Computer hardware is a complex market, and upgrading your PC requires research as a result. Reading hardware reviews may not be exciting, but you'll be rewarded by the fastest PC upgrades possible.
Know What You're Buying
Having decided what you need to upgrade to gain the most performance for your money, it is now time to turn to the details. It isn't enough to simply decide that you need a reasonably faster quad-core processor, or that you need a new video card, because there are many options available. Even if you're looking at a processor, upgrading from a slower LGA 775 Intel processor to a faster dual-core presents you with numerous options, from the value-mined E7200 to the all-out performance of the E8600. With products that are sold through third party vendors, like video cards and sound cards, the situation can become even more confusing, because the vendor might provide their own bundled software or slightly alter the specifications of the production. To make the best purchase, you'll need to research what you're buying.
Where To Start
Bright Hub offers numerous articles, including many articles aimed at making hardware recommendations. These articles are a great place to start, because they give quick, easy recommendations about what products are generally the best in a certain category. With this information, you can start to build a list of hardware you'd like to research further by evalulating multiple reviews from multiple sources. This reduction of possible upgrades to a few selects picks you'd like to throughly research is important, due the number of upgrades available. It simply isn't practical to try and research every possible upgrade: the in-depth product reviews that can provide conclusive answers about the performance of upgrades you're considering are often long, time-consuming reads. And, it is best to compare reviews from several sources.
Below are some of the best Bright Hub articles in the areas of Video Cards, CPUs, and Hard Drives, the parts which you'll most commonly be replacing or adding in the context of this guide.
Video Cards
Best Video Cards Under $75 Dollars
Best Video Cards Under $100 Dollars
Top 3 Home Theater Graphics Cards
Best High Performance Video Cards
Processors
Best Value-Minded Processors
Best Gaming Processors
Best High Performance Processors
Hard Drives
Best Value Hard Drives
Best Terabyte Hard Drives
Best High Performance Hard Drives
You may have noticed that despite recommending RAM upgrades throughout this guide, I have not listed any RAM recommendation articles. The reason for this is that when choosing RAM, the type of RAM you buy is far more important than the brand. Two seperate RAM sticks made to similar specifications - for example, DDR2 800 - will perform similarly in most situations. As such, discovering which brands of RAM are the most reliable is more important than discovering which provide the best performance.
Narrowing The List
Once you've used the resources above to discover what upgrades you're interested in, you can start searching for reviews of the specific products you want. If you were interested in a high-end video card, for example, you'd probably be deciding between a Radeon 4870 and a Geforce GTX260. There are many reviews available for each card, and if you're looking at a specific card - say, a special over-clocked version - you can search for that as well.
Use your best judgement when reading any review. There are many websites that don't offer unbiased opinions. If the review you are reading appears to be unprofessional or poorly written, then be wary of the conclusion it makes. Also pay attention to how rigorous the review's testing seems to be. An in-depth product review should include benchmarks that pit the product being reviewed against popular competitors.
The Best Possible Upgrade
Upgrading your PC means more than rooting around in the guts of your digital companion. It also means deciding which upgrades are worthwhile, what hardware to keep, and if upgrading is even possible. This series focuses on the mental work that is required before diving into the bowels of your PC.