The natural life of a desktop computer is normally between two to five years. You are lucky enough if you get more than five years. One will be hit first by your pc being outmoded or it having reached its expected lifespan. Like in our office after two years our machines could not cope up anymore with the demands of the newer application software or Windows operating systems. Another year more of use some components start to fail one by one. I would like to outline here the parts that easily get obsolete or often fail:

Hard Drives
Demands for bigger storage capacity roughly double every year. This is mainly due to the storage needs for digital music, digital videos and photos. Thanks to the USB external drives the need to replace internal drives is not that critical.

Memory
Computer memory or RAM is the next to disk storage. Especially when you install new software for graphical manipulation the 512Mb is not enough. Windows Vista is one of that memory monster operating system that to have a smooth use you need like 2 GB of RAM.

CPU’s
Upgrade the processor when the usage is mostly 80% all the time. Multi tasking requires lots of processor resources. This is not easily done but if you have assembled your own PC then you might try to replace it. Matching the replacement with the current mother board.

Video Cards
Working on multimedia projects require that the graphic card adapt with the latest technology. A 3D graphic card would be advisable for increase in performance and functionality with new graphic design software or even gaming software.

CD/DVD Drives
This is one of those easily broken parts depending on how often you use it. You need to upgrade from simply a reader to a writer. This one comes cheap so there’s no problem upgrading.

Computer upgrades can be bought from shops online and there are various sites like Coupon Chief that offer discount coupons for the items. I find CompUSA coupons to be useful as their shop have a wide range of computer hardware available. Another one is Shop4Tech coupons which can be used to buy discounted computer upgrades ranging from memory, hard disk drive, cd/dvd drives and more from their online shop.

Upgrading would not be costly as there are lot’s of discount coupons available. Just a piece of thought, replacement should be considered when the price of an upgrade will be more than half of the new one.