Upgrade or NEW

Hello

I have a Full size Cooler Master HAF X case with the following components
ASUS P9X79 Pro motherboard ( one USB and the Audio port does not work )
Intel i7 3820 3.6 GHz. CPU - Socket 2011 LGA
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU - 2 GB
2 X 4 GB sticks of Kingston DDR3 RAM - 799 MHz
1 TB Western Digital Hard Drive - old and tired
NOCTUA NF P12 cooling fan for the CPU
FRACTAL design 750 Watt PS
Running Windows 10 64 bit OS

Boot up and Applications take too long to start and respond

I do NOT have any security software protection at all

I am NOT a gamer - do NOT play at all - I use my computer a lot for business and surfing

I need it to be very RELIABLE and FAST

I DO use graphics software like Corel Draw and sometime Adobe graphics products to fix graphics files

I use a lot of office productivity tools and Customer Relations Management software

I use Acrobat Pro to create and edit pdfs and a lot of graphics file edits

I surf a whole lot with literally 30 windows open all at once

I am very confused about whether I should change my entire system or just upgrade

I am on a BUDGET

Thank you

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1 TB Western Digital Hard Drive - old and tired

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It's just this. The rest of the computer can be quick and fast if you're sensible with open programs.

Update to an SSD and a bit more RAM if you must have multiple things open at the same time.

Yeah, I'd say try a small/cheap SATA SSD boot drive before making any other major changes. Then look at getting more RAM.

Judging by what you do and what you have. I agree with the above, get an SSD first. An entire new system would be very costly in the current climate and that's the biggest upgrade in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

It's just this. The rest of the computer can be quick and fast if you're sensible with open programs.

Update to an SSD and a bit more RAM if you must have multiple things open at the same time.

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Makes a lot of sense

Thank you

Thank you
I also agree

Yes
Thank you

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TimCon

2 X 4 GB sticks of Kingston DDR3 RAM - 799 MHz

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Another vote for an SSD here. You can get a 1TB SATA drive reasonably cheap. Where I want reliability I usually buy Samsung, but frankly these seem about as good and are a fair bit cheaper. You can download a utility from their website to transfer your hard drive contents onto the new SSD:

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-M...dp/B077SF8KMG/

Another thing to check, on a machine that old take a really good look at the CPU heatsink. They can attract a lot of dust in a few years, and a hot CPU will slow itself down. That just costs you a few minutes of cleaning time, so budget friendly :)

But then there's that memory. You can fit 64GB of ram onto that motherboard, and that looks like a quad channel ram CPU so you usually fit them in packs of 4 (8 sticks max). The ASUS compatibility list is rather dated, but Crucial do their own compatibility guarantee:

https://uk.crucial.com/compatible-up...asus/p9x79-pro

Looks like they currently do a single stick for £30, so two single sticks direct from Crucial is actually cheaper than buying a twin pack. Last time I bought from them it was shipped from the EU, so keep the order under £135 to avoid import duty (someone can correct me if this changed recently). So if you can afford it, you could get 32GB of ram for £120 which with 30 windows open should make a noticeable difference.

In PS,etc newer CPUs will be noticeably faster especially in Adobe software - I suspect a Ryzen 7 5700G would easily be faster,and especially a Core i5 12600K. I saw that in something such as DxO,my Xeon E3 1230 V2/Core i7 3770 was significantly slower than a Ryzen 5 2600!

However,the cheapest way to get some extra performance would be to get an SSD,and add more DDR3 to the setup.

As discussed, SSD will improve your system significantly, but so might a complete wipe and reinstall of your OS and all your programs if you haven't done so already.

Your use case does not sound like it needs anything new, unless you want to go win11. Otherwise you're ok. RAM and SSD and a fresh install should see you right. I'd suggest min 16GB RAM for that number of simultaneous windows and apps. From my own usage that handles a good lot of stuff in one go - and that's on my old i870/GTX460 machine that is far older than the rest of that spec.

Oh and run some security software, even if just MS defender. You should have something.