To upgrade or not

[Nawsder]

Hi guys,

I have my below desktop for over two years now. Running a bit slow on startup, and graphics card isn't the best as I can notice games to run as smooth when put on higher settings. Just wondering if it is worth upgrading, if so what should I be looking at to upgrade.

I did have a look at the upgrade tool on the website, but the graphics card options didn't seem all that good, is that to do with what graphics card are compatible with my setup or something? Also in terms of hard drives I didn't have any SSD options (as I thought that would help speed startup), is that a similar case with setup not being compatible.

Any bit of help or advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Case
COOLERMASTER K350 GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor i5-6500 (3.2GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® Z170-P: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
16GB HyperX FURY DDR4 2133MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050 Ti - DVI, HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Super Quiet Titan DragonFly Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence

 

[polycrac]

I think the power supply is likely a limiting factor for GPU upgrades. Top of my list would be a ssd to put the operating system on. That would boost you boot times and make the system more responsive. I'm surprised that the PCS upgrade doesn't have that option, have you tried calling them?

 

[Shepard]

The motherboard definitely has enough ports to support more hard drives, or you could of course just exchange your current hard drive. Best to give us a ring and we'll help you decide what would be the best option.

 

[ubuysa]

The number one cause of slowdowns in older HDD based PCs is the hard disk. That 1TB HDD is a biggie and will suffer more from the classic disk slowdown problems - because the average seek time is much longer on a bigger disk.

You might find you can recover reasonable performance by managing that HDD properly. Try the following....

1. Uninstall all programs that you no longer use at all.

2. If the drive is more than about 70% full then archive to an external disk all those data files that you want to keep but which you rarely use. Delete all data files that you no longer need at all. Start with the larger files (videos and high-res images) because they recover the most space. In an ideal world a hard drive doesn't really want to be more than about 60% full, over that limit the longer seek times start to become noticeable, especially if the files are fragmented.

3. If you never use hibernation then turn if off and save several GB of disk space (powercfg -h off).

4. Run a garbage cleaner over the drive to remove all the temp files, log files, etc. that build up over time and just waste space. The built-in Disk Cleanup tool is ok for this (check every box there is in there) but many third party tools (like Ccleaner) do a better job.

5. Defragment the drive. The built-in defragger is ok but there are third party tools that do a better job. One that I use is Ultimate Defrag from DiskTrix (it's paid-for but not expensive) because it's an optimising defragger (other similar tools are available). These allow you to place the files and folders where you want them on the disk surface. Placing the most regularly used files and folders close together and close to the MFT greatly reduces seek times and makes a big difference to disk performance.

The main reason why a clean reinstall of Windows always improves performance is because a clean reinstall automatically does all of the above. Give the above a try and see whether performance improves enough to save you having to upgrade anything....

 

[Nawsder]

Thanks guys, appreciate the help. Will try the above to clear space and will then give PCS a call.

Cheers