SSD for older desktop

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WyrTwister

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The PC is 2 - 3 years old . Thinking about buying a 500gb SSD , hopefully to clone c: hard drive to it and make the SSD my boot drive .

The idea is to , maybe , speed the PC up some w/o having to purchase a new PC .

Also thought about upgrading to a faster / more cores CPU , but figure that would require purchasing a new motherboard , which would require purchasing new RAM .
 
I've performed this upgrade on about a dozen PCs, mostly laptops, with various flavors of Samsung SSDs. It includes cloning software and have never had a problem. Best upgrade for PCs; my 7 year old notebook is still one of the fastest I maintain. Go ahead and install their "Magician" utility after installation as it offers an easy way to monitor the hardware.

With a desktop, you may have to fiddle a bit with mounting since the SSDs are "skinner" than classic magnetic drives, but with no moving parts you've lots of flexibilty; e.g., a $10-20 mounting adapter or good old velcro or zip ties...
 
As far as upgrading the CPU, it is doable, you just have to find the CPU from the same family like the CPU in there now with a faster clock speed.
In some cases you can update say an i3 to i7 from same CPU family.

One thing to make sure is the Thermal Design Power (TDP), so the new CPU has to be within the TDP of the existing CPU and Motherboard.
Simply put, this is the watt of the CPU.

Assuming the computer has Intel CPU, you can check the spec from the Intel website and find the same family/generation CPU from there.
After you find it, check Ebay/Amazon to see if they have the CPU you want at a reasonable price. Make sure to get it from US sellers.

Is the RAM maxed out in the motherboard?
 
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What's the current CPU and MB?
SSD will be best speed update for the "puter, no doubt.
Make sure you do a OS clean install.
 
Pretty sure it is a AMD CPU .

Can not remember , but the RAM probably is not maxed out .

It has been my experience out of date RAM & CPU's can get pricey .
 
Originally Posted by Mainia
Yes DO IT!!! Best thing you will ever do for your computer.


Depends on what you're doing. If you mostly play games, an SSD will only improve initial load times, and often not by that much: many games spend a lot of time doing other things at startup while the files are loading in the background, so even a RAM disk can't improve that.

If you're just web-browsing and other simple tasks, yes, it will be a big improvement, because it will boot faster and start programs much faster. But even booting from an SSD isn't that much faster with Windows 10, because it does a fake shutdown unless you force it to do a real one.
 
just put 2 screws into it.. it is very light 2 screws on 1 side will hold it fine.

500gb have been around 50-60$ recently

240gb have been as low as $32
 
SSDs are the best thing ever. I have upgraded everything to full SSD and never can go back to slow mechanical HDDs. The price has come down, I've put WD Blue SSDs which are some of the cheapest name brand ones available in several systems of mine, friends, family, clients and 0 problems. Samsung, Crucial, Intel, and Kingston are also good choices. Avoid generic brands because unlike a hard drive that often gives you a warning it's going to go out (slow performance, noises, etc) SSDs usually just die suddenly with no data recovery easily possible. Newer versions of Windows automatically detect that you have an SSD and disable automatic defrag and do SSD-specific optimizations, but if you're running Win 7 or older or are doing a clone make sure Windows knows you have an SSD. You never want to do an old-fashioned defragmentation on an SSD as it will shorten the lifespan dramatically.
 
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I just changed to a SSD on a 9-ish year old Toshiba laptop and it's the single best speed improvement I've done on a PC.
 
Just do it. Samsung is my favorite brand, but have bought some $19 Micro Center Inland brand SSD's and they are fine so far.
 
do the SSD and skip all the rest and save the money for a better PC later. What makes an older PC slow is not just the processor but the motherboard chipset architecture and the disk is/was always the slowest part. And unless you are running out of memory while using programs adding more will do absolutely nothing. ...Its like having 20 gallons of oil in a 25 gallon can then buying a 55 gallon drum instead as an upgrade. Memory is just a container sized to hold the programs you load.
 
Well , got a WD Blue 250gb SSD from Best Buy . Had some difficulty finding a utility that would clone my C: HD to the SSD . All done now & does seem to boot faster & populate the desktop & tool bar ( bottom of the screen ) quite a bit faster .

I do not play games . I browse the net & watch youtube videos .

I had 2 HD's in the computer . Temporarily disconnected one & connected the SSD to that set of cables .

I ordered & received a tray adapter & cables from amazon . Also , ordered a 2 port SATA card , that I have not received , yet .

This is a 4 core AMD computer with a BIOS date of 2015 . Any one know of a 6 core AMD CPU that would be plug & play with my present Lenovo mother board ?

Best I remember , I only say 2 ram slots , which contain memery cards , presently . Probably not going to go that route .

Thanks , :-)
 
Originally Posted by tmorris1
A 2-3 year old PC shouldn't be that slow? Unless it was a low end one to begin with?


It was a low end PC , but it replaced a dual core .
 
Originally Posted by JMJNet
As far as upgrading the CPU, it is doable, you just have to find the CPU from the same family like the CPU in there now with a faster clock speed.
In some cases you can update say an i3 to i7 from same CPU family.

One thing to make sure is the Thermal Design Power (TDP), so the new CPU has to be within the TDP of the existing CPU and Motherboard.
Simply put, this is the watt of the CPU.

Assuming the computer has Intel CPU, you can check the spec from the Intel website and find the same family/generation CPU from there.
After you find it, check Ebay/Amazon to see if they have the CPU you want at a reasonable price. Make sure to get it from US sellers.

Is the RAM maxed out in the motherboard?

AMD 4 Core
 
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