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1. Get more RAM to use with her old RAM (2x1 GB kit) to bring her up to 4 GB. I can buy a second kit of the kind of RAM she has to bring her up to 4X1 GB sticks ($34). And get an SSD (thinking Crucial M4, 64 GB, $110). Total of $144.
2. Get her more RAM, but insist on going to 8 GB by using two 2x2 GB kits. I'm leery to mix 2 GB sticks with her old 1 GB sticks (if anybody thinks mixing memory sizes is a good idea, let me know). This could cost me $120. Add in the Crucial M4, total of $264
3. Get a new chip/mobo/RAM and SSD - Asus P8H67-V, i3 2100, 2x4 GB kit of RAM, and a Crucial M4 64 GB, total of $376.
Does anybody know what kind of a limitation it will be running a newer SSD (Crucial M4 or Samsung 830) on a SATA II (3 Gbps) controller? If it's huge, I suppose I could get myself a new SATA III SSD and give her my 80 GB X25-M-G2. "
I don't like options 1 and 2. 3 sounds ok, but, should be a second step to four, which is start with the X25 M G2, and put it in her machine, and see how it runs.
I think that should make a big enough difference that she will be impressed. If it doesn't,
then start looking for a new motherboard, ram, and CPU combination.
Whatever you do, don't throw money away on ram for an old system/motherboard/OS.
I run my server on a SATA II controller: