How to Speed Up an old PC?

In this article, I’ll share some of the useful tips on how to speed up an old PC (Laptop or Desktop). Laptops that are a few years older may run very slow and you might even see screen freezing. Over the years, the browsers, applications that your using are all became resource intensive and the older hardware in your desktop or laptop cannot keep up with it.

Replace Hard Drive with SSDs

So upgrading some of the hardware can speed up your PC. When it comes to upgrade, first thing you should consider is to upgrade the mechanical hard drive. This upgrade usually gives the most speed improvement in most on all laptops and MacBook. Boot times will improve drastically, including application load times and the time to switch between applications. The old hard disk drives or HDD are much slower compared to the solid state drives (SSDs). You can easily replace it by yourself with some tools and buying the SSDs online.

Other Hardware Upgrades like RAM or Processor

Most PC models have step by step instructions online or in YouTube. Next thing you can check is if your laptop has removable RAM slots. If so, you can consider upgrading your RAM to at least 8 GB or with a faster RAM if your chipset supports for a higher frequency RAM. You need to check your PC’s manual to figure the RAM frequencies. 

You can also check the chipset’s manual if it’s compatible with a newer or a better quadcore processor(CPU). Difficulty level to upgrade a processor is little bit higher than replacing RAM or SSDs. So, getting it done by a professional is advisable. But this will give more life to your Desktop and in most laptops replacing the CPU is not a option.

Software side tweaks to speed up old PC

You can also tweak some of the software side things to speed up an old PC.

• First thing is to disable unwanted softwares from the start up. This will help the PC to boot faster. Many applications will be setup to start on boot up and slows down PC.
• Remove the temporary files from windows directory. Over a period of time your PC will accumulate a lot of Junk or unwanted files in the temp directory. These files are from web browsing, software upgrades, new installation of softwares etc and can eat up most of the hard drive and eventually slow down the PC. Cleaning these temp folders regularly keep your PC to be faster and you’ll gain more hard drive space too.

Final Thoughts on Upgrading PC

With the above mentioned upgrades, you can extend your PC’s life a little longer with limited expenses. Another important tip it to clean up the dust and debris build up on the vents. This will help in improving the air flow and in turn improve device’s thermal performance. Hope these tips are helpful to speed up your PC.