Yesterday we looked at upgrading and keeping a laptop around longer. Today we will look at a dying breed of computers, the Desktop. Before laptops became so cheap to purchase, desktops were the best thing. They started to become cheap enough that just about anyone could buy one. I remember one of my first computers costing well into the 1,000's of dollars and that was just for a base model.
Just as we looked at yesterday about upgrading a laptop, you can upgrade a desktop. They are easier to work with and cheaper. You can also upgrade just about everything in a desktop, whereas with a laptop there are only so many things that you can do. We will look at just a few upgrades that you can do.
1. The fastest and easiest one to upgrade is the RAM. You will want to check with your computer company or who makes the mother board to see what kind and size of RAM you will need. Once you have found this out check around for prices. Most stores in this area are around $20-50 per piece of RAM.
2. Again from the laptop article, the Hard Drive is the next easiest one to upgrade. Before upgrading make sure that you have all of your discs so that you can re-install everything once you have the new drive in and working. In a desktop computer you have a wider selection of hard drives that you can get. Most drives start out around 120 Gig and go sky high from there. The largest drive I have seen as of the writing of this article is a 3 TB (terabyte) hard drive. Most users only need about 500-750 Gig.
3. The last upgrade that I will talk about is the biggest and hardest one to do. I would recommend that you have a computer tech do this one for you. Upgrading the motherboard, processor, and RAM is the biggest and most costly upgrade for any computer. When upgrading your motherboard processor and RAM you will need to consider things like will it fit in my case, do I have enough power for everything in here. This is why I say to let a computer repair person do this install for you. They can figure that all out and get everything setup and running and most times with a warranty.
Depending on what you upgrade and speeds you get with your new upgrades will determine how much you spend. You could spend as little as $75 for the RAM all the way to several hundred dollars for a new mother board and processor. Keep in mind if your computer is newer some of your old parts (RAM) might work in your new mother board.
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