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Basic mice and keyboards are commodity-priced goods, available for as little as 10 dollars. They get the job done just fine. But if you’re planning to do any gaming at all, you owe it to yourself to upgrade to a gaming-grade mouse and keyboard combo. This upgrade—one of the cheapest you can make—may very well make the biggest difference.
For a budget gaming mouse, we recommend the Razer Abyssus ($30). Although it sits at the bottom of Razer’s sizeable gaming lineup and lacks a few of the features we appreciate in a mouse, such as thumb buttons, the Abyssus will feel like a noticeable step up from any non-gaming mouse. With ultra-tactile buttons, a 1,000Hz polling rate, and a very-respectable 3,500dpi optical sensor, the Abyssus should be more than responsive enough for all but the most hardcore gamers.
Our keyboard recommendation is Microsoft’s Sidewinder X4 ($50), which eschews some of the over-the-top bells and whistles of its more expensive X6 sibling, but retains all the features we really care about in a gaming keyboard. These include anti-ghosting (which allows many simultaneous key presses), programmable macro keys, and multiple profiles that switch when you load a game. Physically, the keyboard’s a real beauty, and the extra-springy keys are a joy to use for extended gaming or typing.
✔ 1,000Hz polling rate = responsive gaming
✔ Anti-ghosting keyboard
Picture a raft full of PC components. It’ll take seven days for the rescue boat to arrive, but only five days of food and water remains. Who gets pushed off the raft first? The GPU? The CPU? No way. They’re first-class passengers. The case? The lowly keyboard? Don’t kid yourself. The power supply will be the first to go. Do you know why? Because no one respects the power supply.
And sadly, that’s the strategy everyone takes when they build a budget PC. We mean everyone. Hell, we’ve even occasionally given the PSU short shrift when push came to shove.
Fortunately, Corsair’s 750TX is one component that might force something else to swim with the sharks. (Yeah, take that, mouse!) With a five-year warranty, a high power-efficiency rating, and a single 62-amp rail, this PSU will keep any budget PC running, even on those sweltering summer days when your components are broiling at 120 degrees. With a street price of $99 and SLI certification for dual GeForce GTX 470 cards, the 750TX strikes a good balance between budget and midrange. Sure, it lacks modular cables, but that just means you can’t misplace the cables.
✔ SLI certified for dual GeForce GTX 470 cards
Few things suck harder than cheap speakers—well, except maybe cheap TN displays. So we have to wonder how Logitech manages to sell the 2.1-channel Z523 speaker system for less than a hundred bucks. Heck, we’ve seen them selling online for as little as $70!
Now, we’ll be the first to admit that these puppies can’t compete with the likes of B&W’s glorious MM-1 system, which we review on page 80, but if you’re seriously considering those bad boys, you aren’t reading a story about budget upgrades. The Z523 isn’t appropriate for critical listening, but it can fill a small room and it has an exceedingly large sweet spot, thanks to the presence of a second driver mounted on the back of the two satellite speakers. These rear-facing drivers bounce audio waves off the wall behind them so that the sound arrives at your ears a microsecond after they’ve heard the front speakers.
The 40-watt amp in the subwoofer sends 9.5 watts to the two-inch full-range dome drivers in the satellites and 21 watts into a four-inch down-firing subwoofer, which is augmented by a six-inch side-facing pressure driver. There’s an input for a digital media player, and separate volume controls for stereo and for bass, so you can crank the lows for gaming. Lastly, there’s a headphone jack for those times when you’d prefer to rock out in private.
✔ Surprisingly rich sound
✔ Rear-facing drivers = large sweet spot
At around $60, the Fatal1ty HS-1000 headset is hardly the cheapest on the market, but it contains several features we consider a must.
First, we like our gaming headsets to have cans big enough to surround the ear, for maximum noise isolation and comfort. The HS-1000 fits the bill here, with large, oval cans and ample foam padding. Second, we need a decent, adjustable mic—bonus points if it’s removable, for when we’re not playing games. The Fatal1ty gets a gold star here, as well. Third, the set should have some sort of in-line volume/mic control, to make it easy to fine-tune your settings mid-game. Creative’s set has this as well.
Last and most importantly, for us to call any gaming headset an “upgrade,” it has to actually sound good. That means bass deep enough to let you really feel each exploding frag grenade, and highs that let you hear the bullets whizzing past your head. This category is what makes the HS-1000 really shine as a budget headset, thanks in large part to Creative’s excellent X-Fi drivers, which emulate the functions of a full-fledged X-Fi soundcard, including EAX effects and simulated surround sound.
You could go cheaper, and you could certainly go more expensive, but we think that the Creative Fatal1ty HS-1000 hits the budget sweet-spot: strong performance at an amazing price.
✔ X-Fi drivers produce high fidelity
✔ Removable mic reduces geek factor
The CM Hyper 212 Plus quite epitomizes the “budget upgrade” concept. It requires minimal investment ($30 and half an hour) but can yield big returns for nearly any system. Skeptical? So were we. The Hyper 212 Plus is a CPU cooler with direct-contact heat pipes, which give it excellent performance for its size. It’s one of the best air coolers we’ve ever tested: On our test bed, it cooled a stock-clocked Q6700 at 100 percent CPU utilization down to just 43 C—an 18 C difference from Intel’s stock heatsink.
But why bother upgrading your CPU cooler at all? For the clocks, of course. Overclocking your CPU is the cheapest way to squeeze more performance out of your rig, but overclocked chips put out more heat. By getting a better cooler, you can sustain higher overclocks. Given that the Hyper 212 Plus can install on virtually any socket, performs better than any other air cooler we’ve tested, and only costs $30, it’s one of the best things you can do for your PC.
For budget buyers, it makes no sense to get caught up in the bandwidth wars that memory makers are waging today. The truth is, unless you use applications with particularly high bandwidth requirements, DDR3/1333 will work fine.
Ultimately, the amount of RAM you should run in a modern PC really depends on your CPU. If you are running an AMD system with dual-channel DDR3, the minimum is 4GB. Likewise, if you are rolling a dual-channel Intel system, then 4GB should be in your sights. Intel systems with tri-channel memory should run a minimum of 6GB of RAM. Anything above 6GB is gravy.
Invariably, first-time upgraders want to know whose memory to buy. Since RAM is generally a commodity component, our guideline is to stick with known brands: Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, OCZ, Patriot. No yellow-box memory, please.
The good news is that RAM prices seem to have stabilized somewhat. We found 4GB of brand-name DDR3 for $100 on the street, with 6GB of brand-name DDR3/1333 in the $160 range.
Comments are closed on this article
bolod
December 26, 2011 at 10:18pm
Hey buddy,this is one of the best posts that I’ve ever seen; you may include some more ideas in the sametheme. I’m still waiting for some interesting thoughts from your side in your next post.
Philips
November 19, 2011 at 12:25am
This is very helpful. Thank you for sharing this awesome this. This is a very good thing to apply.
Philips
October 09, 2011 at 1:59pm
Thank you for this post. This is very interesting. Upgrading a PC is really expensive. But now, there is a cheaper way. Thanks for sharing.
Bogdan
September 05, 2011 at 3:02am
If you are running older rigs and you are going to start swapping CPU's you'd be better off build a new rig that has a better upgrade path down the road. At least this is what I think.
Best regards,
wortwortwort
July 02, 2010 at 10:57pm
I just put together a computer (Monday), so it's way too early to upgrade right now, but it was still a good article.
The Hyper 212 Plus is pretty great. My i5 750 at stock frequencies idles at 24-26 degrees C! That's barely above room temperature! This isn't even with the fan running at full speeds, usually it's at ~1000RPM or lower (Max is 2000RPM). Running Prime 95 for hours, it will barely pass 40 C. I did lower the voltage a bit (from 1.2156V to 1.1V), but it's still perfectly stable. A few days after I ordered mine, Newegg.ca brought the prices from $30 to $60.
The SSD is something that I considered, but I think that I would rather see how the Samsung Spinpoint F3s do (2 x 1TB) and maybe get a X25-M G3 when they come out.
I looked at the 750TX, but I don't need anywhere near that amount of power, so 650W was plenty. The 650HX was only $10 more than the 650TX, so I decided it was worth it.
My system:
Intel i5 750
Gigabyte GA-P55a-UD3
Gigabyte Radeon 5870
4GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600
2x Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
Antec Three Hundred Illusion
Corsair 650HX
Lite-On Blu-Ray player
ASUS VH226H (Yes, shitty TN monitor)
filip007
July 01, 2010 at 1:16pm
Seagate yeah right, http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/hands-on-review-of-1-tb-seagate-barracuda-720012/
Samsung also can't stand simple Smart test so...
Hitachi is my best guess, yes it cost more but at lest it's quality, better 500GB Hitachi then 1TBGB Seagate or Samsung for one year.
SininStyle
July 01, 2010 at 5:37am
Think allot of people missed the point of the article. Its not a budget build or best bang for buck build. Its best money spent for most improvment on an upgrade. If you have a decent GPU then buying a 5770 wont give you much for $150 so it would be dumb to upgrade to it. The 5850 on the other hand will give you a very large margin of improvment for your money.
Reread the part about the i7 920-930, it wasnt suggested to upgrade from a 920 to a 930 it was said the 920 was allways a good buy and they believe the 930 is no different.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother reading comments when I know the majority of them are just whines and rants about a perfectly good article.
dakishimesan
July 01, 2010 at 3:49am
This entire series of routers from Belkin have abysmal reviews everywhere from Newegg to Amazon. I have a previous gen Belkin G router that I LOVE but they missed the mark with reception and bugs this time around, steer clear of this IMHO. http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Wireless-Play-Router-F7D4302/dp/B003CJTNLI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1277981080&sr=8-1
violian
June 30, 2010 at 11:25am
For PC parts - Newegg all the way because it's really easy to filter out the exact parts your looking for....and the price. But for hardware such as LCD monitors, Tigerdirect all the way for their prices.
fiXXer
June 30, 2010 at 9:53am
I don't about everyone else's idea of what "budget" means, but a $300 video card does not fit the bill. I personally consider a budget video card one that falls into the sub-$200 range. MaxPC, you guys reviewed the Radeon 5770 a few months back and said it was a solid low/mid-range card for people using displays around 22 inches. To me, if you're on a budget with your PC's hardware, you're probably not going to running a 30-inch display anyway. Maybe my view is a little off-center b/c I don't do a lot of gaming (some, but not a lot) and I don't need earth-shattering performance in that department.
Overall a very good article! I read the Hyper 212+'s review about 2 months after I baught my ArcticCooling Freezer 64 Pro and promptly kicked myself in the ass for not waiting to get the 212. I take MaxPC's reviews into heavy consideration when upgrading my PC (along with user reviews), so keep up to excellent work!
igoka
June 30, 2010 at 9:30am
I thought the article is about budget. 4, 6 Gigs of Ram?
All of my PCs including my Gaming PC have 2 Gigs. The performance is not great
but it’s ok. All I had to do is upgrade my video card to HD 5850 and don't
underestimate PSU. People usually buy the cheapest they can. PSU is the device
that brings juice to all your PC components the cleaner juice the better
and longer components will work. I lost so many motherboards, video cards
because of bad, cheap PSUs. Is there any serious PC gamer who plays over wireless?
mesiah
June 30, 2010 at 10:18pm
This is about budget UPGRADES. If you are thinking about upgrading, I pray to god that you already have 2 gigs of ram. 2 gigs on a modern rig is the absolute minimum you should even consider. I find it hard to believe you can justify $300 on a video card, but not $40 on an extra 2 gigs of ram. Given, the video card is going to increase graphics performance, but if your computer is constantly using a swap file to make up for lack of ram, everything is slow not just games.
noobstix
June 30, 2010 at 8:48am
If you're not into having the "greatest rig on Earth", you can still save money by reusing some things (provided they still work). The only things I bought were a new mobo, CPU, and GPU. The memory was "donated" to me and I'm using my monitor, HDD, CD/DVD drive, and PSU (going strong after 6+ years). At current market prices, my PC costs probably no more than $600 (a few things are "discontinued" so that pretty much excludes them from the overall price). Sure it might not destroy any benchmarks but it can do some high-detail gaming with smooth frame rates (hell, it can do max AA in a few games).
Mobo: MSI 770-C45
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE
Memory: 6GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3
Video: 1GB Diamond ATI Radeon HD5770
Monitor: 19" Viewsonic VX1935wm
HDD: 320GB Western Digital SATA
CD/DVD: Pioneer DVR-111D
UndeniablyPC
June 30, 2010 at 5:17am
I must say MaximumPC this article is lacking in some serious value to the budget minded. For one thing telling someone that has a LGA 1366 socket to go from a 920 to a 930 is a pretty worthless upgrade. Especially since the 950 is due to drop down to almost the same price as the 930 in August. A wireless router, really? How many gamers do you know trust a wireless connection when playing games? Probably 0. The only thing I can say that would be a considerable consumer upgrade that would net the best results is the SSD. The reason being is that Secondary Storage has always been the slowest part of any computer, and the old story goes that you can only go as fast as your slowest part. And for the record that Intel X-25-V SSD is rather lacking if you want my honest opinion since it only has a sustained read of 170 MB/s and a sustained write of 35 MB/s. Where for the same price just about an OCZ agility has a 230 MB/s read and 135 MB/s write. I understand that this information that you provide is free, but as it took me a matter of about two minutes to find out that tidbit of SSD information, I would think that you could do the same for your fellow readers. I also understand how narrowing down a list of components for viable budget upgrades can be tedious, I would say that most of these are not budget and lack value added.
CENTURION_L77
June 30, 2010 at 4:41pm
UndeniablyPC wrote: "I understand that this information that you provide is free, but as it
took me a matter of about two minutes to find out that tidbit of SSD
information, I would think that you could do the same for your fellow
readers."I completely agree with you! If I was "maximum"pc I would be embarrassed by this. You aren't providing anything for your readers with this article, certainly, nothing that has anything to do with the meaning of "budget."
Somewere along the way it seems, MaximumPC has lost their way. It's like everyone there quit caring. Their articles about the latest and greatest seemed like unfinished reviews. I hate "hitting the jump" to find out there isn't more to an article. I hate reading a review about the latest thing only to see that the last sentence "no price or release date announced". I wonder what happens when an item is released months or weeks later. By then I'd forgotten about it and assuming I remember an item, then the "review" you guys posted originally cannot help me in determining if I made a good buy or not.
I remember I used to love the magazine (though the website has improved, I was never really impressed with it) and felt like I really was holding knowledge and power in my hand when I held it in my hands. Now it feels I'm holding an advertisement in my hands and the bit of knowledge imparted to me seems to be growing smaller and smaller.
I'll hold on though because I'm loyal, but I don't know!, the grass is looking greener on many other websites and magazines.
anysystems
June 30, 2010 at 4:56am
Outstanding devices! i had bought Desktop computer couple of years back, it was assembled and i find best results. The reason was that i installed a branded part of each like storage, RAM, CD Drive etc.
isamuelson
June 30, 2010 at 4:46am
Purchased my Hyper 212+ months ago and now, it can't be found anywhere it seems! Definitely an excellent buy for the price and cools better than the price might reflect. Heck! NewEgg is selling if for $50 now. What a rip off! Maybe we should report that to Cooler Master? Sounds like price gouging by NewEgg if you ask me! Micro Center is selling it for $25 though! That's an even BETTER deal than the normal
price! http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0315397
If you can find this cooler, get it! You definitely get more than your money's worth from it because any other cooler that cools as good as this one would cost $60+ it seems and it even can out perform many of the more expensive models!
dracx619
June 30, 2010 at 3:01am
i cant find the Q9500 ANYWHERE. wanted to give my old core2 rig a little more time before givin it up but oh well, more time to save for a good core i5 or 7 rig i guess
Azrael808
June 30, 2010 at 1:38am
Perfect timing! I was just discussing an upgrade to our PC with the missus and had drawn the conclusion that an SSD might not be a good choice just yet... But reading this, I'm thinking of getting the Intel SSD _and_ the TB HDD mentioned... :)
Lime
June 29, 2010 at 11:02pm
Wouldn't an OCZ Agility 60GB drive be much more cost efficient in GB/dollar while still being a "budget" upgrade for most users? Hell, I'd take that 64GB SSD that WD put out over a $125 SSD that's only 40GB.
richeemxx
June 29, 2010 at 11:34pm
To be totally honest other than the major components like CPU/GPU most these upgrades are totally worthless. If you are running older rigs and you are going to start swapping CPU's you'd be better off build a new rig that has a better upgrade path down the road. No offence to the 5850 its a great GPU but as this is a list of "BUDGET" upgrades you are way overkill for what most people consider budget. 4-6gbs of RAM...c'mon unless you are doing some serious multitasking the avg user is barely touching 4gbs let alone 6. If you are on a budget you'd be better of spening the cash elsewhere.
I should also add, upgrading to that router would be pointless without adding the need for a wireless N card otherwise you'd just be wasting money over a traditional wireless g router.
elktondad
June 30, 2010 at 5:02am
I thought for sure, as I read this article, that I was the only one who thought that $300 for a graphics card was far from "budget" tag. I appreciate what you guys have done here, a lot of helpful information. But I want to see another solid $500 rig (use a cardboard box case if you have too! :) ). With the Quad core AMD chip at $99, and a good motherboard for about the same, throw in 4G of ram and maybe a Radeon HD 5770 for $160, finally a good 750G hard driver to start (about $80), use your existing case, power supply (unless it is in bad shape), and don't overclock the daylights out of it (so you can use the stock cooler) and you got a great budget PC.
