Solid State Drives
As computers age, their hard drives slow down. A traditional new magnetic drive has a read speed of around 140MB/s in real world tests. These are being replaced by solid state drives (SSDs.) The most common type of SSD uses the same connectors (SATA) as magnetic drives and achieves read speeds typically around 350MB/s. Pretty much any PC /laptop can be upgraded with one of these.
A newer type, which is only supported on newer motherboards is the M.2 or NVMe type drive. These can run at speeds up to 3,500Mb/s.
Memory (or RAM) upgrade
A typical entry level pc or laptop is now supplied with 4GB of RAM. This is enough for mose uses, but for a server, workstation or gaming pc, you should be looking for at least 8-16GB.
Motherboard upgrade
For an older desktop PC, you dont need a new case, mouse, DVD player or keyboard, Usually you don’t need a new power supply. There is no need to spend £450 on a new budget PC, the motherboard, processor and RAM can be upgraded for much less.
Other ways of upgrading a slow computer
There are many causes of computers being slow, and as many fixes. Contact us to find out more.
Computer Cleanup
Over time, computers build up a lot of junk, some are programmes that are never used, and many programmes leave remnants behind. Getting a cleanup will often give a good speed improvement. Every few years, it is adviseable to reinstall Windows. If you have had a PC for 5 or more years and never had a reinstall, consider booking one of these. This is easy with Windows 10 as you can do a reset, or preferably a clean reset, while retaining documents, photos and other personal / company information.
Other causes of slowness are a bad hard drive or other hardware failure, missing drivers, conflicting programmes, viruses or anti-virus programmes that hog system resources.
For advice on upgrading a slow computer or improving performance, give me (Adam) a call on 01646 602248