Laptop Slowing down

[Agera One]

My laptop is a Sony Vaio VPCEB34EN. The following are is detailed specs:


CPU - Intel Core i3 370M @ 2.40GHz
MEMORY - 3.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 1066MHz (7-7-7-20) - (One Adata 2 GB stick & Hynix 1 GB stick)
MOTHERBOARD - Sony Corporation C606ENM1 (Chipset - Havendale/Clarkdale Host Bridge Rev 2.0)
GPU - ATI/AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5470M 512 MB GDDR3
HDD - TOSHIBA MK3265GSX ATA Device (SATA) - 320 GB 5400 rpm


I bought it on Oct 10, 2010 and its very close to 5 years old now. So what I'm experiencing is slow opening of chrome, KM player,
sometimes even windows explorer (but boot-up time is normal). I'm cleaning dusts on my laptop insides, using ccleaner, defraggler and other optimization techniques regularly.

So is it time to upgrade my laptop components? If YES, which one to go for at first? An SSD or (2X4) GB 1600 MHz Memory? (which is the maximum supported memory figure by my laptop)

P.S. A good 128 GB SSD and (2X4) GB 1600 MHz RAM costs same for me here.


Thanks in advance.

 

[USAFRet]

5 year old laptop

In this order:
1. Clean install of the OS and all your applications
2. 8 GB RAM
3. SSD

 

[Agera One]

Okay, now I find 2X4 GB RAM price are increased, can I go with single 8 GB 1600MHz CL10 ? Or get a 4GB stick and combine with the current 2 GB stick?

 

[Crixilian]

it is been 5 years
generally, RAM and harddrive will getting worse
I think you had better not go for SSD, cuz storing data on SSD is doesn't take the advantage of SSD

I think you have to check your harddrive for error and health and check RAM for errors, then replace which has error

 

[Solandri]

Have you considered just buying a new laptop? The integrated HD graphics in the latest Intel CPUs is faster than your dedicated GPU.

http/www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5470.23698.0.html
http/www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-5000.91978.0.html

If you do decide to keep the laptop, 3GB RAM is a bit tight. It's the obvious thing to upgrade. But due to the age of the laptop, I'd recommend the SSD (assuming you can fit all your programs and data on a 128GB SSD). With the SSD, at least you can transfer it to a new computer when you eventually upgrade. The memory may not be as transferable since DDR4 RAM is starting to show up. I'd also recommend scraping together the extra money for a 256GB SSD (the 250 GB EVO 850 regularly shows up on sale for $85, vs $50 for the 120GB version). The 256GB drives use more flash dies, so are faster than the 128GB models, and it'll give you a lot more space to work with. You're supposed to keep about 15% of the SSD empty to maintain fast write speeds.

If you do decide to upgrade the memory, I'd just replace the 1GB module with a 4GB module (for 6GB total). Yeah it won't be dual channel, but dual channel only gives you about a 1%-2% speedup in real-world tasks. you're not going to notice a difference.

 

[Agera One]

Thanks guys, I'm going to upgrade the memory that my laptop can support at max. (Bcoz, the RAM prices are absolutely very low here now and i'll think getting an SSD when prices get lower).

 

[leageorge]

Please upgrade your memory and optimize it properly it will start working fine.