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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DanNeely - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Unless you're more concerned about squeezing every last watt of efficiency out of your system than noise under load, you want a PSU that maxes at 200-300W more than your peak consumption level so that its fan never goes above idle speeds. For a gaming box that typically means an extra 10-20W drawn while the system is idle since you're in the <20% load low efficiency zone on most PSUs.piroroadkill - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
That's odd, because my i5-2500k @ 4.5 with a Radeon 6950, 8GB RAM and 7 hard drives pulls around 150w idle. Seasonic X-660. Under load, we're talking north of 300w easy.When I had a Q9550 @ 3.8 and a Radeon 4890, it pulled about 230w idle. That was with a Corsair HX520. I easily pushed 400w at the wall under CPU + GPU load, and I was actually pretty afraid to load both to the maximum.
I have a power meter permanently hooked up to my PC.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
I realise this is AC load, not DC load. However, I have been running pretty efficient PSUs.I do completely agree people overestimate vastly.
Actually, with my old Radeon HD 2900XT, that used MORE power than my 4890.
Taft12 - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
It's the hard drives that are pushing up your idle power usage. WD Blacks or 2+ TB "green" drives use 6-8W each at idle.erple2 - Friday, November 11, 2011 - link
No, it's the 4890 combo with the Q9550 that's pushing that kind of output, even at idle. Drives typically consume "only" 7-8 W each at idle, and only about 10W under load. So expect the drives alone to contribute 49-56W alone under idle. The top 2 consumers in that setup are clearly the GPU, then the CPU.My i7-950 + 6870 and one WD Black drive eats 200W at idle.
My old computer (core2duo 6750, 4890, and similar drive) used to idle at 240W give or take.
Iketh - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
That's funny, because I have a 2600k @ 4.2ghz converting to x264 as I type this and using a steady 170w. That's with 2 Seagate greens, an ssd, and a Radeon 6870. My power supply is an Antec 380w. If I game at the same time, it's at 250w. Idle is 92w. Sounds like there is a little tweaking you can do in your bios.I also have a power meter permanently hooked up to my PC.
wifiwolf - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Just as a side note: you're in the 50% spot, so max efficiency.DominionSeraph - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
$420??Inspiron Desktop 560 Mini-Tower
Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core E6700 (3.20GHz 2MB)
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
500 GB SATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
3 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz (3 DIMMs)
16X DVD +/- RW Optical Drive
$289 at Dell outlet.
Why the heck would anybody build a budget system?
slayernine - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
For friends and family that mostly just Internet browse but want a system that could perhaps be upgraded in the future as most prebuilt systems don't allow.Also building your first entry level system lets you get into system building or gaming without breaking the bank. Your Dell system will not play any games without a dedicated card and would likely need a power supply upgrade if you wanted to install a dedicated video card. Also airflow in most consumer desktops is not suitable for a gaming system unless you buy something like a Dell XPS which then puts you into a much higher price bracket. At that point you will realise why custom built is better :)
jabber - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
Indeed, had many a Dell Dimension or similar in for 'upgrades' and by the time you check them over the HDD and ram is about all that's worth upgrading. If you want to put another HDD in then you have to contend with their bafflingly over complicated HDD mounting systems. Why they have to use 8 parts when other cases use just a simple slot and screw method I don't know.