System Builder Marathon: Low Cost System

Introduction

System Builder Marathon, March 2008: The Articles

The following list includes the System Builder Marathon (SBM) articles we have published so far and the articles to come.


Day 1: The Low-Cost PC - This Article

Day 2: The Mid-Cost PC

Day 3: The High-Cost PC

Day 4: All Three PCs Overclocked - To Be Published on Thursday

Day 5: Summary: The Price-Performance Winner - To Be Published on Friday


It's that time again! The System Builder Marathon is once again upon us, an excellent opportunity for us to examine what's out there on the PC hardware landscape and pick and choose what we think will make the best machines for the dollar. As usual, we will be launching the marathon with the low-cost system build, followed by the mid-range and high-end systems later in the week. And of course - at the end of it all - we will compare these three systems with one another and see which accomplishes the most for the money spent. We test all at standard speeds and then we over overclock each.




This time around we have made some interesting choices in the low-cost PC category, and you might find it intriguing. Before we continue with our justifications, let's have a quick overview of the components we chose for our low-cost build, and the price of these components:



Current SBM Low-Cost PC Component Cost



CPU

AMD Quad Core Phenom 9500

$190.00



CPU Cooler

Cooler master HyperTX 2

$25.00



Motherboard

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H

$100.00



RAM

Wintec Ampo DDR2 PC2-6400 - 2 GB

$43.00



Graphics

HIS Radeon 3870 ICEQ Turbo

$230.00



Hard Drive

Western Digital Caviar 500 GB

$95.00



Sound

Integrated high Definition Audio

$0.00



Case

NZXT Apollo

$70.00



Power

NZXT PP600W

$70.00



DVD-RW

Sony Optiarc DVD-RW

$14.00



Total Price


$837



(Compare Prices on Radeon Graphics Cards)

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