Are you ready for a new computer because your old computer is too slow, even after you tweaked all of the settings and disk defraged your machine to death? Well, don’t send your old desktop to the grave just yet. Here’s what I did to my old Dell Dimension 2400.
SSD – Solid State Drive
Changing your hard drive to a SSD hard drive is the first thing you should do. Don’t bother with RAM just yet. The biggest question I had was “Which bus should I connect the SSD to?” Here’s a link to show you the different bus speeds; look about half way down the page. Bus Speed Link
Most older computers will have a PCI bus and IDE cable. I chose to connect my SSD via PCI slot with a SATA card. One reason I did this is because the PCI bus is just as fast as IDE and if I ever want to remove the SSD and install it in another computer, then a SATA connection is very easy to transfer to most newer computers and newer computers already have the SATA connection built in.
I bought a Kingston 64GB 2.5” SSD. I didn’t bother buying the 3.5” bay adaptor. I just set the SSD in the bottom of the case. If you want to spend as little as possible, then I recommend around 32GB SSD minimum. Check out my webpage on cloning Windows to a new hard drive if you need help with installing your SSD. You may have more data than 32GB on your current hard drive, so you’ll have to make some room by transferring your data to another hard drive or computer until your new SSD is up and running.
After I installed my SSD, I couldn’t believe the speed. It was like lightning in a bottle. Actually I never bothered upgrading my RAM. I still have 512k. It’s really fast, but if you use a lot of RAM and the SSD isn’t enough the do the RAM upgrade.
RAM
This should be the cheapest upgrade. Since your computer is old, the RAM should be cheap. It’s about $30 for me to go from 512k to 2GB of RAM. Double check with your manufacturer’s RAM limits for your computer. You should only install the maximum recommended RAM and type. Example: 2GB max RAM, SODIMM DDR2 P2700.
With these simple and relatively cheap hardware upgrades, your old computer will be fast again.
Important webpage links: Bus Speed Link Clone Windows