I just finished 'tuning up' my Father-in-laws PC that I built for him in 2009. AMD 2.9Ghz Rana Athlon II X3 with 4GB RAM & integraged graphics (785G).
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128397
He got a Sandisk 240GB SSD for like $50 that I swapped in for his old HDD and he now has a newer 1TB drive for his data that I gave him. I re-loaded Win10 Home for him (clean instead of the upgrade he had done from Win 7). The thermal paste had all dried out so the CPU was running hot so I replaced the paste with some new stuff and that made a big different in the CPU temp.. Cleaned out the dust bunnies and now it runs Windows surprisingly well, especially for non-power user like him. Pulled off Windows Live Mail and got him on Thunderbird for his email. He likes to use an email client.
Funny though, loading up Firefox or Chrome with Fox News or CNN as the only thing going and the CPU is running at about 35% on all 3 cores - with just the one tab open. I guess that is the age of the CPU as well as the fact that he's using the integrated graphics.
Any low cost suggestions for improving the performance a bit? If I have a spare GPU would there be any value to adding it?
Edit: I just did a test on my personal machine and high content websites do seem cause quite a bit of CPU spiking to around 35% at times - because I am seeing it on my i5 3570K with GTX970 GPU. It is a little less on my new machine but still more than I would have expected. Normal behavior I guess.
Thanks!
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128397
He got a Sandisk 240GB SSD for like $50 that I swapped in for his old HDD and he now has a newer 1TB drive for his data that I gave him. I re-loaded Win10 Home for him (clean instead of the upgrade he had done from Win 7). The thermal paste had all dried out so the CPU was running hot so I replaced the paste with some new stuff and that made a big different in the CPU temp.. Cleaned out the dust bunnies and now it runs Windows surprisingly well, especially for non-power user like him. Pulled off Windows Live Mail and got him on Thunderbird for his email. He likes to use an email client.
Funny though, loading up Firefox or Chrome with Fox News or CNN as the only thing going and the CPU is running at about 35% on all 3 cores - with just the one tab open. I guess that is the age of the CPU as well as the fact that he's using the integrated graphics.
Any low cost suggestions for improving the performance a bit? If I have a spare GPU would there be any value to adding it?
Edit: I just did a test on my personal machine and high content websites do seem cause quite a bit of CPU spiking to around 35% at times - because I am seeing it on my i5 3570K with GTX970 GPU. It is a little less on my new machine but still more than I would have expected. Normal behavior I guess.
Thanks!
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