I've recently fallen into an interesting activity. Modernizing our computer! I'll talk about some of the things I've added so that it might inspire you to do this too. It's easy and kind of fun!
Many people probably purchase a whole new PC when a component or something becomes slow or obsolete. In the very least they take it to the store to get the new parts. When I was looking to replace our video card (this is what the monitor plugs into on the tower) I realized how easy it was to add new components and in effect make your computer almost new again! The best thing of all is how much you save doing it yourself and the obvious savings from not buying a new PC.
It's amazing what you can learn from the internet and Youtube. There are many many websites all about changing anything and everything within your computer and youtube has an instructional video on how to do just about all of it.
The most difficult issue though is simply figuring out which parts are compatible with your system. The best sources for that are your computer manual and your computer manufacturer (Dell, HP etc) Find you computer's manual online by typing your model number and "manual" into google.
I installed a 512mb video card which required me to also update the power supply to something around 500 watts. (old one was 350watts)
Opening up the PC was a bit intimidating at first but replacing the power supply was actually very good for familiarizing myself with everything in there. That is because the power supply is directly connected to just about everything inside. I was able to learn where just about everything was because of that.
The actual installation of the video card was simple. It's just matter of unplugging the old and putting in the new.
Just this week I made a new upgrade by increasing our RAM. This is your computers multitasking power. Having a lot of it will make for faster boot up, faster loading of programs, and less lagging if a lot of programs are open.
The exciting thing about this is it's SOOOO cheap and simple. Figuring out which RAM to buy is the only confusing part; again, it's all online. PCmemorystore.com is what I used. They have an easy interface that tells you what's compatible and appear to have the best prices. For a second opinion your PC manufacturer should also provide this in the support section of their website.
For $30 i was able to triple our RAM, from 1-3gig. Updating RAM is probably the easiest and cheapest way to significantly upgared your computer.
My next task is installing a second hard drive. The one that came with the computer, 80gig, is almost full. Hard drive space is so cheap; I can get 250gig for $45!
The ironic thing about all this is the original reason I started doing all this was so that our computer was modern enough to handle a particular video game that was coming out. Well for other reasons the game won't start up! Figures! Luckily i didn't pay full price. Oh well, at least i learned something HA!
-Ron
