Cpu vs ram vs ssd for an office laptop

[MEL1315]

Hi all, this is a general doubt I've been having for some time. I don't know which of these components should be given an extra edge for best performance. I know when it comes to gaming, cpu and ram are more important. But when it comes to casual purposes, aren't ssd's more significant? (if one limits frequent usage to that drive). So I was wondering if anyone would suggest a lower cpu (say i3) fitted with additional 4gigs ram and an ssd over a more expensive cpu? How impt is the ram upgrade from 4 to 8gigs? What are the changes that each of these components can cause and what would you suggest?

 

[cdrkf]

Hi all, this is a general doubt I've been having for some time. I don't know which of these components should be given an extra edge for best performance. I know when it comes to gaming, cpu and ram are more important. But when it comes to casual purposes, aren't ssd's more significant? (if one limits frequent usage to that drive). So I was wondering if anyone would suggest a lower cpu (say i3) fitted with additional 4gigs ram and an ssd over a more expensive cpu? How impt is the ram upgrade from 4 to 8gigs? What are the changes that each of these components can cause and what would you suggest?

Which component is most important very much depends on what it is you are doing.

Firstly- for a modern machine you really need 8gb of ram if you intend to do anything work wise with the machine. With only 4gb Windows 10 uses most of it on its own, a couple of browser tabs open and maybe a music player in the background and your at the limit. Once you hit the limit of your ram capacity that forces the machine to use the disk- and even with the fastest NVME drive you can get these are much slower than system ram.

CPU wise- if your use case is fairly casual (e.g. word processing, web browsing, playing video and so on) then a core i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 cpu should be fine. It's worth paying attention to the CPU model number with laptops as there are quite a few different classes depending on what you want- luckily Intel and AMD have followed the same convention on this which helps....
- Y series chips (e.g. Intel Core i3 7Y30) are the lowest power. These are really intended for super thin / light designs and tablets. As a result they are limited to very low power consumption which is good for battery life, but does mean they are quite a lot slower than other laptop chips. I'd personally suggest avoiding these unless you are looking for very long battery life.

- U series are the standard laptop parts offered by both AMD and Intel such as the AMD Ryzen 3 3200 U and Intel Core i3 8100 U. These run in the 10 - 15w power range so still pretty efficient but the extra headroom over the 'y' series parts means they hit higher clocks more often and are good for general use and potentially a bit of light gaming. Generally the Intel parts are a touch faster than the AMD processors in CPU related tasks, however the AMD parts have better integrated graphics than the equivalent Intel. Both are good options for general use, I would say look for the AMD parts if you want the option to do a bit of light gaming.

- H series are the high performance parts and have a much higher power limit (45 watts). These are the best option if you are looking to do intensive work with your laptop (e.g. design work, video editing or gaming). Typically only the Core i5 / Ryzen 5 and higher models are offered as 'H'.

In terms of which tier of cpu you need, I would say an i3 or r3 is a good starting point for most things. If you find a good deal on a Core i5 or Ryzen 5 they are worth a look as the '5' models typically offer turbo boost (a function not offered on the '3' tier parts) which can make them quite a bit faster. The '5' tier parts also offer better integrated graphics, and again the AMD Ryzen 5 has superior graphics power to the Intel option whilst the Core i5 is typically a bit faster in pure CPU tasks than the r5.

In terms of storage, firstly you want a machine with an SSD. HDD's are really slow by modern standards and SSD drives are now cheap enough there's not much point going HDD. The only advantage HDD has is the large storage capacity, so they do make good second drives if you have lots of music or video files that take up space but Windows and any software you install should be run from the SSD. There are typically two types of SSD available, Sata SSD and NVME SSD. NVME is the fastest option, however in most cases in real use they don't offer much real world gain over an SSD so if you are looking for value for money try and get something with a sata SSD is probably your best bet. In order to have a reasonable amount of space to install things on the machine you need at least a 250gb SSD drive as Windows 10 will fill the majority of the space on a 120gb drive.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi all, this is a general doubt I've been having for some time. I don't know which of these components should be given an extra edge for best performance. I know when it comes to gaming, cpu and ram are more important. But when it comes to casual purposes, aren't ssd's more significant? (if one limits frequent usage to that drive). So I was wondering if anyone would suggest a lower cpu (say i3) fitted with additional 4gigs ram and an ssd over a more expensive cpu? How impt is the ram upgrade from 4 to 8gigs? What are the changes that each of these components can cause and what would you suggest?

i3 or better
8GB RAM
SSD

All required.

 

[geofelt]

To my mind, a ssd is the essential component for performance.
I have replaced the hard drive in some very low spec laptops and the performance benefit is remarkable.

If the laptop has only 2gb of ram, that is needs to be 4gb or higher.
Ram is cheap, I would not buy less than 8gb.
For an office laptop, the cpu is likely irrelevant for desktop, email and browsing work.
If the laptop is used for computationally difficult work, then the processor becomes important.

Look carefully at the upgrade options on any laptop you purchase.
More ram comes at an inflated price. You may be able to upgrade ram yourself for 50% savings.

You may also have an option to buy a unit with a low performing /low capacity HDD.
That is not bad because it is easy to replace such a HDD with a samsung ssd and easily convert to the ssd.
You typically save 50% over the inflated cost of ssd upgrades.

One last thing for picking a laptop is the type of display panel.
Cheap units will have little brightness and poor quality images.
Get that right because that is one thing(along with the cpu) that you can not change.