For that very reason, we started writing these System Buying Guides a few years back. We have three categories of Buying Guides: Budget, Mainstream and Performance. Our Budget Guide has a spending limit of $650, the Mainstream limit is $1,200 and we allocate $2,000 for our Performance Guide.
The systems that we piece together here are designed to give you the best overall experience under the given budget. Obviously, if you are a gamer, you would probably want to spend more money on a video card than other components. Our guides are designed with overclocking in mind, so we often select lower-end processors / memory / video cards to save money, because we know these can be overclocked to equal or outperform higher priced hardware. All of our guides exclude common components such as a mouse, keyboard, monitor, OS, etc., under the assumption that you already own these items.
So, here we go with our September 2007 Budget Buying Guide...
Processor: AMD X2 5200+
For our budget build, we decided to go with an AMD processor over Intel for the simple fact that they are cheaper. While not as beefy as Intel's Core 2 Duo, AMD's X2 line of dual core processors are still very respectable. We selected the X2 5200+ due to its 2 x 1MB L2 Cache versus the 2 x 512KB of the lower end X2 chips. This retail processor comes with the stock AMD heatsink, so that is one less thing needed for the build.
Motherboard: ASUS M2NPV-VM
The motherboard we selected is the ASUS M2NPV-VM. This is a Micro ATX board but it has many features that you would expect in a full size board. Four memory slots, PCI Express x16 slot, SATA 3.0, onboard LAN and sound, and even has built in NVIDIA GeForce 6150 graphics. This will help save some money on a video card, as this build will rely strictly on the onboard video.
Memory: OCZ Platinum 2 GB PC2-6400
For system memory, we went with OCZ's Platinum 2 GB PC2-6400 kit. This memory operates at 800 MHz, features low timings of 4-4-4-15 and comes with OCZ's lifetime warranty. This is one of the cheaper low latency 2 GB kits on the market, which is why it made the list for our budget buying guide. 2 GB is the minimum amount of memory I would put in a new build these days. This ensures the memory subsystem won't be a huge bottleneck for the rest of the system.
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 320 GB
We selected a Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 320 GB for our storage needs. 320 GB should be plenty of space for the average user. This drive operates at 7200 RPM with a 16 MB buffer and an average latency of 4.17ms. I have been using two similar Seagate drives in my RAID 0 array for over a year now and am very happy with their performance thus far. Oh, and the five year warranty also helps.
Power Supply: Cooler Master eXtreme Power 650w
The power supply is one of the most often overlooked components in a computer build. Sure, your case may come with a PSU, but odds are it is a generic unit that may or may not last the life of your system. For that reason, we went with the Cooler Master eXtreme Power 650w unit. This power supply has a large single fan which should make it pretty quiet overall. 650w will be more than enough to handle this system, and perhaps even further upgrades down the road.
Optical Drive: Lite On SuperAllwrite Dual Layer DVD Burner
Our optical drive of choice is this Lite On Dual Layer DVD burner. This drive uses a SATA interface, so finally we can get rid of those ugly IDE ribbon cables once and for all! This retail version comes with two drive bezels, one black and one white, to help better match the color of your case. Of course, you can always sand down one of the bezels and paint it to match your case like I did.
Case: Your Choice
This is the segment of the guide that I leave totally up to you, the reader. More often than not, the decision for a case comes down to looks alone. There are a ton of great cases out here with some really good features, but you may not like one case simply because it doesn't fit your style, which is totally fine.
Conclusion
Using our TTZ Media shopping engine to find the lowest prices on each of our components, we come up with a grand total of $528.78 (as of writing). With our budget of $650, this leaves us $121.22 to cover the cost of a case and shipping. The system that we have pieced together here today will serve the average user very well. AMD's X2 5200+ processor should easily overclock several hundred MHz, even on the stock cooling solution, which offers you even greater value out of this budget system.
