$500 off the comper minimum 8gb ram. Suggestions?

[JBW]

Just dreaming right now. But any suggestions for bare bones lap or desktop computer. I'm using an older Lenovo G570 so it shouldn't take much for a noticeable improvement. Oh yes... Windows 10 home.

Brian

[Manfred M]

The new AMD Reyzen desktop CPU that is about to launch is getting rave reviews - outperforming the current generation of Intel chips at around 1/2 the price. I would not go with less than 16GB of ram and highly recommend a SSD as the system drive. A standard HDD for storage would be fine. You don't need a fancy GPU for image editing and in fact a built in one might be good enough.

If you are going for a new screen, I highly recommend getting one that is at least sRGB compliant (not all are).

[JBW]

The new AMD Reyzen desktop CPU that is about to launch is getting rave reviews - outperforming the current generation of Intel chips at around 1/2 the price. I would not go with less than 16GB of ram and highly recommend a SSD as the system drive. A standard HDD for storage would be fine. You don't need a fancy GPU for image editing and in fact a built in one might be good enough.

If you are going for a new screen, I highly recommend getting one that is at least sRGB compliant (not all are).

They're selling for 1500 not 500

[Manfred M]

They have not announced the prices and release dates of anything other than the top of the line chips yet. I doubt that 8-core chips are what you have in mind, as they are targeting the Intel i7 market. The i3 and i5 chip competitors have not been announced yet; the 4-core "Raven Ridge" CPUs are supposed to roll out later this year.

[paintingwithlight]

Just dreaming right now. But any suggestions for bare bones lap or desktop computer. I'm using an older Lenovo G570 so it shouldn't take much for a noticeable improvement. Oh yes... Windows 10 home.

Brian

Hi Brian,

I can't answer your question. However, I recently switched from a laptop with standard hard drive to a new one with SSD only and I recommend SSD drives if you can cope with the smaller storage space and higher price. The laptop came with 128GB. After OS and software I figure I have 90 GB left so I can read in and edit one 64GB SDHC card at a time. I estimate the SDHC card reads to be 3-4x faster as the bottleneck must have been writing to the hard drive. Also the applications open 4 times faster (or so).

Cheers,

Michael

[tao2]

Just dreaming right now. But any suggestions for bare bones lap or desktop computer. I'm using an older Lenovo G570 so it shouldn't take much for a noticeable improvement. Oh yes... Windows 10 home.

Brian

Hi Brian,

why don't ye refurbish yer Lenovo? It's a good laptop. Don't know how old it is but if it's an i5 2500 processor, that's a good, powerful start. Ah assume it's 64 bit? If so ye could upgrade the RAM tae 8GB (selling off the 6GB already in it) Ye can get 8gb (2x4GB) Gskill, Kingston and various other laptop memory for $25-50. A 500GB Samsung SSD drive would cost around $150, again ye could sell the existing HDD or keep it as an external drive. A USB protective case for it, is around $20-50.

Things ye can do right now...

• run disk cleanup
• run defrag
• make sure AV is fully up to date
• run full AV scan
• uninstall any bloatware which may be hanging around. Lenovo comes with Macafee AV and firewall on a number of their machines. If ye have that, ah'd ditch both AV and firewall. Turn on Windows firewall and Windows Defender, they're both better, faster, use less resources and are less intrusive that Macafee.
• If ye rarely use "search", switch it tae manual. Click on "start". If yer gonna have an SSD either in yer present laptop or a new one, switch it off altogether for yer SSD drive. It's not needed.
• Go tae "power options - create a power plan" . Tick "High performance". This'll run down yer battery quicker and make the laptop slightly hotter in extended use but ye will notice a difference.
• Troubleshoot "Performance". If there's any underlying problems, reducing yer laptop's functions, this may sort them.
• Ditch as many desktop gadgets as ye feel ye can do without (if ye have any running)

[JBW]

Hi Brian,

why don't ye refurbish yer Lenovo? It's a good laptop. Don't know how old it is but if it's an i5 2500 processor, that's a good, powerful start. Ah assume it's 64 bit? If so ye could upgrade the RAM tae 8GB (selling off the 6GB already in it) Ye can get 8gb (2x4GB) Gskill, Kingston and various other laptop memory for $25-50. A 500GB Samsung SSD drive would cost around $150, again ye could sell the existing HDD or keep it as an external drive. A USB protective case for it, is around $20-50.

Things ye can do right now...

• run disk cleanup
• run defrag
• make sure AV is fully up to date
• run full AV scan
• uninstall any bloatware which may be hanging around. Lenovo comes with Macafee AV and firewall on a number of their machines. If ye have that, ah'd ditch both AV and firewall. Turn on Windows firewall and Windows Defender, they're both better, faster, use less resources and are less intrusive that Macafee.
• If ye rarely use "search", switch it tae manual. Click on "start". If yer gonna have an SSD either in yer present laptop or a new one, switch it off altogether for yer SSD drive. It's not needed.
• Go tae "power options - create a power plan" . Tick "High performance". This'll run down yer battery quicker and make the laptop slightly hotter in extended use but ye will notice a difference.
• Troubleshoot "Performance". If there's any underlying problems, reducing yer laptop's functions, this may sort them.
• Ditch as many desktop gadgets as ye feel ye can do without (if ye have any running)

I have done most of your suggestions re maintenance. I could put in more ram. But with all of the new stuff I'm half way to a new desktop

[george013]

I have done most of your suggestions re maintenance. I could put in more ram. But with all of the new stuff I'm half way to a new desktop

My advice if you keep this machine is a complete reinstall of the os. This includes a new formatting of the drive. To me this is the only way to get rid of all that stuff that settled on your machine in the past. And then get rid of all that unwanted software that came with your computer.
I agree with Tao about both McAffee and AVG. Their newest slows down your pc after a while. I did install AVG again, just has been my choice.
Using your pc means either using your old os or buying a new one.

George

[JBW]

My advice if you keep this machine is a complete reinstall of the os. This includes a new formatting of the drive. To me this is the only way to get rid of all that stuff that settled on your machine in the past. And then get rid of all that unwanted software that came with your computer.
I agree with Tao about both McAffee and AVG. Their newest slows down your pc after a while. I did install AVG again, just has been my choice.
Using your pc means either using your old os or buying a new one.

George

I did install W-10

[Cogito]

So the $200 odd that Boab suggests is half way to a new desktop.... That begs the question, even if you are merely dreaming, what's your budget?

[JBW]

So the $200 odd that Boab suggests is half way to a new desktop.... That begs the question, even if you are merely dreaming, what's your budget?

In the $500 U.S. range.

[tao2]

Dell Inspiron range have always been good VFM. Cyberpower or Lenovo desktop.

[Manfred M]

I tend to be thinking along the same line as Boab - I am using a 4+ year old mid-range ASUS laptop while I am on the road. It already has 8MB of RAM and cannot handle more (I checked). The best thing I ever did was to spend some money on a SSD drive to replace the standard mechanical HDD on the machine. The speed increase was quite amazing.

Windows will swap things it is not using to hard disk, when it needs more memory. Laptop drives are slower than desktop ones (largely because of power use and mechanical robustness requirements), so in many ways, adding a SSD is almost the same as adding more RAM. Image editing is not particularly resource intensive; not the way 3D gaming or video editing / rendering is, so rather than replacing everything, upgrading a few items is likely going to let your limited budget stretch farther.

Any new desktop for $500 means you will be getting fairly low end components in terms of CPU, HDD and RAM. You will be paying for a case, motherboard, power supply, etc. that you probably don't really need. If you had a larger budget, and could throw in 16GB of fast RAM, a dedicated video card with at least 2GB of fast RAM, a SSD drive, then it would make sense to go for a new desktop.