A new computer is a thing of beauty. It's fast, it's clean, and everything runs as it should. But as time goes on, that PC that was once so slick and fast now feels like it's trudging through molasses. Programs take forever to start up, and when they finally do, they run slowly. Usually, organize your files and increase the computer memory can boost its speed.

Many friends would ask me what computer memory is exactly. Is it RAM or CPU? Are the files on hard disk having great impact on computer speed? Is hard drive a kind of hardware? That’s quite puzzling. In this article, we are going to break these confusions down and learn how to increase the memory to speed up slow computer.


CPU/Processor


The CPU handles all of the calculations a computer performs. It usually refers to as a processor, central processor, or microprocessor, which is the Central Processing Unit of the computer. A computer's CPU handles all instructions it receives from hardware and software running on the computer.

CPU speed is “thinking speed”. Today, CPUs are equipped with two, four, or even more cores, which means the CPU can handle more calculations exponentially and consume less electricity. And yes, the higher Core iX you get the better performance you have.


RAM/Memory


Random Access Memory is basically the short-term memory of your computer. While your computer is loading and running applications, they get stored in the RAM. The RAM is much faster than the hard drive. The more RAM you have, the more "stuff" that can be stored in it. The faster the RAM, the faster your computer can access the data that gets temporarily pushed into it. Once your RAM is stuffed, your computer will depend on the hard drive to retrieve information, and that's where things get sluggish. Once you stop running a program, it will remove itself from the RAM to free up some space for everything else running.

Therefore, when your computer starts slowing down, shut down the programs you do not need this moment. By the way, this is how RAM looks like:


Hard Drive


The hard drive is the storage device of a computer. For extremely high-end PCs, the hard drive is the bottleneck. Hard drives, when compared to RAM, are very slow to access and write information. Once your computer needs to rely on your hard drive heavily for RAM, things are going to start getting bogged down. There are costly solid-state drives, but as a performance-improving factor, typically solid state drives aren't the cost-effective answer.


So, how should I increase the memory to boost computer speed?

If you have scanned the facts above, you may have learned that you need to remove the old unwanted, duplicated, and unused big files, clean and defrag the hard drive, uninstall the programs you no longer need, to free the memory space and speed up slow computer ultimately. In case something with the system, once you’ve uninstalled unused program or deleted files, make sure to clean out your registry as well. That’s some work, right?

Fortunately, Neptune SystemCare Ultimate would help you do all these with easy clicks. Except for Big Files Manager to scan and delete useless big files regularly to release more disk space, Disk Defrag to realign the files to provide noticeable speed improvements, Neptune SystemCare Ultimate can securely wipe out all your hard drive data, removing only your personal files and leaving the programs intact, making sure your personal information is not recoverable.