RAM upgrade or SSD upgrade on laptop for noticeable performance boost???

jonty009

Right off the assembly line
My laptop is an HP pavilion x360 s-102tu
intel i3 6100U skylake
4GB DDR3L memory
1TB hard disk

I want my laptop to be noticeably snappier than it is now. It is not very slow but sometimes it does perform a lil slower than i expect it to be for example when i click the start button it will take a little time to open it but not always. i open chrome it takes few extra seconds to open and after few extra seconds to close than normal. i browse a lot on my laptop and sometimes after opening around 20 tabs few tabs start to refresh. sometimes scrolling on a big document is not smooth. i do not play any games on my laptop. mostly i browse and listen to music on this machine.
so upgrading to total of 8gb(4+4) ram or a 240gb SSD would make a performance difference? i just want everything to a little more smooth than it is right now.
Thanks in advance
 
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mobo

Broken In
1 word: Linux.
If you are using Windows then moving to GNU/Linux is the cheapest way to make things 'snappier'.
Extra RAM will make absolutely no difference if you don't actually use the larger capacity.
 

gta5

Ambassador of Buzz
First Upgrade To SSD .. it will make your computer really snappy.. you are getting limited by very slow read speeds of Hard disk .. opening/closing of apps/files ,booting, antivirus scans all will speed up a lotttt..

Open task manager and see memory and disk usage when you feel PC is getting slow and have opened up too many tabs .. see if the memory usage is 85 % + when you have those tabs open ...

You are using chrome , which is a memory hog .. so when you open 20-30 tabs , your ram gets fully used up .. to compensate that and free up ram windows start swapping other open programs and saving old Tabs to hard disk.. this swapping constantly keeps the hard disk busy due to low speeds and when you resume your old tabs or already open programs , windows recalls them from hard disk which is very very slow this makes the computer very sluggish..

you can avoid buying ram - by closing unnecessary tabs or using extension called " THE great Suspender " the unused tabs will still be there but it will delete all the site data to free up RAM , so when you click on it later it will load again from web and not from ram.. so you can open 1000s of tabs and not be limited by ram ..

if memory use is 85 % + and you don't want to use the above procedure ( closing unnecessary tabs or using suspender extension ) then you will have to buy ram as well...

Before buying anything .. the usual ritual - making sure not too many programs are running in the background , antivirus , a clean format etc ...
 
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Ricky

Cyborg Agent
My laptop is an HP pavilion x360 s-102tu
intel i3 6100U skylake
4GB DDR3L memory
1TB hard disk

so upgrading to total of 8gb(4+4) ram or a 240gb SSD would make a performance difference? i just want everything to a little more smooth than it is right now.
Thanks in advance

I have done this in past, go for it RAM + SSD upgrade, you will love it. The differences will be so noticeable that it will make you wonder why never did it before. :)
 

Randy_Marsh

Youngling
For snappier machine, SSD is a must for you. My brother bought a new laptop some time back and installed a SSD in it by himself, we were amazed to see the performance boost.
4GB is enough RAM as per your usage. No need to upgrade it.
 

ankush28

Bazinga
SSD is a must now a days. 4GB ram will not create problem for typical desktop use but hard disk. 4k read speeds(benchmark that measures random read/write, really important for daily use) on hard disk are sh!t. Get yourself SSD first, then in future add same 4GB ram to make it dual channel.

240GB ram might be costly, get 120GB ram for softwares and store rest of your files on hard disk. samsung evo 120gb costs like 4.2k

- - - Updated - - -

1 word: Linux.
If you are using Windows then moving to GNU/Linux is the cheapest way to make things 'snappier'.
Extra RAM will make absolutely no difference if you don't actually use the larger capacity.

Don't offer false promises, while Linux is quite faster, it's not always the case.

There are many more reasons to switch to linux other than that. If you don't game or use any specific softwares like Adobe suite or CAD etc. then linux is best option.

Linux is..
1. Free!
2. Secure(much more secure compare to windows, but in the end it all boils down to how you use it)
3. Clean(zero bloatware)
4. Faster(because you won't be running antivirus and other windows sh!t in backround)
5. Customizable. Just go checkout /r/unixporn and see what level of customization can be achieved.
 
OP
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jonty009

Right off the assembly line
i run linux in a different machine for programming purposes. i installed linux mint on this one too but it is too much of a hassle to set up everything properly when all i do is browsing, music, movies. but there will be one day when i will completely move to linux simply because i hate windows spying on me. i know google and apple also does but my laptop more important stuff and docs than my android device.
 
OP
J

jonty009

Right off the assembly line
thank you everyone for taking time and recommending me the best. i have decided that i will upgrade both, a 240gb ssd and extra 4gb ram. now any brand that you would like to recommend? also a fresh install is better or cloning is better?
 
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