Upgrading and Improving Performance

Is your computer running slowly?  Have you tried clearing space and optimizing but nothing seems to be improving the performance. In that case, maybe it’s time to look at upgrading some of your hardware or investing in a new computer.  But whats the most effective steps to upgrading your system.

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Upgrading Your Memory

Adding more memory is the easiest and most affordable upgrade you can make and  you can do it on almost any machine including many laptops.  Upgrading RAM delivers an instant performance to almost all computers that are running slowly. For resource hungry tasks - like video and image editing  or gaming - the more RAM you’ve got, 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 browser.

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Upgrading The Graphics Card

If you’re a serious gamer then it should probably be the first thing you upgrade. If you aren’t a serious gamer, 3D modeler or animator, then you probably won’t ever need to upgrade it at all.  Skimping out on graphics is an easy way to save on costs, so 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.  Despite the fact that integrated graphics performance has been improving, even a good one is about the equivalent of a £45 dedicated graphics card. Upgrading to something around £100 will give you a big boost in most cases.

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Upgrading Your Hard Drives

The main reasons to upgrade your hard drive are you’re low on space or you want faster performance.   A full hard drive makes it impossible to save new data, but it can also impact performance. At the very least, try to keep 15Gb free for the operating system to use.  Consider upgrading the physical speed of your drives. If you currently have a 5400 rpm drive, then upgrading to a 7200 rpm model will give you a nice speed boost.  The fastest and best overall performance option is to switch to a solid state drive (SSD). These newer drives operate at speeds up to 5 times quicker than mechanical drives but are more expensive and smaller in size.  Replacing the system drive with a SSD and using your existing drive for data only seems to be the most efficient way to gain a noticeable improvement these days.

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Don't Expect a Miracle

So, RAM, Hard Drives and Graphics Cards are the most important things to upgrade. You should see real, instant improvements whenever you upgrade any combination of them.  Just don’t expect miracles. There will always be a bottleneck in your system. As soon as you replace the slowest part, something else will take its place. And as your computer ages, it’s important to be able to discern whether you should upgrade a single part or buy a whole new machine instead.

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Give us a call on 07711 292 488 and we can help you get the most out of your computer by improving its performance.