Speeding up older kit with SSD's

[superatticman]

Hi all

 

We have some older kit still in front line. These include HP dc7600's which are P4 HT 3ghz, 3Gb RAM running Windows 7. Obviously they are starting to show their age now, especially from login to a stable desktop. In general they are just used for SIMS, Office 2010, Active Inspire and non graphical intensive apps. Has anyone else had any joy in giving similar aged kit a turbo charge with an SSD drive?

 

Cheers

[3s-gtech]

We are working through adding SSDs to all of our kit, and we have a wide range of kit from 2006 on. We drew a line at the DC7600 and retired them - they're such a dinosaur I didn't feel it was worth it. They should work fine though, despite their age.

[superatticman]

Did users notice the increase in performance?

[ChrisH]

We've had good success upgrading a load of 7700s

[Arthur]

We have some truly ancient PCs with SSDs in them - seven year old Dell Latitude 131Ls and ten year old (!!!) Dell OptiPlex GX280s - and the difference they make is massive. Users definitely notice the difference when logging back onto PCs that still have HDDs. Edited July 7, 2014 by Arthur

[matt40k]

Yup. Mate installed it on a old AMD machine and it made the world of difference. I would still look at replacing them however, two options are the - ask if this goes wrong, are they ok if it doesn't get repaired\replaced as its out of warranty? If they say they are ok to buy a new one if it breaks. Then replace it, cause clearly they have the money. Other route is to look at the power usage - the new PSU have 80% High Efficiency, so you should see a drop in the old electric bill - I know one school covered the cost of a new server with one years worth of savings. OK a desktop won't be on as long as a server, but your have more desktops running so the costs do add up.

[3s-gtech]

Did users notice the increase in performance?

 

Users may have noticed, but sadly we only seem to get feedback when things get worse! I noticed the difference, and in testing logon times were reduced, applications more snappy, and crucially Windows updates complete more quickly so there are less instances of students getting bored and knocking the power off halfway through a critical update, stuffing the image.

[MrEprise]

I did this as a test on a DC7600 last year. I found the difference in performance noticeable enough to the point of usability being snappier and actually quite pleasant (even when coupled with 1 & 2GB of RAM) that I recommended we upgrade some of our more problematic rooms (i.e. the ones with these PCs in) when we get the cash to do so. Also consider that we have a few hundred of these and no plans to replace them so we have to make do and mend where possible.

 

Of course budgets being what they are - and severely lower in schools like mine, it hasn't happened. We did manage to upgrade the RAM to 2GB in these across the site so that's helped somewhat.

Edited July 8, 2014 by MrEprise

[localzuk]

To be completely honest, I'd advise replacing the machines. Pentium 4 machines are quite past their prime. You can even get a refurb Core2Duo, with 4GB RAM and a 3 year warranty for £100 a piece from @ict-direct, for example.

 

An SSD on such an old machine is kinda like a sticking plaster for a missing leg. It might be aesthetically pleasing, but you're still missing a leg.

[sted]

To be completely honest, I'd advise replacing the machines. Pentium 4 machines are quite past their prime. You can even get a refurb Core2Duo, with 4GB RAM and a 3 year warranty for £100 a piece from @ict-direct, for example.

 

An SSD on such an old machine is kinda like a sticking plaster for a missing leg. It might be aesthetically pleasing, but you're still missing a leg.

 

true but its not like you cant move the ssd to any new machine you get in years to come so buy new ones with cheap hdds which you can then repurpose or sell or even without hdd's at all if you can

[timbo343]

I did some performance tests on this and here are the results http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/136885-ssd-v-hdd-2.html post# 21.

 

We are starting to put SSDs in our Dell 755 machines this summer. At the moment we have some SSD drives in our old Dell Optiplex 520 machines which have increased the performance but im not sure if users have noticed. Our lot dont ever say how quick things are, they only complain when things are running slow.

 

Just to add to the information in the stated thread here are some more numbers to look at.

 

Test 1:

Once deployed new image, time for machine to run sysprep to computer name

HDD = 1m 22secs

SSD = 38secs

 

Test 2:

Computer name in sysprep to Ctrl/Alt/Del

HDD = 4m 34secs

SSD = 1m 34secs

 

Test 3:

First Login (Ctrl/Alt/Del to Desktop)

HDD = 1m 21secs

SSD = 36secs

[newpersn]

I did some performance tests on this and here are the results http://www.edugeek.net/forums/hardware/136885-ssd-v-hdd-2.html post# 21.

 

Test 3:

First Login (Ctrl/Alt/Del to Desktop)

HDD = 1m 21secs

SSD = 36secs

 

New user or existing?

[timbo343]

Exisiting domain admin account but this is the very first login after the image has been imaged so will be applying all group policy items to the machine. Normal login times for us are around 30 secs with a new local profile. Edited July 8, 2014 by timbo343