Ram or harddrive upgrade?

daz87uk

daz87uk

daz87uk

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Hi, I've just finished an upgrade on a acer Aspire T180 with the bellow specs;

2Ghz Dual core Athlon
1Gb Ram (768MB Usable)
160Gb seagate hdd
Windows 7 64bit

At idle with only the few basic background processes it's using 62% of Ram, but I think the man killer maybe the harddrive as it constantly clicks and grinds way and is generally very slow read and write speeds. I have replaced a harddrive before and noticed massive differences in booting to windows as everything starts up; 20mins of clicking and nothing really opening very fast in that time was turned around to 20 secs with a Wd hdd. prob was, that computer had a decent amount of ram this pc doesn't. So my question is; Ram or harddrive, given that opening a few programs brings the memory from 62%, 75% and then 80% and above with more than 2 applications running

I was thinking a 320GB WD3200AAKS; single platter?
or corsair value 2GB of ram. cant really stretch the buget for them anymore so its either 1 or the other. plz what would be the best solution. :)
 
If you are not overfilling the ram and using the pagefile for running programs (i'm surprised you're not with 1gb) then i would upgrade the hdd.
 
first i would check the health of your hard drive.

you dont wanna get the ram only to find your hard drive breaks
clicking is never a good sign for hard drives.

if the harddrives health seems to be ok, then i would go for the ram
 
Hi, I ran a test on the drive and its fine no bad sectors, reason it clicks is because its a cheap drive. like any pc brought from a shop these days they all click constantly. I opened word 2007, outlook 2007 and firefox at the same time used 76% ram and it paused for a second and the drive was reading like crazy CLICK CLICK CLICK etc, then it was ok.
dddddddd.png
 
+1 for RAM. 2GB atleast, im assuming the mobo has an IGP which is sharing the systems RAM (hence 768 usuable)

Probably best to check what is already installed. Firstly so you can check its speed to buy the same rated stuff and secondly to see if any RAM slots are free. If you have 4 slots its worth moving the RAM installed to these spare slots to make sure they are not for different RAM (some boards have 2 and 2 for different RAM).

HDDs are relatively cheap. You could upgrade later after the RAM, a 500GB spinpoint F3 HDD is £30 odd quid and has plenty of capacity and good speed. The 1TB is £40 odd and would be a better investment (£10 more for double the capacity)
 
thanks, i know 256 is the nforce graphics off the ram :) if its not eating 2much page file then its the slow drive i guess. i know 2gb is ideal but its a fine line of a basic use pc and a slow drive, if i up the ram i think the drive will still chunder away taking 4 ever. so really both need 2 be replaced but there is no budget for it.. kinda temped for the ram i did match like 4 like 533 same latency ddr2 corsair value. hopefully it will see an impovement even if the harddrive is still a bottleneck
 
Honestly RAM is the best option. I dont know what you have enabled but you could try changing the colour scheme. If you are using aero try changing it to windows 7 basic, it should help performance.
 
thanks, ram it is :D. 4got about basic mode cant stand it myself lol but will give it ago 2moz then order the ram. thanks all.
 
The windows 7 basic isnt too bad. You're thinking of the classic scheme where the taskbar is grey and blocky arent u? ;p
 
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Well a lot of retro stuff can be cool but i cant see that win98 look coming back into vogue ;p

Once you have the new RAM in you can change it back, just thought it may help performance short term.
 
RAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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