Old Computer/ Whether to Put in SSD

hi advice needed please old . computer amd 5300 with asus a85xm-a motherboard .4gb ram 500gb hd. is it worth it to stick in an ssd in computer to speed up boot times etc, would like to keep this computer as i have 464gb left on hd only use for web browsing / youtube . i dont know whether these figures are irrevelent or not with what i was thinking of doing. if you say go ssd whats the best favourable way thanks


  • +7 votes

    Yes it is. I am running amd phenom II and putting in a SSD a couple years ago gave my computer new life! Performance is so much faster (not just booting up). It's a cheaper upgrade since you can get a SSD for less than $100.

  • +6 votes

    It would solve the boot times, however web page rendering times are CPU dependant, and so is youtube video playback.

    SSD upgrades are never wasted — if you're not happy with the performance still or if the computer dies due to some other failure, the SSD can be installed on a newer system as they're all SATA based.

    The sweet spot for a SSD is usually 500 GB's — expect to pay around $60~80 dollars for one,
    1TB models typically go for at least $120

    SSD's come in two different form factors. 2.5 inch and M.2.

    The version you want is the 2.5" form factor as it's likely your old motherboard doesn't have a M.2 slot.

    Best to stick with known brands like Samsung, Crucial, Kingston, Sandisk, Seagate and Western Digital, don't buy the weird no-names. They may be cheaper by a very tiny bit but they cut all sorts of corners to achieve a low price, and quite often they do a lot worse than a branded product.

    • +1 vote

      On old computers an aging hard drive can make loading websites/youtube painfully slow, SSD will definitely speed it up to some extent. The biggest struggle is no hardware decoding of youtube videos on those old CPUs so the CPU usage will be very high and might even have some stutter on 720p videos.


    Grab a cheap 500GB SSD with the only proviso that it includes DRAM to speed it up. The brand does not matter for what you are going to use it for IMHO.

  • +4 votes

    asus a85xm-a motherboard

    SATA2 ports. Most SSDs DRAM cache or no cache will reach close to those speeds on read. You hardly write.

    4gb ram 500gb hd

    RAM might be an issue. Upgrade to 8gb if you can. What OS are you using?


    You basically have only your operating system on there. SSD is good for instant read speed. I doubt you care about write speed.


    +4gb of DDR3 ram would help. Only 2x DIMM slots, if they are both occupied then you might go and buy a second hand 8gb cheap ($30).
    +120gb SSD (BX500 is around $32) and plug the HDD into second SATA port for storage. Since you have only used 40gb I doubt you need a big HDD

  • +1 vote

    The 2 biggest and only upgrades you can really do is the ssd and ram.


    It's criminal to not have a ssd these days.


      Depends on your user case. SSDs fail catastrophically so if you're depending on a single drive then you have to keep backups or be prepared to say bye bye to your entire setup without warning.


    I put a 2.5" 500gb SSD in a laptop about 8 years ago when they were pretty expensive, that, in combination with a ram upgrade gave it three extra years of life.

    That SSD has then gone in to another laptop, into an external case and used as a portable USB3.0 drive and now in to the gaming rig for the steam library, so they are a good investment in that regard.


    Get a Crucial MX500 250GB or 500GB or a Western Digital Blue 250gb/500gb SSD

    Centrecom or Amazon Australia usually the cheapest places to get them.

    Avoid the other budget SSDs as they don't have a dram cache and are less reliable/slow for the small difference you are paying.


    Yes, even a cheapo 120GB SSD will do wonders for an old computer

  • +2 votes

    Yes. And once you put in SSD, there is no going back.


    Honestly, no. IMO it's past the point of investing more into it.

    My suggestion would be to buy one of the ex-corporate HP or Dell machines that come around for less than $200 - it'll have double the RAM, an SSD already, and a much more recent processor.

    You'll be able to drop in your old HDD as a secondary as well, for that extra storage bump.


    Just do it. I look after a few oldies who just use their PC's for email and FB and once they get a bit old (the PC's) it's not worth them spending the money to buy a whole new PC so I've been having great success with putting in SSD's. Also, if your PC dies at some point you can get the ssd out of it and put in into your new one.