We also tried to stick to $500, $800 and $1200 budgets for our three cheapest desktop systems. Paper launches and preorders don’t count, for obvious reasons. We confined our selections to components that are currently available online. The end result, we hope, is a series of balanced systems that offer decent performance as configured and provide ample room for future expandability. We also sought balance within each system configuration, choosing components that make sense together, so that a fast processor won’t be bottlenecked by a skimpy graphics card or too little system memory, for instance. Instead, we looked to that mythical “sweet spot” where price and performance meet up in a pleasant, harmonic convergence. That means we avoided recommending super-cheap parts that are barely capable of performing their jobs, just as we generally avoided breathtakingly expensive products that carry a hefty price premium for features or performance you probably don’t need. The guiding philosophy behind our choices was to seek the best bang for the buck. If you’re new to building your own systems and want a little extra help, our tutorial on how to build your own PC is a great place to start and a helpful complement to this guide.īefore tackling our recommended systems, we should explain some of the rules and guidelines we used to select components. The first thing you should know about this guide is that it’s geared toward helping you select the parts for a home-built PC. Keep on reading for all the dirty details. A small-form-factor gaming PC geared specifically for the living room, that configuration combines better gaming graphics than current-gen consoles, considerably greater versatility (including the ability to chuck in a TV tuner card), access to online distribution services like Steam, Blu-ray playback, and Microsoft’s excellent wireless Xbox 360 controller. To mix things up, we also included a new one-off build: the Console on Steroids. We’ve taken these changes into account to give you a complete, definitive, and pragmatic resource for your Christmas PC shopping. However, memory prices have gone up, and AMD’s Radeon HD 5800-series cards are harder to find than ever. On the upside, we have new budget processors to play with. We’ve decided to give the TR system guide a last touch-up before 2010 arrives and we face another new batch of launches in the first quarter.įor better or for worse, the hardware landscape has clearly shifted since we published the previous edition of the guide in late October. What we’re left with, now, is the short stretch leading up to December 25. All of this year’s exciting hardware launches are behind us.
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