New CPU, mobo, ram, ssd

[cam1986]

Right, my brother wants to upgrade his CPU, Mobo, Ram and SSD.

He develops websites for a living and needs a swift PC.

What would you clever lot recommend? He currently has an i5-650 Processor and the mobo is limited to 8gig ram.

As for his budget well, he is a tight butt, but, he really wants a fast PC. He doesnt have an SSD and i told him that would be a great upgrade on its own. All his files are saved on other Hard drives. He will be wanting to use Win 8 that he has just bought. Onboard GPU would be fine i guess as he doesnt game.

Any advice would be fantastic

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What are the specifications of his PC,ie,PSU model,case,motherboard,amount of RAM and its speed,etc??

[Willzzz]

I'd be betting that an SSD and a fresh install of windows would leave him with a perfectly swift PC.

[cam1986]

He has an Acer Aspire M3910-2 PC. Intel® Core™ i5-650, 3gig ram. Motherboard only supports 8gig. He wants 16!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

As mentioned an SSD and a windows install would probably do the trick. Moreover,you could also plonk in a secondhand socket 1156 Core i5 or Core i7 too.

However,Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 seems to support multi-threading better:

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6396/51121.png

http://www.behardware.com/medias/pho...IMG0039484.png

http://media.bestofmicro.com/Y/Y/357...l%20studio.png

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4955/41699.png

[cam1986]

He wants new stuff. Any suggestions as to a new Mobo, CPU, Ram and GPU?

[cam1986]

Would an SSD work ok with his current PC / Motherboard? Would he need a new motherboard?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looking at the Visual Studio tests in the links in my previous posts in this thread,I would look at the following CPUs:
1.)Phenom II X6 1045T ~ £83

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-p...che-95w-retail

2.)FX6300 ~ £102

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-f...che-95w-retail

3.)Core i5 3330 ~ £141

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...tio-77w-retail

[cam1986]

Would an SSD work with his current PC, Acer Aspire M3910-2. Looked at specs but not sure. Does he need to have Sata 3 6gbps?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

An SSD would work fine with a SATA2.0 port,as long as there is no chipset incompatability.

[cam1986]

So maybe worth a punt then? That alone would increase the speed of his PC plus if he put the max amount of ram in, 8gig?

[davesom555]

I'd definitely agree on getting an SSD. I think that alone will boost productivity so much. Apps load almost instantly there's such a noticeable difference between that and a hard disk.

I'd try that first - and see if he actually needs to upgrade the i5 - this is probably still quite capable when it comes to just productivity apps (vis studio).#

Also some extra ram wouldn't hurt, that's dirt cheap now.

[cam1986]

Cheers.

[scaryjim]

For web development you really don't need a power house. I used to web dev for a living on (effectively) a 2.5GHz Phenom 2 Quad with 4GB, that was also running as a dev server, database server, svn server and a few other functions (oh, and folded 24/7!). It was more than ample. His current machine with an SSD and 8GB of RAM will be faster than he knows what to do with

[Willzzz]

Yeah, people always seem to want to spend much more than they need.