Developments in the Budget Marketplace

Since our last budget buyer's guide back in November 2011, there have been many developments in the budget sector of the DIY market. Perhaps most noteworthy, SSD costs have finally fallen far enough that they are within reach of price-conscious builders. Given that mechanical hard drive prices remain inflated in the wake of last year's flooding in Thailand, I have been putting lower capacity SSDs in budget builds more frequently than HDDs in the last few months.

That said, it's worth elaborating that while you might have become used to larger capacity hard drives in the last few years, a 60/64GB SSD is more than enough space for a basic machine that will have Windows 7, Office, and a few other productivity applications installed on it and not be used for personal storage. Even a 40GB SSD can comfortably contain Windows 7, Office, and many small applications. Of course, the small size of SSDs might very well preclude their inclusion in your system if you need more space—know what your storage needs will be. Thus, in the office builds, we include both SSD and HDD options. Gamers will likely want to stick with larger HDDs because a gaming library will quickly surpass the capacities of less expensive SSDs.

Also of note is the disappearance of AMD's lower-end Athlon II CPUs from retail channels. I probably built more computers with the AMD Athlon II X2 250 than every other CPU model combined from 2009 to earlier this year. That chip and its close relatives are now rarely available from retailers, and that limits budget processor choices. In the previous budget buyer's guide, I compared the Athlon II X2 250 with the then newcomer Intel Celeron G530, a super-cheap chip based on the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. The G530 has become the king of the budget CPUs. While AMD's Llano APUs offer acceptable computing, for CPU-centric tasks—that is, non-gaming—the G530 remains a better choice than the comparably priced lower-end Llanos. Since most home and office users aren't playing games, I've built more and more G530 systems as X2 250s have become harder to find. However, the higher-end Llano APUs offer a very good value for gamers on a very tight budget.

There are also a few new budget cases that have caught our attention here at AnandTech in 2012 that we'll highlight in the guide. NZXT's Source 210 case is a capacious offering that's easy to work in, offers attractive, subdued lines, and is well-built; its 'elite' brother is one of the least expensive cases with front panel USB 3.0 support. Dustin recently reviewed the Cooler Master Elite 120, an inexpensive ITX case that I just got my own hands on that has impressed me.

Finally, new video cards—as well as old video cards with new prices—put more gaming power in the hands of budget gamers than ever before. Those are covered on the gaming build page. First, though, we'll start with the basic office productivity builds on the next page.

Budget Office/Productivity Builds

I covered the Intel Celeron G530's capabilities last year in a previous budget buyer's guide. Succinctly, it remains the best choice for those on a very tight budget, and apparently Intel is in no hurry to release an Ivy Bridge microarchitecture-based Celeron CPU (the cheapest retail 22nm Intel CPU right now is the quad-core i5-3470 at $195, which is obviously in a different market). I also reviewed the various LGA 1155 socket chipsets last year, and H61 remains the budget chipset choice. The G530 is more than capable of smoothly and quickly performing basic office tasks like word processing, emailing, and Facebooking. It also handles more strenuous tasks like 1080p content streaming with ease. Perhaps the best thing about a budget Sandy Bridge Celeron build is that in a few years, you'll be able to drop in a much more powerful CPU like an i5 or even i7-grade chip for not much money (assuming those depreciate in value like most other processors).

One consideration worth noting for an office build is physical space consumed by the case. Gone are the days of unwieldy, 20+ pound behemoths. Most businesses, whether they're in an office building or the spare bedroom of a residence, can use all the desk space they can get, or will at least appreciate not having legroom constricted by a big box under the desk. Therefore, we're recommending a long-time favorite that is a relatively small mATX tower as well as a newer iteration of an ITX solution.

As mentioned on the first page, SSDs have dramatically decreased in price in the last year. While mechanical HDD prices have also decreased from their flooding-induced highs, they remain more expensive than they were pre-flood. This has created a situation where lower capacity SSDs are less expensive than smaller HDDs. That is, you can find SSDs for less than $50, especially if you're willing to fill out rebates, but it's difficult to find new HDDs for less than $50. Sadly many of the now cheap SSDs are not well-known for their reliability, and productivity machines need to be reliable. It's up to you whether you want to spend more on a drive with a stellar reputation for reliability, but those are what we're recommending here.

Anand recently reviewed the Intel 330 series SSDs, which carries on the tradition of Intel SSDs: not necessarily the fastest, but among the most reliable. The new 60GB model, however, is unlike most previous Intel SSDs in that it is among the cheapest of comparable models. Crucial's M4 64GB SSD also has a reputation for solid reliability. You can see in Anand's review of the 330 Series how these two different SSD models compare, performance-wise. The important thing to keep in mind is that Windows 7, Microsoft Office 2010, and a handful of other (smaller) applications can fit on an SSD as small as 40GB. A 60GB/64GB SSD is more than enough space for a lot of productivity applications and office documents. Of course, once you start adding media files, that space will disappear in a hurry, so make sure you have an idea of how much local storage you'll need before omitting a higher-capacity HDD.

For the cases, we're recommending an old favorite (Fractal Design's Core 1000) and a new small form factor that Dustin recently reviewed: the Cooler Master Elite 140. The Core 1000 is relatively small for a tower, has great thermals and acoustics, is well-built for such an inexpensive case (no finger-slicing sharp edges!), and is light—which makes moving it around in an office environment easier. The Elite 140 has an even smaller footprint, but is limited to ITX motherboards which is an issue if you need to install expansion cards. You can use regular, full-size optical drives, hard drives, and power supplies, though.

As you likely know, Windows 7 comes in a few different flavors which are compared on Microsoft's page and more thoroughly on Wikipedia. You'll need to decide whether you want or need more than Home Premium offers, but for the sake of this guide, we're including the less expensive Home Premium because it is typically sufficient for small/home offices.

Rounding out the builds we have the venerable Antec Earthwatts 380W, a budget-friendly, well-built, quiet, 80 Plus Bronze certified power supply. I've had excellent experiences with the Biostar H61MGC and Intel BOXDH61DLB3 motherboards; both are inexpensive and reliable boards. The Intel board offers USB 3.0, a nicety not always found on H61 chipset-based boards.

Mainstream (i.e. non-overclocking) RAM is mostly interchangeable these days, with companies competing mostly on price and customer service. The Corsair and Kingston modules here should serve you well, but look for good prices on other reputable manufacturers like G.Skill, Crucial, Mushkin, ADATA, Samsung, and others—and don't forget to pay attention to the specified voltage level and CAS latency; all other aspects being equal, lower is better. We've listed 1x4GB for all of the budget builds today, since all of the motherboards are limited to two DIMMs. Personally, I'd spend the $20 or so to go straight to 2x4GB, but then I'd also be more likely to spend up on most system components. If you do find you need more RAM (or you really feel the need for a dual-channel configuration), switching to two DIMMs is a simple change to make.

As for hard drives, as mentioned previously in this article, though the floodwaters in Thailand have receded, their prices remain high. Even worse, with Seagate's acquisition of Samsung's hard drive business and Western Digital's acquisition of Hitachi's hard drive arm, we're left with only two mainstream drive manufacturers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both Seagate and Western Digital have lowered the length of warranties on their mainstream drives: down to two years for Western Digital and one year for Seagate. Because of this, I see no reason to recommend Seagate's mainstream hard drives at all over comparable Western Digitals unless the Seagate model is substantially cheaper. We're recommending a small 250GB drive here simply because it is cheap. Keep an eye out for sales on larger drives: $60 500GB drives are popping up on sale here and there occasionally, and $70 will often nab a 1TB drive.

Intel Celeron G530 minitower system

Intel Celeron G530 ITX system

Outlets

It's worth noting that for a basic productivity machine, the Windows 7 license by itself accounts for a large percentage of the build's total cost. This is a nearly unavoidable cost for system builders (the only way to legally avoid it is to use a free OS like Ubuntu Linux that can work in certain productivity scenarios but is not mainstream). However, larger system manufacturers like Dell and Lenovo get Windows 7 licenses for far less than end users can, and sometimes their returned, refurbished, and scratch & dent systems in their outlets can be purchased for less than the two systems above, and modified accordingly—especially if you're willing to sell the parts you replace on the used market like our own For Sale subforum. You can also always ask for advice on our General Hardware subforum. Dell's outlet for home systems is here and their outlet for businesses is here; Lenovo has their outlet here.

If you're looking to do more than just type papers and create Powerpoint presentations—like kick back with some friends and shoot some zombies—check the next page for budget gaming systems.

Budget AMD Gaming System

With the budget gaming rigs, we have our first AMD-based system of this guide. Recommending AMD on the desktop is becoming increasingly difficult given Bulldozer's lackluster performance and Sandy/Ivy Bridge's domination at every level of desktop use. But there is a particular niche left for AMD: folks who want more than basic CPU power and the ability to play less demanding games, including old favorites—especially at lower resolutions.

The A8-3870K APU (accelerated processing unit) is a quad-core CPU with a lower-end discrete-level GPU on the same die. In terms of its CPU performance, the A8-3870K trades blows with the Intel i3-2100 in real-world applications. (While we don't have the A8-3870K in Bench, that comparison of an A8-3850 with the i3-2100 should give you a good idea of how the A8-3870K compares to the i3-2100 since at stock clocks, the A8-3870K is only 100MHz faster than the A8-3850.) Intel CPUs that are slower than the i3-2100 either come close to the A8-3870K or simply can't keep up with it. In other words, in terms of CPU-centric tasks, AMD's $110 APU performs similarly to Intel's $110 CPU.

However, the A8-3870K's integrated graphics perform more like a discrete video card than the integrated graphics you're probably used to. At stock speeds—and with DDR3-1866 memory—the Radeon HD 6550D graphics in the A8-3870K perform about as well as a GT 430, which is itself a $50 GPU. That said, the FM1 socket will see no future processors that are faster than the A8-3870K—it is a 'dead socket.' But the bottom line is that if you are using a lower-resolution monitor (like 1600x900 or 720p or lower), and are on a shoestring budget, the A8-3870K can be a sensible decision. While there will not be a more powerful APU released for the FM1 socket, this system could be upgraded to better graphics power by including a lower-end discrete card like the Radeon HD 6670 using AMD's Hybrid Crossfire technology.

One important consideration in building an A8-3870K system is that this processor benefits greatly from the use of faster RAM, as clearly illustrated by Anand's tests. Thus, we're including a kit of DDR3-1866MHz here. Don't let the poor stock timings of the Samsung module fool you: these are superb overclockers. In my experience, they are reliably capable of DDR3-1866 9-9-9-24 at 1.45V; with the motherboard recommended, this will take a few moments of BIOS fiddling (that is, changing two settings). Of course, dual-channel RAM will also help more with the Fusion GPU performance, so if you can afford the extra $23 we recommend going straight to 2x4GB; alternately, if you're sure you won't regret it, you could go for a 2x2GB setup, but 4GB total is feeling a bit sparse these days.

Another important point is that socket FM1 will soon be replaced by socket FM2. AMD's next generation APUs based on the Trinity architecture are due out in retail channels within the next few months. Based on what we've seen of mobile Trinity along with early previews, the desktop version will feature stronger processing and graphics than FM1's Llano APUs. If you're not looking to build immediately, it might be a good idea to wait and see what Trinity brings; as long as pricing is in line with the current Llano offerings, Trinity should be a platform with a bit more legs.

Finally, while Intel has locked down its entire processor line below the i5-2500K/i5-3570K SKUs, one of the more appealing features of the A8-3870K is its unlocked multiplier. That makes overclocking the AMD APU very straightforward, and both its bus speed and multiplier can be manipulated to give you a faster than 3GHz CPU. Furthermore, its GPU can be overclocked, making its GPU faster than stock as well. In my experience, these APUs can be conservatively overclocked to 3.3GHz on the CPU side and 750-800MHz on the GPU side (from 600MHz at stock) on stock volts with the stock air cooler. More aggressive overclocks are possible with better cooling and/or higher volts (of course, spending a lot of money on cooling for a low-end APU may not be the best way to improve overall performance). Overclocking doesn't appeal to everyone, but being able to overclock the system's CPU, GPU, and RAM on a system with such a low price tag to get meaningful boosts in productivity and gaming is certainly a welcome option.

Regarding the case, a newer arrival on the scene gets our nod: the NZXT Source 210. It is a very roomy case with great thermals and high build quality for such a low price tag. It is not particularly quiet, though, so keep that in mind. That said, it's tough to beat for a cheap gaming rig—Amazon frequently has this case on sale for under $35. Like the productivity builds, we're recommending the Antec Earthwatts 380W power supply to power this system. Also as with the budget productivity builds, we're recommending a lower capacity 250GB hard drive simply to keep costs down—though again, keep your eyes open for sales on higher capacity drives.

The Gigabyte GA-A55M-DS2 motherboard recommended here is my favorite of the A55 chipset-based FM1 boards. The systems I've built with it are stable and reliable. Plus, this board features enough overclocking options in the BIOS to satisfy those who want to tweak and tune their system to get more than stock performance out of it. Here's the final tally:

Budget Intel Gaming System

Though the A8-3870K fills a somewhat narrow niche, if you are anticipating having funds available in the future for upgrades, then you will want to instead build around Intel's LGA 1155 socket. The Celeron G530 is the least expensive Sandy Bridge CPU, but don't let the Celeron name and low price tag fool you into thinking it's junk. I reviewed the chip in a previous buyer's guide, and while the system outlined below features weaker performance than the A8-3870K for CPU-based tasks, its Radeon HD 6670 DDR3 video card is more powerful than the 3870K's on-die Radeon HD 6550D graphics. That is, this budget Intel gaming system will be a bit better at gaming than the 3870K but worse for, say, productivity tasks.

It's notable that the Radeon HD 6670 comes in two distinct flavors: GDDR5 and DDR3 versions. The GDDR5 variant is substantially faster in all scenarios than the DDR3 version. According to my own testing, in more demanding games like Aliens vs. Predator, the GDDR5 6670 can produce almost 30% higher frame rates than the DDR3 version at lower resolutions. The gap does narrow substantially in less demanding titles, however; for example, the DDR3 only lags behind the GDDR5 version by about 10-15% in Left 4 Dead 2.

The primary reason for recommending the less powerful Radeon HD 6670 in this guide is its cost: it can be regularly found for less than $50 after rebate. The more powerful 6670, on the other hand, rarely drops below $75 after rebate. While $25 isn't much in an absolute sense, it's a 50% increase in cost here for much less than a 50% increase in performance. In that sense, the DDR3 6670 is a better value for gamers on a tight budget. Bench includes metrics for the 6670 GDDR5's performance, and Ryan reviewed it thoroughly as well. If you're looking for other options, NVIDIA's GT 630 is an alternative that will also hit $50 after rebates, and it's basically the same as the older GT 440 hardware (96 CUDA cores), but our primary choice remains the 6670.

This Intel system will not benefit much (if at all) from higher-clocked RAM like the AMD APU system above, so we're back to DDR3-1333MHz RAM. The MSI H61M-E33/W8 H61 chipset-based motherboard is an exceptional value at $50 and will work out of the box with Ivy Bridge CPUs, unlike many older H61-based boards that require a BIOS update. This is not an immediate benefit now since the Celeron G530 is a Sandy Bridge CPU, but one of the LGA 1155 platform's main benefits is its upgradability from the G530—the potential to install a much more capable CPU and GPU will be very easy in the future. Here's the final rundown of our Intel Budget Gaming rig:

Closing Remarks

Compared to last year's budget buyer's guide, the productivity and gaming systems outlined in this guide offer two main advances: productivity builds at a low budget of around $400 can now include a smaller capacity SSD, and gaming builds at the $400 price point now include discrete-level graphics card performance.

AnandTech has been stressing for years that upgrading to an SSD from a mechanical hard drive can yield one of the most noticeable benefits in day-to-day computer usage, whether you're typing papers or playing games. Now we have reliable (albeit lower capacity) SSDs within reach of even the most budget-conscious system builders.

As for the GPUs, discrete graphics—or discrete-level graphics on the same die as the CPU—are still necessary for gamers. The AMD A8-3870K APU offers budget buyers a CPU that is more than sufficient for light to moderate day-to-day productivity use with a GPU that is acceptable for light to moderate gaming; if you can wait another month or so we should see Trinity APUs improve on both areas. The other options is to pair a GPU like the AMD Radeon HD 6670 with Intel's Celeron G530. That will get you basic computing capabilities and solid light to moderate gaming—with a lot of room for future upgrades.

As is nearly always the case with computer hardware, $400 buys substantially more power than it could even less than a year ago. While there are frequently newer/faster/better options just around the corner, most of those options start at higher price points and only trickle down into the budget categories over time—Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs being a great example of this. Thankfully, for the budget conscious users we've now reached the point where the vast majority of tasks run well even on low-end hardware. Use an SSD instead of a hard drive and you can even alleviate the slow degredation of performance normally experienced as hard drives get fragmented, so in three years you're still likely to have a sufficiently fast PC.