Why do computers slow down with age

Spyware, adware, malware, and all forms of computer viruses are popular slowdown culprits. If you experience sudden crashing or inexplicable processing slowdown, your computer may be the victim of a nasty virus. Before assuming the worst, run an antivirus scan to detect any suspicious activity.

Yes it will, it is the only factor that affects fps more than graphics settings. Starting from scratch you can buy exactly what fits your needs. And best of all, when building the computer you will learn not only where and what each computer part does, but if you want to upgrade later on, its just a quick switch of hardware.

Also building your own computer costs less because you are only paying for the parts and not the labor, so your money will get you more! NOTE: If your looking to build your own computer, you can find parts and check their compatibility here. With a customized computer, it is easy to switch out individual parts to suit your needs.

But be careful and make sure the parts bought are compatible with the ones already in your computer. On older machines you could just need some more RAM.

Fact Myth. Myth Computers slow down with age. In addition, there are many other things that contribute to a slowdown. We explored some of the major causes. Rachel told us that software and hard drive corruption are two reasons why your computer may slow down over time. Corruption can be caused by a host of things but it's mostly bugs in the operating system, corrupted RAM data, static electricity from carpet or other fabrics , power surges, failing hardware, and for Windows users, normal operating system decomposition with age.

Two other huge culprits are not having enough RAM memory to run programs and simply running out of hard disk space. Not having enough RAM causes your hard drive to try to compensate for a lack of memory. The computer will constantly seek more RAM taking away resources from other tasks. Another thing users fall victim to is installing unnecessary software. This will fill up your hard drive, causing you to run out of space at the price of speed.

There are useful free programs that help you easily identify what is taking up space on your hard drive:. If you're updating your software regularly, that can contribute to a slowdown because the updates themselves take up more space and require more system resources. Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker points out that, "i n theory, if you did a clean install and never updated any of your software, everything would run as fast in year four as it did on day one.

But that's not exactly a feasible—or secure—way to use your computer. Stob's Index Of Cruftitude may help. Humour obviously, but with a grain of truth. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Do computers slow down as they age? Ask Question. Asked 9 years, 7 months ago. Active 1 year, 9 months ago. Viewed 6k times. Improve this question. Trust only what you can measure empirically. Websites have become more demanding, so web pages are more complex and require more cpu to render. Local software should run the same. Add a comment.

Active Oldest Votes. Most of the time when a computer seems to have gotten slower, software is to blame. However, since you've completely purged your system, none of these things are affecting you. It is entirely possible that your expectations are playing a role here.

Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Nathan Greenstein Nathan Greenstein I have had drives slow down with age; one drive ran for many months but was close to failing; it kept slowing down considerably to perform re-reads of everything, and succeeded often enough that the machine appeared to be in working order. Replacing the drive fixed the issue. Though admittedly I would call that a bad drive — Billy ONeal.