Holiday Budget System Buyers' Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on November 8, 2011 12:00 AM ESTRecommended Budget Systems
Note the below prices include neither taxes nor shipping as those vary based on the buyer's specific location. The RAM, hard drive, optical drive, power supply, and case recommendations are all, of course, interchangeable between the AMD and Intel-based systems, so mixing and matching those components is unproblematic.
Budget AMD Athlon II X2 system
As noted on previous pages, the AMD motherboards are largely interchangeable and the inclusion of the ASRock board in this list is largely subjective. In this case, it is my opinion that the ASRock board's richer feature set outweighs its shorter warranty.
| Component | Product | Price |
| CPU | AMD Athlon II X2 250 (dual-core 3.0GHz) | $60 |
| Motherboard | ASRock 880GM-LE (HD 4250 IGP) | $55 |
| RAM | GSkill 4GB DDR3-1333 kit | $26 |
| Hard drive | Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB | $70 |
| Optical drive | Lite-on iHAS124-04 | $18 |
| Power supply | Antec Earthwatts 380W | $40 |
| Case | BitFenix Merc Alpha | $39 |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit | $100 |
| Total: | $408 |
Budget AMD A4-3300 system
It's important to remember that the A4-3300 uses socket FM1 motherboards, so you cannot swap only the processor between these two AMD builds. You must change both the chip and the board. Given the benchmark results on the second page, the Athlon II X2 250 system above is a better general, basic usage computer—if you are not interested in gaming. However, if you are interested in playing less system-demanding titles at lower resolutions, as well as general computing, the following A4-3300 system will let you game on a budget. For anything more demanding, we'd recommend either upgrading to a quad-core Llano APU (with its faster GPU), or add a budget GPU to one of the other two builds. The Llano system also uses less power than the Athlon build, though the Celeron still wins as the low-power champ of this trio.
| Component | Product | Price |
| APU | AMD A4-3300 (dual-core 2.5GHz, HD 6410) | $70 |
| Motherboard | ASRock A55M-HVS | $59 |
| RAM | Mushkin 4GB DDR3-1333 kit | $26 |
| Hard drive | Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB | $70 |
| Optical drive | Lite-on iHAS124-04 | $18 |
| Power supply | Antec Earthwatts 380W | $40 |
| Case | Fractal Design Core 1000 | $40 |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit | $100 |
| Total: | $420 |
Budget Intel Celeron system
Similar to the AMD system, the budget Intel boards are also interchangeable, and in this case I include the Biostar motherboard largely because it offers a DVI port and legacy PCI slots (whereas the ASRock and MSI boards do not).
| Component | Product | Price | Rebate |
| CPU | Intel Celeron G530 (dual-core 2.4GHz, Intel HD Graphics) | $57 | |
| Motherboard | Biostar H61ML | $60 | |
| RAM | Mushkin 4GB DDR3-1333 kit | $26 | |
| Hard drive | Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB | $70 | |
| Optical drive | Lite-on iHAS124-04 | $18 | |
| Power supply | Corsair CX430 V2 | $45 | -$10 |
| Case | Fractal Design Core 1000 | $40 | |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit | $100 | |
| Total: | $416 | -$10 |
Suggested upgrades
Neither the Celeron nor Athlon II X2 systems as configured will work as a gaming computer. Adding a Radeon HD 5670 will bump both systems near $500, or a more capable Radeon HD 6770 will push them over $500. Including an SSD will not significantly change the overall cost of the system given current HDD pricing; it's worth considering ditching the mechanical hard drive altogether if you don't need much storage space given the relatively high cost of platter-based drives right now. (Note that you'll still want a larger capacity drive if you plan on storing any video or lots of pictures, and if you want to install more than a couple modern games.) As discussed earlier, the Llano platform with an A4 chip isn't going to impress in terms of benchmarks; upgrading to a faster A6 or A8 chip would help, but that will also increase the price quite a bit. If you're interested in going that route, we'd also suggest looking at motherboards with the A75 chipset, which adds native USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps support.
Closing Thoughts
If it weren't for the anomalously high prices of hard drives at the moment, budget systems built around AMD and Intel CPUs would be well under $400—OS included. That's about 10% less than the budget systems we outlined back in February of this year. While the AMD AM3 system hasn't changed all that much, on the Intel side, you're getting a substantially more powerful computer today than earlier this year, and one with much better upgradeability to boot. AMD's Llano platform is a bit of an odd man out at this price, as the dual-core Llano fails to really impress given the cut-down GPU, but about $20 more will net you a modest gaming system if you're willing to go that route.
Once more, it's important to note that the upcoming holiday season will present lots of great deals for budget-conscious builders. The Hot Deals section of AnandTech's forums is a great place to find and share the latest low prices on components. Further, the General Hardware section of the forums is a great place to ask for and share advice with fellow computer enthusiasts.
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Taft12 - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
For a long time lurker, you could have done a lot better with your first contribution. You've completely missed the point of this article. Try harder for your second.mhahnheuser - Friday, November 11, 2011 - link
...IMO very rude reponse. Maybe you should use your energy on something other than punching the keys on your keyboard. He was only pointing out that you could get much more cpu performance for relatively little extra dollars. I thought a valid point myself.SleepyFE - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
My friend you are thinking of the first generation Athlon, which would be a bit slow and old. For anyone not needing more cores (since you can only play one game at a time and other things are less taxing) a good idea is to look at Phenom II x2 555. I am from Slovenia (it's in Europe) and you can get it for 80€ while the athlon at 3GHz is about 65€.Also it is a good Idea to buy a motherboard with USB 3.0 since USB 2.0 will get real slow real fast once you get a taste of USB 3.0.
antef - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Thanks for this but could you do a mid-range guide by Christmas :) I plan to build over my vacation. Can't decide if should do 8 GB of RAM or more, if I should wait for new AMD video cards, or what SSD I should get...Beenthere - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
antef-8 GB. is plenty for most folks. AMD Vid cards should be available in Jan. SSDs are still immature technology and some what unreliable and having compatibility issues. If you can afford BSODs, lost data, weekly firmware updates and RMA'ed drives, then an SSD may work for you. If not you may want to wait another six months and see if they sort the problems out better.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Woah there tiger... SSDs are not 100% reliable, but let's not get carried away. I've yet to experience a BSOD that I'd attribute to my use of SSDs (haven't been using SF-2200 stuff, though), and firmware updates are really only necessary if you're an early adopter of a specific model. I've got a Vertex, Vertex 2, a couple Intel SSDs, and several 64GB Kingstons that are all running fine. Now, they're not inexpensive so I wouldn't necessarily force one into a budget build, but for midrange builds I would definitely try to get at least a 120GB in there for the OS and apps.StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Never had a problem regarding system stability and SSD's.Had my OCZ Vertex 2 60gb drive for months. Never had a crash or RMA'd the drive, lost data... Or even updated the firmware. It just works and it's an upgrade I highly recommend to anyone.
Currently counting 17 days of total up-time without a single reboot, crash or error even with a "buggy SSD".
The great thing about an SSD is how much faster and responsive windows feels over a mechanical drive.
slayernine - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
I just RMA'd my one year old OCZ Vertex that just randomly died on a desktop system that saw very light use. Crossing my fingers that my replacement does not fail. A close friend of mine had that happen to him. Bought the same or similar model of OCZ, it died, got a replacement and it died too. The claimed 3% failure rate is more like 30-40% in my estimations. I think many people just don't bother to RMA due to the shipping costs, effort and system down time.Death666Angel - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
I have an OCZ Agility (first Indilinx generation) 60GB and a OCZ Vertex 2 120GB running, alive and well to this day. The 60GB was in my desktop and got transferred to the Acer Travelmate 8172 once the Vertex 2 got affordable. Have flashed them and done one or two secure erase, but other than the Vertex 2 giving the BIOS some SMART-data grief after a cold start, no issues. Also, I have been employing a 1.8" OCZ Onyx for about 2 months in my HTPC without issues.geniekid - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
"SSDs are still immature technology and some what unreliable and having compatibility issues."That I can somewhat agree with.
" If you can afford BSODs, lost data, weekly firmware updates and RMA'ed drives, then an SSD may work for you."
That's definitely hyperbole. Maybe you had a bad experience, but I counter your anecdotal evidence with my own - I've been using an Intel X-25M for a year now with no firmware updates or lost data.