Best bang for buck speed upgrade - SSD?

Rainmaker · 4 Sep 2013 at 15:23

ATM we're saving hard and on a bit of a shoestring budget. My MBP has been dropped (not by me) and awaiting insurance. Meanwhile I've been given an old Dell off my mum who bought a new machine for herself. It's OK for what it is and runs fine on Win8 and Linux Mint 15. Thing is the HDD isn't the best and frequently freezes the whole system with a solid activity light showing, while it catches up. Usually this happens when browsing, downloading or especially during torrent downloads.

Here's the spec:

The CPU could be worse and the RAM is plenty sufficient for basic desktop use, so I don't see a point adding a 4GB kit when the rest of the machine is so old. Ignore the 70oC CPU temp btw, I'm currently transcoding some video for my tablet.

With that in mind I'm guessing an SSD would be the best bang for buck upgrade in making the whole thing feel lighter, faster and more modern? I don't care about huge storage space for this machine (I live in the cloud mostly anyway) and just want something that's not going to stutter and pause all the time, and feel more snappy.

Short of affording a whole new rig (if only!), I'm guessing SSD is my saviour but just wanted to check. I can get an OCZ Agility II 60GB for under £30 as-new (repackaged and with a new warranty from OCZ). Does that sound like a plan? Just checking before I burn some £.

I've put this here rather than in storage as I'm open to ideas. TIA.

Ephraim · 4 Sep 2013 at 15:51

I'd imagine that you will see a world of improvement with a SSD

Rainmaker · 4 Sep 2013 at 16:11

Thanks. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't wasting the money when a different upgrade might have proved more beneficial. I'm guessing the Don who moved my post didn't read it to the end, but never mind.

Ephraim · 4 Sep 2013 at 16:35

I can't imagine a better use of £30 to upgrade your system.

pryere · 4 Sep 2013 at 17:47

What else could you do? Go for it.

Rainmaker · 4 Sep 2013 at 18:59

Ephraim said:
I can't imagine a better use of £30 to upgrade your system.

Thanks for your help and input.

pryere said:
What else could you do? Go for it.

Thanks. For that price I was looking at an extra 2GB RAM or a beefier CPU from the MM. They'd still have been bottlenecked to a large degree though, so I've pulled the trigger on that SSD. Thanks again guys.