What performance upgrades can be added to my computer?
Performance upgrades on computers isn’t as unusual as you might think. At some point, anyone who owns a computer is going to get frustrated by its limitations. Even if you have the newest, most expensive, fastest computer available now, eventually new technology is going to push the limits and make your computer start to look a little outdated. Many people just bite the bullet at this point and buy a new one, but you don’t always have to.
If your computer isn’t performing as well as you want it to, you should consider some performance upgrades for your existing system, rather than buying a completely new one. Not only is it cheaper to buy specific parts instead of a brand new computer,but in most cases it’s also incredibly simple to swap out the parts on your own. Even paying someone to do it will save you money over the cost of a brand new PC. So, before you throw your computer away, consider these performance upgrades.
Performance Upgrade Options
RAM
In most cases, upgrading your RAM is the single most significant thing you can do to improve your PC’s speed and performance. The amount of RAM you have available has a drastic effect on your computer’s ability to load programs, run resource-heavy programs and manage multiple applications at the same time.
The good news? This is also an incredibly easy fix, and RAM is not expensive at all.
Hard Drives
As long as we’re talking about memory, we should also mention your hard drive. If your hard drive is full, or close to it, then there’s a good chance it’s slowing your computer down (as well as just being incredibly inconvenient). The less space on the hard drive, the more the PC has to search to find, load and store information. This can have a significant drag on your system. Buying a bigger hard drive can help. At the same time, hard drives also run at certain speeds, so a faster hard drive helps your computer work at optimum speed. If you haven’t already, getting a solid-state drive is the best bet, as they run the fastest, and are much more reliable to boot.
Graphics Card
If you’re a hard-core gamer, you probably already know a lot about graphics cards. For the rest of you, though, you should know that graphics-heavy applications (like games, video software, etc) rely heavily on the quality of the graphics card. A slow card, or one that can’t handle the latest graphic-based programs, will slow your computer down tremendously, if not cause it to shut down altogether.
CPU
Most people assume the CPU, or processing chip, is the key to a fast computer, and while the CPU does determine the overall speed of the computer and its functions, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Still, an older CPU can cause a bottleneck. You should know, though, that replacing a CPU can be tricky, and new chips are pretty expensive, so you should wait on this until you’ve replaced the other parts first, to see if this is really needed.
If you have questions, would like to know more, or would like to know how we can help you get the most out of your system with a performance upgrade, please contact West County Computers today!
