Question RAM or SSD?

[lifeblood]

My daughter PC has 8GB DDR4 and a 5400rpm hard drive. It is slow to boot, exit games, alt-tab between game and desktop, etc. Once it’s in game it’s fast enough, so the problem is not the CPU. I can’t decide if it needs more RAM or an SSD. The “slow boot” says hard drive, but the slow alt-tab says memory. I can’t afford both at this time so anyone have an idea of which would give the biggest bang for the buck?

 

[UsandThem]

Without any reservation at all, a SSD all the way!

It's painful to use PCs who have their OS on a spinner.

 

[Harry_Wild]

SSD will accelerate boot up time tremendous!

 

[cfenton]

Definitely the SSD. It's the biggest upgrade you can do for any modern system. 8GB of RAM should be fine for day-to-day use.

 

[Shmee]

Agree on the SSD first for sure.

 

[hojnikb]

SSD first for sure. 8GB is plenty, if you're not a heavy user. It might help if you clean up your system, remove apps you don't need from startup, etc..

 

[arandomguy]

SSD boot drive is going to be the cheaper option than another 8GB of memory. It'll also even improve direct game loads off the HDD as it will no longer need to concurrently serve as the boot drive (splits the work load).

 

[VirtualLarry]

y daughter PC has 8GB DDR4 and a 5400rpm hard drive

Is this a custom PC, or a pre-built name-brand rig? It sounds like a name-brand OEM rig, if it has a 5400RPM HDD in it.

Make sure to get an SSD that comes with (or allows for a download license for) some cloning software, so that you can clone the original OS. Or make OS recovery CD/DVDs, or a USB stick, whatever the PC allows. Then install the SSD, unplug the HDD, and use the recovery media to install the OEM OS image.

 

[KentState]

SSD. Even if you don't have enough RAM at times, the paging to disk will be much quicker.

 

[gpse]

SSD for sure... 8GB of ram is decent enough.

 

[lifeblood]

Is this a custom PC, or a pre-built name-brand rig? It sounds like a name-brand OEM rig, if it has a 5400RPM HDD in it.

It's a custom rig I put together. It's the Core i3 in the signature below. I can't remember why I used a 5400rpm drive, maybe that was the only one I had available at that time. She uses her PC for homework and to play Guild Wars 2, Mass Effect, etc.

I'm thinking of getting the Team Group SSD. I WANT to buy her the 240Gb ($29 on Newegg) but her drive currently has 200Gb on it even after helping her clean it up, so I NEED to buy her the 480Gb ($49 on Newegg) to insure she has room to grow. Games take a butt load of space!

 

[arandomguy]

You don't necessarily need everything on the SSD. A common thing was to use a SSD as a OS drive and to leave a few select commonly used applications on it. Many people for instance will typically only play a few games at a time predominantly.

A SSD as an OS drive will also indirectly increase performance on the HDD as it will need to multitask much less.

 

[DontMessWithJohan]

Buy her a 250GB SSD for OS and programs (honestly, even 125GB is enough) and a 1TB HDD for games and files and she will grow plenty

Get ready to completely reinstall everything if you do that, though.

 

[lifeblood]

Buy her a 250GB SSD for OS and programs (honestly, even 125GB is enough) and a 1TB HDD for games and files and she will grow plenty

Ha! You underestimate the ability of Microsoft Windows to fill a hard drive with junk files and old patches. I learned a long time ago to plan for twice what you think you need, then double that. And don't be surprised if you need more. Fast CPU's and inexpensive storage has simply made Windows programmers sloppy.

 

[hojnikb]

Not really. I'm running a bunch of office like PCs with just 64GB of ssds and they works just fine. A cleanup here or there and no worries.