System Buyers Guide: PCs for Under $1000
by Wesley Fink on December 29, 2008 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Final Words
The problem with systems under $1000 is that they aren't normally sexy or groundbreaking. Lower end PCs are therefore completely devoid of any of the glitz and excitement associated with the midrange to high-end market. Most consider low-end PCS to be just the Dell or HP special of the week - hardly worthy of consideration as a "real" PC. That perception is really a shame, because the sub-$1000 market is where many PC buyers choose to buy - or are forced to buy because of budget constraints. Today, more than ever, you will get a lot for your money in this market segment. When dual-core CPUs can be choices in Entry PCs, 4GB of DDR2-800 can be bought for $40 or less, and the starter hard drive is a $59 500GB 7200RPM, there truly is value to be had at these price points.
Our entry systems, complete with a 1440x900 monitor and decent integrated graphics, are just $538 for either Intel or AMD. These are prices for a complete system with LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse, and Vista Home Premium OEM Operating System. We can't recall a time where you received better value for your $500. Indeed, the Intel/AMD wars in the CPU space and the NVIDIA/ATI wars in GPUs have created some truly excellent values in the market. This value has been further enhanced by the worldwide recession. It is ironic that the best prices coincide with the scariest economic times, but that is how economies work. If you are in the market for a PC, though, even an entry model, you will be pleased with the values you can find.
A year ago, the entry-level PC cost around $750 and the budget or value PC cost over $1000. Today that $750 price point is the beginning of the budget category. Both our budget PCs are complete systems at less than $850. Both include a Radeon HD 4830 GPU at that price, a 1680x1050 LCD, 4GB of DDR2-800 memory, a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, and a tri-core Phenom Black Edition or dual-core Intel 1066FSB CPU, Microsoft keyboard and mouse, Vista OS, and a Logitech 2.1 speaker system. Either system will provide excellent performance in general use - much better than you would expect for a system at this price level.
If your budget interests extend to gaming you can substitute a full HD 1080P monitor in a 21.5" 1920x1080 LCD and upgrade to the well-regarded ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB video card to bring your new system up to current gaming PC standards. This would only add $165 to your system price. That means you can build a 4870 gaming rig with a 1080P 1920x1080 HDMI LCD for just $998. That kind of value did not exist until recently, and that is why it is such a good time to buy and build a new PC.
Finally, who would have thought that an AMD and Intel HTPC could be built with so many features for so little money? You can get 4GB of memory, a reasonable CPU, and graphics fast enough to provide stutter-free and tear-free Blu-Ray playback for a song! Add in 1TB of quiet hard drive storage, a combo 6X Blu-Ray player/DVD burner, and HDMI capable onboard graphics, all wrapped in a Lian Li aluminum case with a PC Power & Cooling 500W Silencer power supply for around $750, including the Vista OS and a wireless keyboard and mouse. The result is tremendous value for the money spent.
As has been pointed out many times in the last few months, AMD and Intel performance are almost price par for low-end to midrange systems. That is to say, a $120 AMD CPU is pretty comparable in performance to a $120 Intel CPU today - and the same goes for $70 and $100 options. Intel still owns the top of the CPU market, but that may be subject to revision in a few days when the AMD Phenom II launches.
This price parity in the sub-$1000 segment is part of the reason so much value is available at such relatively low prices, but CPUs aren't the only values. You can buy what we consider a top ATI HD 4870 1GB GPU for $220 if you shop around, and it will perform as well as or better than yesterday's $500 video card. 500GB is now and entry-level hard drive and 1TB drives offer storage at $0.105 per GB; 1TB at around $100 is now a reality. Memory has also reached commodity pricing levels when we can recommend 4GB of high-speed DDR2-800 for less than $40.
Put it all together and you can buy an excellent entry, budget, or HTPC computer for well under $1000. You can even deck it out with a 1080P monitor and a 4870 video card and still barely reach $1000. It is a good time to be shopping for a new PC. Value is the rule of the day as competition, a mature market, and a lackluster world economy have created great deals in every computer component category… except perhaps when it comes to operating systems (excepting Linux, naturally).
Next week we will take a closer look at midrange systems, recommending system configurations with a broad price range of $1000 to $2000. Many of you will find you can even meet your high-end computer dreams in this price range that was once reserved for the middle of the road PC and the beginning of computer gaming.
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Wixman666 - Monday, December 29, 2008 - link
Nonsense, you're forgetting that they are posting builds that are user friendly for the general public. 99% of the people in the US couldn't install Linux if their life depended on it. Even for many supposed "power users" it is not exactly friendly.While it is indeed a good alternative, Linux is still just not for the mainstream.
You guys also neglected to choose Vista 64 for forward thinking. Buying a 32 bit OS today is like throwing away money. If I wanted a 32 bit OS I'd buy XP home, pro, or media center.
n0nsense - Tuesday, December 30, 2008 - link
People in US do install and use Linux like in any other place.Dumb
Anyway you will install some OS and installing Vista is at least longer process at the first time and "find the drivers CD" on next time since even NIC wont work out of the box in most cases (XP much worse with default drivers).
And usability, if my 60 years old (in average) parents can use it without calling me few times a week (like they did with XP), anyone can :)
strikeback03 - Monday, December 29, 2008 - link
I'd guess that most users considering assembling their own computers (and for that matter most users who can put a CD in the drive) could install Ubuntu. And with reasonably mainstream hardware they might even have it run flawlessly. If you are willing to use the forums and such to find help you probably can get it to run on just about any system. The problem is that lots of people want it to just work, and you never know what you are getting with each new release. I have been using Ubuntu since 6.10 on my desktop and 7.04 on my laptop. Each release I have installed on the desktop has required new kernel flags to work around problems (noapic, nolapic, all_generic_ide, etc), and the 7.04, 7.10, and 8.04 LiveCDs didn't even boot without help. With 8.10 they seem to have fixed all that, I still haven't gotten around to actually installing it but it runs perfectly off a flash drive. My laptop (Thinkpad T43) , OTOH, had zero problems with any of the releases prior to 8.10, everything did just work. So I went ahead and installed 8.10 without any trial period, and it broke Wireless support, so that it would constantly disconnect from the router, then most times ask for the password on reconnecting and sometimes refusing to reconnect at all. Obviously not acceptable, so I went back to 8.04.I have installed Ubuntu on several other systems at work without problems (including one which is almost identical to my troubled desktop), but the point is that a lot of users probably don't want the uncertainty of whether their hardware will be happy with the software or not. Not that Vista has a spotless hardware support history, but most users probably feel more comfortable finding support for that than Linux.
JarredWalton - Monday, December 29, 2008 - link
Actually, we didn't specifically state whether you should buy the 64-bit or 32-bit version, though we did mention that 64-bit is the way to go if you run 4GB or more RAM. There's only a couple applications I use regularly that utterly fail under 64-bit Vista: Dragon NaturallySpeaking (still waiting for their 64-bit update!) and Gametap (a bunch of the games fail to install/work under 64-bit Vista). So it's still not 100% the same as 32-bit, but I do run 64-bit for my primary gaming PC. My work PC remains 32-bit until the Dragon issue is fixed.sprockkets - Monday, December 29, 2008 - link
If you can assemble a computer, you can install Linux.By the way, that WD Green drive has NEVER been a variable speed drive; it operates at 5400rpm ALL the time. WD just doesn't want the public to fret over the fact that it is a 5400rpm drive so they obfuscate this fact as much as possible.
cbutters - Monday, December 29, 2008 - link
I was just about to post that the WD wasn't a variable speed drive, but I see you have commented on it already, therefore, I second your post.n0nsense - Monday, December 29, 2008 - link
Truly, I can't understand why 20% of computer cost should be spent on OS.Yes, you can argue that other OS does not really support ALL games.
But when talking about Internet/Office/Media non professional use (in professional people can choose Mac) for what f... reason should person to spend this 100 USD on something really not needed. Actually it's more then 100$ since they gonna need "good anti everything" soft which will slow down their already not so fast computers.
On the other hand they can opt for something like Mythbuntu for HTPC, or Ubuntu for normal desktop and spend saved money on something better like tripling disk space, getting decent dedicated graphics and other things.
And i'm disappointed that you don't even mention this.
and please, add preview button for posts :)
DerwenArtos12 - Monday, December 29, 2008 - link
Why didn't you all use the Corsair ram you were raving about in your memory guide, it's only a couple bucks more?Wesley Fink - Tuesday, December 30, 2008 - link
We certainly like the Corsair memory as well. As we said in the Buyers Guide:"RAM prices as a whole are certainly in the commodity category as of late. We recommended the Kingston 4GB DDR2-800 kit, but you could just as easily choose OCZ, G.Skill, Corsair, Crucial, GeIL, Patriot, or any other quality DDR2-800 name and shop for the memory based on a combination of price and the company's support reputation."
BernardP - Monday, December 29, 2008 - link
I have had a system based on Asus M3N78-VM GeForce 8200 motheboard for a month. I have all the latest chipset, audio (NVidia + VIA) and video drivers installed. I have tried all possible audio settings and configurations, in WinXP and BIOS. Despite this, I have been unable to get audio through HDMI, although the HDMI video is perfect @ 1280x720.Searching on the net, this seems to be a widespread problem. Some users report they have HDMI audio working, but they don't seem to have done anything special to make it work.
The fundamental problem is that, on my system, there is no visible option to select HDMI audio, either in Hardware Manager or Control Panel/Sounds.
Anyone knows the sure-fire recipe to enable audio through HDMI on the 8200/8300 chipset?