New laptop or upgrade?

ian-83

ian-83

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Ian
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My laptop is getting on a bit now and I can't decide if to replace it or upgrade it.

I have a 15" Dell Inspiron laptop which I think is about 6 years old now. It has a generation 3 i5 processor and 4gb ram. Hard drive is 500gb.

I mostly use it go on the net and watch YouTube.
When I do edit photos I currently use Photoshop Elements 15.

Performance wise it copes ok except when I run Photoshop Elements then it bogs down a little.

My options so far are stick some more RAM in it, currently has 2 X 2gb and I think from looking online it can handle 8gb most.

Maybe get a decent sized tablet to edit on instead, around a 10" screen but I fear this will probably have worse performance than my laptop with RAW files? How would I store files? External hard drive?

Or maybe look at a mini PC which I can hook up to a TV as I unfortunately don't have the room for a PC and monitor on its own. Are TV any good for editing on?
 
An i5-3xxx is still a reasonable processor. I'm using an i7-3770 in my main desktop PC and it still easily handles everything I do.
Increasing the RAM from 4GB should provide a definite boost and - the expensive option - swapping the 500GB HDD for a 1TB SSD will double your storage space and hugely speed up file loading.
TVs are not generally considered good for photo editing and editing on a tablet is just like wearing a hair shirt.......

If you consider a replacement then look at Dell's outlet web site as moderate performance laptops are available at good prices and will have much better screens as well as better overall performance than your current one.
 
Snapsh0t said:
An i5-3xxx is still a reasonable processor. I'm using an i7-3770 in my main desktop PC and it still easily handles everything I do.
Increasing the RAM from 4GB should provide a definite boost and - the expensive option - swapping the 500GB HDD for a 1TB SSD will double your storage space and hugely speed up file loading.
TVs are not generally considered good for photo editing and editing on a tablet is just like wearing a hair shirt.......

If you consider a replacement then look at Dell's outlet web site as moderate performance laptops are available at good prices and will have much better screens as well as better overall performance than your current one.
Click to expand...

Thanks I think the RAM upgrade is possibly the best move to make. I guess tablets are ok for the occasional edit of say a JPEG but RAWs will probably be too much to handle? I have noticed if i plug the laptop into a TV via the HDMI port the quality on the TV doesn't match what the laptop screen shows, it appears less defined. Will have a look into an SSD maybe., was looking at maybe an external one and working that way with the files stored off the computer on that and a separate external hard drive. My hard drive is about 75% full at the minute but needs a bit of a clear out soon.
 
I updated my Dell XPS to 16GB RAM and a 960GB SSD and the difference was amazing ... tat's a;so an i5 processor.
 
From experience of upgrading my desktop recently (also has an i5 processor), I upgraded my RAM first from 8Gb to 16Gb and didn’t really see much difference, although you might see a bigger improvement going from 4Gb to 8Gb. A couple of weeks later I installed an SSD and the improvement in performance was dramatically increased. Therefore, in my case I got more bang for buck from the SSD upgrade. Less than £100 will get you a 500 Gb SSD from a reputable manufacturer. Considerably cheaper than a new laptop.
 
more Ram and an SSD for sure

also make sure you do a full defrag and a diskcleanup
 
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Where would people recommend getting new ram from? Anywhere or any makes recommended or to avoid?
 
When I was researching a new laptop, my computer whizz friend suggested using crucial too.
 
Still looking into upgrading the ram in my current laptop, just had the back cover off and it has two slots, one is currently occupied by 4gb ram. The other is empty. From what I can find on the Dell website my laptop will handle max of 8gb. Am I best buying one 4gb ram or just two 4gb "match paired" to slot in?
 
ian-83 said:
Still looking into upgrading the ram in my current laptop, just had the back cover off and it has two slots, one is currently occupied by 4gb ram. The other is empty. From what I can find on the Dell website my laptop will handle max of 8gb. Am I best buying one 4gb ram or just two 4gb "match paired" to slot in?
Click to expand...
Double check on the Crucial website what the max ram for your laptop is ... Dell said mine was 8gb but Crucial said 16gb and it works great with 16gb.
If you use two slots ideally they should be occupied by a matched set ... if it was truly 8gb max I would get an 8gb to replace your 4gb.
 
gramps said:
Double check on the Crucial website what the max ram for your laptop is ... Dell said mine was 8gb but Crucial said 16gb and it works great with 16gb.
If you use two slots ideally they should be occupied by a matched set ... if it was truly 8gb max I would get an 8gb to replace your 4gb.
Click to expand...

Just looked on Crucial and they say 16gb. If I went just 8gb would one 8gb be better than two 4gb?
 
ian-83 said:
Just looked on Crucial and they say 16gb. If I went just 8gb would one 8gb be better than two 4gb?
Click to expand...

Depends on your finances ... extra 4gb would be cheaper but the worst option, 1 x 8gb or matched pair of 4gb would be better ... 2 x 8gb would be best.
However, IIRC only 64-bit can access over 4gb so if you are using a 32-bit version of Windows the extra RAM would not benefit you ... if so update to 64-bit.
 
i5-3xxx chips support dual channel memory access. A matched pair of either 4Gb or 8Gb sticks will give you a performance increase over a single stick of the same total size.
 
gramps said:
Depends on your finances ... extra 4gb would be cheaper but the worst option, 1 x 8gb or matched pair of 4gb would be better ... 2 x 8gb would be best.
However, IIRC only 64-bit can access over 4gb so if you are using a 32-bit version of Windows the extra RAM would not benefit you ... if so update to 64-bit.
Click to expand...

I am running 64-bit Windows 10 so all ok there just need to decide how much will be enough of an upgrade.

Tori_T said:
i5-3xxx chips support dual channel memory access. A matched pair of either 4Gb or 8Gb sticks will give you a performance increase over a single stick of the same total size.
Click to expand...

Ok I will look into getting a matched pair of 4gb or 8gb sticks then
 
Going from 8 to 16 on my Dell plus adding a SSD was like getting a new machine for me. :)
 
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