Jul192010

How can I upgrade my RAM and hard drive?

Sahil Dave asks:

I currently have 512 MB RAM and 120 GB HDD. I want to upgrade this to 4 GB and 500 GB, respectively. What should I do? Change the motherboard or can it be done just by replacing these two things?

I don’t have any idea about these things, so please help me! What would be more reliable?


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Similar questions

  • http://www.dunedincomputing.co.uk Oron Joffe

    The answer depends on the motherboard. Find out the exact make and model of your motherboard (you can download and use SIW for this), then search for the motherboard manual to find out what the max. supported RAM and HD size are. For the memory, you can also go to crucial.com, and click the ‘scan my system’, which will show you what memory configurations are available and how much they cost.

    If all this sounds alien and scary, find someone to help you either privately or commercially. Don’t get into a mess you can’t get out of!

  • http://www.TopSecretWriters.com Ryan Dube

    The odds are good you should be able to swap out your hard drive, but the real question is whether the motherboard can accept that level of RAM. Like Oron posted, Crucial is your best bet to automatically check the motherboard for the max RAM it can take – you can also conveniently order from there, which is cool.

    Be careful swapping them out if you’ve never done it before – I had a friend who fried his CPU with static shock because he didn’t follow the right practices while opening up the box and working with the sensitive electronics in there. Good to have a geeky friend do it for you if you’re unsure.

    Good luck!

  • http://www.socialbrandingblog.com/ Steve Campbell

    I recently wrote an article about the basic parts of a computer and how to upgrade them:

    http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/basic-parts-computer-upgrade-technology-explained/

  • Anonymous

    You will have to figure out whether or not your current motherboard supports RAM upto 4 GB. More importantly, you will also need to figure out what type of RAM your motherboard supports. This could be DDR, DDR2, DDR3, etc. Finally, you will want to figure out what is the maximum clock speeds for RAM, the motherboard supports. You will need to buy RAM accordingly (800 MHz, 933 Mhz, 1333 Mhz, etc. The hard drive on the other hand, should be much lesser trouble. You should be able to simply swap it out.

  • http://www.jackcola.org/ Jack Cola

    I would probably just buy a new one. No harm in having a spare.

    But have a read of http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/the-guide-build-your-own-pc and even http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/build-a-gaming-pc

  • Rtej89

    It will always help to have extra RAM and Hard Disk. As i saw the configuration(512 RAM & 120GB) i assumed it was purchased about 4 or 5 years back. A lot has changed since then. So i would recommend a motherboard up gradation along with the other 2. It will also help you to update your processor and other peripherals at later stages when you can afford them. Especially since the older motherboards will not support newer processor and the other peripherals which keep on improving.

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