Slow Acer Desktop PC

[Zahid Makda]

I have an:

Acer XC-603 Mini Tower

Intel Celeron CPU J1900 @ 1.99GHz
2GB RAM
64-bit processor
500 GB Hard Drive
Intel HD Graphics (onboard)

it runs very slow with windows 10

any suggestions on how i can sped it up? should i add more RAM? or upgrade my processor?

any suggestions please

thanks
regard Zahid

 

[Paul NZ]

Is this it?

If it is, it looks like it can support up to 8 GB

The prob may not be the ram, it maybe the CPU

 

[WildCard999]

Budget for upgrades? First thing to come to mind would be putting in a SSD which should speed up the system considerably.

 

[GrowTFM]

That Celeron is really slow. If you have 64-bit os 2gb is really not enough. You also should get an SSD that will speed things up alot even with basic tasks.

 

[rhysiam]

Those Celeron J1900 CPUs are soldered - so can't be upgraded AND are a 10W atom CPU. They're really tablet processors, not desktops.

Yes, you could put more RAM in which might help a little.
Yes, you could add an SSD which might help a little.

BUT, in the end of the day you're stuck with a dog-slow atom CPU which will never be fast. I think you'll just be throwing money at a "solution" which - at BEST - might make the computer barely usable.

What's your upgrade budget here? Ex-lease computers with an OS and 4GB of RAM or more can be picked up off ebay for pretty cheap (like $100-$200). Throw an SSD in there if you budget allows (maybe $80 more) and you'd have a very competent little office machine. I realise that's probably more money than you're looking to spend, but at least it's going towards something that will give you a solid long term solution and a machine that you can work on happily (hopefully!) for a good few years.

 

[Zahid Makda]

thanks to all for your suggestions.

would it be worth downgrading to windows 7 then? would that help in anyway?

 

[rhysiam]

thanks to all for your suggestions.

would it be worth downgrading to windows 7 then? would that help in anyway?

Not really. Win 10 isn't particularly worse from a resource point of view.

It all depends what you expect out of the machine. If you're prepared to be very patient, then it should function as a word processor and basic web browser. You'll just need to be patient.

Just to be clear, I don't really have a big issue with the machine itself, it's just putting money into it that seems wasteful to me. If it has a free RAM slot (it's probably SO-DIMM - laptop memory, but check) and you can find a compatible DIMM on the cheap, that might help. It's just that you only need like $100 to pick up a second hand machine that's much better.

 

[Zahid Makda]

thanks again for your answer.

ive seen this desktop on ebay.
could someone please help me out and let me know if it is any good for web browsing and document editing...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/182124926809?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

[GrowTFM]

thanks again for your answer.

ive seen this desktop on ebay.
could someone please help me out and let me know if it is any good for web browsing and document editing...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/182124926809?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Well it crushes basic tasks.

 

[Zahid Makda]

is it better than what i currently have? as in, is the processor better and quicker? sorry for being so ignorant...

 

[GrowTFM]

is it better than what i currently have? as in, is the processor better and quicker? sorry for being so ignorant...

well its not a huge going from celeron to pentium but you can always go with those dells with i3s

 

[rhysiam]

Can you stretch to something like this for a hundred quid? http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ACER-VERITON-X275-DUAL-CORE-PC-2-80GHz-320GB-2GB-WINDOWS-7-PRO-WARRANTY-/182124926809?rmvSB=true

Or even this with 8GB RAM for 120GBP: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-UltraSlim-Desktop-i5-64bit-3470s-8GB-160GB-Win-8-Pro-2-9ghz-/162433436419?hash=item25d1c98b03:g:SBUAAOSwsW9YymJZ

The one you suggested has only 2GB RAM, and an older/slower CPU.

I didn't realise you were in the UK, as prices seem quite a bit higher there. You could buy the cheaper one and upgrade the RAM, but again, you're throwing money at a really outdated machine. If you can stretch to an Sandy Bridge (2xxx) or Ivy Bridge (3xxx) CPU, then you'd be on a relatively modern quad core Intel platform which should last you a good few years. If you can throw a cheap SSD in there either now, or in future when the budget permits it, you'd have an extremely capable little work machine.

BTW - seeing as you never clarified what you're using the computer for, I'm basing these recommendations on the assumption that this is just an Office/Internet browsing machine.