Looking to Upgrade on a Small Budget

[bcfan25]

Hi there,

I've been wanting to upgrade my iMac (Mid 2007 20") for a while now and have never gotten around to it. The main reason is to bolster the speed as it's been having a lot of speed issues as of late (freezing up and moving extremely slow.) It's always been a hassle trying to play the Sims 3 on it but I refuse to get a PC for gaming when it's really just the one game (possibly more in the future, but I'm a 360 owner not a hardcore PC gamer.) What I've been told is that the most important thing to upgrade is the RAM. I already have found a replacement and that's the Kingston 4GB (2x2GB Modules) 667 MHz DDR2 SoDimm iMac Kit.

Current Status:
2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT

Now is there anything else I should/could update to help improve the overall performance as well as the gaming experience. As I'm sure some if not most of you know (especially the gamers) that the Sims will kill a computer such as mine as is when running at full capacity.

 

[miles01110]

A RAM upgrade will get you the best performance boost per dollar.

 

[bcfan25]

Thanks for the advice. That's the first thing I'm getting on top of. 4GB for $55 is a nice cheap upgrade and from what I read can extend the computer life quite a bit.

 

[bcfan25]

Anything else?

 

[Dresevski]

My C2D laptop has been acting very sluggish lately. I have the max 4GB RAM and the only other thing I would consider is using a SSD, which I don't want to do because putting money into this computer doesn't make sense to me. But, it could be an option for you...not quite on the low end of the cost spectrum however.

 

[jouster]

Did it used to operate at an acceptable speed? I don't understand why it got sluggish. What has changed?

 

[bcfan25]

I should add I cleared up about 40GB on my internal HD to see if that would help but it did nothing for it. I plan on getting a external HD within the next couple of days. Any suggestions? I planned on getting a 2TB WD My Book Studio LX.

My C2D laptop has been acting very sluggish lately. I have the max 4GB RAM and the only other thing I would consider is using a SSD, which I don't want to do because putting money into this computer doesn't make sense to me. But, it could be an option for you...not quite on the low end of the cost spectrum however.

May be a bit to expensive of an upgrade. I'll be getting a new Macbook next year before I head off to college so I don't want to put too much into this one. I'd love to buy a new 27" monster iMac but it would cost almost $3000 with everything I'd want in it. :/

Did it used to operate at an acceptable speed? I don't understand why it got sluggish. What has changed?

It used to be fine. For the past couple of months its been freezing a lot when changing pages or just taking a really long time going to a different webpage or changing tabs. Before I shut it down at night I quit Firefox and iTunes and I have to click force quit for them to both shut down after the fact. If I just click shut down then quit Firefox so it will shut down it will say "Firefox could not close" or something along those lines and make me force quit before continuing the shut down.

 

[jouster]

My old Mini was doing that sort of thing until the last Snow Leopard point upgrade. Now it seems fine. But I'm wondering if maybe you are soon going to have a hard drive failure, or some other more serious hardware issue.

 

[bcfan25]

My old Mini was doing that sort of thing until the last Snow Leopard point upgrade. Now it seems fine. But I'm wondering if maybe you are soon going to have a hard drive failure, or some other more serious hardware issue.

I sure hope not, at least if I do then I'll have my new external HD to back the stuff up and not lose anything.

I've had this since Christmas 07, couldn't having it for 3+ years lead to slower speed?