Hardware Revolution

Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had you all had a great weekend.
Today, we’ll be looking into the 3rd part of the series of articles on various custom builds desktop computers. We’ll be focusing on a 500$ office system, for the entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small businesses and any of you that need an unexpensive computer the browse the web, read your favorite blogs/feeds, listen to music, watch a DVD, work on documents and use your favorite programs.

Introduction:

I will recommend to you all the hardware parts to build your own custom build desktop computer or have one of your wife/husband/friends/familly build it for you if you’re not confortable with building a computer. For the time being, I will not recommend a screen, keyboard, mouse nor an operating system as you may already own them or have your own preferences. If the demand is strong enough, I will also include recommendations for them.

Through those articles, I will try to cover the needs of everyone, from the gamer on a budget to the video professional with money to spare. For each part of every system, I will include links of where you can buy the parts in Canada. The various system builds will be updated on a regular basis, in order to reflect price changes, parts that are discontinued/Out of stock,unavailable or specials that are over and to change some parts to new products that arrives on the market.

I will discuss various aspects of every system, such as what kind of person is the system for, my recommendations for every part of that system, what is the system best at and overclocking with the computer. I encourage you to comment, ask any question you may have and if you going to buy a new computer soon and are unsure of what kind of computer you require to answer you needs, please contact me, it will be my pleasure to assist you. You can contact me at

The 500$ office computer desktop system:

It is designed in order to browse the web, listen to music, work on your websites, write your blog, use photoshop, Office or any of your favorite programs. You’ll be able to multi-task and do quite a lot of things on this system. If you come from a Pentium II, III, IV or a Core 2 Duo low/medium-end system or an AMD Athlon Xp, 64 or even X2 equivalent system, you will see a great to huge boost in performance, in multi-tasking and in system speed. Your programs will load and run much faster. Your system will answer your commands more quickly too, with much less latency(lag) between when you enter your command and the moment when your computer starts doing it.

The hardware parts recommendations:

Cpu (Processor): Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor - 3.0GHz, 6MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB, Wolfdale, Dual-Core, Retail, Socket 775, Processor with Fan 219.99$
This is the most important part of this system, thus why I’m putting 44% of the budget on this only part. If you think you’ve seen fast cpus, you’ll think again when you see this one. It is blazing fast, one of the top 5 processors on the market at the moment, and definately an amazing deal for 219.99$ . Very high speed(3.0GHZ), a huge cache(6MB), the cache being a very high speed memory acting as a buffer between your cpu and your main memory(ram), Dual-core to multi-task easily, based on the new Wolfdale core, which increases performance by about 10% at the same speed compared to the first Core 2 Duo generation(Conroe/Allendale) and it also consumees less energy. I cannot stress how much of a good deal this is.

Motherboard : ECS G31T-M Motherboard - Quad Core Support, Intel G31, Integrated Audio and Video, PCI Express, 10/100 Ethernet LAN, USB 2.0 x 8(4 on the back, 4 through brackets), Serial ATA 58.99$ (73.99$ - 15.00$ rebate available until April 30th)
This motherboard has video and audio outputs, LAN network connection, 4 USB 2.0 connections on the back(there 2 more on the front of the case), Serial ATA connections for your hard drive, with the option of adding another hard drive for RAID 0(higher performance) or RAID 1(Data protection). It supports Intel new cpu generation, with the 45nm technology as well as Quad-core cpus. At this price, this a perfect motherboard. Even better with the rebate!

Memory/Ram : Crucial Ballistix Dual Channel 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz EPP Memory (2x 1024MB) 19.99$ (49.99$ - 30.00$ rebate, until the 4th of May)
Great reliable memory, comes with the heat spreaders to ensure greater stability and a longer lifespan. 2 x 1GB, in dual channel mode, to ensure you have a lot of memory and bandwidth available to use. At 49.99$, it’s a great deal. At 19.99$, with the rebate, it’s simply amazing, WOW!

Video Card/ : Integrated into the motherboard. Good enough to hook your screen on it, through a D-sub/VGA connection, do your office work, watch DVDs and such. Not to mention how much money you save.

Sound card : Integrated into the motherboard. Not the greatest sound, but good enough for you, unless you’re an audiophile. Once again, think of how much money you save.

Case : Ultra Black Defender ATX Mid-Tower Case with Front USB Ports and 400 Watt XVS Modular Power Supply 73.99$
Great case, good looking, simple and effective. Comes with front USB connections and a 400 Watts modular power supply. Modular means that you only plug in the power cables YOU need. Less of a mess in your case, it also improves airflow and keep your system cooler.

Hard Drive : Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB Hard Drive - 7200, 8MB, SATA-300, OEM 49.99$
I’m using 2 of these, the 250GB model, in my own desktop computer and they are great. Great performance, very silent, don’t heat up too much and I had no problem at all in the last year and a half I had them for. 49.99$ for 200GB is great!

DVD Burner : LG GSA-H55N Super-Multi Security DVD ReWriter - 20x DVD±R Burn, 16x DVD±R Read, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 10x DVD±R DL, 12x DVD-RAM, 48×32x CD-R/RW, Black, IDE 29.99$
Great burner all around, LG is a brand I’ve trusted for years now. Great price at 29.99$

Total:
Without the rebates:497.94$
With the rebates: 452.94$

I’m speechless. This is a very powerful office desktop computer and it’s for less than 500$!

Gaming : 1/10 You will not be able to play any recent games, but games in your internet browser(Flash games and such). You’ll be able to play some older games, depending on the resolution you use. Obviously, this is an office system, not a gaming one.
Office : 10/10 This system is based on a blazing fast dual core processor; it will run all applications very quickly, it will run several cpu intensive programs (Image/Video editing, media burning) at once without latency(lag). Quick on multi-threaded optimized applications as well, amazing at multi-tasking. The raw speed will help you a lot.
Overclocking : 8/10 While this system was NOT designed with overclocking in mind, you will be able to squeeze a lot extra performance by overclocking, especially from the cpu and ram. Intel Core 2 Duo cpus are renowned for being amazing overclockers, especially the Wolfdale core, based on the 45nm process. However this system is using the stock-cooling, in order to reduce costs and that means that will not allow you to raise the voltage a lot, nor overclock a lot, due to heat issues. A good advice would be to upgrade the cooling, in order to reach even greater speed on the cpu. A good cooler will cost you between 30 and 80$, depending on models.
Power consumption : 9/10 With a low-energy 45nm processor, integrated audio and video card, this system will consume a low amount of electricity. The cpu will be the part which will draw the most watts.
Value for the money: 9.5/10 This system will offer you amazing performance for an amazing price tag. It’s only weakness being video games, but this is not the purpose of this system.

In conclusion: Is this the perfect 500$ office system? It is certainly the best I could design at this given time, given the current promotions and using brand new parts. Can you find better parts or better prices? Probably, promotions ends and starts everyday, prices drops, new products come up, sellers clear their warehouses. You could also buy a used or refurbished product on Ebay, from various websites, friends, a local shop, etc. There’s a reason why this is called a custom computer. Not too long ago, building such a great office system would have costed you at least 200-300$ more.

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Cheers,
Mathieu