a worthy upgrade for a 3 year old computer

[emmanuelw]

I'm considering an upgrade for my 3 year old computer, something within the range of 250$ or whereabouts,
my main uses are general office jobs, watching HD movies,a little programming and working with sound files,
I am manily interested in speeding up launching of applications and general snappiness of the computing experience.

my current specs are:

GA-G41M-Combo
Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5500 @ 2.80GHz
2 Gb Ram
WDC WD5000AADS-00S9B0 ATA Device (465 GB, IDE)
Windows 7 ultimate 32 Bit

I was thinking about going for more memory and a Crucial M500 120GB ssd, would that be a worthy upgrade for my needs or I should invest first in a new mobo
and processor?

thanks a lot

- Emmanuel

 

[envy14tpe]

How about a i3 ($120), mobo ($65), and 4GB DDR3 RAM ($30)?

If you get a SSD then you have to reinstall OS and everything on the SSD. Which isn't so bad cuz it causes you to clean house a bit. It could be a great upgrade. Then wait another year for a cpu/mobo upgrade.

 

[rsmith13]

You could install a caching ssd such as Sandisk ReadyCache.
No need to reinstall os. Boot time and program start ups are much faster. Installation is brain-dead simple but requires you have a sata connector on your motherboard. The price is modest, I paid less than $50 for mine from NewEgg. I would buy again. With the price you save over that 120GB ssd, you could add 2 more gig of ram.

 

[filippi]

imho you could try this upgrade (only 4GB DDR3 for GA-G41M-Combo) :

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1AjAT
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1AjAT/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1AjAT/benchmarks/

Memory: Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($32.20 @ Adorama)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($176.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $209.19
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-05 15:24 EDT-0400)

 

[burdenbound]

I would recommend another 2GB of RAM and an SSD but I get the feeling you are still running DDR2 in which case it might not be very cost effective to do a RAM upgrade.