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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antef - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
I'm not worried about getting an SSD. I think reliability and such has really improved if you stick with the right brand. Even so, if I have a problem, I won't be keeping any personal data on it, just my OS and apps. If it has a decent warranty I think it's absolutely worth the increased performance and responsiveness that everyone raves about.Everyone else agree on 8 GB memory? I have kept my last build for over 3 1/2 years so I could potentially keep this one for a similar amount of time.
Paul Tarnowski - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Right now 8 GB is right around $50-$60, and less if you look for deals (like $35 for 1333 on Newegg's shellshocker today). 16GB 1600 can be gotten for as little as $70 on special. So if you find a deal, and it's in your budget, I'd say go with 16GB. It's probably more than you need, but it'll mean you can get rid of your pagefile. If you have an SSD, that's always a plus.Either way, just stick with 4GB sticks as the 8GB sticks are overpriced.
Lunyone - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
I generally think that Llano is really good for laptops and not as good for desktop area. This is just my opinion. Llano isn't that more expensive than the 2 other budget builds above, but does better in games (at stock configuration) than either of the budget builds. Another note is the Llano chipset doesn't have much upgrade path, IMHO. The AM3+/1155 chipset mobo's I think are better options for upgrades than the FM1 socket/chipset, IMHO. Isn't Piledriver a different socket/chipset?Now don't get me wrong, Llano chips aren't all that bad, but I just don't see them being a good/better long term buy in the desktop arena. If' I'm just building a regular "Desktop" they are fine as well as the other 2 budget builds listed above. But since I usually build more than just a regular Desktop, I usually opt for a system that works better with a dedicated GPU (mainly for better gaming capabilities). Of coarse this is just my preference and is a bit different than what the article was looking at. These builds look pretty good for what the design/budget is looking for.
StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Rumors are that AMD may end up making Socket FM2 backwards compatible with socket FM1, just like they did with Socket AM2+ and AM3.Nothing Solid yet of course.
Lunyone - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Well if that is the case, than the Llano build might not be too bad. I just see Llano as a good laptop chip and an okay desktop chip. For probably 90% of people, Llano will do just fine, because they probably wouldn't notice too much difference than what they currently own. Most people will notice if you have an SSD as your main boot drive than if you have an i7 quad core instead of a Llano chip. Now if your doing encoding or some heavier CPU related tasks, than the i7 quad core will definitely notice the CPU difference (of coarse you'll be paying for that option too).Taft12 - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
I seem to be in the minority, but I think desktop Llano is a great product that is the best choice for 80% or more of desktop systems. You sacrifice CPU capability (which has been "good enough" for just about everything ever since the Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 X2 days) and in its place you get much (MUCH!) improved IGP performance which will have no problem whatsoever for Flash games or 1080p Youtube.Hardly any of my family or coworkers play 3D games or use Photoshop, video transcoding, etc -- I would think this is a pretty accurate sample of the majority of PC users.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Have you tried Flash games and 1080p YouTube on Sandy Bridge? I haven't had any issues with either one, but I'd love to know what specific games/videos you've tried that didn't work properly. AFAIK, even desktop Core 2 Duo systems handle YouTube 1080p pretty well, doing all the decoding on the CPU.The other issue I have is that you imply all Llano are roughly equal, and obviously they are not. A quad-core Llano with the full on-die GPU is a far more interesting chip, but then it costs twice as much as the A4-3300. 160 shader cores is barely enough for most games at minimum detail and a reasonable resolution (hint: 1024x768 isn't "reasonable" in my book; 1366x768 for laptops and 1600x900 minimum for desktops is what most users are running).
Saying Llano is the best choice for 80% of users is like saying 80% of users shouldn't have ever upgraded from a Core 2 Duo E6600. Hey, wait... I'm running one of those in my HTPC!
QChronoD - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Would you guys consider this level of hardware adequate for HTPC duty? I'm guessing that it might need a discreet video card since most of the boards don't have HDMI. What would you recommend as the minimum video card for good quality playback & passing the audio to a real AV receiver?duploxxx - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
any liano build will satisfy that needgeniekid - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
I'm using an A3500 in my HTPC connected to my receiver via HDMI.In my honest opinion, you don't need a graphics card. 34 of the 42 FM2 motherboards on Newegg as of this moment have built-in HDMI.