We’ll show you how to speed up Windows 10 and how to speed up your computer or laptop, in general.
Hardware
These days, slow computers mostly all have the same cause. Therefore, I’ve listed these contributing factors, in order of the impact which they have:
- Solid State Drive (SSD)
One of the most effective ways to make your computer faster is to upgrade your Hard Disk Drive (HDD) to a Solid State Drive (SSD). They are many times faster than traditional Hard Disk Drives, and installing one in your computer or laptop will result in a hugely faster computer, overall. - Adding more memory (RAM)
As time goes on, the programs that we use every day get bigger and bigger, and they consume more memory when they are open. Your computer needs to have sufficient memory installed to keep up with ever-the increasing memory demands on modern programs, and even more so when you have multiple programs opened at once. Your computer should have between 6GB to 8GB of RAM. Any less than this, and your computer will probably be slow. - Central Processing Unit (CPU)
The CPU is the brain of your computer. Upgrading the CPU is sometimes feasible, and sometimes not. The feasibility of doing a CPU upgrade depends on multiple factors but, for most people, there is usually no need to upgrade the CPU unless you are running intensive programs. Most people would get the most benefit from upgrading their Hard Disk Drive (HDD) to a Solid State Drive (SSD), as mentioned above.
Software
- Disable Windows Visual Effects
Windows is designed to look visually pleasing, but it does this at the cost of using system resources to achieve this. If your computer has a high-end graphics card, then this won’t have an effect on your computer performance, but if your computer is older or it’s a lower-end market product, then you should turn off these extra visual effects. - Page File / Swap File
When your Operating System (Windows or linux) has used most of the RAM in your computer, it then starts using a file on your hard drive to emulate RAM. The problem with this is that hard drives are slower than RAM chips, so it impacts system performance, and having a variable-size swap file also leads to disk defragmentation.
(See the section above titled “Solid State Drive (SSD)“)
I always like to max out the amount of RAM in a computer or laptop, and I usually set a static size for the swap file. In some cases, I even disable it completely! - Stop resource-hungry apps
Every app on your computer will use a different amount of CPU, memory, and disk usage (depending on how the app was written, and what it does). A web browser will use more memory and CPU time with every tab that you have open, but its memory and CPU usage reduces when you close each tab. This is normal behaviour.
Some apps and services use lots of CPU time even when they are doing nothing. Controlling when these start can speed up your computer greatly. - Disable unused Windows services
Some services, particularly in Microsoft Windows, are always running in the background – even when they aren’t actually performing a useful function!
This wastes memory and can degrade system performance.