PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

1.5 Upgrading a PC

Sometimes
it's sensible to upgrade a PC. Other times
it's not. Whether it is economically feasible to
upgrade a particular PC depends largely on how old the PC is, its
existing configuration, and what you expect it to do.

PCs less than a year or two old are usually easy to upgrade.
Components are readily available and sell at market prices. Necessary
BIOS upgrades and firmware revisions are easy to obtain. PCs more
than two or three years old are harder and more expensive to upgrade.
Necessary components, particularly memory and BIOS upgrades, may be
difficult or impossible to obtain. Even if you can obtain them, they
may be unreasonably expensive. Upgrading one item often uncovers a
serious bottleneck elsewhere, and so on. In general, restrict older
PCsanything more than a couple of years oldto minor
upgrades such as adding memory, replacing a hard disk or optical
drive, or perhaps installing a faster processor. Although you

can perform significant upgrades on older
systems, it seldom makes economic sense to do so. If an older PC
requires more than minor upgrades to meet your expected needs for the
next year or so, it's probably not a good upgrade
candidate.

The reason most people upgrade their PCs is to improve performance.
The good news is that there are several relatively inexpensive
upgrades that may yield noticeable performance increases. The bad
news is that some are easier than others, and performing all of them
can easily cost as much as or more than simply buying (or building) a
new
PC.

Upgrading
the processor improves overall system performance. In general, newer
systems are easy to upgrade, and older systems are more difficult (or
impossible) to upgrade. Upgrade only within the same
generationfor example, a Pentium 4/1.6A to a Pentium 4/2.8, or
a Duron/700 to an Athlon/1800+. If you upgrade within the same
generation you may have to upgrade your BIOS at the same time
(usually a free download), and you may have to buy an adapter (for
example, to install a Socket 370 Celeron in an older Slot 1
motherboard). Avoid upgrade kits, which are usually expensive,
provide limited performance improvements, and are often plagued with
compatibility problems. Replacing the motherboard, processor,

and memory usually costs little or no more than
purchasing one of these kits, and the results are much better.
Upgrading processors is covered in Chapter 4.
Cost: $30 to $200 (although you can spend much more). Difficulty:
easy to difficult, depending on the system and the
processor.

If
your PC does not have at least 64 MB (Windows 95/98/Me), 128 MB
(NT/2000/Linux), or 256 MB (XP) of RAM, adding RAM is the most
cost-effective upgrade you can make. Additional memory improves
overall system performance, sometimes dramatically. Adding memory
beyond 96 MB for 95/98/Me, 128 MB for NT/2000/Linux, or 256 MB for XP
results in decreasing returns. The downsides are that many older
systems do not cache memory above 64 MB (check the
motherboard/chipset manual), which means that increasing memory
beyond 64 MB can actually

decrease performance,
and that you may be sinking money into an obsolete form of memory
that cannot be migrated later to a new system. Accordingly, we do not
recommend upgrading memory in systems that use any memory type older
than SDRAM DIMMs. Upgrading memory is covered in Chapter 5. Cost: $25 to $150 (varies with memory size
and price). Difficulty: usually easy, although physical access on
some older systems is difficult and the correct memory may be hard to
find and expensive to buy.

If
you use your CD-ROM drive only for installing software and listening
to music, even an original 1X model suffices. But if you use your
CD-ROM drive for playing games, accessing large databases, or ripping
audio CDs to MP3 format, you'll want a better drive.
Recent 32X and faster IDE models are inexpensive and easy to install.
However, rather than installing a new CD-ROM drive, consider
installing a CD writer and/or a DVD-ROM drive, both of which offer
full CD-ROM functionality and adds additional useful capabilities.
Upgrading CD-ROM drives is covered in Chapter 10.
Cost: $50. Difficulty: easy.

Modern hard
disks are huge, fast, and inexpensive. Upgrading the hard disk not
only provides additional storage space, but also can dramatically
increase performance if you run applications that access the disk
frequently. Older systems cannot recognize large hard disks, but you
can get around that problem by using a device driver (usually
included with the new drive), by installing a BIOS upgrade, or by
replacing the embedded IDE interface with an expansion card ($25 to
$50) that supports large drives. Upgrading hard disks is covered in
Chapter 13 and Chapter 14. Cost: $60 to $250. Difficulty: easy, except
for problems migrating existing programs and data.

Video adapter technology improves
almost from month to month. Even so, if you use your system primarily
for word processing, email, web browsing, and similar functions, you
won't get much benefit from upgrading to a new video
adapter. But if you play 3D games and your video card is more than a
year or so old, upgrading to a more recent model can provide dramatic
performance benefits. Although it seldom makes sense to install the
latest, fastest video adapter in an older system, installing a
midrange current video card can boost performance at small cost.
Upgrading video adapters is covered in Chapter 15.
Cost: $50 to $200. Difficulty: easy to moderate.

Although
CRT monitors are a mature technology, manufacturing improvements and
other factors have resulted in dramatic price reductions on larger
models. Not long ago, 15-inch monitors were the norm and 17-inch
monitors sold for $750. Nowadays, decent 17-inch monitors cost $150
and 19-inch monitors $250. If you spend a lot of time in front of
your PC, buying a larger monitor may be the best upgrade you can
make. Also, unlike most upgrades, a good monitor is a long-term
asset. You can use it with your current system, your next system, and
probably the next system after that. Upgrading monitors is covered in
Chapter 16. Cost: $150 to $700. Difficulty: easy.

Most systems and motherboards made
before late 2002 support only 12 Mb/s USB 1.1, which is useful only
for low- and medium-speed devices such as mice, keyboards, printers,
and scanners. USB 2.0 runs at 40 times the speed of USB 1.1, and
supports high-speed external devices such as hard drives, tape
drives, and optical drives. If you have an older system, you can add
USB 2.0 support by installing an inexpensive USB 2.0 PCI adapter.
Some models also include IEEE-1394 (FireWire) ports, which are useful
for connecting video cameras and similar consumer devices. Upgrading
USB ports is covered in Chapter 24. Cost: $25 to
$100. Difficulty: easy.

Although it may seem strange to include
power supplies in the performance upgrade category, the fact is that
many systems have inadequate power supplies, and replacing the
original unit with a better unit can improve system performance and
stability. Upgrading power supplies is covered in Chapter 26. Cost: typically $45 to $125. Difficulty:
easy.

Another reason to upgrade a PC is to add missing features. Here are
some common feature upgrades:

A CD writer allows you to burn your own
CDs, which can subsequently be read in any recent CD or DVD drive. CD
writers are popular for making archival backups and, of course, are
used by many people to copy data and audio CDs. Adding a CD writer is
covered in Chapter 11. Cost: $75 to $150.
Difficulty: easy.

A
DVD drive allows you to watch DVD movies on your PC and to access the
increasing number of databases and games supplied on DVD. DVD drives
can also read data and audio CDs, so they are a popular replacement
for CD-ROM drives. DVD writers are to DVD-ROM drives as CD writers
are to CD-ROM drives. In addition to playing back video, audio, or
data DVD discs, a DVD writer can write large amounts of data to a
removable disc or cartridge that costs $3 to $40. Adding a DVD-ROM
drive or DVD writer is covered in Chapter 12. Cost:
$50 (DVD-ROM) or $200 to $300 (DVD writer). Difficulty: easy.

The
downside of huge, cheap, modern hard disks is that there is no
practical way to back them up short of installing a tape drive. Tape
drives store huge amounts of dataup to 50 GB or moreon
relatively inexpensive tape cartridges. Adding a tape drive is
covered in Chapter 9. Cost: $200 to $900.
Difficulty: easy for IDE, easy to moderate for SCSI.

If
you make no serious demands on the audio capabilities of your PC, the
inexpensive sound card and speakers that probably came with it are
usable. But PC audio hardware and applications are advancing faster
than any component except video adapters, and there are a lot of
fascinating new applications, including 3D gaming with positional
audio, DVD playback, IP telephony, voice-recognition software, and so
on. To use any of these new applications, you may need to replace
your sound card and perhaps your speakers. Adding a sound card and
speakers is covered in Chapter 17 and
Chapter 18. Cost: $50 to $400. Difficulty: easy,
except for potential conflicts with improperly uninstalled drivers
from the original sound card.

Years ago, people bemoaned the fact
that PC games were inferior to arcade games or dedicated game
consoles such as those from Sega, Sony, and others. Dramatic
improvements in PC video and audio mean that nowadays the playing
field is level. Many excellent games run on PCs, the Sony PlayStation
series and Microsoft Xbox notwithstanding. But getting the most from
those games requires adding dedicated game controller hardware, such
as a joystick, wheel, or paddle. Adding a game controller is covered
in Chapter 21. Cost: $10 to $150. Difficulty: easy.

The
ultimate upgrade, of course, is to replace the motherboard, which in
effect means building an entirely new PC. Before you undertake a
motherboard upgrade, consider whether you might not do better to
retire your current PC to other duties and buy or build a new system.
If you do replace the motherboard, expect to pay $50 to $250 for the
motherboard itself, but also plan to spend another $50 to $250 to
replace processor, memory, and perhaps other components, depending on
how much can be salvaged from the current system. Difficulty: easy to
moderate (although it may be time-consuming) if you have some
experience working on PCs, moderate to difficult if you
don't.