Can I Speed Up My PC Or Do I Need A New One?

HighNumbers

I have a PC with Intel Core i3-7100T processors @ 3.40GHz (2 Cores, 4 Logical Processors).

I use this PC primarily for music -- I have 16,000 mp3's and I've filled in most of the tags.

(artist, title, year, album, composer, genre, rating, comments)

The files live in a single folder on the C: drive -- in the future I may have up to 25,000 mp3's.

I want to be able to sort the files by the tag info using File Explorer.

It will do it, but it takes like 20-30 minutes per sort.

How much firepower do I need to reduce the sort time to just a minute or so?

HighNumbers

I will be dropping this PC off tomorrow to increase the memory from 6GB to 16GB and to add a 2TB SSD.

Hopefully these upgrades will solve my speed problem.

Found out from the Chat line that TPM ver. 2.0 is a motherboard issue and not typically available as an upgrade option.

Vaganza

What type of hard disk is it?

HighNumbers

System Information describes it as a "Local Fixed Disk", NTFS file system, 919 GB

Also has a 10 GB recovery drive, which I think is a partition of the 1 TB drive.

This PC is a HP Pavilion 24-b223w All-in-One Desktop.

Spec sheet says it has a 1TB 7200RPM SATA III 6Gb/sec Hard Drive.

It also says this machine supports Dual Drive configurations (One 3.5 Inch Drive + One M.2 NGFF (2280) Solid State Drive).

HighNumbers

Would adding a solid state drive and putting all my mp3's over on that drive speed things up?

HighNumbers

By the way, I can't run Windows 11 on this PC because the processor doesn't meet Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0.

Is this something that can be added or upgraded?

HighNumbers

Just to close the loop, I brought my PC in to the St. Louis Park store for upgrade.

They swapped out the 6GB memory and 1 TB mechanical hard drive for 16GB and a 2TB solid state drive.

Unfortunately you can't clone from a hard drive to a SSD, so I had to reload all of my programs and data.

*But* I'm happy to report that the file-sorting operation that used to take 20-30 minutes now completes in 2 minutes.

Very happy with the outcome on this -- thanks Micro Center!

Aodhan_Gorman

Glad everything worked out for you! Be sure to come back whenever you need anything else!