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Upgrade for silence and energy efficiency

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  • 07-03-2015 11:51pm
    #1
    The_B_Man
    Registered Users Posts: 7,863 ✭✭✭


    Hi,

    I thought I'd ask on here for advice before I start spending money I don't need to.

    I'm looking at the parents PC and its starting to slow down. I'm thinking a nice SSD will speed it up, but I'm trying to figure out what other parts I can replace at the same time that'll give it a decent performance boost and make it more energy efficient and as quiet as possible. At the moment, the fans are fairly noisy, as are the hard drives.

    So, I'm looking for advice as to what to upgrade first. Here are the specs:

    ==========
    Motherboard: MSI MS-7367 (K9AGM3-FIH)
    IGP (ATI Radeon X1250 (RS690)
    CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 4000+ (Brisbane) Socket AM2 (940)
    RAM: 4 x 1GB DDR2 PC2-6400 (400MHz) - 2 x corsair, 2 x Team Elite
    OS: Windows 7 32-bit

    Hard drives
    OS: Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 60GB (ST360021A)
    Storage: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB (ST3320620AS )

    Monitor: IBM E74
    ==========

    To me, the CPU and mobo are getting on in years, but might still do a job. Same with the RAM.

    The stage I'm at at the moment is trying to figure out a budget. I reckon getting an SSD is a no-brainer anyway for the silence and less energy consumption so I'll prob go for a 120GB one for the OS. I hear the Samsungs are good, and can be got for around 100 euro. Although I'm not sure if my motherboard can take full advantage of the SATA speeds. For the time being, I can use the 320GB for storage as well.

    Then I'm trying to figure out if my CPU is any good, or if I'll need to replace the motherboard to get a newer processor. Obviously that'll add another decent amount. And of course, if I'm getting the new mobo and CPU, I'll have to upgrade to newer, faster RAM.

    So I suppose there is 2 real questions:
    1. Will an SSD be enough to get the thing lightning fast? (Performance/noise/energy)
    2. Is it easy to replace the fans inside the case with quieter ones?

    IF there's anything else I need to know about making it quieter and more energy efficient, like a new case or settings in Windows, let me know.

    Thanks for any advice.


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