My recent successful “Budget Build” $400 (Pics)

[Matt_Smi]

I set out to build my Dad a new computer, he was using a tired 9 year old Gateway and was going to spend $600 on a new Dell, I was convinced that I could come up with something much better for less money, my goal was to spend between $350 and $400. I put budget in quotes because while this machine was low in cost, its performance exceeded my expectations, throw a decent graphics card in here with a beefier power supply and you have a budget gaming machine as well. I purchased everything at my local Microcenter which had better or similar prices to Newegg after shipping. Here are the components I used…

Case: Antec $300 ($60)
Power Supply: Thermaltake TR2-430 Watt ($50)
Motherboard: Asus P5KPL-CM Micro ATX ($57)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo e7400 2.8 Ghz ($100)
RAM: OCZ Platinum 4 GB DDR2 800 ($30 after rebate)
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE (Blue) 320 GB 8 MB Cache ($50)
Optical Drive: Samsung 22x SATA DVD Burner ($25)

Grand total before rebates and with a 120mm fan included was just over $400, now if you wanted to go even cheaper you could drop $30 more off the price by going with a e5200 CPU and another $50 or so if you went with a case/PSU combo, I love the Antec 300 and didn’t want to skimp on the PSU so I didn’t go that route, nor did I think saving $30 for a lesser CPU was worth it, but if you did this it would bring the cost down to $320 which is still a very good value and perfect for a home office computer. I don’t think it’s worth cutting cost anywhere else, I mean you could save maybe $20 bucks if you went with a 160 GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM but again, not really worth it IMO.

All the parts
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3605/...c8339bb8_b.jpg

PSU mounted in case
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3304/...794355f3_b.jpg

CPU and RAM installed
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3540/...e861951e_b.jpg

MB mounted in Case
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3384/...a62abe12_b.jpg

Cable Management Cubbie
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3347/...38ae3804_b.jpg

End Result
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3342/...77b5800e_b.jpg

[shadowpr]

Nice build.

[jdeb]

Sweeeeettttttttt

[glc]

The power supply is not suitable for a PCI-E graphics card. It's an old ATX 1.x design with only 18 amps on a single +12v rail. 50 bucks could have gotten you a much more suitable unit. Newegg sells that PSU for 25 bucks, by the way. I still use that PSU for AGP replacements.

[not important]

Very nice economical and functional build. I would agree with glc on the PSU.

[Matt_Smi]

Originally Posted by glc The power supply is not suitable for a PCI-E graphics card. It's an old ATX 1.x design with only 18 amps on a single +12v rail. 50 bucks could have gotten you a much more suitable unit. Newegg sells that PSU for 25 bucks, by the way. I still use that PSU for AGP replacements.

Yeah I would not have chosen that PSU if I was going to be running a video card, but it is a nice unit for a simple build like this. I like how the cables are sleeved and I like how it has a fan on the front and back of the unit, rather than the back and top. It works better with the Antec case design.

[Rev_pizzaguy]

Originally Posted by Matt_Smi Yeah I would not have chosen that PSU if I was going to be running a video card, but it is a nice unit for a simple build like this. I like how the cables are sleeved and I like how it has a fan on the front and back of the unit, rather than the back and top. It works better with the Antec case design.

I'll have to go with glc on that... Just because it's not going to be used for a video card now, doesn't mean that the user might not want one later. Fry's Electronics ran a sale on the Antec TruePower Trio 430W for $29.99 no rebates this past weekend that would have been much better stability-wise, power-wise, and upgrade-wise.