Five key points for restoring an old PC

The technology industry does not stop at anyone, it moves forward unstoppably, leaving computer equipment of a certain age obsolete. The first reaction is usually to buy a new PC, but It is also necessary to consider whether the old PC could not be recovered if the cost is reasonable.

Time passes inexorably even for our personal computers. We ran out of storage space or memory; the computer heats up or makes too much noise; software takes forever to start or run; disconnects from Wi-Fi; it crashes or has random errors that you don’t know where they are coming from and generally the user experience is pretty negative. Or simply, even if it works fine, we cannot install the latest versions of operating systems, run new applications or games. It’s time to look for a solution.

How to restore an old computer

Come on, miracles can’t be done and sometimes extending the life of computer equipment to a reasonable limit will not bring any savings and cause a lot of headaches. In addition, a supply of new basic solvent equipment is available at very low prices.

But depending on the equipment involved and after an adequate assessment of the required budget, those teams we cornered can be reclaimed. That’s what we’re going to suggest in this hands-on exercise where we look at those major hardware upgrades to improve its performance and get it working again or keep it active for years of use, either primary or secondary. use.

We will also talk about a software change that can make a difference as not all operating systems have the same requirements. Here we go.

Connect the SSD

There are several hardware upgrades that will give you that so much for so little and so directly. Hard drives have been the bottleneck of computer systems for years, and any type of recovery means replacing them with SSDs and thus gaining the advantages of a solution based on NAND flash memories, especially in terms of performance, during the boot time of the operating system, or applications or when transferring internal files or to external drives.

Your old computer probably won’t have the newer M.2 PCIe connectors, but it certainly has SATA support. It is more than enough, because the data transfer performance will be multiplied by four compared to the hard disk. The change is simple and you can view it in detail in this guide. As for the price, a SATA disk of 250 or 500 Gbytes is “added” to the price.

Increase your RAM

Another of the most straightforward upgrades to revive an old PC is RAM expansion. This component has a direct impact on the user experience and the ability or inability to perform certain tasks on a personal computer. Simply doubling the installed RAM from 4 to 8 GB is overnight.

A RAM swap is a relatively cheap upgrade that allows you to upgrade your device without having to change major components like the motherboard, although you have to be a little careful when putting it into practice knowing the number of module slots available; maximum supported capacity; standard used (DDR5, DDR4, DDR3 and older…); form factor if designed for desktops or laptops and main specifications. If you need it, in this guide we offer you a complete guide to increasing your RAM. As with SSD, its price is very cheap.

Upgrade your CPU and potentially your GPU

Replacing the processor is not as easy or cost-effective as with an SSD or RAM memory. But you can appreciate it too. Both Intel and AMD sell dozens of different models and usually keep the same platform for several generations. This potentially allows you to upgrade the CPU without having to replace the entire motherboard.

The list of compatible CPUs will vary depending on the motherboard, so you should check if your chipset and BIOS support it. Benchmark apps like CPU-Z can help you get started, and if you want to know them in detail, you can go to one of our previous guides like this one on Intel and AMD CPU equivalences with architectures, series and ranges.

Changing the CPU will allow increase computer performance for any type of task because the number of processor cores and operating frequency will increase. And another important section, maybe it has integrated graphics of a higher level than you had. In any case, if you see it as worth it, you can retrofit a dedicated graphics card to the desktop.

It can’t be the latest generation, for which you definitely don’t have enough power in the power supply and there it’s already worth buying a new PC, but you should know that there are older GPUs which can perfectly meet this type of device. In this special, you have cheap graphics cards from 50 euros, which will bring great joy to the graphics subsystem and you can even play with a resolution of up to 1080p.

improves cooling

Replacing the CPU will probably mean a new fan-sink, although you can check if the old one will still be able to do its job. Keeping the temperature of this component in check is key, something we can extend to the rest of the PC.

It must be said that dirt or dust generated inside any computing device can reduce the performance of the device, force fans to be permanently connected, shut down the device if the temperature rises above the safety limit, and ultimately shorten the life of the device. computer.component tool.

Cleaning is free… and it should be done with some regularity and more if it is a laptop. You can follow this setup guide. We assure you that you will notice. Some PC errors come from overheating and cleaning will directly improve this.

change the operating system

If you don’t have a big hardware budget or even with the recommended upgrades you haven’t seen a level jump, It’s time to take the next step, this one, like cleaning, completely free. Yes, you are certainly tempted to continue with Windows, but if you want to use the latest versions such as Windows 11, the same system may be contributing to its slowness or simply not allowing you to install it due to the happy TPM requirement.

As you can see in this group of alternative systems, there is more life than Windows, but in the scenario of restoring your old PC there is nothing better than switching to GNU/Linux. The free system has dozens of different distributions, and some of them stand out for their low resource consumption and large capacity for working with older hardware.

In this special, we offered you five Linux distributions to revive computers, and recently we saw another derivative with the same different core, but also with the same goal, Google Chrome OS Flex, which allows you to bring the capabilities of Chromebooks to any computer. It works really well on older hardware and opens up the field for millions of machines that originally ran Windows.