time for a new pc?

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soggy

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My current desktop is about 5yrs old now and i'm debating whether its time for a new one
My main useage is Photoshop elements with other basic computing tasks
My current set up had a core i5-750 6gb ram and a 500gb hd
Im looking at possibly a i5-6400 with 16gb ram a 120gb ssd and 500gb hdd..approx £650 at pc specialist
How much quicker would this be??
Thanks
 
For what you're doing, save your money. Buy an SSD (best upgrade you can do) - I'd recommend Samsung 250GB model. Not sure what configuration your 6GB will be (2x2GB and 2x1GB?) but you won's see much of a difference with 16GB IMHO. You could stick in a bit more if you really want, but the SSD is where you'll see the gains. Why only a 500GB HDD? They're pretty small by today's standards. If you need extra storage, get a 3TB WD drive. You haven't said what motherboard or graphics card you're using. Again, unless you're playing games there's probably no need to touch either. In your own words you're doing basic tasks - why do you feel the need to splash out on new kit?
 
Here you go:

Samsung 250GB SSD - £82.99
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-191-SA&groupid=1657&catid=2101
Only £20 more than the equivalent 120GB model, and for that sort of cash it'd be rude not to. I have an earlier version and it's excellent.

Western Digital 3TB 'Green' HDD - £79.99
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-376-WD&groupid=1657&catid=1660&subcat=1954
Only £12 more than the 2TB version. I have a bunch of 3TB Reds (NAS-specific) and I've had plenty of WDs before that, and always been happy with them. You might pay half that amount for a 500GB drive, but why not future-proof your system?
 
julianhj said:
Here you go:

Samsung 250GB SSD - £82.99
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-191-SA&groupid=1657&catid=2101
Only £20 more than the equivalent 120GB model, and for that sort of cash it'd be rude not to. I have an earlier version and it's excellent.

Western Digital 3TB 'Green' HDD - £79.99
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-376-WD&groupid=1657&catid=1660&subcat=1954
Only £12 more than the 2TB version. I have a bunch of 3TB Reds (NAS-specific) and I've had plenty of WDs before that, and always been happy with them. You might pay half that amount for a 500GB drive, but why not future-proof your system?
Click to expand...
That SSD is actually cheaper at PCWorld - £76.99.

I bought one a couple weeks ago to rejuvenate my 5 year old desktop. Installed the OS and core apps (PS/LR etc) on it and the difference is amazing. Coupled with 8gb RAM upgrade it goes from cold to desktop in 15 seconds. Was about 2 minutes before with the old Hdd.

Definitely save your money and get an SSD before anything else, I think you'd be surprised bythe results.
 
Have to agree with those suggesting the installation of a new SSD - I'm running an AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor at 2.80GHz and was looking at getting an i5 machine until I installed a SSD instead - really does make a difference. I'm just using LightRoom 5 rather than Photoshop but it has really made a difference..
 
Ssd is the best upgrade you can make. Ram and read write speeds from disk are of the most benefit for lightroom.
 
Hi,

Hope you don't mind jumping on this thread. I have an old Media Centre PC that I upgraded with a small SSD(120GB). If I wanted to use this as my main photo editing computer using LightRoom, what would you put where? eg would you put the catalog on the SSD and your photos on the HDD or do you really need both photos and catalog on the SSD to see a performance increase. Its an i3 processor with 6GB RAM if that helps. Thanks for any advice..
 
mal robb said:
Hi,

Hope you don't mind jumping on this thread. I have an old Media Centre PC that I upgraded with a small SSD(120GB). If I wanted to use this as my main photo editing computer using LightRoom, what would you put where? eg would you put the catalog on the SSD and your photos on the HDD or do you really need both photos and catalog on the SSD to see a performance increase. Its an i3 processor with 6GB RAM if that helps. Thanks for any advice..
Click to expand...

I would put the catalog on the ssd and leave the photos on the hdd.
 
soggy said:
My current desktop is about 5yrs old now and i'm debating whether its time for a new one
My main useage is Photoshop elements with other basic computing tasks
My current set up had a core i5-750 6gb ram and a 500gb hd
Im looking at possibly a i5-6400 with 16gb ram a 120gb ssd and 500gb hdd..approx £650 at pc specialist
How much quicker would this be??
Thanks
Click to expand...

I had a 15 years old computer running on an AMD K6 clocked at 400MHz with something of about 512MB of RAM, and Windows 98 (original Windows 98, not the Windows 98 SE), and had CorelDRAW 10 installed. Although a bit of a slowcoach when it comes to saving a big graphics file, I did manage to design a calendar on it.

Just because your computer is 5 years old, it do not meant it is not capable of doing any work today and needs to be replaced.

If you want to, you could either add more memory or just replace the memory, and it could just make a little more improvement, even with this little improvement, your computer could still do a lot of work for years to come.

Less RAM means that the computer often have to swap the data between RAM and HDD, so add some more RAM, and it would have enough room in RAM to work with, therefore less time wasted swapping between RAM and HDD.
 
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