Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
3
Building a Budget PC
In ThIs chaPTEr
Inexpensive doesn't have to mean cheap. The myth persists that you can't save
money building your own PC, particularly a budget system. In fact, it's easy to
match the price of a mass-market commercial system with a home-built sys-
tem that uses higher-quality components. Of course, you could instead match
the quality level of a mass-market commercial system by buying the cheapest
components available and save a few bucks by doing so, but we don't recom-
mend doing that. We think there are good reasons to build inexpensive systems,
but no reasons at all to build cheap systems.
Determining Functional Requirements
Hardware Design Criteria
Component Considerations
Building the Budget System
Final Words
We define a budget system as one that seeks the maximum bang for the mini-
mum buck, offering good component quality, reasonable performance, and
high reliability. A budget PC uses good-quality components throughout, but
those components fall on the low end of the performance range. They may
even be a generation or two out of date. That's not necessarily a bad thing,
though: last year's models are every bit as good this year as they were 12
months ago, and you can save a lot of money if you don't insist on the very
latest components.
In pursuit of low prices, we don't hesitate to buy components that are discon-
tinued and on sale. There are few disadvantages to doing so. Discontinued
products nearly always carry the full manufacturer warranty and function as
well as they did when they were the latest and greatest products available.
Judicious shopping can easily knock $50 or more off the total cost of a budget
system. That's nothing to sneeze at when your total budget is only a few hun-
dred dollars.
In this chapter, we'll design and build the perfect budget PC.
