Why do computers overload?

Answer 1

There are both many reasons, and many ways, that a computer can become overloaded. Here are a few of the most common ways, and why.

Disk Full: Hard drives running out of space is a common cause for overload on a computer. It's a simple case of not having enough space to store everything you have installed, downloaded, or created. As a general rule, noticeable slowdown begins when the drive is more than 50% full, and becomes crippling at 80%. If you have less than 4 GB of space left, you may also experience malfunctions, crashes, and bluescreens.

Not Enough RAM: RAM is used by programs *currently running* on the computer, and is not freed until you close the application. Installing and uninstalling programs does not affect your RAM, only the programs you have running *at the time*. When your computer runs out of RAM, it has to use the Hard Drive for 'temporary space', this is called 'Swapping' 'Swapfile' 'Pagefile' or 'Virtual Memory'. RAM is typically 8500 MB/s or more in modern computers. However, hard drives are at best 140 MB/s. As a result, if you run out of RAM the computer must wait on the PAINFULLY slow harddrive instead. This causes very noticeable stuttering, slowdown, waits, and can even cause hangs, freezes, and crashes. Rarely, a bluescreen.

Adding more RAM is one of the cheapest, and easiest ways to improve system performance. If you're not sure whether you need more ram, try opening the Task Manager using Control Alt Delete. Under the 'performance' tab, look at the 'available' memory under 'Physical Memory'. If this is very low (less than 250,000 KB) then you need more RAM. Another way to check is looking under 'Commit Charge' and checking what the 'Peak' is. If your 'Peak' is higher than your RAM under 'Physical Memory Total', you need more RAM also. Your Peak should never exceed your Total Memory.

CPU overload is the third cause of overload. This is not as common, but can occur when you try to run very intensive programs, or a lot of programs at once. Under the Task Manager, if it shows your CPU as very active (more than 50%) then you are probably in need of a CPU upgrade.

Finally is Video Overload. Modern videogames are incredibly greedy on videocard resources, so as a general rule, the better the videocard, the faster (and better) the game performance. There's really no upper wall or rule of thumb here- Upgrade until satisfied. Whatever you get, it won't be enough in 3-4 years. Whereas your CPU and RAM may still be acceptible.