iBUYPOWER AMD Athlon II DDR2 Budget Desktop PC

Oct 27 2010 - If you really need a desktop computer with a dedicated graphics card, then the iBUYPOWER AMD Athlon II DDR2 system is one of the few choices available on the market. The Radeon HD 5450 is capable of casual PC gaming at modest resolutions but a 450W power supply allows future upgrades. Just be warned that while the company offers many upgrades to the system, the price increases make it a less than optimal choice compared to better base systems they have to offer.

Oct 27 2010 - Generally it is hard to find a custom built PC from parts that falls under $500. iBUYPOWER is one of the few companies that offers low cost custom built PCs that can achieve this price tag but only if you are willing to go with a cut-throat base system. Their low cost system is based on the AMD Athlon II 250 dual core processor which is a decent processor. The way they cut down there costs is by using this processor with a motherboard combination that uses older DDR2 memory. This does decrease the performance a bit compared to the newer DDR3 but many people probably won't notice in their average tasks.

Storage features are fairly typical of a budget desktop system. It comes with a 500GB hard drive that should provide a decent amount of space for applications, data and media files provided you don't have a lot of HD video to store. A dual layer DVD burner handles all playback and recording of CDs or DVDs. In order to cut the price down, it is necessary to drop a media card reader which prevents the system from working with flash media cards.

What really sets the iBUYPOWER system apart from other budget desktops is the graphics. Rather than being shipped with an integrated graphics solution, the company includes an ATI Radeon HD 5450 dedicated graphics card with 512MB of memory. This isn't going to make the system a major PC gaming platform but it does offer it the ability of casual PC gaming which is pretty much unheard of in any of the major name brand budget PCs. If the Radeon HD 5450 doesn't provide enough performance, the system does come with a 450 watt power supply that can always allow for upgrading to a more serious 3D gaming card at a later time.

If any of these items isn't enough for you, iBUYPOWER offers a huge range of customizations options for just about every component they offer. Whether it is the case, motherboard, memory, hard drive, video card, power supply or even the cooling, they have options for customers. While this is great for those who want to get a system just the way they like it, they would be better off looking at models from the company that use DDR3 as the upgrades will quickly rise the cost well beyond $500.

In fact, those thinking of buying one of these systems from iBUYPOWER should be warned that the base quoted price does not include an operating system. This option is not included until the second screen and will add roughly $100 to the cost of the system. Still, it should be possible to put together a system for around $500.