There will come a time when your old PC he blames the passage of time. The technological industry does not stop before anyone, it goes forward unstoppably and the needs of users grow with it. This way, you may find that your computer equipment runs out of storage space or memory in a few years; the computer heats up or is too noisy; you cannot connect your new peripherals; you cannot install the latest versions of operating systems or applications; apps take forever to launch or launch; disconnects from Wi-Fi; it crashes or has random errors that you don’t know where they’re coming from and you get a pretty bad user experience overall.

The first answer is to think about buying a new PC. And it is certainly a good choice, because extending the life of the computing device to a reasonable limit will not bring any savings and a lot of worries. In addition, there is an offer of new basic solvent equipment at very low prices. All this said generally because You also don’t have to throw away your old PC right away..

What if with a smart investment you could bring it back to life? That’s what we’re going to suggest in this handy simple, in which we look at those major hardware upgrades to improve its performance and train it for the next few years of use. Also a software change that can make a difference as not all operating systems need the same level. Of course, do the math first and assess whether it’s worth it to you compared to the new team’s options.

Connect the SSD

There are several hardware upgrades that will give you that so much for so little and so direct. Hard drives have been the bottleneck of computer systems for years, and any renovation involves replacing them with SSDs and thus gaining the advantages of solutions based on NAND flash memories, especially in terms of performance, booting of the operating system over time, or applications or when transferring internal files or external drives.

Your old PC’s motherboard won’t have the newer M.2 PCIe connectors, but it will definitely support the SATA interface. It is more than enough because the data transfer performance will be multiplied by four compared to the hard disk. And what can I tell you about the price. Today you can find versions with 250 GB for only 23 euros. The change is simple and you can view it in detail in this guide.

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 whether or not certain tasks can be performed on a personal computer. Simply doubling the installed RAM from 4 to 8 GB is overnight.

Swapping RAM is a relatively inexpensive upgrade that allows you to upgrade your gear 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.

Upgrade your CPU and potentially your GPU

Replacing a processor is not as simple or as profitable as an SSD or RAM. 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 motherboard 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 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 it will increase the number of processor cores and operating frequency. And another important section, it may contain 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 probably don’t have enough power in the power supply and then it will be more profitable to buy a new PC, but you should know that there are older GPUs which can perfectly meet for this type of device. In this special, you have cheap graphics cards from 50 euros, which will make the graphics subsystem very happy and you can even play with a resolution of up to 1080p.

improve cooling

Changing the CPU will probably mean a new cooler fan, although you could check to see if the old one is still 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 end up reducing the life of the components. .

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 excessive temperature 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, and it’s completely free. Yes, you might be tempted to stick with Windows, but if you want to use the latest versions like Windows 11, the system itself can contribute to its slowness.

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

In this special, we offered you five Linux distributions to resurrect 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.