This is a question that I get asked a lot, let’s face it, nobody likes a slow computer! Speed is essential when it comes to stress free computing, there is nothing more frustrating than waiting for your programs to load. To speed up your computer you need to consider two possibilities. The first is that spending a little money can go a long way in some cases and is usually the most effective way to speed up your computer, however, if you’re on a budget then fear not because there are ways to make your computer quicker without forking out any cash! Let’s take a lot at both options.

Willing to spend some money? – If so then great, you need to understand the key components of a pc and what role they play in the speed of your computers;

1. Memory – 95% of the time this is the most effective way of speeding up a computer, installing more memory. Not only that but it is the easiest way and doesn’t require any change on configuration, you insert the new memory (with the computer off, of course) turn your machine back on and then reap the benefits of extra memory. There was a time where this could be a tricky upgrade, why? Because you had to find out how much memory your motherboard could support, and what kind of memory your system uses, and its very easy to get the wrong kind! The good news is that there are now free online tools available that scan your system for the type of memory you have, and your system capacity, the best one I’ve used is on crucial’s website which can be found here.
2. CPU – Your CPU or processor is the heart of your computer, it deals with every single piece of data passing through your machine, the quicker the processor the better, however it is unusual for your CPU to be the bottleneck and the cause of a slow computer, not only that but it can be a bit of a headache to upgrade if you’re a novice. If you reach a point where your computer is running at maximum memory capacity then it might be worth getting a new system instead of upgrading the processor. The problem is that you need to be aware of the type of socket your motherboard supports, you then need to also check its maximum CPU speed capability. To make any significant impact with a CPU upgrade you usually have to upgrade the motherboard as well, like I say, it can be a major headache and I don’t recommend it unless you really know what you’re doing.
3. Hard Drive – This is usually an overlooked factor when it comes to speeding up your computer. If you use programs or games that are constantly accessing data from the hard drive or if you do a lot of file copying then you might consider a hard drive upgrade. It’s important to remember at this point that the less memory you have, the more your hard drive is accessed since it can only store a certain amount of information in memory. Accessing data from the memory is a lot quicker than from the hard drive, simply due to the fact that a hard drive has moving parts (unless you have a solid state disk which is unlikely!) Which this in mind it can be worth getting a hard drive with a faster spindle speed. Most hard drives run at 7200 rpm which is standard, you can get upgrades of 10,000 or even 15,000 rpm, but be prepared to pay more than you would with a standard speed drive.

These are the most common hardware components you should look at when it comes to speeding up your system, as you’ve probably already gathered I highly recommend memory being your first point of call when it comes to an upgrade. It is the easiest, cheapest and most effective way of speeding up your computer.

Not looking at spending any money? - No problem, there are ways to speed up your computer without spending any money, let’s take a look at them.

1. Free up system resources – Monitoring and understanding your system resources is an important part of speeding up your computer. Right click on your taskbar at the bottom and then click on task manager, the two tabs you should be concerned with are the processes and performance tab. Let’s check out the performance tab, here is mine:

   

   The two graphs on the left show the current CPU and memory usage, at the time of writing this my laptop was practically idling as you can see, if either of these graphs are constantly above two thirds then you may have problems. The graphs on the right show the usages tracked over a period of time, here you will be able to see what happens when you load a program for instance, you should notice a sudden jump in both CPU and memory usage. Now, let’s check the processes tab:

   

   
   Here, I have clicked on the Mem usage column heading at the top, by doing this it will sort my processes in descending order, starting with the one that is using the most memory. By doing this you can see which processes are consuming most of your systems memory, there might be a chance that you have several running that you don’t even use or that might be rogue, in this case get rid of them! Once you’ve done so your system will have more available memory and should run faster. If you are low on memory then this is defiantly where you should be looking to eliminate programs you don’t need and that are using up valuable system resources. If you click the CPU heading you will get a similar thing except this time the processes will be sorted by the ones using up the most processor power. Again, you will then be able to see if you can get rid of any you don’t need. Most process names will be self explanatory (firefox.exe for example if the Firefox web browser) some might not be as obvious and in which case do a Google search for the process name to help you find out what its used for.

2. Run a full virus / malware check – This point carries on from what I have just said above, you might be surprised to see what is hidden on your computer, you might have a virus that you don’t know about or some malware that is running, taking up valuable system resources. I recommend using both malware antibytes and avira antivirus (both are free) and running full system scans.
3. Defragment your hard drive – There are mixed opinions on this, depending on your file system and how full your hard drive is this can have a minimal if no effect at all. Either way it doesn’t do any harm to give your hard drive a defragment and possibly speed up the reading of your files.
4. Overclock your CPU - This is more of an advanced recommendation and I don’t advise it unless you know what you’re doing! I won’t be covering any details in this article about overclocking a processor; however, the basic idea is that you can set your CPU to run at a faster clock speed than it is pre configured with. Most CPU’s are able to be ‘clocked’ to much higher speeds and therefore giving you a better performance. There are plenty of risks involved here, the biggest being that you’re CPU will be running at a higher temperature once it has been overclocked, and without additional cooling your CPU could be prone to overheating and, in a worst case scenario – burning out completely! If you are interested in this option then do a Google search for ‘overclocking a CPU’ and read one of the many guides available.

Hopefully this guide should give you plenty of ways to speed up your computer, some are more effective than others and it usually helps to do as many as possible for optimal results! Feel free to contact me with any questions.

If you ever want to troubleshoot a computer then knowing its anatomy is essential. There are many important components to a computer and when something goes wrong it’s important that you understand how they all work so you can quickly get to the root cause of the problem. In this article we’ll take a look at the key components of a computer and what their function is.

Motherboard – The motherboard is the holding place for all other components on a computer, everything is connected to it in one way or another, but it is not just a holding place for additional hardware, the motherboard also has many built in chips that perform a wide variety of functions. Most home systems use motherboards that have onboard sound, graphics, network cards, hard drive controllers and chipsets. In one respect this is great because we don’t have to have additional cards for each of these, on the other hand if one of them fails then there are practically impossible to fix since they are soldered on and unless you are competent in micro electronics then you won’t be fixing them in a hurry! The motherboard has the slots for everything from memory to the cpu and to any additional expansion cards that your machine might use.

Processor (CPU) – The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the heart of the computer, it performs all the functions, the processing, the calculations, everything. The CPU views all data as bits, 1′s or 0′s. It uses what are called registers to store data and performs logic functions and mathematical functions to change and modify data. A CPU is capable of addressing memory to store data in and at all times it has a map of the current memory that is available, it is able to read and write to the memory to store and retrieve data from there.

Memory (RAM) – Typically there are two kinds of memory in a computer, RAM (Random Access Memory) and Storage Memory, which is what you might find in a hard drive. RAM is called volatile memory because it is not suitable for permanently storing information, once the power on your computer goes off, all the data in the RAM is lost. Your computer needs RAM to store frequently used data because it can be accessed very quickly and efficiently, if all data was stored on your hard drive then things would be very slow because in comparison accessing data from your hard drive is very slow because of moving parts.

Hard Drive – This is where all your files and settings are stored, basically anything that needs to be retained after the computer has powered off. A hard drive works in the same way a cassette would, it uses magnetic fluxes to store data, the difference is that data can be accessed much faster on a hard drive and does not require rewinding or fast forwarding. A hard drive uses read and write heads to access and write data, these heads can move very fast throughout the disk and this ensures that data can be accessed as quickly as possible. Hard drives vary in size but nowadays a 1Terabyte hard drive is not that expensive. In terms of performance though the two main factors involved are spin speed (measured in rpm) and seek seed (measured in milliseconds).

Graphics Card – The graphics card is the computers way of displaying data, it renders the image that is then displayed on the monitor. A graphics card uses its onboard memory to store the data for images, obviously the more memory the better although there are many other things to consider when looking for a high end graphics card.

Other Components – The other components of a computer are things like sound card, network card, universal serial bus controller to name a few. Typically these are built onto most motherboards although you can also get external card based hardware for your sound and network.

So there you have a summary of the main components of a computer and what they do, remember that this is a basic summary of the key components, I will be writing a more detailed explanation of each of them quite soon.