable ?

Searching for information on this topic reveals a number of old threads that suggest SSDs should not be used on Windows XP due to lack of TRIM support. However it seems that newer SSDs have improved Garbage Collection, so may work with Windows XP. forums.anandtech.com...

Also make sure you Google about aligning Windows XP installations and optimization tweaks. This will improve your SSD performance and life as XP is not as smart as Windows 7 when it comes to using SSDs properly. forums.pcper.com...!

Making XP pro SSD friendly

Windows XP does not support TRIM so the lifespan of the SSD drive maybe affected.

How to optimise Windows XP for SSD

You have to go into Disk Management, initialize the drive

Use the F6 option at the very start of setup to load the sata driver