$400 PC?

BlueBirdTS · Post by **BlueBirdTS** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:03 pm

Can anyone think of a $400 build that uses high-quality components and is relatively quiet, preferably in a small form factor? This PC would only be used for the most basic of computing tasks (i.e. web browsing, word processing, light photo editing, etc.). I realize that there are pre-builts such as the EEE Box available but was hoping a custom-built PC could be created for a similar price.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:09 pm

Including the cost of the OS and case? Nope

Without an OS? Yes it is but tight if you need a case... If you can use an old case you can do a really decent system for $300

BlueBirdTS · Post by **BlueBirdTS** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:21 pm

This is excluding an OS. With a machine like this a Linux distribution would work well. Perhaps if I extended the budget to $350 this would be more feasible. I've been looking around Newegg but can't really seem to get a decent system configuration (with a good quality case/PSU/etc.) for less than about $400.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:38 pm

Do you have optical drives from another machine?
HD from another machine?

I ordered the following system at Newegg last night for $255 to my door:
$56 - AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz Dual-Core - Retail
$94 - GIGABYTE GA-MA78GPM-DS2H
$33 - Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
$60 - WD SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA

You could easily trim $30 off the cost of the MOBO but I chose this one because it has dedicated video ram. Use that to upgrade the heatsink and/or get a couple of quite fans. Even with 2 gigs of RAM linux (Ubuntu is my choice) will run great on this combo.

BlueBirdTS · Post by **BlueBirdTS** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:52 pm

Trav1s wrote:Do you have optical drives from another machine?
HD from another machine?

I ordered the following system at Newegg last night for $255 to my door:
$56 - AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz Dual-Core - Retail
$94 - GIGABYTE GA-MA78GPM-DS2H
$33 - Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
$60 - WD SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA

You could easily trim $30 off the cost of the MOBO but I chose this one because it has dedicated video ram. Use that to upgrade the heatsink and/or get a couple of quite fans. Even with 2 gigs of RAM linux (Ubuntu is my choice) will run great on this combo.

Yeah, I was looking at a similar configuration. It seems like the sweet spot right now is around $400, if you go below that you have to make some major compromises in performance and build quality.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 7:00 pm

BlueBirdTS wrote: Yeah, I was looking at a similar configuration. It seems like the sweet spot right now is around $400, if you go below that you have to make some major compromises in performance and build quality.

Quite true... DDR2 is so cheap right now not going with 4 gigs right now is foolish.

What are you eyeing for your build?

BlueBirdTS · Post by **BlueBirdTS** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 7:12 pm

I was basically just wondering if there was a way to build a $300 PC without major compromises, but it really seems as if it isn't. I guess I'll go ahead and rename the thread "$400 PC".

speedkar9 · Post by **speedkar9** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 7:16 pm

BlueBirdTS wrote:I was basically just wondering if there was a way to build a $300 PC without major compromises, but it really seems as if it isn't. I guess I'll go ahead and rename the thread "$400 PC".

OMG

Don't do those things! You scared me! I was just browsing the thread with a $300 PC as the title, then I went back and found a $400 PC thread on the same page.....

Anyways if it was $300, consider the 740G chipset + Sempron, or even an E1200 + G31 intel setup.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 7:22 pm

If you go Intel, the E2200 is a sweet little processor that overclocks like mad. I have one in a Shuttle k45 that I built for $275 at the beginning of December. I wanted the compact size and was willing to go Intel. I am happy with the choice...

For $5 more the e5200 is a good one too.

But for your money, AMD is where I would begin.

jobu · Post by **jobu** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 9:19 am

I know you're looking for a DIY spec, but for under $400 with minimal requirements and running linux I would suggest a netbook.

protellect · Post by **protellect** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 10:03 am

I'd also roll with AMD; you can do it very inexpensively.

Small Form factor is always a bit tougher, but not impossible. Look at some of the inexpensive shuttle cases. Maybe this for 160$. Add in an inexpensive dual-core processor for 38$, 2GB of memory for 20$, and maybe a quiet 320GB hard drive for 50$, maybe even a dedicated 9400GT video card for 45$? Don't forget a dvd burner for 21$

We're sitting at 350$ right now...

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 11:06 am

The system I recently built for my parents (these are all old prices):

Sempron LE-1250 -- $20
Foxconn A74MX-K -- $40
250GB Samsung S250 -- $40
2GB DDR2 800 -- $25
Used ATX w/ newer 300W In Win PS -- $25
Used DVD-ROM/CD-R -- free

$150 shipped

Very low power even when overclocked to 2.8GHz. A video card would be nice if you want to play newer games. Upgrade to an Athlon X2 for $20 more. Upgrade to a WD6400AAKS for $20 more. Upgrade to 4GB for... you get the idea. The $150 configuartion is still more than twice as fast as any Atom based system.

Screaming Fast Gaming System on a $400 Budget

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 -- $76
Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L -- $58
4GB DDR2 800 -- $45
eVGA Geforce 9600GSO -- $50
640GB WD6400AAKS -- $70
Samsung DVD-RW -- $29
Coolink BAT1VS Tower Heatsink -- $21
In Win Z-Series Mini Tower -- $45

The E5200 can run at 3.33GHz in just about any motherboard by just doing the BSEL mod and perhaps a little voltage bump. Intel's Wolfdales can run very fast if given enough voltage and cooling--even the lowly E5200. Mine runs fine at 3.8 GHz. The video card overclocks quite well too, and the whole thing is fairly quiet. The processor, motherboard, and video card do have some quirks working together--enough that I would recommend spending a little more on at least a Core 2 Duo E7200 and an Intel P35 chipset motherboard. Both of those are getting hard to find new, but the current E7300 + P43/P45 chipset is probably okay too, and if you're relatively rich an Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 would be great.

I actually bought a used E7200 for $99 off eBay, which can clock up to 4.2GHz, but really I wanted it to run at 3.8GHz with 1:1 memory divider (the power meter was reading over 225W just loading the CPU at the higher clockspeed.)

BlueBirdTS · Post by **BlueBirdTS** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 1:17 pm

QuietOC wrote:The system I recently built for my parents (these are all old prices):

Sempron LE-1250 -- $20
Foxconn A74MX-K -- $40
250GB Samsung S250 -- $40
2GB DDR2 800 -- $25
Used ATX w/ newer 300W In Win PS -- $25
Used DVD-ROM/CD-R -- free

$150 shipped

Very low power even when overclocked to 2.8GHz. A video card would be nice if you want to play newer games. Upgrade to an Athlon X2 for $20 more. Upgrade to a WD6400AAKS for $20 more. Upgrade to 4GB for... you get the idea. The $150 configuartion is still more than twice as fast as any Atom based system.

Screaming Fast Gaming System on a $400 Budget

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 -- $76
Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L -- $58
4GB DDR2 800 -- $45
eVGA Geforce 9600GSO -- $50
640GB WD6400AAKS -- $70
Samsung DVD-RW -- $29
Coolink BAT1VS Tower Heatsink -- $21
In Win Z-Series Mini Tower -- $45

The E5200 can run at 3.33GHz in just about any motherboard by just doing the BSEL mod and perhaps a little voltage bump. Intel's Wolfdales can run very fast if given enough voltage and cooling--even the lowly E5200. Mine runs fine at 3.8 GHz. The video card overclocks quite well too, and the whole thing is fairly quiet. The processor, motherboard, and video card do have some quirks working together--enough that I would recommend spending a little more on at least a Core 2 Duo E7200 and an Intel P35 chipset motherboard. Both of those are getting hard to find new, but the current E7300 + P43/P45 chipset is probably okay too, and if you're relatively rich an Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 would be great.

I actually bought a used E7200 for $99 off eBay, which can clock up to 4.2GHz, but really I wanted it to run at 3.8GHz with 1:1 memory divider (the power meter was reading over 225W just loading the CPU at the higher clockspeed.)

I actually built a configuration similar to the second one you listed in December for my brother (except I used a 4670 and Antec HTPC case). I just wanted a very basic PC for a minimal price for my dad to use. I'm not necessarily going to build this PC now, I just wanted to get an idea of what some options are.

Would a mini-ITX PC work? I know that these are generally very poor performers in comparison to any decent ATX or mini-ATX build, but they have a small footprint, are a little bit more affordable, and have minimal power draw. The main advantage they have over netbooks is that they can be easily hooked up to a large display (as opposed to squinting with a mediocre 10-inch one) and can potentially be upgraded.

Atom Platform--$70
640GB HDD--$60
Foxconn mini-ITX Case w/150w PSU--$50
2GB RAM--$20
$20 Optical Drive
Ubuntu--Free

Total Cost: $220
Pair it up with an Acer 22-inch display and any decent mouse and keyboard and for the price of a netbook you have a decent desktop PC for basic computing.

Now what would be really cool is if you could stuff all this into a toaster and use it as a kitchen PC. I'm not kidding: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/toa ... ,2136.html

Again, this would be a very poor performing PC and probably somewhat noisy by SPCR's standards, but for the price it seems decent.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 2:04 pm

BlueBirdTS wrote:The main advantage they have over netbooks is that they can be easily hooked up to a large display (as opposed to squinting with a mediocre 10-inch one) and can potentially be upgraded.

Netbooks can hook up to large displays just fine. The 400MHz RAMDAC in the 945GSE can drive up to 2048x1536@75Hz. My Eee PC 1000A works fine connected to my 32" 1360x768 LCD TV--I can run it dual monitor with the 10" LCD active.

You can go even cheaper on AMD. Like the $40 ECS Goal3+ but that is a lot crappier than the $150 system.

psiu · Post by **psiu** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:01 pm

Check out the Asus barebones at Newegg, they have a nice looking AMD/ATI 780G based system. Only question is how quiet is it...and now we have a nominee for a guinea pig

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6856110099

Throw that, the low end BE-2300 in with some memory, cheap optical and hard drive and you're all set.

155 + 40 + 40 + 25 + 75 = 335, plus shipping. Shop smart and can probably get free shipping on most (cpu, ram, hd, optical). Maybe a case fan also. The motherboard looks really similar to the M3A78-EM I have and the HD3200 video is more than sufficient.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:20 pm

psiu wrote:Check out the Asus barebones at Newegg, they have a nice looking AMD/ATI 780G based system. Only question is how quiet is it...and now we have a nominee for a guinea pig

Many of the ASUS barebones are quite nice and fairly quiet. I think the Terminators are the best form factor. They used to have three year warranties too.

Plekto · Post by **Plekto** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:28 pm

BlueBirdTS wrote: Would a mini-ITX PC work? I know that these are generally very poor performers in comparison to any decent ATX or mini-ATX build, but they have a small footprint, are a little bit more affordable, and have minimal power draw. The main advantage they have over netbooks is that they can be easily hooked up to a large display (as opposed to squinting with a mediocre 10-inch one) and can potentially be upgraded.

In theory. But in practice, no. The problem is that they require a video card, which pretty quickly kills the idea(heat, noise, size, etc).

The only exception so far seems to be the upcoming Nvidia Ion. It looks to be the perfect basic net/multimedia box. It won't game, but it will go basic internet and word processing as well as video and so on.

But you have to wait a few months for this little gem. It should be well under $400 completely built, as well.

EDIT - In a way, this reminds me of the 8 bit machines in a way. You paid a couple of hundred dollars and got a single unit that you plugged a monitor into. (Atari ST/Amiga/etc) I think it will be incredibly popular and likely force Intel to drop it's inane requirement that Atom systems only have a PCIe 1x slot.

BlueBirdTS · Post by **BlueBirdTS** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 3:05 pm

Plekto wrote:
BlueBirdTS wrote: Would a mini-ITX PC work? I know that these are generally very poor performers in comparison to any decent ATX or mini-ATX build, but they have a small footprint, are a little bit more affordable, and have minimal power draw. The main advantage they have over netbooks is that they can be easily hooked up to a large display (as opposed to squinting with a mediocre 10-inch one) and can potentially be upgraded.
In theory. But in practice, no. The problem is that they require a video card, which pretty quickly kills the idea(heat, noise, size, etc).

The only exception so far seems to be the upcoming Nvidia Ion. It looks to be the perfect basic net/multimedia box. It won't game, but it will go basic internet and word processing as well as video and so on.

But you have to wait a few months for this little gem. It should be well under $400 completely built, as well.

EDIT - In a way, this reminds me of the 8 bit machines in a way. You paid a couple of hundred dollars and got a single unit that you plugged a monitor into. (Atari ST/Amiga/etc) I think it will be incredibly popular and likely force Intel to drop it's inane requirement that Atom systems only have a PCIe 1x slot.

I've been reading about the Ion platform and am definitely intrigued. However, I'm not sure there will be a huge market for it unless pricing is very competitive. Most people who purchase these ultra low cost, SFF PC's don't have much of a need for powerful graphics. Netbooks can generally handle 720p video admirably, it's 1080p content they struggle with. But who's going to watch 1080p content on a netbook or a PC designed for basic computing in mind? Ion definitely has potential, but unless we see very aggressive pricing I don't see it taking off.

ilovejedd · Post by **ilovejedd** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 1:58 pm

BlueBirdTS wrote:I've been reading about the Ion platform and am definitely intrigued. However, I'm not sure there will be a huge market for it unless pricing is very competitive. Most people who purchase these ultra low cost, SFF PC's don't have much of a need for powerful graphics. Netbooks can generally handle 720p video admirably, it's 1080p content they struggle with. But who's going to watch 1080p content on a netbook or a PC designed for basic computing in mind? Ion definitely has potential, but unless we see very aggressive pricing I don't see it taking off.

It'll be great for HTPC-type applications. If they can keep the price of a mini-ITX Ion motherboard in the range of $150 or so, there's a market out there eager to gobble it up.

speedkar9 · Post by **speedkar9** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:58 pm

BlueBirdTS wrote:This is excluding an OS. With a machine like this a Linux distribution would work well. Perhaps if I extended the budget to $350 this would be more feasible. I've been looking around Newegg but can't really seem to get a decent system configuration (with a good quality case/PSU/etc.) for less than about $400.

AMD 4850e $56
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-US2H $80
4GB Kingston DDR2 $42
WD 320GB $55
NSK3480 w/380W $100
DVDRW $21

Total $354

A low power dual core cpu paired with a 780G board, 4GB RAM and an 80+ efficient (and quiet) PSU and a good quality matx case for less than $400.