If you’ve had your gaming computer for a couple of years, chances are it’s showing some signs of slowing down and struggling to keep up with the newer generation video games that are constantly being improved on and released. Video games are evolving and the demand on your computer is bigger than ever for the performance needed to render and produce these huge and complex video game worlds. There are some easy upgrades that you can make to your gaming computer to improve its performance, so let’s have a look at three of them.

Upgrade to an SSD

Your first port of call should be your gaming computer’s storage system. If it still uses an older technology spindle drive, you should consider making the switch to one of the more performance-orientated gaming PC hard drives like a solid-state drive. It’s much faster and can make a significant difference to the speed of your gaming PC.

The technical details get quite complex but think of it like an old vinyl player. To find a specific song, you had to carefully drop the needle down on the right part of the vinyl record. This is like the spindle drive – it must physically find the information stored magnetically on the drive surface. A solid-state drive can access any information stored on it almost instantly, like a music streaming service.

Add More Memory

Adding more memory (RAM, or random access memory) into your computer gives it more super-fast temporary storage. It’s an incredibly cost-effective upgrade and it can make a big difference to speed. When you see a loading screen in a game, it’s actually copying the files needed into your computer’s RAM so it can be quickly accessed by the game when needed. The more of this storage you have, the more temporary information your computer can store in it, and the faster the system is. In a modern gaming computer, you should aim to have at least 16GB of RAM, and even more if you can. It’s not uncommon for computers to have 32GB or more RAM.

Replace the Graphics Card

In a gaming computer, the processor is important, but not nearly as important as the graphics card (also called a GPU or graphics processing unit). The graphics card is expensive and can be a significant cost upgrade, but it’s responsible for doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to rendering and displaying your game’s incredible and detailed 3D worlds. The better your graphics card, the higher quality of the graphics in your games. Newer graphics cards also have features like dynamic ray tracing that can make the lighting in 3D worlds more realistic and dynamic, adding depth and life to your game environments. If there’s one thing that you should look at upgrading if you have the money, the graphics card is it.

From a quick and cheap addition of extra RAM to a bigger GPU change, your gaming computer still has some life left in it if you can spend a bit of money upgrading it.