.. When we last saw our intrepid hero, the Machines had taken over. Or in this case, the pricing of them. Everyone goes through phases where something takes precedence for a short while, and in this case, with the free time I had, I was just in the mood to price up systems. And then, after pricing out computers for people I knew, I had a thought. These other two people don’t have a lot to spend right now. How low can I go for a computer? It has to include Windows, monitor, the works. Turns out I could get there for under $500. A word of caution though. These aren’t the absolute cheapest systems. These are the cheapest I could put together that were still reasonable quality. I could cut a few more corners but then I’d be looking at power supplies by unknown manufacturers and the like. If a known manufacturer was a dollar or two more, I went there instead.

BUILD 6: SUB-$500 SYSTEM, INCLUDING MONITOR AND WINDOWS

So I priced out two systems. The first one assumes you’re paying full sticker price for it. At the time I specced it out, it came to $491.

The first stop was the processor. Again we meet the AMD A4-4020 that we saw in the last budget build. A Richland 3.2 GHz dual-core CPU on the FM2 socket means a good amount of power for the price, and it has Radeon HD7000 graphics built into the processor package. This means running your basic applications should be easy as well as some low-end titles. The processor here is going to be pushing your graphics as well. And again, $50 means money well unwasted.

The motherboard was an ECS micro-ATX board, in this case the A55F2-M3(1.0) model. Two memory slots means not much expandability for memory, and its ‘largest’ PCI-Express slot is version 2, not version 3, so cards plugged into it will be slower. But if the only expanding you plan on doing is adding a video card and RAM at some point, it’ll do the job, and it too is only $50. Not bad so far – for a hundred dollars, board and CPU are both done.

Of course, some systems won’t even power up if there’s no memory in them. I spent an extra dollar here over a previous build to get a 4 GB stick of memory from Corsair for $38 instead of Team Group’s $37 choice. Corsair’s been handling memory for a long time and this is their bread and butter. Model CMV4GX3M1A1333C9 is DDR3 operating at 1333 MHz which should be sufficient for this system. (Note that I’m not saying Team’s memory is bad, just not someone I’ve heard of before. Team has fewer reviews on Newegg but the reviews come out very good for them, thus why I considered their memory.)

On this stringent a budget – as I said, monitor, keyboard, mouse and OS were all going to be included – an SSD was not going to be an option. That means heading straight for a standard hard drive. At this point, Toshiba’s DT01ACA050 came up, and it’s a 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive. For $60, you can’t really go wrong; any lower and you’re looking at much smaller hard drives.

I decided at this point I should see how much a monitor would cost. I already knew that keyboard and mouse should be around $15 or so, and Windows was $100 regardless. The question wasn’t yet “Can I do this for under $500?” but more “How low can I do this?” And I found that Hanns-G has a monitor – their HL161ABB 16″ widescreen with 16ms response time, 1366×768 – that was only $90. This is a fair amount cheaper than I was expecting, so I was happy there.

At this point I’m about $300 – $400 once you include Windows 7 Home Premium, and I think this system you’re still getting 64-bit, with Service Pack 1 obviously included – which includes an “in the air” number of about $15 for keyboard and mouse. I still need an optical drive, case and power supply. For the drive we change things up slightly. Asus has their DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS model, which burns DVDs at up to 24x base speed, for only $20. There were about four different models at that price point, so I went with Asus. I’ve found they generally have good quality control as a whole.

The fun part came to finding a case and power supply, which I refuse to buy as a single unit, largely because the power supply is such an important part to the system. If I can’t get an 80 PLUS Certified power supply, the next best option for me is to go with a brand name. That at least gives me some sort of quality assurance. Sure, you can get a $10 power supply off the shelf from your local shop, but do you think that’s wise on even a $300 computer? Spend a little more on it and get something that has some kind of quality built into it. That being said, I managed to find a 500 watt 80 PLUS Certified power supply by Coolmax – their ZX-500 – for only $40. Name brand, certified as energy efficient by 80 PLUS, 500 watts, low cost. Seems fine.

The case I was willing to trim a bit more. A case’s job is to hold your parts. If it can do that, you’re good to go. On ultra-budget you’re not going to be looking at Cooler Master, Antec, or Rosewill. I went with an APEX PC-389-C midtower case. It clocked in at $30 and should be more than enough for what’s being put together.

Finally, the keyboard and mouse. For $13 – $7 for the keyboard, $6 for the mouse – I got a pair of Rosewills, an RK-101 keyboard and an RM-P2P standard three-button wheel mouse. Amusingly the mouse cost almost as much as the keyboard! But you don’t need anything fancy, and going with a lesser-known brand would have made a negligible price difference. And yes, I looked at mouse-and-keyboard combos, and the cheapest one was more than $13. Note that on this build, prices did not include any discounts. For that we go to the next build…

BUILD 7: Super Budget At Current Pricing

.. which looks something like this.

Here’s where the fun begins. This is assuming I bought the parts the day I saw them. I didn’t account for any mail-in rebates but whatever I could get from Newegg themselves.

And in this case we get to switch over to an Intel setup. Remember, the point was to make a build as low dollarwise as you can. Intel’s Celeron G1820, mentioned in a couple previous builds, is $45. It’s a dual-core 2.7GHz socket 1150 CPU using Haswell technology, so it’s a pretty good start to a system. $5 cheaper at that time then its regular price. And again, the CPU here has onboard graphics, so we won’t be needing to add a video card later.

Also for $45 is the matching motherboard. ASRock has their H81M-DGS R2.0 micro-ATX board with two memory slots and again PCI-Express 2.0. Normally this is a $55 board so I was happy to snap it and the CPU for under $90 combined.

What am I forgetting, what am I forgetting, what am I forgettinggg.. oh yeah, memory! In this case I was able to get ADATA DDR3-1600 memory (AX3U1600C4G9-RR) on a 4 GB stick for only $33. ADATA has been around for a few years and commonly makes lower-priced memory – much like how Kingston was known years ago, though now Kingston has started making higher-end memory too. Still, at nearly $8 a gig, I’m happy. It’s $40 typically for this module.

Again, no SSD here, though we may be able to afford one and use it and still keep this under $500. That being said.. you know the $60 we spent on the Toshiba drive? Let’s put that on the Western Digital drive we used in previous builds. Yeah, it’s normally $70, so we save $10 and get twice the storage. Seems reasonable, doncha think? A 1 TB 7200 RPM drive, model WD10EZEX, comes to the rescue!

The same optical drive, Windows version and keyboard as listed above get used here, though the mouse will be slightly different. Rosewill has a $7 mouse that’s $3 off right now – model RM-P2U. This one connects through the USB port.

The case is a bit different. There’s a DIYPC FM08-W ATX midtower that’s normally a $50 case and is currently on sale for – get this – $24. That means you not only can buy two for what you’d normally spend but you still have $2 left over! Not a bad buy. Comes with a 120mm fan and an 80mm fan built in.

The same power supply will be driving our super-budget box; even with discounts you can’t get better than $40 for a 500 W PSU that’s 80 PLUS Certified. And the same monitor we listed before comes up too, but guess what? Not only is it the cheapest at regular price.. it’s also on sale for $20 off! So now you pay $70 for a monitor.

When all is said and done, you’re looking at a grand total of $448 for this unit, which is slightly better quality than the previous one and over $40 less. I can’t say I’d be entirely unhappy with it.

Back tomorrow when I show my most recent creation based on these numbers – and change who I’m going through! See you then!