Help a numpty upgrade his grandsons desktop

Quazi · 4 Dec 2020 at 20:09

Hi, wondered if anyone can recommend or even tell me what type of RAM memory upgrade and hard drive increase I can do for my grandsons gaming PC desktop please. Spec below.
Consists of:

Asus GTX 1070 Turbo 8gb GDDR5 1920 cores *8PEG 500W - MUST UPGRADE PSU* DVI 2x HDMI 2x DP Full height card
Asus Micro-ATX Prime B250M-A LGA1151 DDR4 HDMI DVI VGA M.2
Family Fund Only - Microsoft Office Standard 2016 Single MVL - 021-10559

1.8M UK Power Cable 3AMP Fuse
1155/1156 Fan CPU Cooler
Stone PC Pro MicroATX Black Mini Tower USB3 FSP250Watt 80+ Bronze PC31440
FSP 600Watt 80+ Bronze PSU (Stone PC Pro MicroATX Black Mini Tower)
Intel Core i5-7500 Processor 3.40GHz Base Freuquency (3.80GHz Max Turbo Frequency) vPro 4 Cores 4 Threads 4K Native Optane Memory Capable 14nm 65w TDP VT Intel HD Graphics 630
- Win 10 Home with Office 2016 MAK- Feb 2016 Image
TP-Link TL-WN881ND 300Mbps Wireless N PCI Express Adaptor
Kingston 8GB 2400MHz DDR4 Non-ECC CL17 DIMM 1Rx8
Packaging for a Single Item
MICROSOFT Desktop 600 Business USB Keyboard and Optical Mouse
Quote - Stone PC 3 Yr NBD OSW

Netintelligence Home Edition E-Safety Solution PAS 74 Filtering (3Yr Lic) FF - Electronic Delivery
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit Digital Key
Hitachi-LG Black SATA Super Multi 24x DVD Writer
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gbps 7200RPM 64Mb Cache

AyeAyeAhoy! · 5 Dec 2020 at 08:07

What's he trying to do with the machine? Gaming?

The biggest increase you'll see to performance is by adding an M2 SSD

Joxeon · 5 Dec 2020 at 11:33

Both of these should work no problem.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £104.99
1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey= £55.99

Total: £169.68 (includes shipping: £8.70)

Quartz · 5 Dec 2020 at 12:28

Quazi said:
Asus Micro-ATX Prime B250M-A LGA1151 DDR4 HDMI DVI VGA M.2

That motherboard will take a max of 2400 MHz RAM so there's no point going faster. The good news is that they put in only one stick, so you just need to get another one and plug it in. For best results you should get an exact match. OCUK don't sell that RAM but the river place does, for £35. Just plug 'Kingston 8GB 2400MHz DDR4 Non-ECC CL17' into your favourite search engine. Having two sticks will give a performance boost too. Do note that you may need to put the RAM in a particular slot for best results - check the manual.

With regards to storage, it's not quite as simple as buying a M.2 drive. You will need to either install Windows and all the software onto it or clone the HDD onto it. The former is better as it gets rid of a lot of the cruft that has built up over time and allows you to start with the latest build of Windows but can be a huge palaver and you better have all the license keys! Imaging can be a lot quicker. There are a number of free disk cloning tools, but perhaps the best option from an educational POV is to back up to an external HDD then restore to the new M.2. Microsoft now call this a System Image Backup.

https://uk.pcmag.com/operating-systems/88300/how-to-back-up-and-restore-an-image-file-of-windows-10

Whichever way you go, after you've finished, take the old HDD out, put it in an anti-static bag, and put it in a drawer as an offline backup just in case something goes wrong.

Quazi said:
1155/1156 Fan CPU Cooler

Is this the stock Intel cooler? If so, you might investigate a rather better cooler: your grandson will thank you for having a much quieter PC. Take a look at the Coolermaster Hyper Evo 212 but check that it will fit first!

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler= £29.99

Total: £33.47 (includes shipping: £3.48)

AyeAyeAhoy! · 5 Dec 2020 at 13:09

He'll see an unbelievable improvement with those

Quazi · 5 Dec 2020 at 15:17

Brilliant thanks very much for all your help, appreciate you taking the time to answer

Quazi · 5 Dec 2020 at 16:03

Joxeon said:
Both of these should work no problem.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £104.99

1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey= £55.99

Total: £169.68 (includes shipping: £8.70)

Could I buy the 2TB blue card currently offering 10% at western digital he needs more memory his data is nearly full

Joxeon · 5 Dec 2020 at 19:18

Yeah the 2tb will work just as well as the 1tb.

Quazi · 7 Dec 2020 at 14:13

thanks again

Quazi · 7 Dec 2020 at 15:30

One more question, can I leave the old hard drive in and put the SSD in as well?

Curlyriff · 8 Dec 2020 at 13:20

Quazi said:
One more question, can I leave the old hard drive in and put the SSD in as well?

Yep that no problem, as mentioned above you really want to re-install windows on the M.2 drive and have that as main drive. Then with the current drive leave that in and use as the backup drive/media drive where pictures and documents are saved but don't need the extra speed the M.2 would give you. Once you have the parts if you need any help with it then I am sure will be able to help with the install/setup.

Eliagon · 19 Dec 2020 at 20:35

Quazi said:
One more question, can I leave the old hard drive in and put the SSD in as well?

Might be worth unplugging it when you install so the system does not boot back into the old one during the windows install process on the new one, then when you have the new install finished (or when the system image restore finishes) then you can re-plug the old drive in and re-format it. You will need to use the 'Disk Management Tool' to do this, it will erase all the data on the old hard drive and give you a nice new clean space to fill up with stuff.