Which part to upgrade on this PC?

Dad1980

Hello all - Thank you in advance for your advice.

I built a PC in early 2013 with the main components listed below, and it's just starting to seem sluggish. Main tasks are internet, email, making documents - not gaming or modeling or anything intensive. I don't think it's a software issue as the PC is pretty clean. I have instead been thinking that the network card is outdated and perhaps can't keep up with our 200+ Mbps eero wifi. I have been thinking of replacing the network card, but thought I would post to see if there is anything else suspect here of being outdated in the 7 years that have passed:

- SAMSUNG 840 Series MZ-7TD250BW 2.5" 250GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
- AMD A4-5300 Trinity 3.4GHz (3.6GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 65W Dual-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 7480D AD5300OKHJBOX
- MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 FM2 AMD A75 (Hudson D3) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
- G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-1866C9D-8GAB
- Rosewill RNX-N150PCe (RNWD-11011) IEEE 802.11b/g/n PCIe 2.0 Wireless Adapter Up to 150Mbps Wireless Data Rates WPA/WPA2 (AES, 64,128,152-WEP with shared-key authentication) WPS (WiFi Protected Setup)

Thanks again for any advice you might have!

sanapri

IMO the CPU could be the cause, 2 cores with no SMT, that's pretty outdated. Another cause might be because of hardware failure.

Dad1980

Thank you, sanapri.

One reason i had suspected the network card is because my 3-year-old phone shows about 200Mbps in an Ookla speed test right next to the desktop, while the desktop itself shows only about 25Mbps on the same wireless network. Shouldn't the desktop show a higher Mbps, knowing the signal in that area of the house is obviously strong enough for a faster test on the phone.

Thanks again!

USS_Ustafish

I agree. The time for the FM2 socket has sadly passed, I'm afraid. If you want to keep it going, the good news is that you can get an Athlon X4 760K on eBay from a US seller for about $20. Since you're using a discrete GPU anyway, there's not much need for the APU. That's the very end of your upgrade path, but it does get you into a quad core.