Quest for the Cheapest PC

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief September 23, 2008 · 1 min read

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Been getting email requests to run an entry on cheap desktop PCs. The only way to address that is to pick for the cheapest parts available in stores and build them from scratch. Here’s what I ended up with…

CPU: AMD Sempron LE-1200 2.1Ghz (Php1,598)
Motherboard: Redfox NF61V/S GForce N6100, PCIE, Sound, LAN (Php1,898)
Storage: 80 GB Western Digital 7200rpm (Php1,850)
Memory: 512MB DDR 667MHz (Php648)
Optical Drive: LiteOn 16X DVD-ROM Drive (Php900)
Casing: Orion Glacier with 500W (Php1,200)
Monitor: M-Life 15″ color monitor (Php2,698)

Total: Php10,792

There could be some more ways to shave off a couple hundred pesos from this list (cheaper casing, CDROM instead of DVDROM, etc.). Listed prices are taken from PC Corner and Rising Sun Computers.

If there are other suggestions to the specs above, let me know.

On a side note, if you have that budget then maybe you can also check out the Php9,995 Blue H1 UMPC.

Disclosure: Blue Digital Systems is an advertiser on this blog.

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and is considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines.

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32 Comments

Chris Kelly · 15 years ago

How much does it cost in american dollars? I am looking for best site for cheapest components? where is such a site.

me · 18 years ago

try nyo sa http://www.buyqube.com

geck · 18 years ago

yuga is right, crappy PC is much better than no PC at all.

J · 18 years ago

if you’re going to use it for games or HD, of course this PC is useless, but for blogging/internet/office this PC is fine.

this is actually a good PC for casual use, we built an Intel Little Valley PC months ago, it is alot slower than the AMD Sempron but it was okay.

you can check it here:

http://www.zai3p.com/blog/intel-little-valley/

daryl · 18 years ago

CPU: AMD Sempron LE-1200 2.001Ghz
Motherboard:MSI-k9n6pgm2
Storage: 80 GB gstore
Memory: 1gb ddr2 667MHz
Optical Drive:cd-rom
Casing: generic casing
Monitor: crt monitor

voila!!!!!! a php9.5K

Lucien Dominick G. Tiojanco · 18 years ago

Jay,

Intel’s offerings scale well on the higher end of the market but not on the lower end. I checked a couple of reviews and an Athlon X2 5000+ beats similarly priced Intel processors. Also, AMD’s offerings give you decent IGP’s that allow give you better bang for the buck while consuming overall less electricity.

Jay · 18 years ago

heck.. everyone’s ignoring my suggestion!

how about build an intel core2duo?

decent & midrange PC’s ranges from 10K to 15K.

if you’re tight on budget go for an Intel Atom Desktop PC.

ron · 18 years ago

cr*ppy pc perhaps :)

but for somebody like me who belongs to the marginalized crowd, the package is already a very good deal.

too bad i still can’t afford it (hehehe).

all i was able to afford was a beaten up system (without monitor or accessories) that runs on athlon xp 1500 with 256mb ram.

yeah, that’s how bad it can be for this crowd :)

Lucien Dominick G. Tiojanco · 18 years ago

For a midrange gaming PC @ 1024*720 resolution, my suggestion would be:

Processor: AMD Athlon LE-1640 (PhP 2,198)
Motherboard: ECS A780GM-A AMD780 (PhP 3,248)
Memory: 1 x DDR 800 1GB (PhP 1,248)
Storage: SeaGate 160GB 7200 RPM SATA (PhP 1,998)
Optical Disk Drive: Samsung 20X SH-S203N SATA LightScribe (PhP 1,348)
Casing: Orion FF+11 400W (PhP 1,598)
Monitor: Samsung 17â€³ 793DV (PhP 3,898)
Total: PhP 15,536

For an even better gaming experience @ 1280×1024 resolution, you can also add
Discrete GPU: Powercolor HD3450 512MB DDR2 64BIT (PhP 2,148)
and upgrade
Processor: AMD Athlon X2 5000 (PhP 3,198)
Memory: 2 x DDR 800 1GB (PhP 1,248 x 2)
Storage: SeaGate 320GB 7200 RPM SATA (PhP 2,698)
Monitor: Acer 17â€³ X173W (PhP 7,598)
New Total: PhP 24,332

The set-up enables you to use Hybrid Crossfire with either Windows XP or Vista (using ATI Catalyst 8.8 up) which will provide above average gaming experience on resolutions of up to 1280×1024.

I wanted to suggest AMD Athlon X2 5000 BE and a Black Edition AMD 780G chipset with at least 64Mb sideport memory for enhanced overclocking potential but it doesn’t seem like PC Corner has either of them. If they did it will probably only cost an extra PhP 500 – PhP 1,000 and allow you to increase performance with just a couple of tweaks.

I also recommend Blueâ€™s UMPC, if that’s your thing. I posted a short review on my Multiply (http://lucienium.multiply.com) if any of you are interested with it. I still think they should make a beefed up 8.9″ 1024*600 LCD + VIA Nano U2500 + VIA VX800 version though.

*prices solely from PC Corner*

P.S.: Yuga, kindly delete my first post. It’s incomplete, hehehe. Thanks!

otoymreyes · 18 years ago

this pc + linux = ASTIG!

jhay · 18 years ago

Ah Greenhills. It’s “Divisoria” for techies. ;)

Andre · 18 years ago

Ya but you could probably lessen the hard drive, 40GB is plenty, there once was a time when 20GB was a lot. Surplus parts even.
Keyboard, mouse, powersupply, speakers.
Windows XP? Hindi maafford ng original, bili nalang ng Linux sa greenhills daw :)