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. While a low price, value-focused box is the goal, we did have a few priorities. The target is sub-$500 (without OS) for the Bargain Box, including monitor, mouse, and keyboard. 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 Bargain Box is the lowest-cost setup in the System Guides. Processing power is still a little light by desktop standards however, and relatively low screen resolution is a limiting factor for serious use. 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. Tablets have keyboard docks, more processing power, lower costs, and increased use of the cloud for storage. The line is getting increasingly blurred, though. 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. Media has to be stored somewhere, and that may be on a computer. They’re now powerful enough, light enough, practical enough, and have nice enough screens to handle everyday computing for a lot of consumers.įor a few things, though, users may want to keep a desktop around. Tablets are the biggest change since the last update of the Bargain Box. Neither may be critical, but if you’re building it yourself, they are nice things to consider for relatively minimal cost. 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. When even a stripped-down Budget Box is too much, the Bargain Box is designed to provide an even lower-spec’d price point. Building it yourself, even a bargain system, is a must. 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.įor the enthusiast who insists on building his or her own box, though, a pre-built box isn’t a choice. Paying for the OS is a big chunk of change in systems like these, and something that will significantly affect any builder. This holds particularly true with software. It’s there to do the basic tasks with minimum fuss.įor the lowest-cost desktop possible: honestly, buying an OEM box makes sense.īig 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. 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). There’s no pretense of other needs in the Bargain Box. Tucked in the home office, or maybe even the core of a low-budget HTPC many still have a legitimate need for a desktop. 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. These live on in strength in the office, where the vast majority of employees read e-mail, crunch spreadsheets, and stream training videos. Still, there seems to be a place for a basic desktop system. Before it was just OEM pre-builts, then it was netbooks, now it’s tablets. 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. The Bargain Box (formerly the Ultimate Budget Box) is the most basic box we cover in the System Guides. 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.
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