Where's my bottleneck?

[Michael Piper]

Thinking about building myself a new HTPC (or might get a NUC!) because my laptop doesn't seem to be able to handle what I'm throwing at it - which is not very much. When I was playing online poker it seemed to be able to handle a few tables, of multiple sites, and tracking software, at acceptable speeds; having skype, winamp, thunderbird, multiple tabs in chrome, and utorrent rarely caused any problems. However, it stutters unplayably at video playback for anything at 1080p, and can barely handle even low quality streaming after stripping everything else back.

I've switched out the old hard drive for a decent SSD; running a 24" IPS through HDMI (HTX-22HDX refers to my sound system). Otherwise it's a normal samsung r780, about 5 years old. Took it apart once and cleaned everything out as far as I could.

If I build myself an HTPC I'll be looking to be able to multitask - stream football on one big screen while web browsing on the other - no games at all anymore. Would replacing the RAM with double the capacity, new, remove this bottleneck do you think?

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i5 520M @ 2.40GHz 71 °C
Arrandale 32nm Technology
RAM
4.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 532MHz (7-7-7-20)
Motherboard
SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO. LTD. R780/R778 (CPU 1) 78 °C
Graphics
HTX-22HDX (1920x1200@59Hz)
1024MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M (Samsung) 63 °C
Storage
447GB Crucial_CT480M500SSD1 (SSD)
3725GB Western Digital WD My Book 1230 USB Device (USB (SATA)) 34 °C
Optical Drives
TSSTcorp DVDWBD TS-LB23A
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

Or is it my video card and I should just build myself a new HTPC?

Thanks in advance.

 

[cdabc123]

its could be a large variety of things in that system. the cpu is about half as powerful as a modern desktop i5, 4 gigs of ram isn't recommended and that is a weak gpu.

 

[dudeman509]

I have an i7 laptop from the same generation. The graphics card (also 4 GB RAM) is the weak link, but the Arrandale processors are really beginning to show their age as well.

 

[cdabc123]

I have an i7 laptop from the same generation. The graphics card (also 4 GB RAM) is the weak link, but the Arrandale processors are really beginning to show their age as well.

laptop cpu's are considerable weaker than desktops. i still run westmere xeons from ~2010 that can still outperform a large amount of cpus on the market today

 

[Michael Piper]

I have an i7 laptop from the same generation. The graphics card (also 4 GB RAM) is the weak link, but the Arrandale processors are really beginning to show their age as well.

If the consensus is that the gpu is the weak link, I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet and build a new system. Which I really enjoy, so not that big a deal!

 

[Supahos]

You can build a new htpc to do what you want for around $400 pretty easily even with an os

 

[Michael Piper]

You can build a new htpc to do what you want for around $400 pretty easily even with an os

If I build an HTPC I'm going to want it to be extremely future-compatible with my desire to get a 4k TV and (light) business purposes, thinking I should budget £500 (~$800 i think)

 

[Supahos]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor (£155.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock H170M-ITX/DL Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard (£78.13 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory (£39.48 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£55.76 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£37.98 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case (£39.29 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Super Flower Golden Green HX 350W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (£40.99 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £446.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-29 23:31 GMT+0000

Probably no reason for i5 vs i3 6100/6300 for your purposes but skylake is more than capable of 4k playback on integrated video