PC upgrade - your thoughts

[kmac]

Upgrading the other halfs PC ( general office type usage, no games, no image video/editing etc)
Its an old AMD chip I got in 2010 with on board graphics

Edit: Existing CPU is AMD Athlon II X3 unlocked to a Phenom II X4
Existing mobo is: Asus M3A78-T - an AM2+ Board with the 790GX/SB750 chipset
Has 4GB of RAM

Was thinking of:

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H (socket 1151)
CPU: Intel i3 6100 (3.7GHz, 45W TDP)
Memory: 8GB ( 2*4) DDR4-2133MHz

Is this a decent price vs performance point at the moment - all inc. comes in at circa £200

Everything else from old machine (Case, HDD, Optical drive, PSU)

[Devaraja]

I think that would be a a good option, and if in the future you need something more powerful, you should be able to get and i5 or i7 on ebay.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would plonk in another 4GB of RAM,add a £50 graphics card and an SSD.

[scaryjim]

I'd echo CAT, but perhaps be even more conservative and just go for a decent sized SSD, tbh. Extra RAM would help but you'll struggle to find a 4GB DDR2 kit cheap anywhere (even assuming you have empty ram slots rather than running 4x 1GB), and if there's no gaming going on then I don't think a GPU will make a huge difference - if you look in the BIOS it should be possible to run the IGP off the sideport memory only which will save system RAM for doing system things. An SSD will help pretty much everything, including being a very fast pagefile if the RAM is getting swamped.

What OS are you currently running? Win 10 is very good at managing memory, and should run very smoothly with 4GB of RAM.

Unless there are specific tasks that your other half is complaining about being slow, or the computer is actually having blue screens/failures/crashes, I'm not sure I'd rush to upgrade.

[minghsien]

I think that's a reasonable upgrade, but agree that an ssd would also go very well with the system. 120gb ones go for around £30 now and they are imo definitely worth it.

[Dashers]

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H (socket 1151)
CPU: Intel i3 6100 (3.7GHz, 45W TDP)
Memory: 8GB ( 2*4) DDR4-2133MHz

Just double check that your PSU connectors are suitable for the new board, occasionally I find PSUs missing things like the extra 12V connector. Probably be ok, but worth a quick check to avoid frustration when doing the build.

That rig will do fine for the use you specify. If you can stretch a bit more, then as with everybody else, a SSD is a really great addition - it makes a real difference in day-to-day computing (booting, opening programs etc). Even if you get a small one and then mount the old HDD to the "My Documents" directory if you're expecting large amounts of photos or videos etc.

[kmac]

Running Windows 10
Part of the issue is that the IGP is not totally Win10 compatible (according to ATi RAdeon website - (its ATI HD 3300 chip)
Sometimes doesn't wake up from sleep. Hibernate is not enabled. I reinstalled the driver for the IGP and its seems to be behaving for the time being
Also had a complaint form the user that its a bit slow
Will bung in an SSD and see how it goes

[Pob255]

Yes I'd agree and ssd is a good first step, granted you not get full speed out of one on sata2, but that's ok, still get a sata3 ssd.
This way the SSD can be carried over if she's still not happy with it.

And I think that replacement internals look fine if you do need to do a full upgrade after.

[kmac]

Just double check that your PSU connectors are suitable for the new board, occasionally I find PSUs missing things like the extra 12V connector. Probably be ok, but worth a quick check to avoid frustration when doing the build.

That rig will do fine for the use you specify. If you can stretch a bit more, then as with everybody else, a SSD is a really great addition - it makes a real difference in day-to-day computing (booting, opening programs etc). Even if you get a small one and then mount the old HDD to the "My Documents" directory if you're expecting large amounts of photos or videos etc.

Thanks Dashers - my PSU should be up to the task as I always buy super duper ones

[Pob255]

I think he's on about a 12v 4pin atx vs 12v 8pin EPS connector or the way most psu's now have a 12v 4+4pin modular connector.
Well it doesn't really matter, you can still happily feed a motherboard with an 8pin EPS socket if your psu only has a 4pin ATX.
The time you really need the EPS is for overclocking and/or multiple graphics cards (or some other expansion cards that pull heavily on the 12v through the pci-e slots)

[kmac]

Ah understood Pob. I'll check what my PSU has when I get home this evening but given the GA-H110M-S2H cannot overclock or run SLI should not be an issue

[kmac]

This is probably covered exhaustively in other threads.....but given we use a NAS for all our work, only need a SSD for the OS and frequently used apps (MS Office in this case) right?
Does that mean a Samsung 750 at 250GB would suffice?

[kmac]

I think he's on about a 12v 4pin atx vs 12v 8pin EPS connector or the way most psu's now have a 12v 4+4pin modular connector.
Well it doesn't really matter, you can still happily feed a motherboard with an 8pin EPS socket if your psu only has a 4pin ATX.
The time you really need the EPS is for overclocking and/or multiple graphics cards (or some other expansion cards that pull heavily on the 12v through the pci-e slots)

Ok PSU is Corsair HX620W and it has both the 12v 4-pin and 12v 8-pin connectors so no issues there.
Memory is 2GB*2 of DDR2-1066 PC2-8500 RAM CL5-5-5-15. There are two memory slots free so another 2*2GB might do the trick

[Dashers]

This is probably covered exhaustively in other threads.....but given we use a NAS for all our work, only need a SSD for the OS and frequently used apps (MS Office in this case) right?
Does that mean a Samsung 750 at 250GB would suffice?

Should be plenty if you're storing your media on NAS. I've got 250GB on my laptop and it's plenty for applications, a few films and some games.