MEPX
Chapter 8 of 10All chapters
  1. 1The parts
  2. 2The processor
  3. 3Memory
  4. 4Storage
  5. 5Graphics and parallel work
  6. 6Motherboard and buses
  7. 7Power and cooling
  8. 8Finding the bottleneck
  9. 9Laptops and phones
  10. 10Choosing hardware

Chapter 8 of 10

Finding the bottleneck

Which part is the queue.

Diagnosing

Watch processor, memory, disk and network use while the machine feels slow. One of them will be near its limit, and that is the one worth spending money on.

  • Constant disk activity with high memory use means swapping: add RAM.
  • High processor use on one core means single-threaded work: more cores will not help.

Upgrade order

For an older machine the usual order is an SSD, then more memory, then the processor and board together. The first two are cheap and change how the machine feels.