Crucial Computer Enhancements
The purchase of a new Computer is an important decision in this very wired, electronic era of ours. Before you’ve even brought it home and out of the box, something better and faster has hit the market. It makes sense to do a bit of fore thought and get a system that can remain relevant and adequate with respect to your own specific requirements for at least a few years. In addition to the appropriate treatment and servicing, improvements exist that will increase the lifetime of your system. These include things like upgrading the CPU, memory, graphics card and more.
The first and most critical upgrade for any PC is Random Access Memory. Nothing boosts functionality like adding all the RAM that the PC can handle. Just be aware that 32-bit operating systems can only address 4 GB of memory, so if you really want to go beyond that you’ll need to turn to a 64-bit platform. Another fairly easy up grade is the Graphics Card. They’re a breeze to install as they simply plug into any PCI Express slot on the motherboard and can drastically boost media and graphics rendering.
In addition, changing the original hard drive to something speedier with additional space is a good idea as hard drives or HDDs are fairly low-cost nowadays. Set up kits with all the required apparatus to upgrade are available through a range of sellers such as Seagate, Western Digital and OCZ. Though currently much more expensive than traditional disk drives, solid state drives have the benefit of using less power, being quieter and more rapid, as well as being more shock proof. While you’re tinkering with the hard drive, you may also look at getting a Blu-ray player for media. They’re not that pricey and can be had for £100 or so.
If you have made a decision to upgrade to a brand-new, more powerful graphics card, a second monitor is the ideal way to capitalise on the extra rendering power. Two screens support more effective multitasking and productivity and give you more room to work. Like pretty much every other component, monitors are becoming more of a bargain every day and a good quality screen shouldn’t run more than £150. If you need a living room set up, most contemporary lcd tv sets can deal with PC inputs.
Last but not least, the greatest upgrade of any computer is the motherboard and the CPU. This is usually the best course of action for old hardware that’s really starting to show it’s age. Today’s CPUs from AMD and Intel are amazingly uncomplicated to change out and the speed changes are definitely worth it.