Have a decent rig, just outdated hard drive. (I think)

[Lukey9999999]

Hi tomshardware! I've had a GTX 1070, i7 4790k and B85M-G for a while now. (About two years) And, I've noticed my computer has gradually started to slow down on gaming and desktop use. I have a feeling that it is mainly my hard drive because that is the only thing that I have not upgraded. I just built off of a pre-built so I'm pretty sure it's just a 2TB toshiba. I was thinking about upgrading to a SSD but the only issue is neither my PSU or mobo (no m2 slot i think) are compatible. What should I do? Upgrade my PSU or replace my mobo? Thanks.

 

[theonerm2]

Maybe it's your cooler not allowing your CPU to get up to speed as far as the gaming goes? What's your case like? Does it have good airflow or is it closed up? If you don't have the best airflow then the heat from your graphics card is likely filling your case and overheating your other components. You should get a SATA SSD. That will help with Windows being slow. As far as the games being slow heat is the only thing I can think of that would make it slow on a hardware level. On a software level there are viruses and other malware that can cause it. In fact there are cryptocurrency mining Trojans that can slow your system to a crawl as far as gaming goes. CPU's don't gradually slow down with age unless abused. They will run the same software that they came out with the same today as when it came out. Keep in mind though I'm not accounting for updates which can either cause a game to run faster or slower than it ran upon release. Newer software will tend to run slower and slower with each new release and it will continue to get slower until you can't run it acceptably on your old CPU. Because your CPU at the time it was released was top of the line for gaming it's only just now that games are really starting to take advantage of it properly. It will be years and years before your CPU can't run the latest games anymore at acceptable frame rates. Even if you had a Core i5 4690K it would still run games at an acceptable level for a few years to come. Sure, it would be slower than the i7 but 30-60fps would certainly be attainable for a few years down the line. 30-60fps is the acceptable to good range. With 30 fps being acceptable and 60 fps being good.

 

[Karadjgne]

So you are stating that your psu is so old that it does not have a single Sata power connection?

A regular Sata3 SSD uses a Sata power connection and a Sata data connection. Your mobo for sure has a Sata port, it'll have 4-8 of them.

An m.2 Sata ssd is the same as a standalone Sata ssd, the only difference being a m.2 plugs directly into the mobo, a regular ssd uses Sata cables.

Having a 2Tb hdd, you have Sata power, the older IDE power connections were discontinued long before drives of that size existed.

So not entirely sure why you feel an upgraded storage device is not compatible with either the psu or the mobo, since the necessary connectors already exist in your pc.

As far as slowdowns, it's doubtful you've filled up a 2Tb hdd, that's honestly a massive amount of storage, but it's also highly doubtful it's a 2Tb drive in a 2yr old pre-built, they mostly used 500Gb or 1Tb hdds as back then 2Tb drives were still considerably expensive.

The slowdowns are more than likely software based, multiple useless started services/processes, hdd that could use a good optimization, registry packed with orphans from uninstalled programs, caches bogged down with extensive temp files etc.

I'd start out with Ccleaner from piriform.com, analyze and run the cleaner a few times, use the default registry tool (yes save a copy) to clean that out, Defrag the hdd, use speccy (also from piriform.com) to check local temps (most should be between 30-40°C), do a general good dusting and cleaning of the pc (drag it outside and blow it out with compressed air can, especially fans and heatsinks).

Once cleaned, (inside and out), then check for speeds. You have a pc that's several years old, you might require a visit to the mobo's original site to install updated motherboard drivers, especially audio and Lan, since windows itself has had several major updates that can and will affect older, legacy drivers and create issues. For newest possible audio drivers you might need to go visit Realtek website if the audio drivers at the mobo website are dated.

Regular pc maintenance is a requirement for a healthy pc.

 

[Lukey9999999]

So you are stating that your psu is so old that it does not have a single Sata power connection?

A regular Sata3 SSD uses a Sata power connection and a Sata data connection. Your mobo for sure has a Sata port, it'll have 4-8 of them.

An m.2 Sata ssd is the same as a standalone Sata ssd, the only difference being a m.2 plugs directly into the mobo, a regular ssd uses Sata cables.

Having a 2Tb hdd, you have Sata power, the older IDE power connections were discontinued long before drives of that size existed.

So not entirely sure why you feel an upgraded storage device is not compatible with either the psu or the mobo, since the necessary connectors already exist in your pc.

As far as slowdowns, it's doubtful you've filled up a 2Tb hdd, that's honestly a massive amount of storage, but it's also highly doubtful it's a 2Tb drive in a 2yr old pre-built, they mostly used 500Gb or 1Tb hdds as back then 2Tb drives were still considerably expensive.

The slowdowns are more than likely software based, multiple useless started services/processes, hdd that could use a good optimization, registry packed with orphans from uninstalled programs, caches bogged down with extensive temp files etc.

I'd start out with Ccleaner from piriform.com, analyze and run the cleaner a few times, use the default registry tool (yes save a copy) to clean that out, Defrag the hdd, use speccy (also from piriform.com) to check local temps (most should be between 30-40°C), do a general good dusting and cleaning of the pc (drag it outside and blow it out with compressed air can, especially fans and heatsinks).

Once cleaned, (inside and out), then check for speeds. You have a pc that's several years old, you might require a visit to the mobo's original site to install updated motherboard drivers, especially audio and Lan, since windows itself has had several major updates that can and will affect older, legacy drivers and create issues. For newest possible audio drivers you might need to go visit Realtek website if the audio drivers at the mobo website are dated.

Regular pc maintenance is a requirement for a healthy pc.

The prebuilt is about 7 years old. I am going to clean my PC using ccleaner and with maybe some compressed air. Thanks for your well put response!

 

[Lukey9999999]

Maybe it's your cooler not allowing your CPU to get up to speed as far as the gaming goes? What's your case like? Does it have good airflow or is it closed up? If you don't have the best airflow then the heat from your graphics card is likely filling your case and overheating your other components. You should get a SATA SSD. That will help with Windows being slow. As far as the games being slow heat is the only thing I can think of that would make it slow on a hardware level. On a software level there are viruses and other malware that can cause it. In fact there are cryptocurrency mining Trojans that can slow your system to a crawl as far as gaming goes. CPU's don't gradually slow down with age unless abused. They will run the same software that they came out with the same today as when it came out. Keep in mind though I'm not accounting for updates which can either cause a game to run faster or slower than it ran upon release. Newer software will tend to run slower and slower with each new release and it will continue to get slower until you can't run it acceptably on your old CPU. Because your CPU at the time it was released was top of the line for gaming it's only just now that games are really starting to take advantage of it properly. It will be years and years before your CPU can't run the latest games anymore at acceptable frame rates. Even if you had a Core i5 4690K it would still run games at an acceptable level for a few years to come. Sure, it would be slower than the i7 but 30-60fps would certainly be attainable for a few years down the line. 30-60fps is the acceptable to good range. With 30 fps being acceptable and 60 fps being good.

I think my CPU is fine, I just think my hard drive is worn. I don't know for sure though because I'm not a expert at this sort of thing. I am going to take the advice i've been given and clean my PC, thanks

 

[Karadjgne]

Age doesn't affect speed on a hdd until it wears out. It'll run as good at 7yrs old as I'd did new, up to the point where sectors start going bad, and that'll cause data errors, crashes, missing data etc. It's kinda like wearing wellington boots, they are waterproof for their life until they spring a hole, no matter how worn out they are. What does affect speeds is just how much junk a pc will accumulate, leftovers, orphans, temp stuff etc and that will slow a pc down trying to figure out just where everything is.

Simply, a hdd is a spinning disk with an armature, like an old vinyl record on a player. If the drive is seriously fragmented that arm will be bouncing all over the place trying to recover data. A good Defrag puts everything back in order, so windows is in one spot, a game in another etc not split up in a hundred different areas. The pc will try and save data as close to the middle as it can, so fills in different spots as they become available, separating the big folders into individual files. Defrag puts all the folders back together, reducing the search times, read times etc speeding things up.