Fall Budget System Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on September 1, 2012 12:00 AM ESTClosing Remarks
Compared to last year's budget buyer's guide, the productivity and gaming systems outlined in this guide offer two main advances: productivity builds at a low budget of around $400 can now include a smaller capacity SSD, and gaming builds at the $400 price point now include discrete-level graphics card performance.
AnandTech has been stressing for years that upgrading to an SSD from a mechanical hard drive can yield one of the most noticeable benefits in day-to-day computer usage, whether you're typing papers or playing games. Now we have reliable (albeit lower capacity) SSDs within reach of even the most budget-conscious system builders.
As for the GPUs, discrete graphics—or discrete-level graphics on the same die as the CPU—are still necessary for gamers. The AMD A8-3870K APU offers budget buyers a CPU that is more than sufficient for light to moderate day-to-day productivity use with a GPU that is acceptable for light to moderate gaming; if you can wait another month or so we should see Trinity APUs improve on both areas. The other options is to pair a GPU like the AMD Radeon HD 6670 with Intel's Celeron G530. That will get you basic computing capabilities and solid light to moderate gaming—with a lot of room for future upgrades.
As is nearly always the case with computer hardware, $400 buys substantially more power than it could even less than a year ago. While there are frequently newer/faster/better options just around the corner, most of those options start at higher price points and only trickle down into the budget categories over time—Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs being a great example of this. Thankfully, for the budget conscious users we've now reached the point where the vast majority of tasks run well even on low-end hardware. Use an SSD instead of a hard drive and you can even alleviate the slow degredation of performance normally experienced as hard drives get fragmented, so in three years you're still likely to have a sufficiently fast PC.
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Parhel - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
Is memory bandwidth so unimportant on these budget systems that 2 DIMMS for dual channel RAM isn't worth it?What about the 'budget AMD gaming system'? I thought those were particularly sensitive to memory bandwidth. Why not go with 2x2GB over 1x4GB?
DanNeely - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
The AMD A8 build is likely hurt by it; but the celeron's should be mostly unaffected. An i7 can't saturate a dual channel bus; and the G530 is much less than half a 3770K.StevoLincolnite - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
Might as-well drop in 2x4gb or 2x8gb sticks of DDR3 1866mhz ram anyway, Ram is stupidly cheap these days and the faster ram is very noticeable with APU's.Even DDR3 2133mhz sticks aren't that expensive which Llano and in turn Trinity love when overclocked, drop in a Radeon 6670/6570, enable crossfire and you should be able to play most games decently at 720P.
DanNeely - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
For a non-budget build I'd agree; but a budget build is about how low can you go without it starting to run into underpower problems. 3/4 builds here shouldn't be hurt meaningfully by only having 1x4GB of ram.Alexvrb - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
For the APU build using a single channel will hurt performance quite a bit. Seriously, you can get a 2 x 2 kit off newegg for $25. Some of them are decent kits even, like the Ripjaws X kit. So you're saving TWO DOLLARS and cutting your performance down hard.The 3870K even has some decent overclock potential, both on the CPU and GPU sides. I'd say that you're better off waiting for Trinity to hit the desktop, except that the unlocked Trinity chips will probably price them out of the budget system entirely.
Then again, getting ANY Trinity system, even a locked one, will offer a much stronger upgrade path. Faster chips in the future, and dual graphics will probably be more viable as an upgrade path for Trinity than it ever was for Llano. Llano dual graphics didn't work very well, but from what I've seen of mobile Trinity, it's got potential.
leexgx - Sunday, September 2, 2012 - link
i agree there is no point in using 1x4gb over an 2x2gb systemits Very unlikely you need more then 4gb of ram for budget system
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
I think the idea is you can always add the second DIMM for dual-channel. I'd suggest doing that on the AMD Gaming setup if you're really going that route, but I'd more strongly suggest waiting for Trinity at this point -- lower power and higher performance than Llano. For everything else, dual-channel typically means a 1-5% performance increase, which is negligible, and since the boards are all two slots we'd recommend starting with 1x4GB and upgrading later to 2x4GB, or spend the extra $20 and go straight to 2x4GB. I'll make a note of that, though, just for clarity.Parhel - Saturday, September 1, 2012 - link
That answers my second question. I was thinking desktop Trinity must be right around the corner at this point. But, even then it may not fit in a true 'budget' category.Building your own 'budget' desktop tends to be a losing proposition nowadays anyhow. I have a Dell XPS 8300 with an i7-2600, 8GB RAM, and a 5770 that I paid under $600 for on the Dell outlet over 6 months ago, and a lesser XPS 8300 with an i5 that I paid under $400 for and am using as an HTPC of sorts.
I'm glad you mentioned that in the conclusion of the article. I always enjoy reading these types of articles, but rarely do they ask the question of whether or not the whole idea makes sense to begin with.
Alexvrb - Sunday, September 2, 2012 - link
OEM machines also make sacrifices. I get tired of replacing hard drives and power supplies in Dell machines. The upgradeability and customization aspects are also to be considered. They certainly don't have a lot of headroom for future improvements. In particular, if you want to slap more than a budget graphics card in that machine, you need a new PSU.If you're building your own machine, a budget OEM box isn't even a consideration. You might even be interested in overclocking, even just mild overclocking, and at that point budget OEM boxes lose any appeal. You'd be better off comparing DIY to boutique builders. The Dell units you listed no doubt used bottom-barrel cases, PSUs, drives, memory, and mainboards. Will they work? Sure. Are they using cheap components wherever they feel they can get away with it? You bet. YMMV, of course.
JarredWalton - Sunday, September 2, 2012 - link
Dell's XPS brand tends to be a cut above their budget boxes. If you can find one of those brand new for $600 or less, there's no question it's a worthwhile purchase. I still have an old XPS 410 (Core 2 Duo E6600) that's plugging along, and while the power supply fan makes a bit of noise on occasion (mostly when cold), the only issue I've had is that the old GTX 7900 got a bit too old for my tastes.It's now running an HD 5850 (for over a year), and the 375W Delta Electronics PSU is working well enough. My biggest gripe is that the PSU Dell includes has these perfectly specced cables so that everything goes together really well, and if I swap out the PSU the HDD placement in particular is an issue for cable routing.
Would I recommend people spend $1000+ for such a system? Heck no, but at $600 for the equivalent new setup that wouldn't be a bad purchase at all.