Wait, OP, what suddenly changed? None of the applications you described (even photo organization) would even use the GPU, much less require one.
They are not general-purpose performance enhancers the way that RAM or even CPUs are. Software has to be specially written to use the GPU, and most are not. Excel, your browser, Quicken, and your photo organization software will not benefit from it.
If you’re not gaming or doing video encoding or similar things, the GPU won’t even get used. Windows can use it for UI transparency etc., but it doesn’t need to, and any integrated graphics that come with your CPU is way more than adequate for this and has been for two decades.
OP, there is no reason to get a GPU for your described uses. It is just one more point of failure, both in hardware (fans, connections, etc.) and in software (GPU switching between integrated and dedicated can occasionally be buggy, especially when you need to update drivers or OS versions).
It is wasted money. It will not (and cannot) magically enhance systemwide performance. Only get one if you’re gaming or working with video editing/encoding frequently.
This is a great idea, if you have such a local shop around you.
The Powerspecs from Microcenter I mentioned earlier are similar. Barebones but nice computers at very good values. (Edit: I mean this in terms of the lack of preloaded software/crapware. They are not refurbished. Sorry for the ambiguity.)
OP, if you don’t have such a store near you, you can also buy any off the shelf PC and just refresh your Windows: Give your PC a Fresh Start - Microsoft Support. It’ll do mostly the same thing.
If you have this option I’d take it. They use good components and they build them right there on-site; you can probably talk to the person who actually put it together.
I just sent a message to a local computer shop. They have an online config that’s almost exactly what I set in my OP. I’m waiting to hear back from them.
This may be redundant but in a similar situation the free version of the software CCleaner can help delete all the shit that fills your drive. Windows updates whose source files don’t get deleted are a major culprit, but lots of software does not properly clean up after itself.
It is nagware, it will ask for a license fee, but it is free to use forever with that nag screen - long enough to clean up.
I paid for it when I used Windows. I believe there is a Mac version but i’ve not seen the need yet on my Mac.
It has a few other really nice functions but your mileage is really going to vary depending on your skillset and needs.
That sounds odd. Just having a lot of junk on your disk won’t cause high disk traffic.
Have you looked in task manager to see which process(es) are causing that disk traffic?
Smells like a virus, or at best, some sort of rogue application.
The disk usage in the task manager – which I assume the OP meant, because otherwise their storage shouldn’t fluctuate up and down – shows disk activity (how busy it is), not storage used (how full it is).
Even if the disk has plenty of space left, a disk-heavy app or OS memory swapping (when your RAM is depleted and it has to offload some data to the hard disk temporarily) can fully saturate its read/write capabilities, especially on a older mechanical hard disk drive where it has to physically spin the mechanical platter to different places in order to fetch data stored there. Modern solid-state disks have no moving parts and can be 10x-100x faster in that regard.
Exactly what I just said. If you’re not running any applications, the disk traffic should be close to zero.
Close everything (browser, media player etc) and just bring up task manager as the only app running. Then see what it shows as the the originator of the disk activity.
If you still have a lot of disk traffic, there is something on your system that shouldn’t be there.
It did enable me to install Windows 11 on a VM, which is still working fine… I mean, if you were considering scrapping a computer, you have nothing to lose by installing it.
I have done that multiple times. It usually shows 0% or slightly above.
But when I open an app, even Chrome with just one open tab, it will jump to 100%. And Task Manager will show Chrome using perhaps 5-8%, and the other system apps might add up to another 2%. How it’s getting to 100% is beyond me. As mentioned above, it may be a physical issue with the hard drive.
I’ve put up with it for several months, and I’m going to replace it, dammit!
I’ve bought Dells for decades but if there’s a good, competent local shop, you’re probably better off buying from them. They can customize as you need and will be easier to get support from than a giant corporation.
(I wanted to buy my last computer from a local shop but they seem to be rarer these days.)
Interesting. Have you scanned through the list of processes to see if there is anything else showing high disk usage? You can click on the disk column to sort by disk usage, by the way (the default being CPU).
If nothing else shows up in task manager… hmm… begins to sound like some sort of malware?
Have you done a scan with something like Malwarebytes?
Though it could be a hardware problem with the disk, as you say.
I’m sure you know you can just find a drop-in SSD replacement for that HDD, but given what you said (you don’t want to tinker with it on your own, and plus it’s 7 years old anyway)… yeah, you’ll probably see a big performance and reliability boost across the board with a whole new (or even just new-to-you) system.
But of course then you have to mess with making a bootable copy of your system drive, physically replacing it, and possibly tinkering with the BIOS to set the new one as boot drive.
My own main system has an SSD system drive, and I’m a bit unhappy to see that its ‘remaining life’ is already down to 93%. SSDs are great for speed, but cheaper ones… don’t give me a lot of confidence.
You could do it. I could do it. But the 80-year old women I support for my writer’s group had to be slowly introduced to Zoom. No way.
My wife who is brilliant in biology and writing but awful in tech could never do it by herself either.
Geeky question. When I worked for Intel I tried to figure out the reliability of consumer processors, and found there was no data (almost 30 years ago.) If repair shops fix a machine by tossing and replacing the mother board, I suspect the information would never get back to Intel. When I worked for Sun we were doing high end highly reliable servers, and I knew exactly the reliability. (Reporting it to our exec VP was one of my jobs.)
You can estimate it by tracking early life failures, but there are issues about that - I have a paper on that. And the predictions by the reliability guys never quite matched reality. Reality was better, I’m happy to say.
When this was happening to me I found a bunch of Windows processes that were using a lot of disk. I wonder how much memory they have - the root cause of my problem was that the machine was swapping itself to death. Problem totally went away with 32 Gig of memory. (I had 6 or 8 in my old machine.)