Looking for some advice - will more RAM help?

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ParkyRFC

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My desktop PC is getting on a bit and it's starting to slow down, particularly when I have a lot of tabs open which I need for work. I have two extra slots I can install more RAM into, would that speed it up? Or should I start looking for a new PC? Ideally, I would like to keep it going for a bit longer.

I'm not really tech savvy so if you think some extra RAM would work I'd appreciate some recommendations. My spec is in the images below. If any more info is needed let me know. Thanks.

Spec 1.jpg

Spec 2.jpg

Spec 3.jpg

Spec 4.jpg
 
What does task manager look like when it's going slow? If you're actually low on memory, more will help, but 16GB isn't too bad, and you're rocking a 10 year old CPU. Security updates aren't kind to Ivy Bridge.

I'm not sure it DDR3 has been out of mainstream long enough for prices to creep back up, too?
 
You should not invest more money into that machine. You got every penny's worth of PC out of that rig and you should be proud that your machine has served you well all these years.

But there are like, ARM-based mini PCs for under $200 that would outperform that machine today.
 
I agree with others, it would probably help, but it's a machine not worth investing into. Sandy Bridge was from all the way back in 2010 (actually may 09?). Your Ivy Bridge machine predates that.

The problem is sourcing DDR3 will cost you more money than its worth for performance gains that will be minimal. It's very likely that you'd only spend slightly more to buy an entirely new machine. Either through looking for sales (on a prebuilt) or buying someone's older fully built machine.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
I agree with others, it would probably help, but it's a machine not worth investing into. Sandy Bridge was from all the way back in 2010 (actually may 09?). Your Ivy Bridge machine predates that.

The problem is sourcing DDR3 will cost you more money than its worth for performance gains that will be minimal. It's very likely that you'd only spend slightly more to buy an entirely new machine. Either through looking for sales (on a prebuilt) or buying someone's older fully built machine.
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Ivy Bridge did not pre-date Sandy Bridge.
 
toast0 said:
What does task manager look like when it's going slow? If you're actually low on memory, more will help, but 16GB isn't too bad, and you're rocking a 10 year old CPU. Security updates aren't kind to Ivy Bridge.

I'm not sure it DDR3 has been out of mainstream long enough for prices to creep back up, too?
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I'll get back to you on that one, I have a lot of tabs open just now but it's responding okay. I'll check next time it gets sluggish.
 
1. Reinstall windows clean install always speeds things up again
2. Kill extra startup apps you dont need to start up
3. Buy new computer - system is old and dated and wont get faster with more ram.

I mean, the 120GB SSD i presume is your OS SSD is long in the tooth, but should still be fast enough for day to day use.
 
Thanks everyone for the help, I'm not on here often but I always get great advice. It was this forum that helped me build her in the first place. 12 years later and she's still going well overall for day to day use. So that is a testament to the knowledge available on here!

When I run CCleaner and restart it will run like new for a while, even with like 30 tabs open. But it seems the longer they have been open it starts to wilt. Don't know the exact cause but I can have no complaints. Incredible value.

Short term I'll try that OneTab extension. Thanks Axman. I will need to work out a budget and then let the hardforum work their magic again for a new build.
 
Do what you can for now. But it's definitely time for a new PC. You can also try Process Lasso (you can use it for free, but it will nag you temporarily each time you start the computer). I've used this with a great amount of success on computers that slow down. It works great for games as well as you can add specific games to a maximum performance list and it will prioritize those games above everything else.
 
So from someone who's still regularly using lga775 and lga1156 and lga1155 systems, definitely add more ram. Software bloat is absolutely for real and is practically an order of magnitude between hardware generations, so your system is being taxed to the max regularly as you have nearly 20GB in your swap file--that means that even at 32GB of ram you won't have enough RAM, but it will be noticeably faster with 32GB vs 16GB.

I would upgrade to the fastest ram you possibly can (2400 is I think the fastest), overclock the cpu slightly (a lot of these could easily run 3.8-4ghz all core with a capable cooler), and see how much your swap file is being used on your ssd and maybe upgrade that too since the newer 850/860 series hit 500MB/s more consistantly. All 3 of these upgrades should be under $40 in the used market (well, maybe not 2400 ram), and you will have a system that will feel even faster and last a few more years. Oh, and it wouldn't hurt to upgrade the 660Ti to something faster since that will also help since newer cards will have more ram and faster pixel rendering, making any video operations nice and fast.

And personally, even if you go the route of a new system, you don't have to abandon your old one one bit. What I do is simply rdp into my newer/faster systems from my same old setup, and have even moved to a thin client that does just that while my systems are scattered all over the place. As I'm typing right now, I'm logged into about 10 different systems and have spread my tasks across them, so I scale up by just turning on another system. I'm catching up on HF on this system, while another is for watching weather/cameras, another for another set of specific tasks, etc, etc, scaled to infinity if I want. All using hardware that still works, but was destined to be trashed otherwise. (For people wondering about power, one of the locations has no power bill (included in rent), and another has really cheap power--like .08c/kwh.)

One thing I've learned about browsers that speed them up is to use the 'incognito mode' on chrome as it runs purely in ram. This has a few pros and cons, the pros being these tabs are faster as they will generally run in physical ram and not touch the disk except if they are written to the swap file. The cons are these tabs will not restore if chrome crashes so you need to remember what you had open. I use a bit of incognito tabs and regular ones--incognito for what I'm working on right this second vs regular for those are some sort of tab that I don't mind taking time pulling up from a swap file.

Some food for thought. The ram should be easy to find as people are usually dumping it for cheap in the used market. I would check reddit hardwareswap and the FS/FT here.
 
32 gb could help for heavy browsing use (would be worth a look it can be find quite cheap) and a new larger SSD hard drive could also help (those have gone down quite a bit since you bought that 120gb) and would not be wasted as it is an easy piece to transfer to a new system.

But before putting good money on a system (for the part that will not be transfered on your next one) if changing to a new one is not too much of an hassle (you can bring your harddrive os without having to reinstall usually or clone it to your new drive, making it a very small issue), keep in mind that it is a 2070 passmark single thread system and 6500 multithread.

A 14100 non F system will be 3830 and 14350, with a nice iGPU with up to date codecs supports, for $130, a msi pro h610M ddr-4 board goes for $90 and nice 32GB 3600 ddr-4 kit go for $80, $300 total before tax.

Power supply-cooler-etc... can all be on the very inexpensive size, maybe what you have work if you find the intel stock cooler too noisy.
 
My current system is almost exactly like yours, but with 32GB RAM. Yes it's old, but I keep multiple browsers with dozens of tabs open along with Ameitrade Thinkorswim, Excel sheets open and sometimes Winamp playing music and it's still as snappy as I could want it to be. I think it could be worth adding more RAM, or as someone else mentioned a clean install of Windows.
 
I have an Ivy Bridge socket 2011 machine. I pretty much quit using it last fall, but it had 64GB of ram and I'd upgraded it to a Xeon E5-2687Wv2 (8 cores, 4.0GHz max turbo) CPU off eBay (used server pull) a few years back for like $120 or something. So basically as fast as you can get for that generation unless you overclock. That'll get you a bit more in single thread. I'll dust it off and fire it up if I get into some sort of programming project where it would be useful. More ram would help if you're running low on ram doing what you do. I also have newer rigs. Unless I have a lot of tabs open my 2019 model i7-8565U 16GB laptop is a good bit snappier than that old rig unless I have a ton of tabs open, and my 64GB 10th gen desktop blows it's doors off. I'm tentatively planning a new build this year or early next since my main rig is from 2020, but I'll wait for the Intel 20A chips and NV5000 series to come out first. The delay is mostly about the vid card. I have a 3090 because I was able to get it into my cart and check out in December 2020 and decided to skip the NV 4000 & AMD 7000 series cards. I'm going to do a full build when I can get a next gen vid card. At any rate I think you're due for an upgrade. More ram would help but given that a budget build would be faster I think it's about time for a new rig.
 
SamirD said:
But would it run windows? And these seem to be far slower than what the OP has:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compar...re-1800-MHz-vs-ARM-Cortex-A76-4-Core-2400-MHz
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Nah, you'd have to run Linux of some flavor, or run some experimental Windows on ARM AFAIK. You'd still have better graphics, better encode/decode, NPUs, and faster RAM. You'd also be going from ~450-500W to 10-20W. As far as compute goes, 8 real cores beats 4 cores with multi-threading almost every single time. In this case I think cooling might actually be the limiting factor, I don't know, I bought an older Nano and it's RAM-limited (4gigs versus 32 on my 775 Intel machine) so I can't really compare them.

I suspect that this 16gig Nano would trounce my 32gig i7-3770 machine without many, if any, losses.

But it won't run Windows.
 
Axman said:
or run some experimental Windows on ARM AFAIK
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It has been a very long time that native windows on arm have launched (since the first Surface tablet at least)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windowsinsiderpreviewARM64

But it is windows on arm (which could destroy the purpose for most), it does like Apple OS provide an x86 emulator now, nothing guarantee to work before trying, but stuff like Excel will have native arm version.

Both case (Linux or Windows arm version), not sure if I would recommand for someone not technical for their work machine if they are not ready spending sometime on the transition, computer much better than at 3770 and good enough to be a nice experience even on Windows are quite cheap now.
 
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LukeTbk said:
computer much better than at 3770 are quite cheap now.
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That is my very point. While I was highlighting a boutique niche machine, almost any money is better well-spent on something made inside of this decade than upgrading that old machine. I mean, I love old machines, but you don't try to solve modern problems with them. You enjoy them as they are, not for how they compete with anything new.

New beats it. Don't spend on old unless you want old for whatever reason. (And you'd better bring a reason.)
 
Axman said:
Nah, you'd have to run Linux of some flavor, or run some experimental Windows on ARM AFAIK. You'd still have better graphics, better encode/decode, NPUs, and faster RAM. You'd also be going from ~450-500W to 10-20W. As far as compute goes, 8 real cores beats 4 cores with multi-threading almost every single time. In this case I think cooling might actually be the limiting factor, I don't know, I bought an older Nano and it's RAM-limited (4gigs versus 32 on my 775 Intel machine) so I can't really compare them.

I suspect that this 16gig Nano would trounce my 32gig i7-3770 machine without many, if any, losses.

But it won't run Windows.
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That's what I was thinking about windows since ARM is a whole different microcode. And cores vs ipc really depends on the task at hand. A server would love the cores while a game would love the ipc.

Going off those passmark ratings though, no way I would see any of these smashing a 3770.
 
There is the argument that newer hardware is faster/cheaper, but then there's the time factor of setting up a new machine. A lot of times, a memory upgrade and back to work is even worth more than new machine simply because of the opportunity cost of downtime. This seems to be a factor rarely accounted for in the 'newer is cheaper/better' argument.
 
SamirD said:
Going off those passmark ratings though, no way I would see any of these smashing a 3770.
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I bet in real-world usage it's about the same, especially since it has that video decoder and NPU, not to mention, way faster memory. Mostly it's on my mind because I want one to play with, and based on my experience with other models it's as responsive as my old i7-3770 system (granted, it supports NVME boot, so it's pretty responsive even for being 12 years old), it's just memory-limited. This new model with 16 gigs I'd like to get a crack at and see if it can replace my Mac Mini.

But really my point is that even some used Zen or Zen 2 parts from FS/FT with an equal amount of faster RAM will be similarly cheap and definitely outperform it, and outshine a memory upgrade like 5-to-1 in terms of dollars spent-to-user experience.
 
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