Development machine upgrade

[pilks]

I am currently running the following on my development machine in which I use Visual Studio 2013 on:

I5 2500K
8 GB Ram
Nvidia 680
120gig OCZ Agility revision 3
Windows 8.1

Like all of us I have a case of Want more Speed
I have between R3k- R5k to spend on it.

1. Is that enough to warrant a noticeable speed increase while developing C# applications?
2. If yes where do I spend the money ?

Thanks

 

[grim]

More RAM and a faster CPU should help.

Do you have all your projects on the SSD?

 

[pilks]

I have everything Including the OS running off the SSD

 

[froot]

I run the same setup as you (except for the SSD: Vector 4) and I don't notice much of a difference between that and my development laptop at work, which has a top of the line i7, when you take into consideration the majority of development activity. Maybe build-time and other CPU-intensive things, but it's not too bad.

Only thing I'd go for now if I were you, would be to get another 8GB RAM.

 

[pilks]

Thanks for the advice. I would not have thought of ram. My machine with all my projects open and running never seems to exceed 6.5gb of ram. I am probably asking a stupid question here but why would more RAM help ?

 

[mister]

I am currently running the following on my development machine in which I use Visual Studio 2013 on:

I5 2500K
8 GB Ram
Nvidia 680
120gig OCZ Agility revision 3
Windows 8.1

Like all of us I have a case of Want more Speed
I have between R3k- R5k to spend on it.

1. Is that enough to warrant a noticeable speed increase while developing C# applications?
2. If yes where do I spend the money ?

Thanks

Increase in speed? What specifically is not fast enough?

Moving around the editor and typing lol?
Compiling?

 

[pilks]

Compiling in general is just that little bit too slow.

I find it often freezes for a bit when I am switching and editing Xaml designer.

 

[grim]

Thanks for the advice. I would not have thought of ram. My machine with all my projects open and running never seems to exceed 6.5gb of ram. I am probably asking a stupid question here but why would more RAM help ?

It'll reduce paging and it's a cheap upgrade, can never have enough RAM

My laptop which has 16GB installed has a Windows managed pagefile of a whole 700MB

Windows 8.1 seems to be happiest with 16GB+ when running memory intensive applications, also if you want to run multiple VMs at the same time you need a lot of RAM

 

[GoB]

More ram wouldn't help if it doesn't get used, eg if you're like me and only keep < 10 app instances open. In fact, the larger memory refresh could theoretically slow down your PC, not to mention the related software overhead if the memory was in use.

I choose not to upgrade my home PC because it will make my work PC feel more miserable.

 

[Pada]

I'd bump the RAM up to 16GB of RAM, which may cost anything from R1000 (for 2x 4GB) - R2200 (2x 8GB), depending on how many open slots you have left.

Also, what motherboard and CPU cooler do you have at this moment, because most likely you're not overclocking your CPU?

 

[pilks]

I have an aftermarket cooler, not sure which one as it was my bros.
Will try buy one stick of 8gb and see if it makes a difference.

What can I reasonably overclock the 2500k too without changing voltages etc ?

 

[Pada]

You'll need a Z68/P67 motherboard to overclock that CPU at all!

You can probably do 4.2GHz on auto voltage. At 4GHz some people even reduce the voltage offset to a negative number and still have their system 100% stable.

Unfortunately overclocking usually requires trial and error when you care about temperatures and power consumption, because you want to run the CPU at the lowest possible voltage to keep the temperatures & power consumption as low as possible.

 

[pilks]

Thanks for all the answers and replies. I will get another stick of RAM. And try a simple Overclock and see if it makes a difference. Thanks again. Got to love myBB

 

[xera]

More RAM won't make a difference if it's not used. Open your task manager and check memory usage.

Compile times is mostly the CPU, and a tiny bit the SSD.

I don't notice any speed difference between my laptop with SSD & 8GB RAM, and desktop with SSD & 32GB RAM.

Oh and, my desktop's pagefile has always been disabled.

If you are not using all of 8GB, I would recommend first upgrading CPU, then upgrading SSD, if you can get a faster one for your machine.

 

[Wasabee!]

Get a decent 256GB SSD. Not Sandforce rubbish. Like the Vector 150 or Samsung 840 Pro. That would make the single largest difference.