Increasing PC performance – Upgrading Hardware

The modern internet and modern software can sometimes drain the resources of the older PC, even dual core machines.

Sometimes software tweaks and general housekeeping can improve performance, but if you want to really make improvements, budget permitting, physical upgrades are always going to be your best option.

The first place to start with your desktop PC is the power supply. This often gets forgotten about, because most people want to make a laptop run faster rather than a desktop, but a desktop power supply is changeable. If your machine is, for example, a vista oem machine with a 250watt power supply, that unit has to power the motherboard, graphics card and all of the hdd and optical drives. Feeding power to the equipment in the machine can be a drain on the system, so by replacing it with a 500watt or even a 900watt will increase power delivery and will give you the extra power if needed.

The next place to check is your drives. Lets say that your machine still has a floppy drive, Unless you still use floppy disks, this is obsolete hardware and can be disconnected and where possible, removed. When booting the pc, press 'delete' or 'f2' on standard machines for the bios, and disable the floppy drive from the boot list.

Next, check the optical drive, a cd rom/cd-rw can be upgraded to a dvd/dvd-rw drive to improve performance, a dvd drive can be upgraded to a blu-ray drive. But if you mainly use USB flash drives, then this is another drive that could be removed altogether. This would free up physical space and resources for an extra hard-drive.

If you have the finances, and want an improvement of data transfer then the option to swap out the HDD (Hard disk drive) for an SSD (Solid State Drive) is always available. A hard drive is a component full of mechanical moving parts, but an SSD is similar to a stick of memory, as it doesn't have moving parts and access to data is much faster. This can be an expensive option, so shop around for the best prices.

If you want to get a bit deeper into your machine, then a memory upgrade is an excellent option. The memory in your machine is the working environment of the PC. You increase the working environment by increasing the memory, by increasing the amount, or installing faster memory.

If you have a motherboard with 2gb of memory, but the board will take 4gb, then you can increase up to 4gb. A 32bit operating system can utilise up to 4gb of memory, and a 64bit operating system can utilize more than 4gb

Also, if you have, for example, DDR2 memory that is PC2-5300, then if your machine will allow, you could possibly upgrade to PC2-6400, which is a faster running memory

Another option for upgrade is the CPU, or processor. The best way to upgrade the processor is to find the manufacturer website for your machine or motherboard, and there should be a list of supported cpu's for your board. Simply choose a fastest one from the list that you can afford and swap them out. There are safety procedures in regards to static, and make sure you use paste / compound when fitting. There are plenty of youtube vids showing how to fit a processor. If your board is a 32bit board, then this list will be short, but if you have a 64bit board, then a quad-core maybe a viable option.

If you still haven't spent enough money, then I would check the graphics of your system. Most machines will probably have onboard (built in) vga graphics, more than likely Intel chipset graphics. The main problem with onboard graphics is that they need to use the memory installed on the motherboard. If you fit a graphics card with its own memory, then onboard resources are freed up. Where possible, I recommend at least 1gb on the graphics card. Check what fitting you have, whether it is PCI, AGP or most modern machines use PCI-E, and choose a maker, ATI, nVidia, Asus, MSI, etc.

One other way to improve performance is to check the air flow of your pc case. Most pc's have a fan on the heatsink of the cpu, a fan in the psu and maybe an exhaust fan on the rear of the case to expel the heat created in the machine. By installing a front fan, you can intake cool air to assist with component cooling. The only issue is whether you want to create positive or negative pressure in your case. The simplest way is to fit a front fan, a rear fan, and everything is nice and even. For a demonstration of case pressures check the link

watch?v=sh6F2eccMec

Lastly, one of the main issues with slow computers is that they use Microsoft operating systems (XP, Vista, W7, W8). There are many reasons why these OS are sluggish, the main reason being that they use a registry as part of the boot. Swapping out for a replacement operating system can increase performance immensely.

There are many linux operating systems to choose from, using formats very similar to windows. They can be installed easily along side windows or even run from a cd / dvd disk or USB drive, such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or my personal favorite alternative to windows, Zorin, which has a theme changer to make the desktop look like windows, linux or even mac os.