Fall Budget System Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on September 1, 2012 12:00 AM ESTClosing Remarks
Compared to last year's budget buyer's guide, the productivity and gaming systems outlined in this guide offer two main advances: productivity builds at a low budget of around $400 can now include a smaller capacity SSD, and gaming builds at the $400 price point now include discrete-level graphics card performance.
AnandTech has been stressing for years that upgrading to an SSD from a mechanical hard drive can yield one of the most noticeable benefits in day-to-day computer usage, whether you're typing papers or playing games. Now we have reliable (albeit lower capacity) SSDs within reach of even the most budget-conscious system builders.
As for the GPUs, discrete graphics—or discrete-level graphics on the same die as the CPU—are still necessary for gamers. The AMD A8-3870K APU offers budget buyers a CPU that is more than sufficient for light to moderate day-to-day productivity use with a GPU that is acceptable for light to moderate gaming; if you can wait another month or so we should see Trinity APUs improve on both areas. The other options is to pair a GPU like the AMD Radeon HD 6670 with Intel's Celeron G530. That will get you basic computing capabilities and solid light to moderate gaming—with a lot of room for future upgrades.
As is nearly always the case with computer hardware, $400 buys substantially more power than it could even less than a year ago. While there are frequently newer/faster/better options just around the corner, most of those options start at higher price points and only trickle down into the budget categories over time—Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs being a great example of this. Thankfully, for the budget conscious users we've now reached the point where the vast majority of tasks run well even on low-end hardware. Use an SSD instead of a hard drive and you can even alleviate the slow degredation of performance normally experienced as hard drives get fragmented, so in three years you're still likely to have a sufficiently fast PC.
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mevans336 - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
I bet you couldn't tell the difference unless you used a benchmark util.popej - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
Probably not, but even Windows Experience Index will drop significantly because of lack of bandwidth for integrated GPU.Even if I couldn't show more advantages of dual channel memory for office PC, I would feel uncomfortable building such an handicapped system ;)
mosu - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
I've noticed that too.Also I would recommend a faster memory packgoinginstyle - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
For $5 more you can get the Asus F1A55-M LE board. What does that $5 buy you? Another x4 PCIe slot, 2 additional SATA ports, 4 more USB ports, additional fan header, and a true UEFI and not the Hybrid EFI crap on the Gigabyte board. Oh yes, also much better audio and network controllers and the software suite (options, fan controls, etc) is greatly improved on the Asus board. I understand this is budget but another $5 for that trade-off seems like an easy choice.SunLord - Sunday, September 2, 2012 - link
I'd get the ASRock A55M-HVS personally as it at least has an HDMI connector and it's only $60 with shipping but really if I'm gonna lock myself into a dead socket I'm gonna just save a little more and get a board with USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbit/s so I have some future proofing in other areasJoe Miller - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
Very good read. It is very well balanced. I liked it a lot - all the issues with selections and compromises to do are laid out well.I feel like now it is more difficult than ever to make a budget build - AMD is weaker, Trinity is expected soon, but the socket is changed, Core i3s are relatively expensive, hard drive prices are higher, while SSDs are still more expensive than I am willing to pay, and I am still afraid of reliability and need larger capacity for dual boots, and so on :)
There is also a problem with availability of mini-ITX cases where I live. Delivery from US is like 70$, so not an option.
Torrijos - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
The thing with AMD CPU on gaming machine is they might have more influence than previously sought on gaming performance...This article shows that there are more slowdown with AMD CPU than with Intel
http://techreport.com/articles.x/23246/4
Z Throckmorton - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
Hi Joe - Thanks for the kind words. I agree that AMD's retreat (though not total withdrawal) from the budget market is a bummer for consumers. That said, the fact that the G530 is as powerful as it is and so dirt cheap helps to mitigate the drawback of less competition. ...For now. I worry that this situation will not persist much longer. Anyway, I hope that Trinity will bring better CPU-centric performance to the low-end APU line, which would bring AMD closer to parity in the cheap CPU segment. As for your concerns about SSD reliability - there are many SSD models that I personally trust as much as any mechanical HDD. So do your research, take a deep breath, and jump in. (Of course, the lower capacities are an issue for multi-OS booting and such, but that will become less of an issue with time.) Where do you live? AnandTech's General Hardware forum is filled with non-US users who might be able to point you to ITX case resellers in your country if you post there. Hope this helps - Zachbill4 - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
I'd argue the number one reason costs are higher is cause Intel has no competition. $220 for the sweet spot quad core Intel's sticks out like a sore thumb. Used to be able to pick up some perfectly fine AMD chip or other for like 100, and maybe 60 on the mobo. No more.It's sad all the AMD haters online who so desperately want them to go out of business vs Nvidia, this is what you're going to get...
JarredWalton - Sunday, September 2, 2012 - link
You can still find plenty of AMD CPUs/APUs for $100, but they're not compelling compared to Intel's offerings. The quad-core Llano stuff is a case of win some, lose some against even a low-end Core i3-2100, never mind newer Intel CPUs like the i3-3220. Heck, even the Pentium G2120 would likely give it a run for the money. Still, if all you want is an inexpensive PC, there's nothing wrong with Llano's performance for general use -- or Athlon X2 or Core 2 Duo for that matter. You can find some pretty inexpensive motherboard as well if you shop around.