When it comes to the time when your computer starts to show signs of age, some people just give or throw away their old box and buy new. The more adventurous with the geek-streak amongst us, however, prefer to upgrade the internal and external hardware from time to time in an ongoing process.

When upgrading the hardware in a computer, a lot of pre-planning is required before doing the actual physical upgrading task itself.

First, you have to know why you’re upgrading in order to know what particular components to upgrade. – For example; if your computer’s graphics capability becomes  insubstantial for your requirements in line with the higher-bandwidth and greater-performance-demanding advancing internet-content – yet you know that your processor and RAM are well above the recommended system specs suggested for playing the game, then you’ll be looking to upgrade the graphics card., or to fit a graphics card that will take over from the motherboard’s onboard graphics capabilities.

There are several main components inside a computer which you can upgrade. There may be other components fitted that may also require an upgrade from time to time, ( A PCI or PCIe RAID card for example, or an additional sound-card.) but the main components, which, are fairly standard for any computer are: -

Motherboard

Graphics card

Hard-drive(s)

Power supply unit (PSU)

Random Access Memory (RAM)

Processor (CPU)

One or two of the above may have to be upgraded when other main components are upgraded in order to maintain component compatibility. – For example; if you were upgrading the motherboard, unless the new motherboard takes the same processor and/or same processor socket designation as the previous one, then a new, compatible processor is called for. The same goes with the RAM: Unless the previous RAM sticks will fit into the slots and have the same slot designation as the RAM slots on the new motherboard, then new RAM is also called for. Sometimes a new power supply unit may also be called for too with a motherboard replacement.

When upgrading a motherboard; which is about the biggest upgrade task you can do on a computer, you’ll probably want to change the processor and RAM for something faster that performs better anyway: there doesn’t seem much point in upgrading a motherboard just to have it bogged down by a slow CPU and lagging RAM.

A well-documented way to increase a computer’s performance is to increase the amount of RAM. This can be accomplished by adding sticks, and/or by replacing existing sticks with new sticks with more capacity on them.

Replacing the processor with a faster and better-specced model of the same socket designation may also be a performance aid in some cases. Ideally, though, a processor upgrade should normally always be a part of a motherboard upgrade , or even a separate operation in its own right.

Hard-drives are another thing you might upgrade: Either adding one or more, or replacing one or more. – You might just want more room to store data; and therefore might, for instance, change a 500GB HD for a 1TB HD, or even just add a 1TB HD as an extra storage drive or as a part of a RAID array. Perhaps your old hard-drive is making unsavoury noises, or is experiencing a recent glut of bad sectors, and you feel that it’s time to replace it.

Power supply units wear out and require replacing at times too. Alternatively you might require more wattage for the new graphics card that you’ve just installed, or the new motherboard even’ and therefore the upgrade is merely a matter of course.

I once described a computer as an adult Lego set; with wires, electricity, and data added to make it a little more difficult. Once you master how it fits together and at least the basics of how it works, you’ll find that it’s fairly easy to do your own upgrades, and save yourself time, and maybe a small of money too, in the process. – It really isn’t as difficult as you may imagine: All you need is some basic electronics knowledge, general software knowledge, a static-free work area, take proper precautions, a small toolkit, a steady hand and relatively good hand-eye-coordination, and you’re away: You can upgrade your own computer(s) and gain great satisfaction from the result. You can also upgrade other people’s too for a fee, build new computers for yourself and others – The world’s your oyster when you know what you’re doing.

One thing to consider, though, is that there’s not a lot of money in building & upgrading computers currently, unless you do it en masse; but it’s a useful talent to have all the same, even if you only use it for your own purposes: Whenever your PC stops working you can just usually fix it on the spot with a minimum of effort and cost, compared to calling a geek in to umm and arr, take it away for a few days, and charge you a small fortune when they return it in a working condition. Also, whenever you feel that you could do with a performance-increase in whatever respect, you can just plan whatever upgrade you need, buy the parts, and do it whenever it’s convenient to do so, all at a cost decided to the penny by you – in that you yourself are in total control over your spending, you decide what components you’ll use, what quality of components to utilise, everything.

There’s another aspect to this, and that is the aspect of progress as a person: Maybe it’s not the kind of thing that you’d like to do every day, and maybe you’re not as fascinated by electronics and building computers as I and some others are…

When your computer malfunctions, however, is maybe the time that you wish that you did have the know-how: ‘See there have been times in the past when I’ve been joyfully geeking away at the keyboard without a care in the world and suddenly the computer crashes with a blue-screen. ( BSOD ) I boot up again only for it to crash again shortly. Eventually it blue-screens almost as soon as it restarts every time. You yourself may or may not have experienced a similar problem in the past.

I know to run chkdsk /f and chkdsk /r, and if the problem continues to occur and worsen despite this, having run Spinrite  to fully diagnose any disk-issue, I replace the main hard-drive and re-install the contents of the old drive to the new one from my backup: Cost = a few hours and the price of a new hard-drive.

If I wasn’t in the know, I wouldn’t be able to use the machine until I’d had someone else fix it and had paid them whatever they asked for, which could be anything up to £200. (About $300.) – or maybe more. Then again I might have done as some people do – panic, and gone out and bought a whole new machine…

…So I find that doing my own upgrades and being in the know when there’s a need to be so, that being when a fault develops, has many clear advantages, particularly in terms of reducing both cost and also downtime.

Do you do your own upgrades and/or repairs? If so, please share some of your experiences.