Upgrading 8 year old pc, advice and guidance

[emotimes]

Hi, my pc is lagging and often freezes so I'm considering upgrading parts. I'd like to ask for some guidance and suggestions on where to start please.
Bulk of use is for streaming, media centre, office use, some Adobe PS and IL, and light gaming.
Any advice is appreciated, thank you

Here is the spec from my of pc purchase back in 2011:
Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5-2500 Quad Core (3.30GHz, 6MB Cache) + HD Graphics
Motherboard
ASUS® P8H61-M LE/USB3 (NEW REV 3.0): M-ATX, USB 3.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)
8GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)
1st Storage Drive
2TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD2002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
450W Quiet 80 PLUS Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling
STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
4G Module
NONE, I WILL BE USING BROADBAND
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence
Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-home-office-pc/U9CAwKSzCQ/

 

[SpyderTracks]

I would say it would be worth upgrading fully given your use cases. Would you say the main focus was photoshot and illustrator? If so, an Intel build may well suit you better than AMD as they perform better for Adobe packages.

What's your max budget?

 

[Oussebon]

You could just do a clean install of Windows 10 (if you're not upgraded yet you can still do so for free)

You Can Still Get Windows 10 for Free With a Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 Key

Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade offer is over--or is it? There's still a way to activate Windows 10 with a Windows 7, 8, or 8.

www.howtogeek.com

And take the opportunity to get an SSD. Plenty are on sale at the moment. Even if you do get a new PC you could move the SSD over.

 

[ubuysa]

And take the opportunity to get an SSD. Plenty are on sale at the moment. Even if you do get a new PC you could move the SSD over.

This is excellent advice, getting a SSD is probably the best bang-for-buck upgrade you can do.

That HDD can probably manage a data transfer rate of around 160MB/s, plus of course the seek and latency times, which can be very significant especially if the drive is badly fragmented. Even a relatively cheap SATA attached NAND SSD should be able to achieve a data transfer rate of around 550MB/s and with zero seek and latency times, so you can expect access times to/from that SSD to be around five times faster than the HDD you have, that's a very big deal indeed.

You do however need to be certain that with PS and IL running you are not exhausting your RAM. Check your RAM usage and the hard page fault rate when running PS and/or IL to tell. If you are short of RAM (a constant non-zero hard page fault rate when using PS or IL would indicate that you are) then more RAM would be a better first upgrade with an SSD the next best.

And do consider Windows 10, after Jan 20th next year Windows 7 will be a serious liability on any Internet connected PC.