ITGURU Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 We have a large number of teacher PCs - All quad core (Q9400), 3GB RAM, HDD. They're all getting a bit slow and long in the tooth! Just wondered what suggestions people would have in regards to upgrading these. All PCs have decent monitors, KB/Mice so just base unit required. Would you: 1. Upgrade the PCs with more RAM (on 64 bit) and add and SSD - debating over 120GB or 240GB as some departments have some hefty software i.e Music. 2. Replace the whole base unit with an i3 or i5 with SSD and 4GB Ram or more? Teachers heavily use SIMS, Smart Notebook, emails, and few other applications open at the same time. We bought some i3, 4GB , SSD base units for students last year and they fly. - Base price was £283.
CyberNerd Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 3. replace the operating system. That seems to be your bottleneck.
Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 I'm replacing/creating teacher desktops with @ICTDirect_Dave's Lenovo M92 offerings. i5, and your choice of 4gb/8gb and and 250gb HDD/120gb SSD plus windows 7/8.1 COA and 12/24month warranty for between £220 and £300 depending on your options. They are plenty fast enough for most uses. Also, check out the 22" DVI/Display Port/VGA monitors for £70! Note: I have no afiliation with ICT Direct, I'm just a well happy customer! 1
fairm010 Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 ^ He lies, Dave has him on monthly PayPal payments.
ITGURU Posted September 25, 2015 Author Posted September 25, 2015 3. replace the operating system. That seems to be your bottleneck. We are already on Windows 7 x64.
Oaktech Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 ^ He lies, Dave has him on monthly PayPal payments. If Only...
sonofsanta Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 If money is tight then 120GB SSDs will make a world of difference, and then you can pull them out again when you replace the machines and re-use the upgrade elsewhere There's nowt wront with the Core2 era CPUs, the only problem is how old they are, and at what point you decide you're living on borrow time with the kit.
steveg Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Depends on the budget, if its fairly tight I would say replace the hard disk with an ssd, and also consider upgrading the os as 8 and 10 should both be a little quicker than 7, although obviously a lot of other things to consider with this! By the price you mention for the newer pc's I'm assuming you are having them built to order, if this is the case then when you come to replace the pc's could you get ones with no hard disks in them, and move the ssd's across? Although 3gb of ram is a little low, I don't think you'll notice much of a performance increase by upgrading it, and this will be lost when the machine is replaced, so may not be good value in the long run. If you do have the budget, may just be time to replace them all - factor in the time all of the above will take when making the comparison. Steve
pcstru Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Would you: 1. Upgrade the PCs with more RAM (on 64 bit) and add and SSD - debating over 120GB or 240GB as some departments have some hefty software i.e Music. I would try adding an SSD, run a 64bit OS and possibly go to 4GB RAM. That will make much more difference than the change of processor to an i3 or i5 (the change to an SSD will make the most difference, I doubt you will notice much difference just in the change of processor).
ICTDirect_Dave Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 Normally I'd say buy new machines from me, but you're already on Q9400's and they're better than a 1st gen i5 650. Pop the ram up to 4GB, Add a 120GB SSD, you'll see a hwole new lease of life. Alternatively, get the m92p from me and repurpose these old machines for somewhere that needs them? Either way, drop me a Pm if you'd like to talk pricing and options? @Oaktech your latest (imaginary) cheque is in the post! 1
CyberNerd Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 We are already on Windows 7 x64. yeah, I was just being facetious. I bet it would run ubuntu fine I'd go with upgrading the RAM and SD btw.
3s-gtech Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 I concur with the above. Your PCs are decent, a touch more RAM and an SSD and they'll do you good for a few years yet - very few applications in school beyond heavy Photoshop use and more specialist stuff like CAD that will really tax them.
Callum Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 3 GB of RAM should be fairly decent, especially for school use. We found that replacing HDDs with SSDs massively improved performance.
MatthewL Posted September 25, 2015 Posted September 25, 2015 SSD will make a vast improvement. 3GB should be plenty.
PotNoodleTech Posted September 28, 2015 Posted September 28, 2015 All you need to do is pop a 128GB SSD in there for £40 a pop and it'll be like having brand new PCs! 3GB RAM is OK, Ideally 4-6GB would be best but the SSD is the most important upgrade by far.
sonofsanta Posted September 28, 2015 Posted September 28, 2015 If you're putting an SSD in then RAM becomes less important anyway, because the page file is on much faster storage, and so running out of RAM and spilling into storage is nowhere near as noticeable. 1
pow Posted September 28, 2015 Posted September 28, 2015 (edited) I've got a suite of Core2 Duo Optiplex 7010's at a school that had 250GB HDDs and 2GB RAM in them, think they are 2012 models? I've just given them another stick of 2GB RAM and a 120GB SSD for about £47 a unit and a fresh Windows 7 x64 image and the difference is literally night and day. It's amazing. Staff are convinced that they are brand new. Edited September 28, 2015 by pow
ITGURU Posted September 28, 2015 Author Posted September 28, 2015 Thanks for all the suggestions. Yes, the price were built to spec PCs . Happy to replace drives with SSDs, but the next question would be how long before I have to replace the motherboard anyway as may not have windows 10 drivers when I plan to roll out starting next summer. Already discovered this on some older laptops, that there isn't the drivers to support 10.
newpersn Posted September 28, 2015 Posted September 28, 2015 Thanks for all the suggestions. Yes, the price were built to spec PCs . Happy to replace drives with SSDs, but the next question would be how long before I have to replace the motherboard anyway as may not have windows 10 drivers when I plan to roll out starting next summer. Already discovered this on some older laptops, that there isn't the drivers to support 10. Depends on what motherboard they are? I guess you can "borrow" a computer and install windows 10 and go from there.. (I think Windows 7/8.1 drivers will work on windows 10)
ICTDirect_Dave Posted September 28, 2015 Posted September 28, 2015 I've got a suite of Core2 Duo Optiplex 7010's at a school that had 250GB HDDs and 2GB RAM in them, think they are 2012 models? I've just given them another stick of 2GB RAM and a 120GB SSD for about £47 a unit and a fresh Windows 7 x64 image and the difference is literally night and day. It's amazing. Staff are convinced that they are brand new. Those Dell 7010 are way beyond core2duo! They're intel 3rd gen machines and will have ivy-bridge core i3 at least (unless you went for the god-awful pentium/celeron procs).
pow Posted September 29, 2015 Posted September 29, 2015 My bad, the classroom 780's were Core2Duos - the 7010's are ivy i3's!
PotNoodleTech Posted September 29, 2015 Posted September 29, 2015 The dell stuff is all commodity intel based hardware - I doubt you'd have any problems with Windows 10 drivers. May be a good idea to test though before you buy out on upgrades!
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