How to speed up Pc

how to speed up Pc

Having an old PC at times can be very tiring as it slows down considerably over a period of time and feels no more than a paper weight at times.  How much do you feel it would cost you to get your PC up to speed with the latest version?  What if I tell you not even a hundred dollars!
The best part is that, it’s so simple that anybody can do it.
There are certain factors that are mainly responsible for affecting the speed of a PC, namely:

1. Speed of the processor (this one’s a bit on the expensive side, beginners can avoid)
2. RAM or Random Access Memory (this one’s light on the pocket and easy to install as well)
3. Speed of the Hard Drive (again very easy to install and light on the pocket as well)
4. Software issues (these are again quite easy to fix and cost almost nothing)

Processor speed

Speed of the processor is defined by the CPU. A CPU is a small square chip inserted in the mother board; this cannot be seen by just opening the PC cabinet as there’s a fan and heat sink on top of it.
Although, I’s not a very difficult thing to replace a CPU, this doesn’t mean that you can just go ahead buy and replace the existing CPU chip.  You need to make sure that it’s supported by your mother board.
In case you already hold the best one that your mother board can support then you have no other option but to go ahead and buy a new mother board which would support more advanced processors.  However, this is more difficult to do and it’s also as good as buying a new computer.
But don’t be disheartened, there’s a brighter side as well.  If you are not wary of shopping online then you can get great deals on motherboards and CPU’s online, in fact even better than what your local store might offer.

RAM – Random Access Memory

RAM is what majorly affects the overall performance of your PC.  But surprisingly is also the cheapest part to buy.  For an average user doing nothing more than working on documents a 4 GB RAM is good enough, however, if you are a one of the more advanced users who’s into gaming and working on applications then I would suggest nothing less than an 8GB RAM.
Replacing a RAM is child’s play; once you’ve opened the cabinet you would be able to see a chip, long & rectangular in shape, inserted in a plastic slot.  There are two of these slots on the motherboard with a clip on either side.  All you need to do while removing the existing chip is just to release these clips, the RAM will automatically pop out of the slot, once done just insert the new RAM in its place and you are sorted!

Speed of the Hard Drive

Speed of your hard drive also plays a major role in the performance of your PC.  A hard drive does all the back-end work of your computer, for e.g. for a file to be opened it needs to be located first.  This work is done by the hard drive.  The faster the hard drive does its work the faster you are able to open your files.
The latest hard drives in the market are the Solid State hard-drives, although like everything else they will be further programmed to run even better and faster.  These hard drives can boot a PC within 15 seconds without the head ache of crashing or freezing as often as the spinning ones.
Currently hard drives are not very expensive to buy and buy these at a rate of .25 cents a GB.  However, this would again depend on where you are located and the kind of deals you get.
Installing a hard drive is again not an issue, all you need to do is insert two cables in the slots provided at the back of your hard drive and you’re done.

Software issues

This is one problem which is the easiest to fix but at the same time is the cause of the most amount of frustration.
Just like any other piece of machinery a computer also needs to be maintained if you want it to provide you with its peak performance.  If you don’t use it often or don’t maintain it regularly then over a period of time it would not perform its best.
What this means for you is that you need to keep maintaining you PC by doing these tasks regularly:

• Defragmenting of the Hard Drive

• Running an anti-virus scan (try AVG it’s a free antivirus program)

• Clearing any junk regularly such as the cache files, temp files or anything else

• Regular check up on the start-up program’s list and disable the ones not in use

• Scanning and fixing any registry errors immediately

Just follow these simple steps and you can make your PC perform as good as new for a good amount of time and also get rid of the worry of buying a new PC every 5-6 years. All it takes is a simple and regular maintenance.