A Budget PC For Rs. 25,000

Since our last roundup, the economy has taken a turn for the worse with the global recession. Thousands of jobs are being lost by the day even as inflation climbs. In such a case after the excesses of last week, we decided to approach a more economical build-up for our entry-level machine this week. Here is our take on what will constitute a sensible budget machine, which seeks to balance decent performance with affordability.

CPU: Intel E2200

The E2200 is similar to the E2180 that we used in our earlier roundup. It’s based on a 65nm process, offers 1MB L2 cache and runs at an FSB of 800MHz at a clockspeed of 2.2 GHz. Like all its predecessors, this processor is also 64-bit capable, and at its cost is the perfect base of our budget system.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L

The choice of a motherboard in this price range is always a tricky prospect. Luckily for us, all Tier-1 firms are present in this segment with multiple product release. We ran through the list quickly and settled in on Gigabyte’s GA-G31M-S2L, which is based on Intel’s G31 chipset, offers compatibility with all the current generation Intel processors (45nm/65nm), has RAM expansion options up to 4 GB,  support for DDR2 1066 RAM sticks and more.

Check out its specifications here.

RAM: Kingston DDR2 (2x1GB)

Kingston is a well-known brand, offering significant value for money products. We have chosen one of their budget RAM sticks in a 2GB package. This way if your budget permits, it's possible to upgrade to 4 GB of system memory at a later date and extend the life of your PC.