System Buyers' Guide: PCs for Under $1000
by Sean Hollister on February 12, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Intel Entry-Level PC
From Pentium 4 to Pentium D, Core 2 Duo to Core 2 Extreme—not to mention the occasional Celeron and Xeon—Intel's LGA 775 socket has had a long, illustrious six years housing powerful processors. We're not going to write LGA 775's obituary quite yet, as Intel hasn't officially announced an end-of-life date for the aging socket. But with widespread availability of a mainstream successor in LGA 1156 and leaked Intel roadmaps depicting only the Pentium Dual-Core chips to continue through 2010, the writing's on the wall. If you buy an LGA 775 system today, don't expect to be able to easily upgrade its processor through retail channels next year.
However, none of that says an LGA 775 processor and motherboard can't be the base for a fantastic budget PC. LGA 775 chips have proven to be excellent overclockers, with many of the recent 45nm SKUs capable of reaching speeds up to 4GHz at stock voltage. They are mature and reliable; multiple AnandTech editors still use them in their home PCs, and clock for clock they continue to compete well against AMD's offerings (albeit at generally higher prices and/or lower core counts). And should you still want to upgrade at some point down the road, the aforementioned wide variety of compatible processors means that you may still find an opportunity to do so in the secondhand market.
| Intel Entry-Level System | ||
| Hardware | Component | Price |
| Processor | Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300 (2.6GHz x2, 45nm, 2MB L2 Cache) |
$65 |
| Cooling | CPU Retail HSF | $0 |
| Video | Onboard | $0 |
| Motherboard | ASUS P5G43T-M Pro LGA 775 Micro ATX | $80 |
| Memory | G.Skill Ripjaws 4GB DDR3-1600 F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL | $105 |
| Hard Drive | WD Caviar Blue 500GB WD5000AAKS | $54 |
| Optical Drive | Sony Optiarc Model AD-7240S-OB 24X DVDRW SATA | $28 |
| Audio | Onboard | $0 |
| Case | Cooler Master Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Mid Tower ATX | $55 |
| Power Supply | OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W ATX12V SLI Certified, CrossFire Ready, 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC (before $25 Rebate) | $65 |
| Base System Total | $452 | |
| Display | ASUS VW193TR Black 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD (1440 x 900) | $120 |
| Speakers | Built-in Monitor | $0 |
| Input | Microsoft B2L-00045 Comfort Curve Black USB Keyboard and Optical USB Mouse - OEM | $22 |
| Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium OEM 1-Pack (for System Builders) | $105 |
| Complete System Total | $699 | |
| Plus Estimated Shipping (within Continental U.S.) | $715 | |
| Rebates | -$25 | |
| Final Total (less tax, if applicable) | $690 | |
 |
Since December 2008, our CPU of choice for the Intel Entry-level PC has been the excellent Pentium Dual-Core E5200 Wolfdale: a 2.5GHz, $64 processor that hit a sweet spot in the price/performance ratio that no other Intel chip could match. Today, we're going to stray ever so slightly from our previous recommendation and suggest you pick up its bigger brother, the 2.6GHz Pentium Dual-Core E5300 instead. Why? Simply put, the $65 E5300 is the exact same chip, but with a 13x multiplier that immediately makes it 100MHz faster—for only $1 more. And considering that 13x multiplier also means a higher maximum overclock than that of the 12.5x E5200, we believe that extra $1 is money very well spent.
It's also important to note that since late 2009, new E5300 processors have been shipping with Intel's Virtualization Technology, or VT-x. If you're hoping to run the Windows XP Mode under Windows 7 Professional/Ultimate, you'll need this feature and you won't find it on the E5200. You can indeed find VT-x on the cheaper $60 Celeron E3400, but only in exchange for a significant drop in performance. On the other hand, if you're looking to spend even more on a processor and don't plan to overclock, you might consider the 2.8GHz E6300 for $80, which has guaranteed VT-x support and a 1066MHz (vs. 800MHz) FSB speed.
 |
With LGA 775 fading from the public eye, it was imperative that we find as capable and upgradable a motherboard as we could fit into our budget while such boards were still to be found. To that end, we chose the ASUS P5G43T-M Pro. At only $80, the P5G43T-M Pro features both the Intel G43 GMCH as well as the ICH10 Southbridge, allowing for acceptable video playback with the X4500 IGP and plenty of storage options, including a single IDE header and six SATA 3Gb/s ports. The board supports all LGA 775 processors up to the Core 2 Extreme series, 8GB of DDR3-1333 memory, and has excellent connectivity with VGA, DVI and HDMI ports, six USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit LAN and Realtek ALC887 8-channel HD audio, in addition to combo PS/2 and optical S/PDIF audio out. Onboard, there's a single PCIe x16 slot, a PCIe x1 slot and two PCI slots, as well as headers for six more USB 2.0 ports. There's no hardware RAID support, only a single chassis fan connector and you won't be playing new games or natively decoding H.264/VC-1/MPEG2 streams with the integrated X4500 graphics, but the P5G43T-M Pro's got a pretty solid layout with room to grow.
All other components are the same ones chosen for our AMD Entry-level PC, up to and including that 4GB of G.Skill DDR3-1600 memory. Even for an LGA 775 rig—where the majority of affordable motherboards use DDR2—we felt it didn't make financial sense to go with the slower modules when quality DDR3 is available for a marginal price increase, and can be repurposed if/when you build your next PC. However, if you're looking to squeeze out every last drop of value, you can pick up low-end DDR2-800 memory instead as with our AMD build. In that case, our motherboard recommendation is the ASRock G43Twins-FullHD (a similarly featured G43/ICH10 Micro ATX with separate DDR2 and DDR3 slots and a DVI/DisplayPort riser card) for $75. Just be aware that the G43Twins-FullHD uses jumper settings for its memory divider, so you'll need to check the manual in order to properly set the board for your memory.
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jstall - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
While I have no problems with Dell LCD monitors (some great buys and I own 2) I would never again purchase a Dell system. Poor build quality, poor components and limited life. I would rather take the extra time and effort to build a system knowing the parts were carefully chosen/thought out and well put together.
Just because it's a budget system doesn't mean you can't think and act like it's a high end system when you put it together. After all, this may be someone else's high end system when it's built.
StormyParis - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
Thanks for yet another very nice write up. I use them regularly when recommending or buying PCs.A few suggestions:
1- the perfomance graphs are very nice. Could you possibly
1a- generalize them, so that we can see how much the extra money spent going from "entry" to "mainstream" buys us, performance-wise ?
1b- indeed, include your past recommended configs, so that we can judge if upgrading is worth it.
1c- format the graphs as indexes, I got a headache mentally flipping half of the bars.
1d- to make up for all that extra work, methinks you could get rid of a handful of benches, and just keep 1 each of: boot+launch apps, DX9 game, DX10 game, video encode, office work.
2- You seem in love with Asus MBs. I've given up on them after a couple of dead MBs, and very bad service. My retailer told me that the issue was frequent, on top of that. I do like Asus's screens a lot though, much better build than most others.
3- It would be nice to have upgrade suggestions, as in "how to best spend an extra 10%"
4- Maybe you could list the peripherals (screen, kb+mouse, printer...) separately ?
Anywyay, those are minor remarks. Thanks and congrats on a job well done.
Olivier
JarredWalton - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
Thanks for the feedback.Are you referring to ASUS or ASRock? We've got one ASUS, two ASRock (a split off from ASUS back in the day, but I'm sure we can all agree that they're not the same sort of company, given the sometimes quirky nature of ASRock board layouts), and one Gigabyte. So one of four is hardly too many ASUS boards.
All manufacturers have some poor products, and most of these recommendations are made with input from our other editors. The ASRock H55 board for example is the best current bang-for-the-buck that Raja has tested. General statements about ASUS quality (or any other brand) being good or bad don't help unless you've had actual experience with the recommended board.
For upgrades, we've got page six... though I suppose we didn't specifically address the 10% extra? Separating out peripherals is something we will likely do in future guides.
GeorgeH - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
Overall the article was well done, but there’s a lot of room for improvement in its organization.The RAM, HDD, Case, PSU, KB/Mouse, and OS are common to all builds, so it would have been good to do a first page breaking out and detailing all of those items, and to only list them once. The following page could then have been dedicated solely to unique Entry-Level components, and the one following that to unique Mainstream components (although if there were room, both Entry-Level and Mainstream on the same page would be even better.) Also slightly better highlighting (perhaps a different color or slightly larger font) of the most important totals would help immensely.
As it stands right now, it’s very difficult to get a sense of the differences between the builds without lots of clicking back and forth and/or the opening of multiple windows, meaning a lot of the (very good) information you have to offer here just gets lost in the work of trying to sift it out.
BelardA - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
Yep... the now discontinued X2 550 (and X3 720BE) is defaulted at 3.1ghz. With air and no voltage changes... it runs like a champ with all 4 cores running and 3.4ghz. Some are hitting 3.6~3.8 without raising the voltage on the x2 550.X2 555 = 3.2ghz default clock. About $10~15 more in price.
These CPUs are usually faster for day to day operations over the X3... getting the other 2 cores up and running is a big plus.
Gigabyte boards have the BIOS setting for this... takes seconds to do.
AznBoi36 - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
For a HTPC case, check out the Moneual Labs MonCaso 312 HTPC case.http://moneual.cafe24.com/english/sub02/sub6.htm">http://moneual.cafe24.com/english/sub02/sub6.htm
It's a beauty.
jstall - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
Nicely done and welcome, I think we often forget that some of the systems we build are not mainstream. I may even put together the budget AMD system in the next month or two.
Thanks for a well thought out article.
JarredWalton - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
Congrats to Sean on his pilot article for AnandTech!Just FYI, if you try to send him an email, you'll notice that it goes to me instead. I'll forward the email messages on to him short term, because we don't want to overwhelm Sean's real email with hundreds of spam messages.(After heavy filtering, I still get at least 10-15 spam messages per day... and when we switched filtering a few years back and didn't have anything for a day or two, there were 2000+ messages in just one day. Ouch!) Update: We're going to see how Gmail does at filtering spam now, per Sean's request. So now you can flame him without me filtering anything. ;-)Anyway, long story short, you can either email Sean through me, or you can leave him a comment down here and we all get to see it. So welcome aboard, Sean, and good job with your first article.
coolhardware - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
Very nice article Sean!I always enjoy seeing Anandtech put their expertise to use in creating some nice builds :-).
I was a bit worried that the entry level AMD system I put together a couple of weeks ago, http://bit.ly/b6GF9W">http://bit.ly/b6GF9W was already going to be obsolete ;-). It looks like it is holding its own though. That system was inspired by Anand's Phenom II X2 unlocking article. Any tweak/tips from other readers are greatly appreciated.
Please keep up the great work guys!
Rampage1 - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
I'm not sure why most hardware sites segregate their reviews for processors
AMD processors
Intel processors
why not just processors?
and specify price/performance etc