Question Acer AR5B22 running super slow

May 8, 2019
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Hello all - first time poster here, just signed up.

First of all, please forgive me as I'm not very technical when it comes to computers.

I have an Acer AR5B22 desktop. It's been pretty good to me over the years but has become increasing slow after having to get a new hard drive, they also removed a stick of RAM at the computer repair place. So you should know that I'm only running with 6gb of ram.

I don't do anything crazy with this pc, no gaming or anything...the most this computer sees is google chrome with about 10 tabs open at times, and maybe some photoshop from time to time. I'm not a super "heavy" user.

The guy at the computer repair store a couple years ago (when I got my hard drive replaced) basically said I have a POS that was gift wrapped and charged a premium price for at the department store.

Now fast forward to current time - this PC is slowing down pretty bad, actually really, really bad...

Often times I open task manager when it's stalling and it shows over 90% cpu / memory usage. So I guess to get to my question...

What's the most cost effective way to fix this? Should I just get more ram sticks and install them? Or get a whole new computer? I'd rather go the cheaper route, but only if it will last. I'm really not sure what quality of computer I ended up with and don't want to be upgrading a turd so to speak.

I've read that a SSD and RAM will fix what seems to be my issues - but like I said, I know nothing about this kind of stuff..

Was hoping some knowledgeable members here would chime in and guide me in the right direction.

Here are my specs:

windows 8.1
i7-377U CPU @ 3.40 Ghz
6.00GB installed RAM
64 bit OS

EDIT: I have bitdefender, malware bytes, cc cleaner, & driver easy installed and have run all of them, removing any malware, disk defrag, and installing updated drivers.

Should I start looking for a new machine or is this worth upgrading? If so, what would you all recommend I upgrade?