First Time Upgrading Question

[Aoyi]

Hello everyone

I'm not very good with building computers. I just wanted to state that from the beginning. What I'm looking to do is just increase the performance of my current system a bit as I haven't upgraded before. I've been told RAM is a really good place to start for very little money, so I was thinking of increasing my RAM from 4 gigs to 8 gigs. I don't know how to tell if this is possible, but I'll post my specs here. Any suggestions would be great, but keep in mind, money is very tight for me. I was just worried that I'd buy the 8 gigs of RAM and find out my system couldn't use it.

Thank you in advance for all your help.

Windows 7 Home Premium
Service Pack 1

System:
Rating - 5.1 Windows Experience Index
Processor - AMD Athlon(tm) 64X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ 2.30 GHz
Installed memory (RAM) - 4.00 GB
System Type - 64-bit Operating System

[chaud]

That won't likely make a large impact on your performance. You need a new build.

[Aoyi]

Thanks for the fast response Chaud. I was afraid of that. As I'm completely new to the whole PC building/upgrading thing, would you recommend I start looking piece by piece? Or should I be holding out for cheap sales on pre-built things. I don't know when I'll really have much cash to spend as I'm getting married later this year, so I was really hoping I could make a small improvement on this machine.

[Nellah]

What are your full system specs? If it's an OEM PC like an HP or eMachines or something like that, what's the model number?

Custom built PCs can usually be upgraded a reasonable amount (and I'd start by looking at your CPU, but that depends on what your video card is), while most OEMs are quite difficult to upgrade and may end up being cheaper and/or easier to build fresh.

[chaud]

Unless your GPU is newer your first/cheapest parts to buy are PSU and GPU. A complete parts listing with models would be helpful.