Final Words
The problem with "entry-level" systems is that they aren't normally sexy or groundbreaking. PCs under $800 are therefore devoid of any of the glitz and excitement associated with the midrange to high-end market. Many consider low-end PCs to be just the Dell or HP special of the week - hardly worthy of consideration as a "real" PC. That perception is really a shame, because the sub-$800 market is where many computer buyers choose to buy - or they may be forced to buy in this price range with the strains of today's worldwide economic woes. Today, more than ever, you will get a lot for your money in this market segment. With entry choices like Core 2 Duo and Phenom II CPUs, 4GB of DDR2-800 or faster memory, and a starter $59 500GB 7200RPM hard drive there truly is value to be had at these price points.
Our base entry systems with decent integrated graphics are just $300-$320 for either Intel or AMD. Add a 1440x900 LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse, and the Vista OEM OS and the complete system build is still around $500, and decent integrated graphics were just $538 for either Intel or AMD. Even compared to just three months ago these entry PCs are faster and just as cheap. There has never been a time when you received better value for your $500. Indeed, the Intel/AMD wars in the CPU space and the NVIDIA/ATI wars in GPUs have created some truly excellent values. This value has been further enhanced by the AMD introduction of Phenom II and the worldwide recession. It is ironic that the best prices coincide with the scariest economic times, but that is how economics often works. If you are in the market for a PC, you will be very pleased with the values you can find.
If your budget interests extend to gaming, you can start with the AMD or Intel Budget PCs. Both feature a Viewsonic 21.5" 1920x1080 LCD, and you can add the well-regarded ATI HD 4870 512MB video card to bring your new system up to current gaming PC standards for only $155. That means you can build a 4870 gaming rig with a 1080P 1920x1080 HDMI LCD for around $940. That kind of value did not exist until recently, and that is why it is such a good time to buy and build a new PC.
Finally, you can build a powerful AMD or Intel HTPC 4GB of memory, processors and graphics fast enough to provide stutter-free and tear-free Blu-ray playback, 1TB of quiet hard drive storage, a combo 6X Blu-ray player/DVD burner, and HDMI capable onboard graphics in a quality home theater component or mini cube case with a PC Power and Cooling 500W Silencer power supply for a base system price of just over $600. Add a wireless keyboard/ mouse and Vista and you are still around $740. The end result again is tremendous value for the money spent.
As has been pointed out many times since the introduction of Phenom II, AMD and Intel performance is all but equal from low-end to upper midrange systems. That is to say a $120 AMD CPU is today pretty comparable in performance to a $120 Intel CPU. Intel still owns the very top of the CPU curve with Core i7, but those processors and systems are much more expensive in today's market. This CPU price/performance parity is part of the reason so much value is available at such relatively low prices, but it isn't the whole story. You can buy what we consider a top value GPU for around $150, and it will perform as well as or better than yesterday's $500 video card. 500GB is now an "entry" hard drive and 1TB drives offer storage at $0.105 per gigabyte, making 1TB at around $100 a reality. Memory has also reached commodity pricing levels when we can recommend 4GB of high-speed DDR2 for a cost of less than $40.
Put it all together and you can buy an excellent entry, budget, or HTPC computer for well under $800. You can even deck it out with a 1080P monitor and a good video card and still barely top $940. It is a good time to be shopping for a new PC. Value is the rule of the day as competition, a mature market, and a lackluster world economy has created great options in every computer component category - except perhaps the computer operating system, assuming you still plan on running Windows. Fortunately, you do have options available even in the operating system cost. Microsoft has kept the Vista OS "system" or OEM price for Vista Home Premium at $100, and it is even more expensive if you buy a full retail Vista. However, if you are good with computers you can install Linux for little or no cost at all. Even if you're not a computer whiz the Ubuntu flavor of Linux/Unix is still free and relatively painless to install. Drivers for new hardware remain the biggest Linux/Ubuntu issues, but even that has been improving.
When you build a new system for your mother, brother, nephew going to college, or even yourself, you no longer have to feel like the person on the other end got a crippled system with little upgrade potential. The systems in this sub-$800 guide are powerful, upgradeable, and capable of even more powerful performance with a careful selection of upgrades. Your friends and relatives will consider you a hero when you build one of these systems - so much so that it is a shame to consider them entry-level.
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v12v12 - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
I agree most of these posts are the nerds-nit-pick special! I'm sorry but if you're whining about $15 here and $20, get a clue and get a REAL JOB or start saving/studying for certs/school and make some real money.This shoe-string budget crap, for a so-called "gamer" box is plain stupidity. If you're hurting over $600-800 MAX limit, sounds like you have your financial PRIORITIES out of whack! Nobody is "gaming" for long with a $600 box. It's a fool's investment and will have you stuck with a sub-par performing machine, rapidly. Oh and don't even think about resale, you're stuck with the low-end junk.
While mirroring the car market: UPSCALE cars/PC builds lose a small percentage of value as soon as you buy them, BUT they hold top value over the coming months Vs this low-mid-level junk that immediately loses an chance of resale value. Have you seen how many stupid people are on Ebay that overbid even for those relic 8800s?!
Who's going to buy your used, non-warranted (many manu's do require proof of purchase these days) 2nd rate card for ~$30 less than RETAIL? Pawning that off to ebay noobs is your only hope to recoupe your losses. Be smart people.
If you're maxing out around $600 = STOP and rethink your finances... $800? Might as well save and get an Icore. Geesh, oh and don't forget about TAXES + initial cost of hardware lol. Not to mention if something goes wrong and you have to RMA = how you gonna afford S/H if you can barely afford a paltry $600-800?
Flame time...
nubie - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - link
I did get an e5200, for $59.But the motherboard I chose was not using single channel ram, or onboard video. I got an 8600GTS (the GTS is important, it has much more memory bandwidth - 2000mhz DDR3) for $43.
I would like to note that new systems with any sort of budget should be built with a quad-core (unless you need that 4.0ghz clocked Wolfdale for gaming of course.) The Q6600 is only $160 on ebay, and it is a really solid performer.
Kudos to showing how to build a system for people new to the task (and it is infinitely better than letting the newbs pick their own stuff, like 3GB of ram and a 9800pro for example.)
I guess ultimate hard-core system building isn't your cup of tea, maybe we need a "Reader's Rigs" section where we can duke it out with budget builds to see what can really be done. (I would cheat, there are P6N OEM boards for $40 on ebay, and MSI should RMA them for functionality with 45nm processors, it already took a Celeron 440 to 3.33ghz without even a voltage bump!! Ironically Speedstep now starts at the 2.0ghz rating of the chip, so it cycles up less than before.)
Knowname - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - link
The only future proof quad cores right now are the i7's, even the Phenom 2's will choke under a very taxing 4-core+ program. The proof is in the cache, where even the Phenom's 6mb (shared) is just too little for a fully multicore aware program. It is for this reason that the Core2Quad's 2mb or 4mb cache per core is just TERRIBLE future proofing.Then again, you have to ask yourself... just how much future proofing do I need? When we are in an era of replacing ENTIRE computers every 9 months.
Knowname - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - link
well my point was it may actually be better for somebody looking to future proof at these prices to buy a e8xxx rather than a q6xxx... JMO.nubie - Wednesday, March 18, 2009 - link
Well, for these prices I would recommend that somebody wait for i7.If they are really on a budget there are 650i OEM motherboards for $40 on ebay, and look for a good deal on a Wolfdale ~$60-70, or overclock the heck out of a Celeron 430/440 (my last two were fine at 3 and 3.33ghz respectively.)
My definition of budget is being out of steady work for ~3 years, so the value for money needs to be very high, and the e5200 and Core2 Celeron are very good in that regard, with 70% overclocks the norm.
My budget systems come in around the $300-350 mark, not the $500+ segment, and yet I would say that they offer the same functionality for gaming and general use (and as I said, I would go Q6600 if I could, probably will when everyone moves to i7 and the prices drop below $100)
7Enigma - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - link
Great deal I saw on Fatwallet the other day if you are a student (or know someone whom is). This would drop another $35 bucks which would allow for some much needed flexibility especially on the entry-level systems where that difference is ~7% of the build price.Oh to be a student again.....
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv...">http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv...
7Enigma - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - link
Wanted to mention that page also includes Office Ultimate 2007 for $60 if you are an active student. Not bad for someone who needs Office (I personally use OpenOffice).*Seems like the Vista Ultimate might be an upgrade version and not the full version. It's difficult to confirm as the main page that is linked doesn't mention which version but if you click on it it shows upgrade with sp1. Someone less of a hot deal if it's the upgrade only.
7Enigma - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - link
Anand see if your weight in the tech industry will allow you to aquire for testing one of these puppies:http://www.dailytech.com/Fusionio+Claims+Worlds+Fa...">http://www.dailytech.com/Fusionio+Claim...lds+Fast...
I'd love to see it put through its paces, even though it is in a completely different class ($5000 for lowest model).
scwtlover - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
For the entry-level AMD system, you recommend G.Skill 800-DDR2 RAM at $37. It's timings are 5-5-5-15 and 1.8V, but it does not come with a heat-spreader. Should we infer that a heat-spreader is unnecessary?mushkin 1.8V memory, with 5-4-4-12 timings and a heat-spreader is available, after rebate, for only $3 more.
And, how significant is 1.8V? At 800-DDR2 Newegg sells OCZ with a heat-spreader and 5-4-4-15 timings, but 2.1V. It's $24 after rebate. Corsair's offering, after rebate, is only $20. It has heat-spreaders, and is 1.9V. The timings are 5-5-5-18? How significant is 12 v. 15 v. 18?
If we look at 1066 DDR2 RAM, the OCZ sticks you recommend cost $28, after rebate. You advise: "Just be sure to look for RAM with better timings if you can afford it." The OCZ is CAS 7, with 7-7-7-20 at 2.0V. For $30, after rebate, Newegg sells OCZ2P10664GK. It's CAS 5, with 5-5-5-18 timings at 2.2V. For $8 more than that, you can get the same RAM plus a bundled XTC memory cooler. How important is voltage versus timings? For $34, that is, $6 more than the OCZ, Newegg sells OCZ Reaper with 5-5-5-18 timings at 2.1V
Wesley Fink - Monday, March 16, 2009 - link
Traditional "Plate stuck on each side" heatspreaders do almost nothing to cool the ram. in fact sometimes they hold in heat and are actually worse than no heatspreader at all. Some more exotic HS designs used in more expensive RAM that is run at higher voltages sometimes do help cool the RAM.The OCZ is DDR2-1066 with slower timings and the 5-5-5 and faster is DDR2-800. The same 7-7-7 1066 memory often runds fine at 5-5-5 at DDR2-800. Higher speed usually means slower timings. If you can find faster RAM like DDR2-1066 at CAS 5 at a similar price then buy it.
As I said in the article quality RAM at the same speed can be selected from any of the major memory providers. Comparing two at the same price look at highest speed combined with reasonable timings. If the two memories are the same price and the same speed then timings (and warranty support) should be your main considerations.
We try to select reasonable choices we have personal experience in using at AT. But there are many rebates in memory right now - and they change daily. You need to be flexible if you are looking for memory that is the best value.