DIY upgrades

摘要

The progress of technology in the PC industry never seems to falter, and there's always some new piece of kit that makes tomorrow's PCs infinitely better than today's. In many cases, though, you don't need to buy a completely new computer to benefit from these advances. Adding a new processor, graphics card or more memory can make a radical difference to an existing computer. But how radical, exactly? Are we talking 10 per cent, 50 per cent or 200 per cent improvement? And how much is it going to cost? If it costs ￡500 for upgrades, wouldn't it be better to spend ￡700 or ￡800 for a completely new PC? What you really need is a breakdown of the costs and likely benefits of upgrading, and that's just what we're going to give you here.We'll look at each of the main parts of a PC that are worth upgrading and indicate the advantages and disadvantages of each, and we'll go further than that by quantifying those advantages to indicate how much faster or how improved an upgraded PC will be, in comparison with a PC platform from three years ago.