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The ever present question – Upgrade or replace?

Technology moves at a rate of knots these days so much so that there are times where even the most clued up geek could miss a slice of news.

With promises of “up to 10X better performance” and other wild claims meant to lure you into a purchase, it’s often folks who are fed up with a slow PC that feel that replacing their existing PC is the best way forward.

More often than not however, a few clever upgrades can vastly improve your computing experience.

A survey of 350 IT managers revealed that 50 percent of respondents preferred upgrading a system while only 19 percent said they would replace a PC that is slow or not performing well.

The great thing about a PC is that many of the parts can easily be swapped out for something better. We like to think of a computer as a giant piece of LEGO and while it might seem intimidating, upgrading is as simple as pressing a physical button.

What parts should you consider replacing?

The two most common issues that come up when a PC is slowing down is a lack of RAM and the storage capacity either being too full or too slow.

Often, these two components can be upgraded easily and at far less cost than replacing the entire machine.

IT managers say that upgrading a system from 4GB of RAM to 8GB of RAM and adding a 275GB SSD often costs 75 percent less than a new system. Of course, this depends on how much upgrading costs in time and money compared to simply replacing the machine.

When to replace?

Experts suggest that if a PC is running an older generation CPU with DDR2 memory, you should consider replacing the machine.

Another valuable consideration is whether the user needs to run a new operating system or newer applications which may be more demanding.

Of course, the final decision comes down to cost effectiveness. If your entire team is going to be offline as PCs get upgraded, it may make more fiscal sense to replace the PCs.

Speed matters

The key thing to remember when upgrading your storage is that volatile memory, in the form of Solid State Drives, is fast, much faster than traditional hard disk drives.

Don’t let the name fool you though, this doesn’t mean your data will disappear when you switch your PC off.

Solid State Drives are made up of chips similar to those found on RAM DIMMs but a lot more hardy. These chips remove the physical aspect of hard drives and a controller helps facilitate the transfer of data.

The result of this is that data transfers are much faster. This extends to the launching of applications and the operating system as well.

Crucial is a global brand of Micron Technology, one of the largest memory and flash storage manufacturers in the world. Crucial makes computer memory upgrades (DRAM) and solid state drives (SSDs) and offers more than 250 000 upgrades for over 50 000 systems across desktops, notebooks, and workstations. For 17 years Crucial has provided award-winning products, and are globally considered to be the memory and storage experts.

The Crucial MX500 uses 3D NAND cells and boasts read speeds of 530MB/s and write speeds of 510MB/s but the Dynamic Write Acceleration technology is the real star. This tech uses an adaptable pool of high-speed, single-level cell flash memory to generate blistering speeds throughout the drive’s long life.

The MX500 series is also much more power efficient than a typical hard drive.

A wide spread of capacities also means you can find a Crucial MX500 drive that suits your needs.

With more than 100 000 products on the market, memory and storage used to be notoriously hard to buy whilst ensuring compatibility with existing hardware.

Thankfully with the Syntech Online Memory configurator, years of compatibility research are at your fingertips. In just three questions, Crucial will learn enough about your system to provide a list of guaranteed compatible parts – all in less than a minute.

As for memory, this requires a bit more insight from the IT team. This is because you need the right type of memory – DDR2, DDR3 or DDR4 – as well as the correct form factor.

Thankfully, Crucial has a number of DIMM and SODIMM modules available that suit the needs of any PC.

Whether you are upgrading a notebook or a workstation, Crucial offers high-speed and high capacity memory solutions.

For more on Crucial SSDs and memory modules get in touch with Syntech. Not only will Syntech help you select the best products, they can help you upgrade your entire office. For more information visit the Syntech website.

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