Sometimes computer hardware can be hard to keep up with. The latest spec now will be old news in a year’s time and keeping up to date can cost a small fortune. But buying a new computer every year is simply not practical so there are some very cost effective ways of improving the speed and performance of your system without having to buy a totally new computer.

Memory – Without a doubt the cheapest and easiest way to give your computer a boost in performance is to buy new memory. There are two things to consider here, firstly check your motherboard limitations to see the maximum amount of memory and the maximum memory speed it can handle. Some motherboards are able to run two different speed memory blocks at once (obviously both will run at the lower speed) but sometimes it can be worth buying all new memory at the highest speed possible, especially if you don’t have much memory in there to begin with.

Depending on your budget just an extra gigabyte block of memory can make a big difference but if you are able to upgrade all of it to a higher speed then do so. If you are running Windows 32 bit then don’t bother buying anymore than 4GB as the 32bit version of Windows is unable to use anymore than this. Fitting memory is very simple and just requires a simple slotting in job, there is no extra configuration required.

Hard Drive – Often an overlooked part of improving your computer performance but a new hard drive can work wonders, especially if your current one is very old. Hard drives have moving parts and over time they can wear down and this can result in slow moving read/write heads which means slow performance. But not only this, an old hard drive that is almost full will perform slower due to the read/write heads having to move further to access the data. A newer hard drive with more storage can perform better because the outer heads are not used and so read/write times will be faster.

It might also be worth considering the hard drive speed depending on your budget. A faster rpm can result in much quicker loading times if you use a lot of programs that require constant reading and writing from the hard drive. Other ways to improve the hard drive performance are by using a RAID setup but this can get expensive and is usually not worth it in most cases. Fitting a new hard drive is straight forward enough, there are only two connections to worry about (power and data).

CPU – Probably the more expensive and slighter harder upgrade to perform, but this doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile doing. You should check to see what socket type your motherboard can house and the maximum speed that is compatible. If you are currently running a CPU that is a lot under the maximum (it can sometimes be up to 1GHZ) then consider an upgrade. Older CPU’s are usually quite cheap nowadays and the extra speed you get from them is usually worth it.

Fitting a CPU can be a bit more tricky depending on your current heat sink setup but with a bit of patience it is usually easy enough, be sure to follow the instructions you get with it or consult an online guide.

For lots more articles, guides and how-to’s check out Stan The Computer Man’s blog. You might also like to check out my in depth guide on speeding up a slow computer.