Upgrading/Improving 2 year old Custom Built PC

[abhisheak]

Hi,
My current Config:
Processor: Intel Core i3-2100
MotherBoard: Intel DG67BL
Storage:Seagate 500GB, WD Green 500 GB
RAM: 4GB DDR3 * 1
PSU: Cooler Mater 350w
GPU: ATI HD7750

I am using my PC for occasional gaming, downloading and internet browsing.
The problem I am facing is that Firefox hangs quite a bit, usually there are anywhere between 180-280 tabs open in the firefox as I hate to close the old tabs. With that usual tasks like downloading on IDM, music (media monkey) etc is going on in the background. So randomly firefox will stop responding when quite a few tabs are loaded at once.
So i wanted to know is this because of any component of my PC insufficient for my PC needs or is it because of software?
If it is because of hardware please suggest some upgrades.

Budget: Minimum it takes to make my PC competitive enough

 

[noahhicks]

Yikes! I'm surprised it's just Firefox hanging and not the whole system.

Anyone with 200 tabs open at 1 time should expect their system to hiccup every once in a while. Here's the solution, close a few of those tabs.

Here's a page from Mozilla about reducing RAM usage by Firefox. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-memory-ram

You can also use "about:memory?verbose" in Firefox to get information about the memory usage. Or use the windows task manager to see a basic estimation of Firefox.

If you wanted to upgrade something, Firefox requires more RAM if you have that many tabs open.