Getting more performance from your PC doesn't have to cost as much as you think. Darren Yates shares his upgrading secrets.
THE $0 SYSTEM UPGRADE
Give your PC an early spring clean and refresh your Windows OS installation. It's an unwritten law that PC performance is inversely proportional to the age of the OS install and I've always been surprised how much more smoothly a clean OS can perform. We all install crapware and forget about it, but if that crapware is forcing Windows to preload junk on boot-up, it'll likely be slowing your PC for no real reason. If you don't have time for a complete reinstall, at least check your Programs and Features list of rubbishware you no longer need and grab back some system resources.
THE $20 SYSTEM UPGRADE
Actually, we'll give you a bonus upgrade option in this one. I've gathered a few SSDs over time and I’ve found nothing faster for accessing files I need than a low-cost USB-to-SATA adapter. The USB connector delivers data and power connectivity from the PC and the SATA port plugs straight into the back of the drive. You'll find USB 2.0 versions for as little as US$3 on eBay, or just get the USB 3.0 option for US$5. If your PC doesn't have USB 3.0, get it with a $20 USB 3.0 PCI-E expansion card — it'll make all the difference using the latest external hard drives as well.
THE $40 SYSTEM UPGRADE
If you're like me, you think nothing of opening a few dozen new web browser tabs as the mood takes you. Problem is, with too little RAM to start with, your system can begin to suffer. Adding 4GB of RAM, provided you have a 64-bit version of Windows, will enable you to open more apps and files before the system pagefile needs to be called in — and the less you need the pagefile, the more everyone wins. Your PC's CPU won't process code faster, but it won't need to swap out data as much, so it'll maintain its native speed for longer. A 4GB stick should cost around $40-$45.
THE $60 SYSTEM UPGRADE
Whenever I upgrade my PC, I always start with a fresh hard drive/SSD and keep the old hard drive as an instant backup. To grab needed files, I plug the drive straight into a dual-bay USB 3.0 SATA drive dock. You'll find them for under $60. Having end-to-end USB 3.0 is the key to maximising data transfer speeds. But what's great about having one of these devices is that it allows you to keep your internal storage clean of files you don't necessarily need permanent access to. If you use an SSD as your system drive, the less you store on it, the longer it'll last, so having ready-made backups works for me.
THE $80 SYSTEM UPGRADE
Need something to speed up your old PC, but on a tight budget? Grab Kingston's 120GB V300 SSDNow SSD for under $80 online and make it your PC's new system drive. Keep your old hard drive as secondary storage and use the SSD for OS and apps only. Even with only a SATA2 port, a budget SSD will boot your system faster than a hard disk drive and give it more responsiveness. Given how difficult it is to do a CPU upgrade on most PCs older than 12 months these days, it’s the cheapest way to give your PC a perceived performance lift.
BUDGET HARD-CORE SPEED FOR $100
Intel's Pentium G3258 is Intel's budget dual-core desktop CPU, but with lots of overclocking potential. How much? Reports are it'll easily jump from its stock 3.2GHz rate to 4.5GHz, even 4.8GHz. For around $100, it delivers overclocked single-thread performance that goes close to a quad-core Core i7-4790K. A great little upgrade starter.
SILENCING YOUR PC - #1
Building a home theatre PC, there's nothing worse than a noisy PSU fan. Fanless PSUs aren't cheap but they do exist. Seasonic is our go-to PSU brand, so check out the 400-watt Platinum P-400 for just under $200 or the 460-watt Platinum X-460 for around $220. We wouldn't choose it for gaming, but its fine for a home theatre/server.
SILENCING YOUR PC - #2
The CPU heatsink-fan is the other issue. Again, were partial to Noctua CPU coolers and one of the quietest options is the NH-L12. It's not cheap at around $90 and it's not suitable for overclocked systems or any CPU with a 95-watt or greater TDP rating, but at low operating voltage, the fan here barely operates beyond a whisper (around 12dBA).
DUAL MONITORS ON INTEGRATED GRAPHICS
You don’t need a dedicated graphics card to get multi-monitor support — Intel's integrated HD Graphics GPU has supported at least two monitors since Sandy Bridge (Core iX-2000 series). We wouldn't game with it, but for coding, doing spreadsheets or other office work, it should work nicely (provided your board has two integrated video outputs, of course).
BEST MINI-ITX CASE FOR $100
There's a mini-boom in Mini-ITX cases at the moment, but we keep coming back to the BitFenix Prodigy. Just this side of $100, it handles tall CPU coolers (even a Noctua NH-D14), PSUs up to 160-millimetres long and GPU cards to 320 millimetres. It's not the most compact, but still one of the more versatile Mini-ITX cases you'll find.
BACKUP YOUR POWER SUPPLY
One of the inherent bonuses notebooks have is battery backup. If AC mains power is lost on a desktop PC, everything you haven't saved previously is gone. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) will give a typical 120-watt desktop PC around 20 minutes of extra power to shut down gracefully. Belkin's 600VAUPS costs under $100 at Officeworks.
KEEP YOUR OLD DRIVES
If you're upgrading your system, start with a fresh hard drive in addition to a new SSD, but keep the old drives as ready-made backups. With new 1TB drives selling for $60, it's not worth forcing old drives to go around the mill again. Besides, dumping old drives is a data security risk at the best of times.
THE $1 AUDIO DAC
Audio quality on some budget motherboards in recent years has gone 'down hill'. I picked up a USB DAC based on С-Media's CM108 chip (tinyurl.com/ obygy8p) from eBay and although not perfect, it's much better than my on-board audio. Best of all, it cost me just US$1 — including shipping! Just eBay-search for 'USB sound card'.
DITCH WINDOWS FOR ANDROID
Run Android KitKat/4.4 on your x86 PC free, thanks to the Android-x86 project (tinyurl.com/pbl4ryt). It comes as an ISO image you install to a USB flash drive withUNetbootin (unetbootin.sourceforge.net). Grab an old 64GB SSD, install KitKat from the USB drive and you're away. It won't likely have drivers for everything, but it still works exceptionally well.
GET 1GBPS SSD WRITE SPEEDS
Grab two identical 500MB-per-second (500MB/s) or faster SSDs, run them in RAIDO on late-model Intel H- or Z-series motherboards via the onboard RAID and use at least Windows 7 operating system. Not ideal for long-term or important storage, but we hit the 1GB/s sequential-write mark with two 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSDs on an H77 chipset board.