6 Year Old Dell XPS PC - Replace or Refresh?

[Hawkwind16]

So I have a 6 year old Dell XPS which is starting to slow down, with occasional freezes and my memory is almost full (some big programmes, plus bloatware?)

I looked at the current Dell XPS's which seem to be still highly regarded, and it looks like my current PC spec is still pretty competitive to my non technical eyes, but with outdated chips no doubt:-
- 8th gen Intel i7-8700 6 core processor
- 16 GB DD4 RAM and 256GB m2 PCie x4 SSD
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 video card - 6GB
- 2TB 7200 rpm hard drive

So do I
1. Limp on for a few years, maybe delete a few programmes, files, games, internet clutter etc ?
2. Take it to a PC specialist to service it or reformat it ? (eg Currys?)
3. Buy a new one ?

I use the computer for internet browsing, home finance spreadheets, photo storage and games

Any views / advice ?

 

[RobSys]

Typically, laptops offer very little scope for improvement. Things to try include:
~ Backup the stuff you need to keep and reformat the hard drive
~ Install the operating system - If you're adventurous, install a linux based distro (Lime is a good option) else go for Windows 10 (I don't think that Windows 11 will run on a 6 year old machine machine due to Microsoft's TPM requirements.) Keep in mind that support for Windows 10 will stop in October.
~ Get an external drive to store your photos, etc. to free up disk space.

 

[herring8]

win11 can probably be installed but you need to bypass the TPM. plan would be back up your files, fresh install of win 11 and it should be like a new PC, back up plan would be install a linux distro - again should deliver s snappy PC

 

[DCarmi]

It depends what you do with the computer. I'm guessing it is an XPS Desktop (rather than laptop) and it is probably an XPS 8920 or 8930. If correct then I think it has TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the bios, required by Windows 11, but is disabled. I can't remember the steps to enable (mine is an XPS 8930 with a 9th gen I7 and a 2060 video card and I have Windows 11).

Google or go to Dell to find out if TPM exists and how to enable it. Once you've enabled TPM then Windows 11 will install without complaint.

Adding an SSD as the boot device would probably make the biggest improvement to performance.

EDIT:
I should add that for anything other than the latest games the system will be fine for most purposes. The only change I've made to my system was to bung in a load more RAM but that is only because I sometimes run multiple Linux distributions using WSL. 16GB is enough for most usage.