Since the early 2000s, the Ars System Guides have been helping those interested become “budding, homebuilt system-building tweakmeisters.” This series is a resource for building computers to match any combination of budget and purpose.
The Bargain Box (formerly the Ultimate Budget Box) is the most basic box we cover in the System Guides. As the lowest-price box in the guides, it lacks the sex appeal of its flashier siblings, and it has a host of competition today. Before it was just OEM pre-builts, then it was netbooks, now it’s tablets.
Still, there seems to be a place for a basic desktop system. These live on in strength in the office, where the vast majority of employees read e-mail, crunch spreadsheets, and stream training videos. At home, boxes like this are a convenient place to stash all the pictures from the family vacation, and a nice place to hold media that won’t fit on the (relatively) limited storage of the average tablet or cell phone. Tucked in the home office, or maybe even the core of a low-budget HTPC; many still have a legitimate need for a desktop.
There’s no pretense of other needs in the Bargain Box. It gets a reasonable amount of storage despite its low cost, and there’s no attempt at 3D ability outside of the basic level of performance found in the integrated graphics (IGP). It’s there to do the basic tasks with minimum fuss.
For the lowest-cost desktop possible: honestly, buying an OEM box makes sense.
Big OEMs like Dell, HP, Toshiba, Lenovo, and others all get volume discounts and economies of scale that the individual builder or even smaller OEMs can’t match. This holds particularly true with software. Paying for the OS is a big chunk of change in systems like these, and something that will significantly affect any builder.
The Bargain Box is probably more useful to such buyers (and potential builders) as a reference on what specs their pre-built system should meet.
For the enthusiast who insists on building his or her own box, though, a pre-built box isn’t a choice. Building it yourself, even a bargain system, is a must. The Bargain Box is aimed at them. When even a stripped-down Budget Box is too much, the Bargain Box is designed to provide an even lower-spec’d price point.
We do try to emphasize a few things we think are worth the money, particularly higher-efficiency power supplies (PSU) than are typically found in bargain-basement boxes, as well as USB 3.0. Neither may be critical, but if you’re building it yourself, they are nice things to consider for relatively minimal cost.
Tablets are the biggest change since the last update of the Bargain Box. They’re now powerful enough, light enough, practical enough, and have nice enough screens to handle everyday computing for a lot of consumers.
For a few things, though, users may want to keep a desktop around. Media has to be stored somewhere, and that may be on a computer. Photo processing (not just viewing) is still not ideal on a tablet, and there are lots of times where the virtual keyboard on a touchscreen is impractical.
The line is getting increasingly blurred, though. Tablets have keyboard docks, more processing power, lower costs, and increased use of the cloud for storage. Also, don’t forget the netbook; it occupies the same price point—actually a lower one than high-end tablets—yet packs a physical keyboard and a hard disk for bulk storage. Processing power is still a little light by desktop standards however, and relatively low screen resolution is a limiting factor for serious use.
The Bargain Box is the lowest-cost setup in the System Guides. It’s priced below even the Budget Box from the main three-box System Guide, sacrificing any pretense of gaming ability in favor of even lower cost and competence at only the most basic tasks. The target is sub-$500 (without OS) for the Bargain Box, including monitor, mouse, and keyboard.
While a low price, value-focused box is the goal, we did have a few priorities. A balance of processing power, storage, and two slight indulgences over the absolute-lowest-cost: USB 3.0 and a decent, high-efficiency power supply. All that media has to go somewhere, and too little processing power means the Bargain Box would be a chore to use, so those get some attention. USB 3.0 may be planning for the future, but it’s a future that is already well on its way. Finally, a high-efficiency power supply is a nice thing to have, both in terms of saving money in the long run and in terms of reducing the A/C load in the summer.
Saving a few more dollars could be done, but we feel the Bargain Box does the job as far as the lowest reasonably priced system possible without cutting too many corners.
Unfortunately, the operating system is a significant chunk of change in a $500 box. Windows 7 Home Premium is easily 15 to 25% of the budget, while an open-source OS such as Linux Mint or Ubuntu still lacks the traction (and the polish) on the consumer desktop that Windows has.
Due to the prevalence of Windows, it’s hard to ignore. So many users are familiar with it, particularly business ones, that non-Windows operating systems are not an attractive option. As noted, Linux tends to lack traction in the desktop market, and to non-geeks. The polish required never seems to quite be there in many eyes.
For those who do believe Linux is worth a try, don’t forget to look outside the mainstream full-on distros and into others, such as XFCE and E17 desktop environments. There are also specific ones for specific uses (should your needs match up), like the media center focused XBMC.
We cover two versions, one powered by AMD and one powered by Intel. Each has strengths and weaknesses: better CPU performance with Intel, better graphics performance with AMD.
GeIL 2x2GB (4GB) DDR3-1600 1.5v = $26.99Seagate 500GB 7200rpm = $79.99LG 22x DVD-RW = $16.99NZXT Source 210 = $39.99Seasonic SS-300ET 300W = $39.99Acer S201HLbd 20″ 1600×900 = $99.99Microsoft Wired Desktop 600 = $22.99Speakers (no specific recommendation) = $15Intel Pentium G620 (2.6ghz) retail = $69.99Gigabyte GA-H61MA-D3V = $69.99Total = $481.91AMD A4-3400 (2.7ghz) = $69.99Gigabyte GA-A75M-D2H = $79.99Total = $491.91
Differences in performance between the processor and graphics are very real, but performance in the grand scheme of things is still limited. Still, the differences might matter more to specific user types, so we discuss both.
Intel version: Pentium G620 retailAMD version: A4-3400 retail
AMD and Intel both offer different strengths for the Bargain Box. AMD offers markedly superior graphics performance (Anandtech), while Intel offers significantly better CPU performance and power consumption over the dual-core A4-3400.
On the AMD side, for a few bucks more, the triple-core A6-3650 competes much better with the Pentium G620 in CPU performance. It also crushes the Pentium G620 in GPU performance, but this starts the slippery slope of possible upgrades and more money. It is something worth considering given the small premium, but we leave that in the hands of individual builders.
Intel’s Pentium chips are somewhat handicapped with smaller caches, lower clockspeeds, no Turbo Boost, and the slower versions of Intel’s HD Graphics compared to their full-fledged Core i3/i5/i7 brethren. In spite of all that, it still takes a triple-core AMD chip to keep up with a dual-core Pentium. It’s not just that Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture is good, but AMD has lagged that much on the CPU performance side. Much like AMD, a few bucks more buys faster Intel chips such as the Pentium G850, but this time, the performance gain is much more marginal. The CPU side is fast enough, but the graphics side is still slow (we don’t consider it worth it). In fact, stepping down to the dual-core Celeron G540 might be worth it if every last dollar counts—just avoid the single-core parts even lower in the lineup.
The Bargain Box is decidedly not intended for gaming, but AMD’s graphics performance advantage is substantial enough that it’s worth mentioning. Keep in mind that compared to any sort of remotely worthwhile discrete card, such as the Radeon HD 6770 or nVidia Geforce GTX 550 Ti, integrated graphics performance is best described as anemic. Even the Radeon HD 6570 is notably faster.
Lower-power CPUs such as the Intel Atom and AMD Brazos (aka E-350 APU, and its brethren) could be used, but they don’t save very much money in the Bargain Box, despite their significant hit in performance. Even for lightweight photo management or streaming 1080p video, we feel they’re a little bit too much of a hit for the relatively small savings they provide. Less memory could also be used, but memory is so cheap today… anything less seems silly.
Heatsink: make sure to pick up a retail boxed CPU. The included heatsink/fan is more than adequate.
As far as the actual processor choice in the Bargain Box, we consider both pretty valid. For the vast majority of office-bound or Mom/Dad/Grandparent-bound systems, we might prefer the Intel setup due to lower power consumption, but the all-around flexibility granted by AMD’s superior graphics performance is definitely worth considering.
Next: a closer look at the motherboard, memory, and sound options.
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