Speeding up old laptop: Ram or SSD ?
- Thread starter CarLuver
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This +100
SSD
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Data Memory Systems is my go to for memory chips...
I see a 32 gigabyte chip for $14, not sure if it is the right one...
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I see a 32 gigabyte chip for $14, not sure if it is the right one...
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2013
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New Egg is my go to for hard drives...
www.newegg.com
Major thing you need to find out is whether you have SATA II or SATA III drive controller.
SATA II is limited to 3 gig per second, and you can have major problems getting a SATA III drive to downshift to SATA II
SATA III is 6 gigs per second....
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Major thing you need to find out is whether you have SATA II or SATA III drive controller.
SATA II is limited to 3 gig per second, and you can have major problems getting a SATA III drive to downshift to SATA II
SATA III is 6 gigs per second....
SSD made a big diff in my old laptop, but I found some cheap memory and expanded it from 4GB to 8GB. I think it may have been a total of $100 invested, that might have included a cloning cable and external drive case (as I figured I could use the old drive as external storage)*. I would look at the price of both.
*I moved the drive into the external case but it's giving me some warning about a password... I've never gotten around to figuring out, and I wound up just doing a fresh install of Win10 instead. Been meaning to get back to that. Point being, I didn't need the cloning stuff, and despite not having any sort of paperwork, the laptop was recognized as legit and Windows allowed me to do a fresh install. Night and day performance increase.
*I moved the drive into the external case but it's giving me some warning about a password... I've never gotten around to figuring out, and I wound up just doing a fresh install of Win10 instead. Been meaning to get back to that. Point being, I didn't need the cloning stuff, and despite not having any sort of paperwork, the laptop was recognized as legit and Windows allowed me to do a fresh install. Night and day performance increase.
SSD *unless* you routinely run out of RAM. But even then I'd go SSD and set a portion of the SSD for swap use.
Forget the upgrades. Just run Chrome OS instead of windows.
To try it out, you can download and boot from a USB drive.
How To Turn Your Old Laptop Into A Chromebook
To try it out, you can download and boot from a USB drive.
How To Turn Your Old Laptop Into A Chromebook
I've never had any issues running newer SATA III SSDs in older SATA II systems. They're supposed to be backwards compatible (either direction) but I've seen plenty of warnings about how it won't work or can be unstable, but none have come to pass.
I own an HP Z400 and HP Z600 (Intel ICH10R SATA II southbridge) which have newer SATA-III SSDs and both run flawless.
I own an HP Z400 and HP Z600 (Intel ICH10R SATA II southbridge) which have newer SATA-III SSDs and both run flawless.
First SSD
then SSD
third SSD
fourth SSD
then think about ram.
many years ago I bought an asus eee for obd diagnosis, hdd and only 1gb fixed soldered memory. It really needed a 2nd gb of ram but that wasn’t possible. Switching from hdd to SSD made that thin actually usable. Much more so than I could have imagined.
so go SSD
then SSD
third SSD
fourth SSD
then think about ram.
many years ago I bought an asus eee for obd diagnosis, hdd and only 1gb fixed soldered memory. It really needed a 2nd gb of ram but that wasn’t possible. Switching from hdd to SSD made that thin actually usable. Much more so than I could have imagined.
so go SSD
you can get off brand sata SSD's for like 25 bucks now adays.
Are you running Windows, if so which version? Make sure to clean up the temporary files as well and cleanup the start up tasks etc. All that windows garbage slows down computers as well.
ssd
Change the OS to almost any Linux package or SSD and fresh install of Windows.
Linux Lite.... Or minth xfce.... + ssd
