Or how I learned to suppress upgrade-itis and learn to love the bomb.
November 19, 2010 3:09 PM Subscribe
Cost Benefit of Upgrading Laptop?
I have a HP8530w laptop which I like alot. It has a gorgeous screen, form, keyboard, and a sturdy build to deal with the clumsiest of individuals (me). I have 2 years left on the full accident-covered warranty.I do a lot of data processing, statistical programming and GIS work on it, and I am pushing the machine to its limits and I think I want to upgrade the internals to keep it from falling too far behind.
There are two or three options for upgrades: processor, ram, or a faster solid state disk hard drive ; each would be comparably expensive: increasing ram to 4 gigs would cost $100, for a 4gb RAM stick, or $200 to increase RAM to 8gbs. I suppose a SSD would go for anywhere from $150 up: my current HD isn't slow (7200rpm) but I don't know what the relative gain would be from the upgrade.
Alternatively the max processor can go up from my T220, 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo to the X9100 3Ghz Core 2 Extreme, which are available now for around $250.
Given that I want to stick to this computer for another 2 years, are ANY of these options worth it? Is it likely that the price for the RAM or processor will drop further or will before prices for upgrade parts increase from new processor and RAM lines replacing the older ones?
Or should I save my money and buy a full desktop for $300-400 in a year and a half?
I have a HP8530w laptop which I like alot. It has a gorgeous screen, form, keyboard, and a sturdy build to deal with the clumsiest of individuals (me). I have 2 years left on the full accident-covered warranty.I do a lot of data processing, statistical programming and GIS work on it, and I am pushing the machine to its limits and I think I want to upgrade the internals to keep it from falling too far behind.
There are two or three options for upgrades: processor, ram, or a faster solid state disk hard drive ; each would be comparably expensive: increasing ram to 4 gigs would cost $100, for a 4gb RAM stick, or $200 to increase RAM to 8gbs. I suppose a SSD would go for anywhere from $150 up: my current HD isn't slow (7200rpm) but I don't know what the relative gain would be from the upgrade.
Alternatively the max processor can go up from my T220, 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo to the X9100 3Ghz Core 2 Extreme, which are available now for around $250.
Given that I want to stick to this computer for another 2 years, are ANY of these options worth it? Is it likely that the price for the RAM or processor will drop further or will before prices for upgrade parts increase from new processor and RAM lines replacing the older ones?
Or should I save my money and buy a full desktop for $300-400 in a year and a half?
I suppose a SSD would go for anywhere from $150 up
SSDs are currently running about $500+, and mostly above $600, for 256G, which is a pretty modest size by modern hard drive standards. The RAM upgrade will be much more economical...
posted by rkent at 3:32 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
SSDs are currently running about $500+, and mostly above $600, for 256G, which is a pretty modest size by modern hard drive standards. The RAM upgrade will be much more economical...
posted by rkent at 3:32 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Definitely get the RAM. SSD might be more expensive than you might expect if you want to replace your HD with something of similar or larger capacity. Relative gain is amazing with a high-end SSD. I'd skip the processor upgrade.
posted by zippy at 3:39 PM on November 19, 2010
posted by zippy at 3:39 PM on November 19, 2010
RAM is always good. $200 for 8GB sounds like a pretty good deal to me, honestly. I'd go for that first. An SSD can be helpful depending on type. If you want to get a good SSD, you probably can't get a really large one unless you're willing to shell out big bucks, so you'd want to store your data on something else (NAS, external HD, etc).
posted by kmz at 3:55 PM on November 19, 2010
posted by kmz at 3:55 PM on November 19, 2010
Processor: You don't want to do a processor upgrade. The work involved in tearing apart a laptop is not fun, and you will be doing more repairs than you bargained for. Many of the cords inside are fragile and this won't be a fun thing to do. Further, going up in processor speed will probably cause power issues. The power supplies in laptops are meant to cover the component power requirements with little headroom. An upgraded processor will take any headroom you may have had. Lastly, the BIOS for a lot of HP laptops won't allow it to function without the specific processor or one that is in it's range, meaning the processors that the series of laptops were intended to sell with.
RAM: Upgrade to 4GB. This is probably slowing down your computer the most. RAM prices will likely drop some more, especially for the 4GB sticks, but it's not worth waiting for. If you do a lot of high RAM usage applications: Photoshop, video editing, large file work, you may consider getting 8GB, but for 99% of users it's a waste of money at this point. Get RAM that matches the speed of your current RAM.
SSD: SSD's are still high priced. I purchased one for my desktop and love it because it helps your system boot quickly. My Windows 7 system will boot up in 17 seconds if I enable all fast boot options. What you notice is that things with file operations move quickly. If you are doing video editing, booting, installing programs, etc. you will see the difference. If you are playing games, surfing the internet, doing normal office work you will not see a difference.
Price for a SSD is high. The sweet spot in pricing is at 120GB or 128GB, costing $220-300. 240GB/256GB SSD's are all $500 or more. 480GB/512GB SSD's start at $1000. Smaller SSD's can be had for cheaper: 60GB around $125-150, 90GB at $180-225.
If you go the SSD route, you will probably want to have an external drive for file storage. Lastly, if you get one, pay attention to which chipset is in which drive. You are looking for a newer Sandforce, Intel G2. Indilinx Martini chipset based SSDs may offer a better price for slightly less performance. Old SSD's (in this case meaning 1 year or more) will lack TRIM commands, and their performance suffers indefinitely after the drive has written through itself one time.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 4:05 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
RAM: Upgrade to 4GB. This is probably slowing down your computer the most. RAM prices will likely drop some more, especially for the 4GB sticks, but it's not worth waiting for. If you do a lot of high RAM usage applications: Photoshop, video editing, large file work, you may consider getting 8GB, but for 99% of users it's a waste of money at this point. Get RAM that matches the speed of your current RAM.
SSD: SSD's are still high priced. I purchased one for my desktop and love it because it helps your system boot quickly. My Windows 7 system will boot up in 17 seconds if I enable all fast boot options. What you notice is that things with file operations move quickly. If you are doing video editing, booting, installing programs, etc. you will see the difference. If you are playing games, surfing the internet, doing normal office work you will not see a difference.
Price for a SSD is high. The sweet spot in pricing is at 120GB or 128GB, costing $220-300. 240GB/256GB SSD's are all $500 or more. 480GB/512GB SSD's start at $1000. Smaller SSD's can be had for cheaper: 60GB around $125-150, 90GB at $180-225.
If you go the SSD route, you will probably want to have an external drive for file storage. Lastly, if you get one, pay attention to which chipset is in which drive. You are looking for a newer Sandforce, Intel G2. Indilinx Martini chipset based SSDs may offer a better price for slightly less performance. Old SSD's (in this case meaning 1 year or more) will lack TRIM commands, and their performance suffers indefinitely after the drive has written through itself one time.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 4:05 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
SSds, are not anywhere near $500. Very decent ssds with TRIM are below $200...
posted by lattiboy at 4:05 PM on November 19, 2010
posted by lattiboy at 4:05 PM on November 19, 2010
Before you go to 8Gb of RAM, check that your OS can make use of it. If you don't already have a 64bit edition of Windows (I'm assuming you're on Windows?) you may need to buy an upgrade.
posted by robertc at 4:35 PM on November 19, 2010
posted by robertc at 4:35 PM on November 19, 2010
RAM is always the best bang for the buck, especially going up to 4 GB. As mentioned above, only go higher than 4 GB if you have a 64-bit OS.
posted by Simon Barclay at 5:12 PM on November 19, 2010
posted by Simon Barclay at 5:12 PM on November 19, 2010
SSds, are not anywhere near $500. Very decent ssds with TRIM are below $200...
For the record, your link is entirely consistent with my post above, and with Mr. Fabulous's, that SSDs are $500 or more for 250G capacity. At the moment, SSD pricing appears to be roughly linear with respect to capacity; you don't get a better price per byte by getting a larger drive, and the only way to save is to give up space. This may change in the future, but who knows when.
posted by rkent at 5:33 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
For the record, your link is entirely consistent with my post above, and with Mr. Fabulous's, that SSDs are $500 or more for 250G capacity. At the moment, SSD pricing appears to be roughly linear with respect to capacity; you don't get a better price per byte by getting a larger drive, and the only way to save is to give up space. This may change in the future, but who knows when.
posted by rkent at 5:33 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks for the advice, sorry about the confusion I already have 4gbs already and I am running 64bit Windows 7, so I would need to spend 100 for a single 4gb stick to upgrade to 6GBs.
The computer / motherboard is made to take the 3.0 ghz chip as it is, it's HP's "business line" so it has a little bit more room for upgrading.
Regarding the SSD, the computer can take two hard drives, so I could get a smaller SSD and place the OS on there, and use my current hard drive for storage.
posted by stratastar at 5:56 PM on November 19, 2010
The computer / motherboard is made to take the 3.0 ghz chip as it is, it's HP's "business line" so it has a little bit more room for upgrading.
Regarding the SSD, the computer can take two hard drives, so I could get a smaller SSD and place the OS on there, and use my current hard drive for storage.
posted by stratastar at 5:56 PM on November 19, 2010
This may change in the future, but who knows when.
As an avid reader of tomshardware and keeping a good eye to computer parts and prices: SSD's have dropped in price fairly quickly, but have a long ways to go.
In March I purchased a Mushkin Io 128GB SSD. It was $378. It ran the Indilinx Barefoot controller, which is now already behind by one generation, and a full two steps behind the current Sandforce controllers (SF-1200 and SF-1500). The Intel G3, SF-2000, and Indilinx Jet Stream are all slated for 2011, which will run SATA 6Gbps and make mine even more "obsolete." Obsolete being a relative term, I won't be replacing this SSD as I am not made of money, and it runs plenty fast for the life of my current rig.
The expectation currently is that prices will drop solidly below $2/GB in 2011, and it will take anywhere between 2-5 years for SSD's to match the price of HDD's and eliminate them from the market. It depends entirely on better MLC technology, production costs of NAND memory and whether HDD's continue creating bigger hard drives for less money. Remember that HDD's are running as low as $60/TB, i.e. $0.06/GB (give or take a penny with GB vs GiB), and 3TB drives are now out, with 5TB projected in two years.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 5:58 PM on November 19, 2010
As an avid reader of tomshardware and keeping a good eye to computer parts and prices: SSD's have dropped in price fairly quickly, but have a long ways to go.
In March I purchased a Mushkin Io 128GB SSD. It was $378. It ran the Indilinx Barefoot controller, which is now already behind by one generation, and a full two steps behind the current Sandforce controllers (SF-1200 and SF-1500). The Intel G3, SF-2000, and Indilinx Jet Stream are all slated for 2011, which will run SATA 6Gbps and make mine even more "obsolete." Obsolete being a relative term, I won't be replacing this SSD as I am not made of money, and it runs plenty fast for the life of my current rig.
The expectation currently is that prices will drop solidly below $2/GB in 2011, and it will take anywhere between 2-5 years for SSD's to match the price of HDD's and eliminate them from the market. It depends entirely on better MLC technology, production costs of NAND memory and whether HDD's continue creating bigger hard drives for less money. Remember that HDD's are running as low as $60/TB, i.e. $0.06/GB (give or take a penny with GB vs GiB), and 3TB drives are now out, with 5TB projected in two years.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 5:58 PM on November 19, 2010
Best answer: hanks for the advice, sorry about the confusion I already have 4gbs already and I am running 64bit Windows 7, so I would need to spend 100 for a single 4gb stick to upgrade to 6GBs.
The computer / motherboard is made to take the 3.0 ghz chip as it is, it's HP's "business line" so it has a little bit more room for upgrading.
Regarding the SSD, the computer can take two hard drives, so I could get a smaller SSD and place the OS on there, and use my current hard drive for storage.
Well that changes things for my response. I'd go with a 60GB or 90GB SSD for your OS drive and keep your regular HDD for storage. If the regular drive isn't big enough for you, consider upgrading it. 500GB Notebook HDD's are $50 on newegg. I am partial to the Mushkin SSDs, so my fully biased opinion would say go for this SSD. It's 90GB, $180, and runs the SandForce SF-1200 chipset, TRIM enabled.
As for RAM: you are better off keeping matched sticks, so either leave it at 4GB or bump it to 8GB. Run Task Manager in Windows and see if the computer is really using the RAM or if you have a lot of free space overhead. If you are maxing it out when working as usual, consider upping the RAM.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 6:03 PM on November 19, 2010
The computer / motherboard is made to take the 3.0 ghz chip as it is, it's HP's "business line" so it has a little bit more room for upgrading.
Regarding the SSD, the computer can take two hard drives, so I could get a smaller SSD and place the OS on there, and use my current hard drive for storage.
Well that changes things for my response. I'd go with a 60GB or 90GB SSD for your OS drive and keep your regular HDD for storage. If the regular drive isn't big enough for you, consider upgrading it. 500GB Notebook HDD's are $50 on newegg. I am partial to the Mushkin SSDs, so my fully biased opinion would say go for this SSD. It's 90GB, $180, and runs the SandForce SF-1200 chipset, TRIM enabled.
As for RAM: you are better off keeping matched sticks, so either leave it at 4GB or bump it to 8GB. Run Task Manager in Windows and see if the computer is really using the RAM or if you have a lot of free space overhead. If you are maxing it out when working as usual, consider upping the RAM.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 6:03 PM on November 19, 2010
Could you offload the data processing to EC2? It's a cheap way to get a hell of a lot of processing power, especially compared to the marginal increase you'll get from upgrading your CPU or RAM.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 6:35 PM on November 19, 2010
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 6:35 PM on November 19, 2010
I was thinking along the same lines as qxntpqbbbqxl. Why not take the money, buy a solid desktop machine, and run CPU or RAM intensive scripts remotely? Depending on your budget and experience, the cloud may also be an option.
posted by chrisamiller at 7:43 PM on November 19, 2010
posted by chrisamiller at 7:43 PM on November 19, 2010
SSD is nice, but you'll probably want a second harddrive, perferably an interal one, for data and swap disk/temp/log/&c files.
Is there's any way at all to upgrade the processor to an i-series (i-3, i5, i7)? That has been the biggest, by far, difference between my previous and current laptop. Once I got an (low end) i7 desktop, I couldn't stand my Core2Duo laptop anymore. I have an (mid-range) i5 with SSD (and second internal HD) and for some things (loading up CS5), it beats my desktop, but for others, the i5 can't quite meet the i7.
posted by porpoise at 8:25 PM on November 19, 2010
Is there's any way at all to upgrade the processor to an i-series (i-3, i5, i7)? That has been the biggest, by far, difference between my previous and current laptop. Once I got an (low end) i7 desktop, I couldn't stand my Core2Duo laptop anymore. I have an (mid-range) i5 with SSD (and second internal HD) and for some things (loading up CS5), it beats my desktop, but for others, the i5 can't quite meet the i7.
posted by porpoise at 8:25 PM on November 19, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks for the help everyone, I'll be doing my research on SSDs!
posted by stratastar at 9:21 PM on November 21, 2010
posted by stratastar at 9:21 PM on November 21, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by jchaw at 3:12 PM on November 19, 2010 [1 favorite]