Technical Upgrading A Computer

In the left margin you will find links to all the upgrade guides to date. I plan to add more pages but have only scheduled this for the very near future but no definite date yet.

Scotsmist's Ultimate PC Upgrade Guide

So, you're now a power user, and you have decided it is time to see just how much yor computer is upgradeable. Good for you! Unfortunately, technology moves so fast that no sooner is a machine in place than it's outdated. You wish that the latest 3D graphics card had been available when your machine was built only a week earlier. How do you make sense of what to dump for something new ? On this page I will try to give you a few tips when buying new hardware. These tips may not be the only things to look for in a device, but at least they're a good start.

Where will you buy everything?

Deciding where to buy can be the most difficult decision of all. Like most of you, I like a bargain, but too often in this industry, getting a good deal means getting cheap hardware but little or no support or warranty. As a technician, I used to think it didn't really matter where I bought from as long as the component was of high quality. Now I am not so sure as I spend less time buying hardware and more time wrestling with its configuration or sending it back
I mainly always rely on brand names when purchasing new computer hardware. However I have some knowledge on what makes certain devices faster than others, so that I can decide what's best.

CPU

Buying a processor is as difficult due to the wide range of options. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that an Intel CPU is more compatible or more stable than others. This is not true. While Intel does make good CPUs, so do other companies like AMD. An important feature I look for is the CPU's "overclockability". The more overclockable a CPU is, the better its price/performance ratio. But look at the average overclockability, rather than the maximum amount reached. Then, measure this overclockability against the CPU price. Sometimes you may have, for example, two CPUs that perform about the same, one is rated 300Mhz and the other one, 400Mhz. The 400Mhz unit will be more expensive, but it may happen that both overclock to about the same speed, e.g. about 450Mhz.

Motherboard

The trick to choosing a new motherboard is always try and purchase one that appears to have the best upgradeability. The wider the range of CPU bus options, the easier it will be to overclock your CPU. It is important to have many CPU bus options if you want to maximize your CPU's performance, especially if your CPU doesn't allow you to change its multipliers. Another important thing to look for are the voltage options. Try to get the motherboard with the greater amount of them, another key factor for overclocking. Stay away from motherboards that don't allow you to change your CPU voltage, in case you are looking for the best overclocking results. As far as performance goes find out the motherboard's chipset. The chipset is the part of the motherboard mostly responsible for its performance. Try to look for a motherboard with the greater amount of cache, it can make quite a difference in performance. It's equally important to find out how much memory your motherboard can cache. If you exceed the maximum amount of cacheable memory, it will run much slower. Make sure that the maximum amount of cacheable memory is big enough to handle some of your future RAM upgrades. The motherboard design is always crucial. I prefer ATX motherboards, because they tend to have a much better design than AT ones, a good number of PCI slots that can accomodate my cards and a greater amount of DIMM slots.

Hard Disk

When buying a new HDD, most people only take in consideration its size. HDDs also differ in terms of speed. Since the HDD is one of the major bottlenecks in the computer's overall performance, it is very important to have a fast HDD if you want to have a fast computer. Even if the size of your current HDD fits your needs, a HDD upgrade can give you a good performance boost. When searching for a new HDD, try to look for it's access time (usually measured in ms). It's like a summary of the HDD's performance. The faster the HDD is, the smaller its access time.Also, make sure to check out how much cache it has, and how many rotations per minute it performs (RPM). In both cases, the bigger, the better. SCSI HDDs are much faster than the regular IDE ones, but they're much more expensive and require a SCSI controller card, which you have to purchase separatedly, but if you're looking for top performance, then they can't be beaten.

Memory

The problem with the memory is that they are usually the limiting factor when overclocking the CPU bus. The lower the memory's access time, the higher the CPU bus it will support. On the other hand, quality is also very important. High-quality memories have a better tolerance for higher CPU bus frequencies. And, as far as quality is concerned (at least for memories), brand names are very important. The more memory you have, the less accesses thrashing your HDD will do, so always buy the biggest size of RAM stick you can afford.

Video Card

Most of the time you're computer, is using a 2D environment (ie. Windows), so the 2D performance of a video card is something to consider. If you have a bigger monitor, such as a 21" one, make sure that your video card supports the resolution you're expecting to use, at a comfortable refresh rate (ie. 75Hz or higher), and with at least 16-bit colors. The performance difference between two video cards using the same chipset may vary a lot, other factors such as the RAMDAC, the quality of the RAM used in the card and the frequency at which the chipset is running are important in the card's performance. Brand names are usually the best performers. AGP cards are better than PCI ones because the data bandwidth of the AGP slot is greater and because the AGP bus is twice as fast as the PCI one. Some cards sacrifice the image quality a lot, in order to achieve greater scores. Stay away from them. And make sure to look at the card's extras, such as TV IN/OUT, MPEG hardware decoder, etc, before making you are paying for them instead of raw power.

Final Comments

It's not easy to decide which components to buy when upgrading your computer.The 5 items described above are the most important ones in a computer's performance but keep in mind that software doesn't always benefit from such an upgrade. For instance surfing that Internet using a 56k modem will not get faster if you install a bigger HDD or more RAM. It is still the case today that hardware installed in an average pc lags far behind the real requirements of the software being used on it. Just try connecting to the Internet and downloading your e-mail from a MS-DOS without first loading Windows and you will see what I mean.