Upgrade suggestions -

DoubleCheese · 24 Sep 2010 at 13:59

My current desktop is a few years old now and could possibly do with an upgrade. Spec is

E6420 C2D CPU
Gigabyte mainboard
6Gb DDR2 RAM
ATI X1800 PCI-e graphics card
250Gb SATAII 16Mb cache WD HDD - for Win 7 OS
1Tb WD Green HDD - Lightroom photo catalogue and photos.

Its mainly used for Photoshop Lightroom and it is a little sluggish rendering photos. I suspect this is because they are on the Eco Green HDD which is slow.

What large and fast HDD could I replace it with and will a total i5 "makeover" (OcUK i5 bundle say) make a significant difference to the speed of the machine?

mp260767 · 24 Sep 2010 at 14:06

how about going for a 2nd hand q6600/q9550 then getting something like the OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB SSD for your o/s and lightroom.

DoubleCheese · 24 Sep 2010 at 15:21

mp260767 said:
how about going for a 2nd hand q6600/q9550 then getting something like the OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB SSD for your o/s and lightroom.

I had considered a used quad CPU, its just finding one! My current OS HDD is fast enough, I just need a faster large disc for all my photos and then the 1Tb drive will be for backups.

mp260767 · 24 Sep 2010 at 15:34

have a look at the samsung f4's.

DoubleCheese · 24 Sep 2010 at 16:30

mp260767 said:
have a look at the samsung f4's.

I was thinking more along the lines of a 1Tb or 640Gb WD Black. Any idea how they compare? And is SATAIII backwards compatible or not?