Information Addicts

OK, so you have tried all the speed tips in my earlier articles, ‘Here’s a quick way to speed up your PC‘ and ‘5 ways to speed up your start up‘, but your PC is still sluggish. What now?
You could replace the CPU (Central Processing Unit), which would give your PC a speed boost, but that could work out to be expensive. Also your motherboard may not accept a newer CPU, if it doesn’t then you will have to replace the motherboard and that would mean no groceries for the week (only joking).

The easiest route is to upgrade your RAM (Random Access Memory) which would not only increase the PCs performance but is also quite cheap to do.
Don’t be put off as this is easier than it sounds, I will guide you step by step, from finding out how much Ram your PC has, to installing it.

Step 1. The first thing you need to do is find out just how much Ram your PC has, because you can only install a certain amount.
In Windows XP, click Start (bottom left) > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information. When the window opens look in the right hand window for ‘Total Physical Memory’ it will read something like 256MB, 512MB or 1GB for example.

Step 2. Now you know how much Ram you have installed, you need to find out if you can add more.
You have two options, and the first one is to get hold of the user guide that came with your PC and take a look to find out what the maximum capacity is. The PC I am using at the moment can take up to 2GB, and currently has 512MB installed, which means I could upgrade if I needed.
Or if you don’t have a user manual, then you can head on over to the Crucial website and click on the ‘Scan My System’ button and it will do the work for you. Click on the link to go to the website and follow the instructions.

Step 3. Now you know what memory you need and how much your PC can handle, all you have to do is decide how much more you want. A good rule of thumb is to double what you have now.

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Where to buy it?
I find Crucial to be about the best and most reliable, they also offer free postage, but shop around you may get your memory cheaper. One more thing, buy yourself an antistatic wrist band, when you buy the Ram, if you don’t you risk damaging the new memory modules when installing them.

Step 4. This is the last step. You have bought your new memory and excited to install it, or even nervous, but not sure how to fit it. I am not going to take you step by step as it has already been done for me. Computer Active have a great workshop guide that takes you through the whole process, some of it repeats what I have wrote, but it is excellent none the less. Click here to go to their workshop.

Good luck and have fun.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under PC Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.