New year... new upgrades?

[cpd2009]

It's not even the 1st of December yet, but I'm looking forward at my plans for 2019. Prepare for another long post...

I'm currently thinking over plans to either upgrade or replace Greta. I have had a chance to use her over the weekend during my Thanksgiving mini-vacation. Basic things like web browsing or text documents are still no problem for her. I do notice her old Pentium B960 may be getting a bit outdated for some of my Steam games. The games do take a bit of time to load compared to Pearl. Should this be expected though? The Pentium B960 is clearly an entry level CPU from 2012, and I'm surprised she is still capable of even basic tasks with Windows 8.1. Her old GeForce 610m is also very capable of playing my Steam games on low to medium settings.

I'd rather have Greta on Windows 10, but as I mentioned before, that OS is extremely taxing on her hardware. Windows 8.1 is much faster but is far more clunky in design. 

If I were to replace Greta's old HDD with a modern SSD, would that be enough to run Windows 10 without any slowness, or will the B960 be a potential bottleneck? Given her age, would it be more advisable to replace Greta with a modern laptop that can run Windows 10 from the get-go?

I also plan to upgrade Pearl in steps. I'm starting to discover that she may need a slightly beefier CPU and/or GPU for video recording tasks. As it stands, recording video is mostly flawless, but there are small moments in the recorded videos where obvious frame-dropping can be seen. Since I mostly record TV stuff, the frame dropping is a minor nitpick, but I'd rather have the video as smooth as possible. I don't know if I need to either upgrade the CPU or the GPU. Movavi uses hardware acceleration for recording and displaying the video preview from what I can tell. I want to upgrade the RAM first since it won't take me long to save money for another stick of 8gb RAM. That will make the board run in dual-channel mode, so would simply installing another RAM stick improve performance alone?

If I do need to upgrade the GPU, I would like a GTX 1070 and an upgraded Corsair PSU to match. A GTX 1070 would seem overkill to someone like me, but if I ever want to play Super Lucky's Tale on max settings, I'll need that. 

The question is.. will I need to upgrade the CPU, RAM and GPU? Or will just one of these being upgraded improve things alone?

There is also the matter of Pearl's HDD. Her HDD is quite old, being the 500gb disk from Audrey, who I purchased in 2012. So far it doesn't seem to have problems, but the older the drive gets, the possibility of failure increases. Whenever I do need to replace it, I will get an 1TB SSD, despite being very expensive. What color of SSD should I go for? Western Digital has various different kinds of SSDs, such as Blue, Black, and Green.

And finally, perhaps an unnecessary upgrade... getting a BluRay burner. BD-R discs are a bit on the spendy side, but backing up photos to disc is a bit tedious since I only have a DVD writer.

[huckleberrypie]

Given Super Lucky's graphics, a GTX 1060 6GB should suffice. A 1070 sounds overkill knowing your use case, but it's your call if you plan to futureproof things. You might as well upgrade the CPU as well since the Core i3-6100 would eventually bottleneck in some of the more demanding titles or if you do need to encode them retro commercials and such.

In the case of one of my former classmates, he settled for a Ryzen 7 2700 and a GTX 1060 afaik. He does have quite a budget so I gave him the best specs he could muster.

[cpd2009]

Given Super Lucky's graphics, a GTX 1060 6GB should suffice. A 1070 sounds overkill knowing your use case, but it's your call if you plan to futureproof things. You might as well upgrade the CPU as well since the Core i3-6100 would eventually bottleneck in some of the more demanding titles or if you do need to encode them retro commercials and such.

In the case of one of my former classmates, he settled for a Ryzen 7 2700 and a GTX 1060 afaik. He does have quite a budget so I gave him the best specs he could muster.

What about the laptop? I'm on the fence about just upgrading her to an SSD or going for an all new laptop. Her RAM is maxed out at 8gb.

A 1070 is indeed overkill. but not as overkill as a Titan X.   In all seriousness, a 1070 would indeed futureproof stuff. It all comes down to how much I'm willing to spend.

The bit about the Ryzen reminded me of something. My mom insists that she doesn't need a new computer. I was able to do a bit of maintenance on it, and while it is indeed slow, it's not horrendously slow to inhibit general use. If I were to upgrade anything, it would be the RAM. I ended up updating some software and removing unused games and such. I also ran Defraggler on the HDD.

[huckleberrypie]

What about the laptop? I'm on the fence about just upgrading her to an SSD or going for an all new laptop. Her RAM is maxed out at 8gb.

A 1070 is indeed overkill. but not as overkill as a Titan X.   In all seriousness, a 1070 would indeed futureproof stuff. It all comes down to how much I'm willing to spend.

The bit about the Ryzen reminded me of something. My mom insists that she doesn't need a new computer. I was able to do a bit of maintenance on it, and while it is indeed slow, it's not horrendously slow to inhibit general use. If I were to upgrade anything, it would be the RAM. I ended up updating some software and removing unused games and such. I also ran Defraggler on the HDD.

I presume you're only after basic web browsing on the laptop, yes? An SSD would give it some more oomph, that is certain.

[cpd2009]

What about the laptop? I'm on the fence about just upgrading her to an SSD or going for an all new laptop. Her RAM is maxed out at 8gb.

A 1070 is indeed overkill. but not as overkill as a Titan X.   In all seriousness, a 1070 would indeed futureproof stuff. It all comes down to how much I'm willing to spend.

The bit about the Ryzen reminded me of something. My mom insists that she doesn't need a new computer. I was able to do a bit of maintenance on it, and while it is indeed slow, it's not horrendously slow to inhibit general use. If I were to upgrade anything, it would be the RAM. I ended up updating some software and removing unused games and such. I also ran Defraggler on the HDD.

I presume you're only after basic web browsing on the laptop, yes? An SSD would give it some more oomph, that is certain.

Exactly. The only gaming I do on Greta is very basic casual stuff since I usually game on my 3DS.

Other than the SSD, she also needs a new battery pack. I may focus on the battery first as Acer still sells them for the Gateway NV57H models, and who knows how long they will keep those in stock. As for SSD, something like a budget WD Blue would work. Given how lightly Greta gets used, a big amount of storage isn't necessary so anything from 250GB to 500GB will suffice.

Later on, I will add up costs of the proposed upgrades to both my PCs and post the results here.

[huckleberrypie]

What about the laptop? I'm on the fence about just upgrading her to an SSD or going for an all new laptop. Her RAM is maxed out at 8gb.

A 1070 is indeed overkill. but not as overkill as a Titan X.   In all seriousness, a 1070 would indeed futureproof stuff. It all comes down to how much I'm willing to spend.

The bit about the Ryzen reminded me of something. My mom insists that she doesn't need a new computer. I was able to do a bit of maintenance on it, and while it is indeed slow, it's not horrendously slow to inhibit general use. If I were to upgrade anything, it would be the RAM. I ended up updating some software and removing unused games and such. I also ran Defraggler on the HDD.

I presume you're only after basic web browsing on the laptop, yes? An SSD would give it some more oomph, that is certain.

Exactly. The only gaming I do on Greta is very basic casual stuff since I usually game on my 3DS.

Other than the SSD, she also needs a new battery pack. I may focus on the battery first as Acer still sells them for the Gateway NV57H models, and who knows how long they will keep those in stock. As for SSD, something like a budget WD Blue would work. Given how lightly Greta gets used, a big amount of storage isn't necessary so anything from 250GB to 500GB will suffice.

Later on, I will add up costs of the proposed upgrades to both my PCs and post the results here.

Good call on the battery, though I hope if they're new old stock they still hold their charge well.

And let me know how the upgrade budget goes too.