A
desktop computer’s lifespan usually runs around 5 – 6 years, so once you reach
this pinnacle and go beyond, your PC will start running slow. After countless
optimizations and removing all unnecessary files and your PC is still running slow,
maybe it’s time to upgrade some hardware. But, which parts or components should
you upgrade first?
Although
you can tailor your upgrades to suit a particular need, in general, performance
must always take priority. And so, based on performance, you should upgrade in
this order.
RAM
Adding more
memory is the easiest PC upgrade you can make. It’s affordable and it can be
done on almost any PC including many laptops. Upgrading the RAM delivers an instant
performance to almost all PCs that are running slow. For resource hungry
tasks such as video editing or gaming, the more RAM your computer has,
the better. Even for casual use, extra RAM will enable you to have more apps
running in the background and keep a greater number of tabs open in your web browser.
How much RAM is needed? 4 GB is currently the baseline amount, but you’ll
notice a significant improvement if you upgrade to 8 GB. For heavier tasks, you
should look to 16 GB for best results.
Graphics
Card
If you’re a
serious gamer or do heavy work like video or image editing, then this should be
an upgrade together with the RAM. This also includes work in gaming programming,
3D modeling, and 3D animation. Otherwise, you can upgrade just to improve the
quality of watching videos. PC manufacturers tend to go with integrated
graphics cards rather than dedicated graphics cards. If you have an integrated
card, then moving up to a dedicated one will work wonders.
Hard
Drive
There are usually
two reasons to upgrade your hard drive. Either you’re running out of
space or you want faster performance. If you’ve done everything you can
to free up your hard disk storage and still regularly run out of
space, then you will need to swap it out for a larger one. Not only does a
full hard drive make it impossible to save new data, but it can also
impact performance. At the very least, try to keep 10 GB of free space for the
operating system to use. A quick option is to switch to
a solid state drive. These use flash memory instead of a
spinning disk and are many times faster than a typical hard disk drive, and are
reliable since they last much longer than ordinary drives.
Processor
A processor is only worth upgrading if the
upgrade is really important and much needed. But it’s expensive and may require you to
upgrade your motherboard and it may require you to buy a new RAM. Even if your
motherboard is compatible with a new processor on paper, it may need a BIOS
update to work, so check before you buy. Ultimately, if your processor
is the speed bottleneck in your system, you might want to consider buying
a whole new PC altogether.
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