Upgrading a PC - Assignment Example

From reading Fred’s requests, and he has three main concerns: improving his processing power, increasing his hard drive space and doing all of thisas far below his four hundred dollar price point. This means that his system needs small changes rather than major overhauls, and should retain its case and motherboard. He also enjoys using writeable media for backup storage. Thus, the three main areas to improve are processor, hard drive and possibly removable disk drive. CASE Fred does not need to update his case, as changes to case design are only really useful if something about the current case is a problem (not enough hard drive bays, overheating because of not enough fan bays, etcetera).

As Fred has not mentioned any problems with his case, replacing it would simply be overly costly and to absolutely no benefit to the performance of his machine. POWER SUPPLY Fred should also keep his power supply. With an integrated graphics card, which he does not need to improve because of not doing any 3d work, a 390 watt power supply will be more than sufficient for any upgrades made to the computer. MOTHERBOARD Given the fact that he only wants to spend five hundred dollars and that it is still perfectly serviceable, he should keep his motherboard.

Replacing it would not only be costly but would also require him to purchase more expensive other components to take advantage of any improvements he could make. CPU Fred needs to upgrade his CPU. CPU efficiency at any particular task is very difficult to gauge by any of the specs of the processor: the number of ghz, for instance, does not actually relate to speed in any kind of reliable or comparative ways, especially across architectures. To mitigate these issues one can turn to CPUMarks tests, which help allow benchmarks for general processor power.

Fred’s current processor, the Celeron D430, scores an average of around 585 CPUMarks (Celeron Benchmark, 2011). There are many processors that would provide a significant performance increase from this point. Fred is limited, however, in that his motherboard, the ASUS P5KPL-CM, has an LGA775 processor socket, which cannot accept the newest and most efficient processors, the Intel Core i-series (Asus Technical Specs, n.d.). Given these limitations, the best option is the Intel Core 2 Duo E7500, which provides nearly five times the CPUMarks of the Celeron at a minimal price of $118 (Core 2 Duo Benchmark n.d., MSY Core 2 Duo n.d.).

Replacing his processor will be one of the most efficient choices. MEMORY Fred does not need to upgrade his RAM. His motherboard only has room for two slots, so to upgrade his RAM he would have to replace rather than add to his current RAM, making an upgrade much less cost efficient than it could be. I would recommend that Fred does not upgrade his RAM as he intends to remain operating in a Windows XP, and with that operating system 2GB are plenty unless he is running especially RAM intensive operations, which he says he is not.

GRAPHICS CARD Fre does not need to upgrade his graphics card. He does not engage in video editing, 3d gaming or any other things that a discreet graphics card would be necessary for, so his onboard chip should work perfectly. HARD DISK Fred should keep his hard disk, because that makes things far simpler for maintain his current computer environment (installed programs and so on) and his motherboard has four SATA slots, only one or two of which is being used (depending on whether his DVD burner uses a SATA cable) and his case has open hard drive slots (ASUS Technical Specs, n.d.), so another hard drive could be added to supplement his data storage.

Fred does, however, need to improve his storage situation. Hard drives are becoming cheaper and bigger incredibly quickly, and in this respect is 160 GB hard drive is sadly inadequate and outdated. As mentioned previously, replacing the hard drive will not be necessary as another one can easily be added. Currently the best price point per GB is a 1TB internal hard drive. By adding a Seagate 3.5” 1TB drive for only $55, Fred will be able to significantly add to his storage for very little spend, and he will have the ability add another drive or two if his storage needs are still not fulfilled in the future (MSY Seagate n.d.).

OPTICAL DRIVE The last thing Fred could upgrade is his optical drive. He says he frequently backs up to DVDs, but he may want to upgrade his DVD burner to a Blu-Ray burner for several reasons. A Blu-Ray burner can cost as little as $59, and would make back its cost over its life time based on the fact that 15 burnable DVDs cost nearly as much ($12) as Blu Ray disks ($14) despite the fac that Blu ray disks hold five times more than DVDs, 25GB instead of 5 (MSY Blu Ray n.d., Newegg media 2011).

Furthermore, it is simply easier to store and manage the far fewer disks that would be required by Blu-Ray backups rather than DVD ones. Given the low price of the upgrade and the ease it will give Fred, I would recommend that he pursue this upgrade. Fred’s upgrades include adding a hard drive, a Blu Ray player and replacing his processor, for a price of only $232, less than half of his budget (as he said he wanted to spend as little as possible) but leading to noticeable performance improvements.

Works Cited Asus Technical Specs (n.d.) Retrieved from http://ca.asus.com/en/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5KPLCM/ Celeron Benchmark (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+D+430+%40+1.80GHz Core 2 Duo Benchmarks (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html MSY Core 2 Duo (n.d.) retrieved from http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=1565 MSY Seagate (n.d.) retrieved from http://msy.com.au/product.jsp?productId=7386 MSY Blu Ray (n.d.) retrieved from http://www.msy.com.

au/product.jsp?productId=7056 Newegg Media (2011). Retrieved from http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=dvd+rw&x=0&y=0