Help me with sufficient upgrade.

[bread4leg]

I'm interested whether upgrading my home pc will enhance my overall experience and if it will, to which point I need to upgrade that difference won't be noticeable anymore. Money isn't really an issue, although I don't want to spend it for the sake of spending.

I've got Openbox(meaning it's pretty light on resources) on Linux (not Windows) for everyday usage like internet(Chromium), a/v, photo-viewing, VM. Booting time doesn't bother me.

I browse through large number of photos using `feh` and `geeqie` for the big ones(2mb+); sometimes skimming as quickly as I can and large photos (up to 70mp) may drag heavily; copying beforehand on RAM-disk doesn't help much, so I assume it's slow CPU problem.

Chromium has lots of extensions (20+). Every time that I open new tab, speed-dial and others take 0.2-0.4s (subjectively) for the tab to be usable.

From time to time I encode video, but if it's done in 10 hours instead of 2 doesn't concern me much.

current setup:
Processor: Intel Core i3 550 @ 3.20GHz
Motherboard: MSI H55M-E33(MS-7636) v1.0
Memory: 8192MB 1333MHz
Disk: 64GB KINGSTON SV100S2 + 2000GB Western Digital WD20EARS-00M

I reiterate, I do not use Windows, so please take it into consideration. Thank you.

 

[Outlander_04]

Check your RAM usage in taskmanager .

And also the free space on your SSD

It may be hat the smartest upgrades are eliminating unnecessary programs from using RAM [ and buying more if you need to ] , and a larger capacity SSD

 

[raihan4]

What exactly is your goal if the system were to be upgraded?

 

[bread4leg]

to Outlander_04:
Most of the time more than half of RAM is free; discarding browser, memory usage rarely exceeds 1gb. SSD is about half full.

to raihan4
My goal is to make this pc to load web pages as quickly as if they weren't burdened with extensions. Also I want it work faster with big photos, so that 5-10mb JPEG-pictures would be rendered as quickly as 500kb-ones now.

 

[raihan4]

Do you plan on upgrading just the CPU or with the motherboard also (thus, going with the newer architecture, as yours is quite old)? I would suggest upgrading both, though, if budget allows.

 

[bread4leg]

As I've said at the first message - money isn't an issue, I just don't want to buy more than necessary. As long as changing MB will benefit me, I will.

 

[Outlander_04]

even a 10 Mb picture takes up only 0.01 of a gig of RAM .
Adding RAM wont help .

But a change to a more modern system with ultra fast SSD's will
You really do need to put a price on this or its as easy to spend $10K as it is to spend $1K

 

[bread4leg]

Lets say $400-800 for CPU+MB.
Other components do not really matter, since they're pretty cheap.

 

[raihan4]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($294.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus H97M-E Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($89.24 @ Amazon)
Total: $384.23
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-19 19:52 EDT-0400

This should work