Computer experts--CPU upgrade question

[backporchmusic]

So I have a desk top that is several years old, but over time have upgraded it with 2 1TB SSDs and 12GB RAM. I'd like a little more umph for running some stuff (Adobe items).

Is it possible (or cost effective) to simply upgrade the CPU or motherboard?

It is a Dell Inspiron 3847 (med. tower) with i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz. Anyone know the fastest, best Intel chip I could plug and play with that?

What are my options and best way forward here? Thanks, computer experts!

 

[trancedental]

Depends on the motherboard make & model, you need to find that out & download the user manual from the manufacturer. That will usually give CPU specifications & installation instructions.

You'll also have to put thermal paste on your new CPU unless it is already fitted & also check exact installation instructions.

https://techguided.com/what-motherboard-do-i-have/

 

[Stillhouse]

Looks like a 4th generation LGA1150 Intel would work. Fastest is the I7-4790K @ 4.0 - 4.4GHz.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KPRWAX8/?tag=tdpri-20

 

[buster poser]

Looks like a 4th generation LGA1150 Intel would work. Fastest is the I7-4790K @ 4.0 - 4.4GHz.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KPRWAX8/?tag=tdpri-20

I've had this processor in mine since late 2015 (it was an upgrade for me too) and it's really solid.

Assuming the pins line up, that'd be a tough upgrade to argue with.

OP, if the machine will take more than 12GB of RAM, taking it to 16GB would also give you a bit of a boost.

 

[backporchmusic]

Looks like a 4th generation LGA1150 Intel would work. Fastest is the I7-4790K @ 4.0 - 4.4GHz.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KPRWAX8/?tag=tdpri-20

At $255 new (for what is now old tech) it seems like I am halfway to a fully upgraded computer. Is there a used market for this stuff? Or am I really just facing upgrading the whole thing?

 

[Nubs]

If you're gonna use the same motherboard, then you gotta make sure you have the right chipset to pop into the CPU slot. If it's an LGA1150 as @Stillhouse alluded to, then you'll need an LGA1150 chip.

If you're replacing the mobo, then it's game on. Get whatever you want within budget and make sure your RAM is compatible too. I switched from an Intel to an AMD Ryzen CPU and have been happy with it so far.

I would suggest at least 16GB of RAM, probably should do 32.

 

[buster poser]

At $255 new (for what is now old tech) it seems like I am halfway to a fully upgraded computer. Is there a used market for this stuff? Or am I really just facing upgrading the whole thing?

Not really a great used market for processors... you might try craigslist, but my worry on used processors is that a pin will be bent. That i7 was pretty much top of the desktop line too, so you might look for something slightly less pricey than that with the same pin config.

I'm actually in the same boat right now. The box under my desk is still pretty beefy (OS on NVMe, 24GB RAM, that processor, etc), but it's been upgraded successively since 2011. It's been a hackintosh, triple-boot Linux/Win/Mac and now just runs Win10, and I think it's time to build a new one.

Neat little site if you decide to DIY or just figure out how much you're paying Dell to build it for you: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

 

[Stillhouse]

Used CPUs aren't something I would recommend either. And a quick look at eBay doesn't offer much price reduction to roll the dice versus the NIB cost. Best bet would be applying that money toward a new build. Could be done within the ballpark of $500 for a DIY build that would be newer and with easier upgradability down the road.

 

[backporchmusic]

Would a new mobo/cpu do the trick? Of course, upgrade RAM to fit new mobo...

That way I could keep drives and software and tower case?

BTW I don't do any intense gaming, just internet, adobe and DAW.

 

[Stillhouse]

Could be a tricky operation. Sometimes DELL motherboards will have a different layout of things like the power connections that could be a roadblock if the PSU cables aren't long enough to fit an aftermarket board.

 

[imwjl]

Find where your performance bottleneck is. There's a common and inane propensity for many to say add or swap or buy without knowing that. Your OS has utilities to measure CPU, memory use and I/O.

I have to buy and consider upgrades typically 2-3 to dozens at a time. Given that time and reliability are important, it's not often anymore that I do anything but memory upgrades. I apply a salvage or sale against new purchases when performance is needed.

If you want economical performance for major Adobe apps, music, and video you get a M1 Mac. The performance is crazy good and more so when you consider the price. If you get it in a laptop your battery life also jumps to a whole other league. This week I did another user move to M Mac and as an engineer and iPhone user she found even more benefits.

 

[Boreas]

Agree with @imwjl

How is your lack of oomph manifesting itself? Crashes? Slow speed? If it is just speed, you may want to consider doubling your RAM. It is pretty cheap and may do the trick. If not, then look at the motherboard and processor as your buss/processor are the likely bottleneck. But it would be best to find where the bottleneck is and open one up at a time.

Many people like UNIX operating systems. I have never tried it, but it is pretty efficient.

 

[backporchmusic]

I was rendering a video with a few innocuous browser tabs open and my CPU usage was 98-100% during the process. Memory was at 58%.

Don't want to switch operating systems (Win), just want better performance.

 

[imwjl]

Agree with @imwjl

How is your lack of oomph manifesting itself? Crashes? Slow speed? If it is just speed, you may want to consider doubling your RAM. It is pretty cheap and may do the trick. If not, then look at the motherboard and processor as your buss/processor are the likely bottleneck. But it would be best to find where the bottleneck is and open one up at a time.

Many people like UNIX operating systems. I have never tried it, but it is pretty efficient.

I was rendering a video with a few innocuous browser tabs open and my CPU usage was 98-100% during the process. Memory was at 58%.

Don't want to switch operating systems (Win), just want better performance.

In my suggestions, knowing where performance bottlenecks are is a universal matter.

Mentioning the M1 CPUs is not about a UNIX-like or based OS. Both the ARM and SOC (system on a chip) architecture are the difference. I have to be neck deep with several technologies and platforms. I have enough of these M1s deployed and one in our house to know they're simply amazing and especially for the DAW and media or browser tabs performance stuff mentioned.

Beyond that, just basic stats mean a good chance that someone has an iPhone. With a few deployments people realized they now have continuity and hand off between their phones and computers.

For the laptop deployments it depends on which Intel and age, but these associates are seeing 100% to 400% more battery life in their upgrades.

Sure there are some nice UNIX/Linux features but even up to date Windows has that now. My suggestion is just to point out a sound, photo, video and heavy user will get a huge boost. They perform like systems that used to cost much more.

 

[Boreas]

I was rendering a video with a few innocuous browser tabs open and my CPU usage was 98-100% during the process. Memory was at 58%.

Don't want to switch operating systems (Win), just want better performance.

When I am dealing with heavy video or even audio editing, I make it a point to switch off automatic backup, anti-virus, updates, and other storage/memory/CPU hogs. If you don't already, you may want to try it. I use Task Manager frequently to assess what is taxing my resources and where. I was finding that while editing, my CPU was bouncing around only to find that a backup program was trying to keep my computer backed-up in REAL TIME which was eating resources. It may help, it may not.

You can also get some benefit to investigating/optimizing your SSHDs for faster read/write. Usually, they are pretty-well optimized to begin with, but it won't hurt to check.

What does Adobe recommend for hardware and settings to optimize use of its video programs?

 

[Telekarster]

I was rendering a video with a few innocuous browser tabs open and my CPU usage was 98-100% during the process. Memory was at 58%.

Don't want to switch operating systems (Win), just want better performance.

I think what you really need to do is find out what's bogging down you PC, which sounds more like a software than hardware situation to me. There's a lot of tools out there to help with this but, unless you're comfortable running said diagnostics and troubleshooting, my advice would be to take it to a local PC tech with a good rep in your area, and let him/them deal with it. My buddy just did this, improved is 12 yo laptop emmensely, and it only cost him like 50 bucks and 1 day of down time. In his case, he had a bunch of apps on there that were simply not needed and resource hogs, plus some game app BS his daughter loaded onto it years ago, and over time it simply became too much for his old PC vs. Win10 upgrade etc. etc. 50 bucks and problems were solved. I think they even threw in some used, but better, RAM for him for free...

 

[magicfingers99]

So I have a desk top that is several years old, but over time have upgraded it with 2 1TB SSDs and 12GB RAM. I'd like a little more umph for running some stuff (Adobe items).

Is it possible (or cost effective) to simply upgrade the CPU or motherboard?

It is a Dell Inspiron 3847 (med. tower) with i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz. Anyone know the fastest, best Intel chip I could plug and play with that?

What are my options and best way forward here? Thanks, computer experts!

are you running the Adobe stuff locally on your machine or over the internet? if its locally as in you own the program and not a subscription from adobe.com, you should be looking at your processes to see what background tasks are using up your resources.

I'm assuming you are running windows, if your machine supports it, I recommend windows 7, it less resource heavy than windows 10. You should install the windows tools to manage your machine.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/
The process explorer program and the Autoruns are very valuable in verifying what services and applications are running, how they are starting, and what resources they are consumming. you can use process explorer to change the priority of running tasks as well as the number of cpus (cores) they have available. I find moving some processes to a single core (like firefox) and dropping its priority to below normal actually makes it run better and my entire machine run better.

an I-5 will do most things well, the difference between an i-5 and i-7 aren't worth the extra money for most users. I have both and can barely tell the difference performance wise.

turn off autoupdating on any programs, cause they have no way of knowing what other programs are doing and they will frequently all try to do updates at the same time, jamming up the works.

if you aren't using your computer on the internet. delete any antivirus programs, that will give you a lot of extra performance. If you are using an antivirus, make sure you only have one program installed and running. you'd be surprised how many times I found computers where the user had installed 3 or 4 av programs and they were fighting each other and drawing the system way down.

I don't know how full your ssd's are, but if you fill them too full, you may have performance issues. Also insufficient cooling will cause your cpu to bog down. so make sure your heatsinks and fans aren't full of dust (which is a great insulator, and you don't want a great insulator on a heat sink)

you should also consider what kind of use is your ssd getting - are you writing a lot of large blocks of data like video files? than you need an ssd that has chips and controller built to do large writes. check out the reviews and comparison of ssd's they have come a long way and vary alot by manufacturer.

lastly check you system logs and make sure you don't have programs/processes failing and restarting and burning up your cpu cycles.

you may need to replace your ssd with something newer and bigger. but first try turning off all the services you don't need like fax and telephony and modem etc. background indexing, automatic backups, etc. - learn to do manual backups once a week if that works for you, it will save a sh*t ton of system resources.

many people find reinstalling windows speeds up their computer significantly. if you image the drive after you have installed windows and all your favorite programs, its very easy to just restore or clone it to a new drive when the ssd fails or becomes terribly slow... Macrium Reflect is a favorite of mine, but there are lots of others on the market.

 

[magicfingers99]

I was rendering a video with a few innocuous browser tabs open and my CPU usage was 98-100% during the process. Memory was at 58%.

Don't want to switch operating systems (Win), just want better performance.

better to have 2 machines - one for online and one for offline use. get a cheap 100 notebook for web browsing, and use your current machine for video rendering. - then you can optimize it for doing that well. and not have to compete with your browser (every web page you load, is loading data in the background (cache) as well as connecting to dozens if not hundreds of web sites to transfer cookies and analytics and cohorts as well as things like google ads, and google fonts and lots of other crap) - its easy for a browser to max out your cpu. I've had it lock up my systems where I had to kill the tasks

download those windows sysinternals tools I linked in another message, and run process explorer and TCPview

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/tcpview

it will show you all the ports and addresses your browser is using, you will be blown away by all the traffic going on inside your machine.

 

[richa]

I would look at memory and disk first. What's the max memory your mobile supports. You mentioned SSD. Do you still have a HDD and if so is your virtual memory cache going to that. If so point it to the SSD. Swapping cpu is often not that helpful because alot of the biggest performance impact comes from how fast data can be moved around and that is more to do with mobo architecture. So weigh the cost of adding memory (that you might not be able to carry forward to new mobo) against a new mobo with maxed out memory.

 

[telleutelleme]

If you are using onboard video, consider adding a video card with its own memory and disable the onboard video. If you are doing lots of audio, same thing.

MY order for upgrades for a desktop:

SSD, extra internal drive, memory, reduce buss load (onboard chips like video and audio) then CPU. Finally new motherboard if other than a Dell (too much dell standard stuff).