Christmas 2005 office PC

[Adcadet]

Well folks, it's that time of the year again. My family needs a second office PC. Seems my mom and dad just don't share well enough to make a single PC do-able. My wife and I are the same way, multiplied by a bazillion.

So, what is the current budget champ (with reasonable office performance)? Seems two Christmasses ago it was the Athlon XP 2500+ Barton chips. This year is it the Semprons? Athlon 64 2800+? A low-end P4? Of course I also need to consider motherboard and memory costs.

Thanks!
Adcadet

 

[Tannin]

AMD Sempron 3100, Gigabyte VIA-based board with integrated graphics (you will be surprised how decent the graphics on-board is with these). Or, if you need DVI, a Gigabyte K8NS and a 128MB Gforce 5200. These are very cheap now, and have excellent picture quality - at least the Leadtek ones do. People here will sneer at the lack of ultimate performance. Who cares? Plenty fast enough for office work, no fan to fail or make noise, and drivers that are as reliable as sunrise. Can't go wrong.

The Sempron 3100 runs the same clock speed as the 3000 or the (now discontinued) Athlon 64 2800, but has twice the cache of the S3000. (Or it did - AMD keep changing this stuff every time you come up for air. Who do they think they are? Intel?) It's the nearest thing there is to the old XP 2500 right now. Rcommended.

Athlon 64 3200 is decent value too, though not the bargain that the S3100 is. If you go the A64 route, PCI-E mainboards cost quite a bit more. Probably better to go with AGP unless you are planning on fitting a higher-end video card such as a 6600GT - in which case you can break even by saviong a bit on the video card which is, for some reason, cheaper in PCI-E. But why would you fit one of those in an office machine? Nope: my first suggestion was the best one.

 

[Gilbo]

I might even consider dropping down to the 754-pin 64-bit Sempron 2500+ Adcadet. It is also a 256K cache Sempron, and is an excellent value.

 

[time]

If it's really low-end, you're talking integrated video, and Intel currently does this much better than anybody else.

Unfortunately, that involves installing a P4 space heater, which I can't bring myself to do (it's too hot here already).

Failing that, you're looking at Via or possibly SiS integrated video. They're both based on five-year-old designs (or thereabouts) and completely and utterly suck when it comes to any kind of 3D graphics (and not just in performance), but that's probably not an issue for an office PC.

Personally, I would far rather use a cheap separate video card; apart from allround improved responsiveness, you ought to be able to get a DVI connector - which should probably be mandatory these days. The best buy by far is any low-end Sapphire card, eg X300SE for PCI-e or 9250 for AGP.

AGP vs PCI-e is a tough call in a budget PC, but quite straightforward for anything else.

64-bit Semprons are obviously good. There's not a lot of appreciable difference between them, so get whatever looks like the best price point or is the cheapest.

 

[Adcadet]

I'm leaning towards installing my old ATi 8500 AGP card and passing on PCI-E boards and integrated graphics. It's overkill but my old 8500 is just sitting around, and it will give my parents a DVI out, which might be very useful as they want a flatpanel.

 

[Adcadet]

oh, and a space heater would NOT be appreciated. Looks like it's AMD then.

 

[Mercutio]

If it's really low-end, you're talking integrated video, and Intel currently does this much better than anybody else.

Pardon me?

Have you TRIED one of those ATI-integrated boards from MSI?
They have a DX9 capable X300 onboard, and they are great.

 

[Gilbo]

I'll second Merc's last comment. Those AMD ATI integrated graphics boards are good values.

 

[CougTek]

The GigaByte GA-K8N51GMF-9 looks like a very good board with integrated graphics. It's based on the GeForce 6100/430MCP chipset combo and it's inexpensive (~85$). The GeForce 6100 chipset from nVidia doesn't sacrifice on performances, contrarily on most other chipsets with integrated graphics (like the ATI Xpress 200 and all Via chipsets with integrated graphics). It also has more features than the MSI motherboard that uses the ATI RS482 chipset (no Merc, don't imply that instability and driver problems are additional features). No matter what you think about nVidia vs ATI, I would currently buy a GigaByte board with a bad chipset over an MSI with a better chipset. MSI's QA seems to have gone to Hell these days.

You can read a review of the newly-released Geforce 6100/6150 chipsets here.

 

[Adcadet]

hmm...the Gigabyte board is micro ATX....perhaps I should consider building a small computer as opposed to the midtower I was thinking of. No reason not to, other than cost, perhaps.

 

[Handruin]

I've built three budget-based systems now using the following combination of the gigabyte K8VM800M motherboard. Two fo them with use the Sempron 2800+ and one uses the 2600+. They als use varying parts for case and hard drive:

GA-K8VM800M Socket 754 (micro ATX) (currently $54.00)
AMD Sempron 64 2800+ Palermo 800MHz FSB Socket 754 Processor Retail (currently $75.50)
CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) (currently $36.16)
LITE-ON Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model SOHD-16P9SV (Currently $20)
SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series HD160JJ 160GB SATA (Currently $81.00)
Total: $266.66

At max load using the stock AMD cooler, the chip runs around 30 degrees C, sometimes less. Performance is great for the basic e-mail, web, and word processing. The built-in video is more than acceptable IMHO, yet it offers an 8x AGP if you want to add you're own card. The card can run some very limited 3D applications, but performance and quality suffer, so don't consider it for this use. I installed and ran warcraft III on one of these systems just for fun and it worked. It was slow and the quality wasn't very good, but it ran.

I currently have one of these systems with me right now. If you want any more info or pictures let me know and I'll post them here.

 

[CougTek]

...perhaps I should consider building a small computer...

May I suggest the following µATX cube (with an integrated 420W PSU) : Aspire Q-Xpack. There's a silver & black model too.