10 killer PC upgrades for less than $250 - nelsontardwilis

The holidays lay out an excellent opportunity to trick down your laptop or desktop PC, peculiarly if Santa, your boss, or your favorite gift-donor directs a sudden inflow of immediate payment your way. And even if your holiday haul was enceinte along sugarplums and light along spending money, you still don't have to break the bank to add some purposeful organisation upgrades. These days, you bum reach your PC upgrading dollar farther than ever before—as the items on our lean clearly prove. Here are x meaningful ironware upgrades with a ceiling of roughly $250 (and in some cases a great deal less) each.

1. A solid-state drive

This one's a biggie, especially if you've already ponied up for Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 8. SSDs keep going to become more and more cheap, and you can probably score yourself a decent unity with a capacity of at any rate 200GB for about $250.

If you've done your homework and selected a speedy, problem-free SSD, you should construe with a huge improvement in loading multiplication and a major lift in overall system functioning, compared to what your conventional disc drive delivered. And because Windows 8 is oversize happening "hibernating" your kernel, drivers, services, and other processes when you squinched down your PC, a cold boot your new SSD has the potential to zip through cold boots look-alike nada you've ever seen before.

Our recommendation: Check out Critical's M4. It offers 256GB of speedy, SATA 6Gbps storage, and you can find it for little than $250 retail.

2. More and speedier memory

It's a invariable chorus among PC builders: Memory is cheap, so scoop information technology out. Indeed, if you're working with a paltry 2GB—or even a more reasonable 4GB—you'll benefit hugely from giving your system as much headroom as possible, particularly when you're dealings with complex, memory-hungry applications.

At a minimum, have sure that you're rocking the quickest memory your system can livelihood. Alternatively, purchase memory that gives you enough room to do around for overclocking.

Adding memory Beaver State replacing relatively slow remembering with higher-rated Ram down North Korean won't double your chassis rates in games, and Windows is unlikely to feel twofold faster, either. But the upgrade will make a substantial difference in extreme multitasking scenarios and in memory-intensive applications equal Photoshop. Prices vary because not altogether RAM is created same.

Our recommendation: We'Ra big fans of the favorite Corsair Vengeance demarcation of RAM; you can convey 8GB for under $45. That's a zealous deal.

3. A Blu-ray burner

We see your humdrum optical drive and advance you one Blu-ray burner. Though you may not do much burning to some of the more esoteric formats the drive supports (an first rudiment soup that includes BD-R, Bachelor of Divinity-RE, BD-R L, and many more), unmatchable of the best reasons for buying a Blu-ray burner is that you'll finally personify competent to take your desktop PC with its old optical disk options to the future, multimedia-full level.

You could just buy in a Blu-ray of light reader and call it quits, but what if you ulterior decide that you want to be able to spell to Blu-ray discs of your own? $250 goes a long way in the Blu-radiate burner land, but it would be punch-drunk to bear to buy an optical drive double.

Our recommendation: You'll find a embarrassment of options for some home and outer Blu-ray burners, most of which volition run you less than $80. We don't have a favorite brand for the positive reason that the immense majority of them are bad darn swell.

4. A video card

Still using the integrated art that the Jehovah built into your motherboard? Then you're letting mislaid allegiance toward your chipset get in the room of better performance. IT's certainly true that some of the latest joint offerings from Intel and AMD—such as the H77 and A85X platforms—have advanced to the point where PC enthusiasts armed with the rectify processors can pass the traditional, "Will it play Crysis?" test without needing a separate video card.

Just having taken for granted the improvements in integrated graphics, we urge you to start out a distinct video bill. If you have any interest in gaming at higher frame rates, at higher resolutions, and at higher prime settings, a stand-alone graphics card is your best ticket to gambling awesomeness.

Our recommendation: You can pick upwards an excellent graphics board for less than $250 and receive dramatically better fles rates—assuming, of course, that you aren't teaming functioning the new card with a clunker of a CPU.

5. A CPU*

We slapped an asterisk on this recommendation for a specific reason: Extraordinary of the champion slipway to cave in your system a much-needed acclivity in speed and connectivity (such every bit USB 3.0 support) is to perform a simultaneous advance of the motherboard and the CPU; but to get top-shelf performance, you'd have to plunk considerably more cash more the capricious $250 maximum therein upgrade guide.

Information technology's likely, however, that you may already be running game a pretty good motherboard—but one that's existence hobbled away a cheap, slow, non-overclockable, CPU.

Our recommendation: Though you power non see a world of difference by stepping up from a 2.9GHz CPU to a 3.1GHz chip, you could see some improvement if you switch Sir Thomas More cores (logical and essential) or an unfastened clock multiplier into the ruffle.

6. A PCI-based Wi-Fi card

Are we crazy? No, we'Ra just sick of stringing cables wholly close to our homes and apartments. Gigabit networking will beat the best speeds of a WI-Fi connection, but going complete-radio isn't unreasonable if you primarily fear yourself with browse the World Wide Web, updating Facebook, playing World of Warcraft, and talk to your friends online.

As farsighted atomic number 3 you aren't trying to transform your desktop into a multiuser streaming hub for your support area, an 802.11n Wi-Fi connection (aka, Wireless-N) should be just okay for your true needs. You'll still believable follow competent to stream high-quality movies, depending happening your connection—which is wherefore

Our good word: We suggest that you go for a multiple-feeler, PCI-based wireless card over a relatively forceless USB-based Wireless-N adapter. You should be able to find a good PCI-based unit for under $65.

7. An aftermarket Central processor cooler and larger eccentric fans

This trace applies to background owners who are displeased earshot the din generated by Central processor and case fans.

An aftermarket CPU cooler can give you best performance than a typical stock cooler. More important to the drug user we have in mind, it will likely be quieter. The same same thing goes for aftermarket cause fans: Larger fans that run at a lower rpm rate offer up greater cooling system potential, and in many instances bash so at a glower decibel reading.

Our recommendation: Many good aftermarket Central processing unit coolers and fans are available. A quick scan through the CPU cooler offerings at Thermaltake reveals prices ranging from $15 to $100, with almost options decreasing in the $40-to-$60 range. Fans, meanwhile, typically monetary value $10 to $20 each. The crucial factors here are making sure that your system can accommodate the increased sizing of the components you choose and installing them in good order.

8. A radical case

Many encase options, ranging from budget to midrange, cost well under $250 and can provide you with a completely new experience beyond your cheat's standard setup.

Perchance your current grammatical case only sports USB 2.0 headers on the front, and you desire to upgrade to USB 3.0—to match your new USB 3.0-neighbourly motherboard. Or maybe you'd like to switch to a case that's more upgrade-amicable than the tiny, screw-filled system you have immediately. Operating room it could be that you want to add visual punch under your desk, with all the lights, fans, glowing LED strips, and touch-panels you can get your custody on.

Our recommendation: Check out the Fractal Define R3, an inexpensive ($120) chassis that looks as good as it functions.

9. Unfrozen cooling

With this upgrade subordinate your belt, you'll have graduated from "computer partizan" to "die-rocklike system detergent builder." Merely making the prominent jump off to clear cooling doesn't have to an exercise in masochism. The cooling capabilities of liquid-based systems tend to be superior to anything supported traditional air travel-cooling methods. This is a crucial consideration if you want to overclock your CPU or GPU.

You'll also notic that you can eliminate a significant amount of noise when you depend on liquid-filled tubes instead of cacophonous fans. And, naturally, melted cooling looks neat, especially if you're sporting straighten out tubing filled with bad (or UV-reactive) fluid.

Our recommendation: Our do-it-yourself liquid cooling system came in at about $220, but models in the popular Barbary pirate Hydro line will set you back remote less. Comprise sure to invest a bit excess money in some towels, just to be safe.

10. The biggest hard drive you can find

If you're jonesing for unfinished bucket along, the solid thrust described in item routine unrivalled is your ticket. As famous earlier, though, a hybrid labour like the Seagate Momentus XT can pair a 7200-rpm standard hard drive with flash storage, giving up SSD-like performance with plenty of storage capacity; and a 750GB interbred drive can be yours for about $140. Even another option is to go strictly for hollow storehouse content: You fundament split a 2TB stale drive from Western Appendage's Caviare Black line for most $170.

Our recommendation: Hard drive prices aren't great right nowadays, but if you're timeworn of living small and/Oregon slow, you should treat your computer to a boost in storage (with a hard drive that breaks the terabyte barrier) or speed (with a hybrid drive).