Although the price of computers has come down over the past five to ten years, you will meet very few folks who consider a computer a disposable purchase. When picking out a laptop or desktop computer, they search for one that fits their needs and will be a long-term investment. Even businesses look at computers as a long-term investment, especially when upgrading their system to something newer and faster.
If you own a desktop computer, the tower is the outer shell that holds all of the hardware. The hardware includes things like your motherboard and processor, hard drive, graphics and video card, and RAM (your computer’s active memory). As newer, better processors hit the market at greater speeds, owning a tower system has never seemed more cost effective to some shoppers. Why?
The tower houses your hardware. You can open the tower up, remove nearly any piece of hardware, and replace it with a newer and better piece that will improve and optimize your system performance. Purchasing a laptop makes you less able to do this.
Laptops are made to be portable so they are compact. In most cases your graphics and video card is built right into your motherboard, which will make it difficult to ever upgrade, especially if cost is important to you. Laptops are often easier to simply replace with a newer model than upgrade.
Hardware does not always have to be upgraded. If your computer system runs smoothly, then the hardware you’re currently running is perfectly fine. The most common hardware upgrade consumers seek is an upgraded graphics and video card for better graphics and more gameplay. The second most common upgrade is RAM, which is the amount of active, application memory the computer has. The third more popular upgrade is a new motherboard and processor for faster system performance.