Upgraded Intel Budget Platform
| Upgraded Budget Intel Core 2 Duo System |
| Hardware |
Component |
Price |
| Processor |
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 - 1.86GHz 1066FSB 2MB |
$183 |
| Motherboard |
Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H - Intel P965 775 |
$106 |
| Memory |
PQI POWER Series 2GB (2 x 1GB)
DDR2-533 4-4-4-12 |
$195 |
| Video Card |
XFX PVT73GUGF3 - GeForce 7600GT 256MB |
$146 |
| Hard Drive |
Samsung SpinPoint P 250GB
SATA3.0Gbps 250GB 8MB 7200RPM |
$76 |
| Optical Drive |
LG GSA-H10N 16X DVD+/-RW (12X DVD-RAM) |
$36 |
| System Total |
$742 |
| Complete Package |
$1028 - $1300 |
At the top of the performance tower in this budget guide, Core 2 Duo once again reigns supreme. And once again, it does so at a slightly higher cost. We are more than willing to pay the price premium, and the
amount of overclocking you can get out of these chips is almost criminal. Sadly, reaching the highest overclocks often requires memory that is exorbitantly expensive, but even with DDR2-800 memory you should be able to reach performance levels that are out of reach of the fastest current AMD processors. If someone were to ask any of us right now what the best overall value is in the CPU world, it would undoubtedly fall to the Core 2 Duo E6300.
As with the AMD upgraded configuration, we chose the cheapest Core 2 Duo processor. The E6300 comes with a default clock speed of 1.86GHz along with a 7X multiplier. At stock speeds, it will be moderately faster than the X2 3800+, while even
moderate overclocking quickly catapults it up the performance ladder. Of course, that's provided you are doing tasks that benefit from additional CPU speed, rather than something that is already bottlenecked by another component. Do you want better gaming performance? A faster graphics card will do far more than an overclocked CPU right now. We still like dual core CPUs for the reasons we mentioned on the previous page, and more and more applications are becoming optimized for multiple processors support. Given that the future appears to be moving towards even more processing cores rather than faster individual cores, such optimizations can't come soon enough.
Having settled on the Core 2 Duo E6300, we still need an appropriate motherboard. We recently published our
first roundup of P965 motherboards, which focused primarily on midrange offerings. While we haven't formally reviewed the Foxconn P965 motherboard we've selected yet, the choice was made with the input of our motherboard reviewers. Foxconn has been working on improving their image in the enthusiast community, and their top-end AMD AM2 nForce 590 SLI motherboard really impressed us. Their P965 motherboard isn't quite at that level, but it still offers good performance and should overclock to 400FSB. That is definitely lower than what can be achieved on many other P965 motherboards, but as you will need better memory anyway to get beyond 400FSB, the price and features of the Foxconn make for a great upper-budget recommendation.
Our storage choices haven't changed much, other than adding a larger hard drive and a minor upgrade to the DVD+/-RW. The LG GSA-H10N offers slightly better performance and media compatibility, along with faster DVD-RAM support (12X DVD-RAM versus 5X on most other DVDRs). For the hard drive, 250GB-320GB tends to be the best value in terms of price/GB, and with this being a budget guide we stayed on the low end of the capacity range. The Samsung SpinPoint 250GB costs $0.31/GB versus $0.38/GB on the Hitachi 160GB model. Samsung also makes what are currently the quietest hard drives we have tested, although most hard drives are now at the point where system fan noise is far more audible.
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JarredWalton - Monday, October 30, 2006 - link
To some, yes. To someone else, $15-$20 is the difference between IGP and X1300/7300, or Athlon 3000+ and X2 3600+, or 320GB and 160GB HDD, or a better motherboard, or....You get the point. I still strongly believe that most people who grip on power supplies as being low-quality are trying to use them with higher end systems. As soon as someone starts to upgrade from the basic budget builds, yes I would definitely recommend going with a better power supply. However, when you are trying to save as much money as possible, $20 is a pretty significant upgrade on every single component.
Personally, I don't like building budget computers, because $10-$25 above "budget" in every category will get you a MUCH better computer. Yes, it ends up costing $200 more, but if anyone asks me for advice on a budget computer that's what I'm going to recommend (within reason). The "upgraded build" more or less represents what I would truly recommend, with the caveat that I would not recommend every single upgrade for every person. I really feel $750 is the best price point for a "budget" system. Unfortunately, when I get a few budget buyers guides targeting that I got complaints from people that wanted to stay closer to $500. You can't please everyone, so I figure a spread from $500-$1000 is pretty reasonable. I like to think that most people are capable of extrapolating the recommendations a bit and realizing that there are literally hundreds of computer parts worth considering. Which ones are best is going to be a matter of pricing, availability, support, and performance. Without trying to write 20,000 word buyers guides, I'm quite sure that I can cover every single aspect of what you should or shouldn't put into a system.
I still think a lot of people are way too concerned about power supply quality when looking at budget (~$500) computers. There's a reason those types of power supplies get put in cheap OEM systems: they're good enough for budget computers running budget tasks. Ripple current? When was the last time ripple current affected a $500 computer? How can you even tell? It's more like voodoo mumbo-jumbo than concrete evidence of what will happen. LOL!
Frumious1 - Friday, October 27, 2006 - link
You're not a power supply snob? You damn well could have fooled me! I think Jarred is beating around the bush and trying to be nice so I'm going to cut right through the crap and tell you how it is.There are a bunch of elitist enthusiasts out there that think every computer on the planet needs high-end components. Oh sure, you can skimp a bit on the memory, motherboard, CPU, and graphics card, but OMG you had damn well better not use a generic brand power supply! These "experts" have all sorts of experience replacing bad hardware. Amazingly, they never get calls from people wanting to replace good hardware.
Of course, the people that buy really good hardware almost never have to call someone to replace any parts that fail in the first place! I can tell you how many times I've gone to the local computer store with my broken PC and asked for help: NONE! Not a single fucking time! You know why? Because I am capable of diagnosing and replacing my hardware without anyone's help. Just like a lot of you.
The people who call up a friend or an expert to come and fix their computer are not capable of doing it themselves. These people are the same people that usually by OEM systems, or if they do get a "custom" system they almost never buy anything that's truly considered high-quality. I've had Enermax PSUs fail on me, quite a few Antec PSUs, and over the years many "generic" PSUs.
Because I've had more generic PSUs that have failed, I could quickly reach the conclusion that they are lower quality. The only problem is that I have built far more systems with generic PSUs. If I look at all of the power supplies I've used, very few of them last more than five years... or at least, after five years I'm ready get rid of the case, power supply, and everything else. In terms of failure rates, I would say about 20% have problems with the power supply in the first three years of life, but less than 5% have problems within the first year. And those figures really seem to have little to do with who makes the power supply. Okay, maybe if I went out and bought only expensive power supplies, my first-year failure rate would be even lower. Given monetary savings that come with cheap power supplies and cases, though, I'm more than willing to deal with a 5% failure rate. Sort of like Dell and HP I bet.
So let me wrap this up with a concrete story. When Rosewill first came onto the scene as a brand... 18 months ago? Two years ago?... I was curious. I ended up building four systems using Rosewill cases. I probably left a little bit of blood/skin on every single one of those cases, but such is the price of using a budget case. It's the Rosewill TU-153 with 400W PSU, if you're wondering. I have a Pentium D 805 system running in one of those cases, using a Biostar TForce motherboard, and the CPU is even overclocked to 3.4 GHz. I have another one of those with an Athlon X2 3800+, overclocked to 2.5 GHz. Then I built two more computers (one Athlon 64 3000+ and one Sempron 2800+) for a couple people I know.
All four systems are over a year old now, and no one has called to complain about instabilities or crashes, and my two dual core systems haven't had any problems either. My one complaint is that none of the systems are really quiet. The cases are also pretty flimsy, at least compared to some of the nicer cases out there. The one thing I need to make clear is that not one of these computers has anything faster than a GeForce 6600 GT graphics card, because none of them are being used for gaming. Case closed.
guyvia - Thursday, October 26, 2006 - link
I do appreciate Linux being mentioned in the article, but there are a few missed considerations / mistakes in the article.1. 'W'INE 'I's 'N'ot an 'E'mulator. It is a compatability layer.
2. Keyboards can be funny in Linux, and the more fancy buttons and scroll wheels you have, the more likely you are going to have to run extra software to make them work.
3. Using an existing home theatre may not be a great choice for your speakers, considering many onboard sound cards get squirrley with the coax / optical outs when run under ALSA.
bzo - Thursday, October 26, 2006 - link
FYI - Linux users interesteed in the M2NPV: This boards will not boot up recent 2.6 kernels without some hacks. Apparently, there is a bad ACPI table in the BIOS - at least that's what an Nvidia developer has posted. A google on M2NPV and linux will show plenty of references to this problem.yyrkoon - Thursday, October 26, 2006 - link
Actually, since we're nickpicking . . .'Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.'
'Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris.
More information can be read in the articles Why Wine is so important, and Debunking Wine Myths. If you are wondering how well a particular application works in Wine, please examine the Applications Database. For installation instructions and step-by-step help with running Wine, take a look at the User Guide.
Wine is free software. The licensing terms are the GNU Lesser General Public License.'
http://www.winehq.com/">http://www.winehq.com/
kmmatney - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
"but we definitely wouldn't recommend purchasing and new socket 939 system unless you can get it for less money than the equivalent AM2 setup."I'm very happy with my $99 socket 939 + Athlon 3400+ combo from NewEgg. The processor overclocked to 2.6 Ghz with cheapo RAM. The $60 saved could get a better class of video card. In my case, it was an upgrade, rather than a new system, and I kept my video card and RAM.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Upgrades are of course in a different category, but you also have to take into account the cost. If you *can* get a 939 configuration for less money than an AM2 config - and I'm not talking $5-$10 less, but more like $50+ less - then it's certainly worth a thought, especially for lower budget purchases. Heck, I'm very happy with my Athlon X2 4600+ setup which is also a 939 system. Determing when and where to upgrade is a very different subject from building an entirely new PC.CrazyBernie - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Cate...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...p;Manufa...AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.4GHz Socket AM2 Processor Model ADA3800CWBOX - Retail
For $115.99 !!!
CrazyBernie - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
Bah.... they made a typo... it's a non-X2... nevermind.erple2 - Wednesday, October 25, 2006 - link
On page 2, the second to last paragraph, the second sentence, starts "Dual channel performance might be up to ..." Should that read "Single channel performance might be up to ..."?