Building a new desktop PC to play some of the latest games? Are you building a home media server to take advantage of Plex Pass or other HTPC software? Whatever your reasons are, there are a ton of great upgrades that custom builders overlook in favor of a more expensive CPU, additional RAM or other internals.

Here are out top choices for totally unique upgrades for your custom computer battlestation:

1. An Odds-and-Ends Drawer

Providing a place to toss all those screws, thumb drives, small cords or physical discs, installing a drawer inside one of your 5.25 drive bays is an extremely useful storage solution as well as an inexpensive upgrade. Most drive bays go unused these days, thus converting to storage just makes sense. On average, these trays run between $10 to $15 on Amazon.

2. Monitor / Keyboard Backlighting

Ideal for late night sessions at the computer, attaching LEDs to the back of a computer monitor or a HDTV can significantly reduce eye strain over time. Antec is the most popular manufacturer of these LED light strips, offering multiple color options that include white, blue, green and red. You can also attach these strips to any surface, like underneath a keyboard, shelf or along the bottom of your PC case. These are powered over USB, thus it’s easy to see when your device is on. Typical price is around $6 to $10 per strip.

3. Soundproofing

While not a flashy upgrade, soundproofing will help your sanity if you use tons of fans to keep your video card and CPU nice and chilly. If you are buying a case outright, we recommend the Nanoxia Deep Silence line (available in multiple sizes). It’s a very sturdy, well-built case that offers a near silent on-state. Alternatively, you can soundproof your existing case with sound dampening acoustic foam that attaches to the sides of your case.

4. Headphones Stand

If you constantly have to switch to headphones in order to keep the noise to a minimum, leaving that pair of headphones lying around on your desk is just silly when you can get an artistic stand for less than $15. We are fans of the AmoVee Acrylic Headphone Stand, but you can find options that clamp onto your desk if you are short on space. There are also higher end wooden and steel options if you want a material other than plastic.

5. Giant Mouse Pad

You don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy the benefits of a SteelSeries QcK gaming mouse pad. Offered in sizes up to a massive three feet in length, the QcK series is a popular choice for anything that wants a high quality, cloth pad with a rubber bottom. The space alone is worth the upgrade from a traditional mouse pad. You can generally purchase these pads for $10 on Amazon.

6. Treat Your Feet

Sitting at a desk all day for your job or all night during an extra long gaming session can take a toll on your comfort. Enter the Foot Hammock, a product that popped up on Kickstarter last year and is shipping now. Offered in multiple colors as well as soft fleece, you can attach the Foot Hammock to your desk without actually drilling into it. Downside is the product is a little expensive at $40. If your desk is compatible, you should also check out the FUUT option on Amazon that sells for roughly $15.

7. Monitor Desk Mounts

Rather than limiting your monitors to the stand that came with it, mount a couple of those monitors to your desk with an adjustable stand. Ideal for both vertical or horizontal layouts, monitors mounted to the left and right of the main screen(s) on the desk can provide depth and additional screen space for both work & play. Mounts typically sell for about $15 to $99.

8. Solid Cable Management

A necessity in the age of mobile devices, some form of charging station or cord management solution is ideal for a home office. You can do as inexpensive as a $10 Quirky Cordies heavy rubber cord stand or more expensive desktop solutions that allows you to stack and charge multiple devices at the same time. Those devices usually have multiple USB ports and range from $40 to $60 depending on design and power output.

9. The Best Chair You Can Afford

There are a ridiculous number of choices for office chairs out there that range upwards of $1,000. We are quite partial to the DX Racer series of chairs, a brand that’s exploded in popularity among PC battlestation enthusiasts. While you will easily lay out $300 to $400 for one of these chairs, the benefits include a 135 degree reclining angle, 90 degree rotating arm rests and stellar Amazon reviews for comfort. You can also get something similar with the IKEA Markus chair at $229, if you are willing to sacrifice a couple features.

9 Unique Computer Upgrades to Enhance Your Custom Battlestation

UuuuuuuuAH? Aaaaaaarooh? Ooooooogh! That’s right, feel free to let your best Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor grunt out. (If you don’t understand that reference, hop in a time machine, head back to the early nineties and enjoy the Al Borland show.) It’s time to talk about garage upgrades. You know, the place where you park your cars, pile up old boxes and store the fake Christmas tree.

Your garage can be much more than that though. It can be a respite from screaming kids, ideal for “Serenity Now” chanting. It can be where you work on that clunker you purchased as a fun fix-it-up project, soon to be road-ready in 2023. It can be a place to hang out with nosy neighbors that want to borrow a hammer, and your ladder, and your drill, and everything else you own.

Here our our favorite garage upgrades that can be knocked out in a weekend:

1. Insulate your Garage Door

Insulation can swing the temperature in your garage as much as 30 degrees cooler in the summer and roughly the same the other way in the winter. There are a ton of DIY kits that will allow you to apply insulation to the majority of the surface of your garage door interior. This is particularly ideal if you have an appliance running out in the garage, like a large freezer for storage or a second refrigerator for drinks.

If you are looking for relatively lightweight roll-on insulation, check Amazon for some solid deals. If you are looking for more rigid, moisture resistant insulation, Home Depot sells polystyrene board kits starting around $60. Keep in mind that additional weight will be added to your garage door, thus it may be worthwhile to make sure your garage door opener can handle the additional weight.

Check Insulation Kits on Amazon

2. Make Hauling Stuff into the House Easier

One of my favorite (and least expensive) garage upgrades was something I didn’t know I wanted until I used it; a mounted, flip-down doorstop. Attached on the door leading into the house from the garage, this is ideal for bringing in groceries every week or anything else that’s in the garage. I can flip the doorstop down with my foot and prop the door open while attempting to bring in 20 bags of groceries inside at once (like a crazy person).

In addition to that, consider converting to a horizontal, handle style doorknob as well. It makes it simple to push down to open the door. You don’t have to free up any of your hands to actually twist a knob, again ideal for hauling in bags.

Check Flip-Down Doorstops on Amazon

3. Smarten up your Garage Door

Connecting your garage door to your home’s wireless network can be very helpful, especially if you have kids that leave the door open all the time. You will receive smartphone notifications when the door is open as well as the ability to open / close it remotely. You can also share access with people that need to get into your home, ideal if you don’t have additional remotes.

There are a number of options to accomplish this. If you are purchasing a new garage door opener, Chamberlain’s MyQ system is relatively simply to use. If you are purchasing an after-marketing upgrade for an existing opener, check out GoGoGate as well as Garageio Blackbox. The former is outfitted with 1 sensor for a single door and the latter has up to three sensors for mulitple doors.

Check Smart Garage Door on Amazon

4. Upgrade Your Parking Zones

While hanging a tennis ball from the ceiling is a tried & true method for avoiding parking snafus, there are a few more subtle options to make sure your teenager doesn’t drive through the wall. One of the most popular is the Accupark strip, a simple yellow, plastic parking strip that lets the driver know to stop. This can be particularly useful for anyone that needs to fit a large vehicle in a small garage. You can also upgrade to a parking mat, if you prefer something you can move around.

Another popular option for a parking zone upgrade is adding a wall guard in the area where you open your car door. The super cheap option is to cut a foam pool noodle in half and screw it to the wall. However, if you want a more professional option that may help your home’s resell value, a simple wall guard will run you about $10 on Amazon.

Check Parking Upgrades on Amazon

5. Give the Garage Floor a New Look

There are a number of options for upgrading your garage floor. You can add a floor cover, which sticks to the garage floor (retails around $130) You can use an epoxy shield paint, like the one Rust-Oleum makes (retails around $90). You can install garage floor tiles, an expensive option that usually runs a minimum of $1,000 for a standard two-car garage. More premium tiles can be found at Racedeck, starting at $4 per square foot (roughly $2,000 for a standard 2-car garage).

If you do decide to upgrade the floors, consider adding a garage door threshold seal to seal off any potential gaps as well as keep water out of the garage during a heavy rain. Also, if you have a vehicle that consistently leaks oil, consider picking up an oil leak mat to soak up and access oil and protect that floor.

Check Garage Floor Upgrades on Amazon

6. Make Working in the Garage More Comfortable

If you like tinkering on projects in the garage, there are a few easy ways to add some comfort while you are hammering away. One simple addition is adding an anti-fatigue mat in front of your workbench. Typically used in any industry where workers on on their feet all day, a commercial-grade, anti-fatigue mat will significantly reduce heel pain and leg fatigue. (These mats are also great in the kitchen or at a standing desk)

If you are trying to keep cool, considering installing a wall-mount fan as well as a motion sensor to flip the power to the fan on and off when you enter the garage. And, of course, there are any number of portable garage heaters for anyone working in the garage during the cold, winter months.

Check Anti-Fatigue Mats on Amazon

7. Go Nuts with Storage / Organization

I’ve never met someone that’s said “My garage has too much storage.” There are a MASSIVE number of creative, DIY storage solutions for garages. Here’s a short list of some of our favorite collections of potential projects:

• 35+ DIY Garage Storage Ideas To Help You Reinvent Your Garage On A Budget
• 38 Borderline Genius Ways To Organize Your Garage
• 50 Genius DIY Garage Storage and Organization Project Ideas

You really can’t go wrong with the basics either. Get some pegboard & hooks to hang up those tools. Get some wire, wall-mount shelving to get boxes off the floor. Buy a freestanding shelving unit for all your paint / cans / car wax. Use plastic bins for all the odds and ends that don’t fit anywhere else. Utilize ceiling space to hang bikes or other large items.

8. Move the Mudroom into the Garage

Ideal for anyone with kids, transitioning your mudroom to the garage will keep the mess in an area that’s supposed to get dirty. Ideally positioned near the entrance into the house, you will need hooks to hand coats and backpacks as well as storage bins for shoes, gloves, hats and anything else your kids are wearing.

This type of area can also double as storage for sports equipment, ideal if the kids are into various sports and need to keep track of uniforms as well as equipment. If you really want to get fancy, you could also consider building a bench area for sitting; ideal for taking off / putting on winter clothing.

8 Ways to Upgrade Your Garage Over The Weekend

Jumping up from $0 to $120 on July 30, 2016, Microsoft’s free upgrade offer to all Windows 7 and 8.1 users will expire at the end of July. After July 29th, anyone that wanted to upgrade to Windows 10 from an older operating system will be force to pay $119.99 to get the new operating system. Of course, any new Windows-powered device you purchase will have Windows 10 already installed as the main operating system.

The $120 price isn’t new, of course. Microsoft have already been selling the full version of the Home version for that price via download or USB stick. The ability to upgrade for free has always had an expiration date, however it was always possible that Microsoft would extend the promotion. However, the latest blog post from Microsoft seems to indicate the promotion will expire as promised at the one-year anniversary of the operating system’s release.

Interestingly, Microsoft is also releasing the Windows 10 anniversary update at the end of July. That’s a free upgrade for anyone that’s using Windows 10. Upgrades include biometric security in apps and other programs, Windows Ink (integrating handwriting with a pen into the interface), an upgraded version of Cortana in more than 1,000 apps and a unified app store with the Xbox One platform. It’s also possible that Microsoft will package deeper integration with the HoloLens platform in the anniversary update.

To upgrade to Window 10, you can visit Microsoft’s upgrade page and follow the instructions. If you do plan an upgrade, consider moving to a SSD drive for faster boot times as well as instant-on access when your computer is sleeping. You can check out the latest deals on SSD drives in our Internal Hard Drive section.

But most of all, remember that all Windows 10 installations come with a ninja cat riding in your house on a unicorn.

Want Windows 10 for free? Upgrade now. It’s $120 in July