Components to Upgrade
When it comes to upgrading a computer you will most likely be upgrading one of three things: the Processor, Memory, or the Video Card. The processor, or CPU, is the "brain" of the computer. It's what does most of the hard work. Certain tasks are very processor intensive. Encoding a video for a DVD, scanning for viruses, defragmenting a hard drive, and searching for files and folders are examples of processor intensive tasks. Memory or RAM is used to store data that the CPU is currently working on or may need to work on in the near future. RAM is much faster to access than the Hard Drive and when your computer needs to use more memory than is physically available it uses something called virtual memory, this is space on your hard drive specifically set aside by the operating system. This is also referred to as swap space. Too many programs open at the same time, poorly written programs that have memory leaks, and other factors can all lead to a program trying to run from virtual memory. This causes the program and the computer to run very slowly, and if it happens often you need more RAM. Certain programs are very memory intensive. Adobe Photoshop, for instance, keeps full copies of images in RAM as you make changes so that you can undo them if needed. If you use programs like this frequently you may need more RAM than is required for other, more simple, computer usage. The video card is specialized computer component. It is essentially a small computer in its own right. A video card has a dedicated CPU and RAM built into it. The purpose of a video card is to draw the video on the monitor, a very processor and memory intensive task. Back in the day, all of this was handled by the CPU and RAM in the computer, but the advent of 3D computer gaming and 3D drafting necessitated offloading these intensive processes onto a separate device. This is a good thing because unless you do a lot of video processing you don't need a high-end graphics card.

Choosing What To Upgrade
Now that you know the function of the three things we will most likely be upgrading, how do you choose which to do first? Should you upgrade all? Well, the answer is: it depends on how you use your computer. What you want to do is identify the bottlenecks in your system. Upgrading your processor won't do much good if you don't have enough memory. If your computer has been running sluggish, think about what you were doing when it slowed down. Were you doing one of the processor intensive tasks listed above? One of the things you can do when your computer gets sluggish is to open the Task Manager in Windows. You can open the Task Manager by either pressing ctrl-alt-del, or right clicking on the task bar and choosing Task Manager. Click on the performance tab and look at your CPU Usage and Page File (PF) Usage. If your CPU usage is spiking at or near 100%, then your processor is your bottleneck. If your PF Usage is larger than your physical memory, then you are using virtual memory and you could probably use more RAM. One thing to be aware of is that a program locking up will likely peg your CPU usage at 100%, so if the CPU usage is real high click on the Applications tab and under status check to see if any programs are Not Responding. If so, select the applications and choose End Task and then see if that improves the CPU performance. If the program continually crashes you have a problem that upgrading your computer will probably not fix. Lastly, if a game you want to play looks horrible on your computer and great on your friends, or if you can't turn on Aero Glass in Windows Vista, or if your CAD software is running really slow you would probably benefit from a new video card.

Research Your Current Configuration
Once you have identified your bottlenecks and have decided on what components you want to upgrade, you need to find out if you can upgrade your components, and what types you need to buy. This is where building your own computer, or having a boutique shop build one for you comes in handy. If you held onto it, you will have your motherboard manual. If you don't have your motherboard manual, or if you bought a computer from a company like Dell or HP, you need to find out who the manufacturer is and what model you have. There are a few things to try. You can try and see if the make and model is listed while the computer is booting. You could also open the case and see if you see a model number printed on the motherboard. Lastly, you can do a search on the internet based on the model of your computer. This may result in multiple options, however, as companies may switch components in a computer while keeping the model number the same. Once you know what your motherboard is and get a hold of the manual, you can see what your upgrade options are. For the processor, you want to find out the socket type of the motherboard and what the fastest processor it can handle is. If you already have the fastest processor your motherboard can handle, or if your computer is more than 3 or so years old you are probably out of luck when it comes to upgrading the processor and you will most likely have to replace the motherboard as well. For the memory, you want to see how many memory slots there are, what the speed of the memory bus is, and you will probably have to open the case to see what the current configuration is and if you can add memory or if you need to replace what's already in there. For the video card, you need to find out what type of slot is on the motherboard. The two options are AGP or PCI-Express. You can also look at pictures of other motherboards and compare them to yours in order to figure this one out.

Buying the Components
Once you know what you need, it's time to go shopping. I buy all of my computer parts from Newegg because they normally have very good prices, and their customer service is superb. Once you price your parts out, you may also want to price out replacing the whole motherboard with a new processor and memory and compare the two prices. You may find that for a slight difference in price you can put together a much faster computer. Sometimes it's even cheaper. When it comes to replacing components, replacing the memory or video card is pretty simple. Replacing the processor, though, can be a bit more difficult. It helps if you can find someone you know who has put together their own computer before. If not, then some Google searches on things like "how to replace an AMD processor" will turn up some good information. Choosing a video card can be a tricky process. You want to get the best bang for your buck, and that's not always easy. A computer gaming friend would come in handy, but if you can't find one, read the reviews on some hardware sites like http://www.tomshardware.com and http://www.anandtech.com. At the time of this recording, if I was asked to choose a video card that is the best bang for your buck for playing the latest and greatest video games I would tell you to buy the Nvidia 8800GT. If you're not looking to play the latest games and want to save some money, you can't go wrong with the Nvidia 8600GT, just make sure the version you buy is using DDR3 RAM.

More Options
One other often overlooked upgrade is the hard drive. If you think about it, all your programs are loaded from the hard drive into RAM and the faster your hard drive is the faster these programs will open. Also, files will open and save faster. The latest in greatest in Hard Drive technology is Serial ATA (SATA) and it transfers data at 3Gbs. As long as your motherboard supports it, I would definitely recommend upgrading to a SATA hard drive assuming you don't already have one. If you're looking for the best performance, you can also go with a drive that spins faster as this will decrease seek times, or the time it takes for the hard drive to find the data it's looking for. Most consumer hard drives spin at 7200RPM, but Western Digital sells a hard drive that spins at 10000RPM called the Raptor. You pay for this speed increase, though. If you have a laptop, you most likely have a 5400 RPM drive, and I would definitely recommend upgrading that to a 7200RPM hard drive.

Don't Forget the Power
Lastly, if you upgrade your computers components, you may need to upgrade your power supply. Many computers, especially the ones you buy from big retailers, have very small power supplies and are barely powerful enough to support the components they come with. If your computer needs more power than the power supply can deliver you will usually have a lot of problems with the computer locking up, especially during intensive processes. Eventually the power supply may even fail. You can use the power supply calculator at http://www.extreme.outervision.com/powercalc.jsp to help you choose the right size power supply.

Well, that's all I have for now about upgrading your computer. I know I covered a lot of material, so if you want to refer back to anything I talked about you can find a full transcript of this show at http://www.techbyteshow.com. If you want to hear more talk about technology, you should subscribe to our sister show Tech Talk with 5 to 9 Computer Services which you can find at http://www.techtalkshow.com. To request a topic to be covered in a future Tech Bytes show, send an e-mail to (listen to the show for the email address). I'm Kevin, and I'll be back next week with another serving of Tech Bytes.