Build Budget PC Less Than $300

June 2013

The date is important in regards to any quote. Recently I thought of upgrading an old PC used for some younger family members. The old PC was running an Athlon XP of early 2000s vintages. The PC itself has got a mixture of component.

The challenge is to build a PC for less that $300. As shown in the table below, this can be done. The prices are quoted from www.msy.com.au in Australian dollars. The actual components have prices listed in the Price column. The Alt column shows the prices of alternative PC components.

The key components that need upgrading are CPU, Motherboard, RAM, Hard Drive and Case. The cost limit is enough to include a CPU Fan. The main design is to have the budget Celeron CPU which has integrated ATI Radeon graphics. The motherboard is chosen to include some legacy PCI slots to use the existing wireless adapter card. The lack of grunt of the Celeron is made up by the whopping 8GB RAM. The old DVD writer can be reused. A modern PC Case would improve the image of this budget PC.

Alt	Price	Components	Model	Details	Link
	$62.00	Motherboard	AsRock B75 Pro3-M	2PCI, USB3, UEFI, Socket 1155, SATA3	http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/B75%20Pro3-M/?cat=Specifications
$60.00		Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3V	1PCI, USB3, UEFI, Socket 1155, SATA3	http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4151#sp
	$44.00	CPU	Intel Celeron 1610	Ivy Bridge, 22nm, 2.6GHz, 55W, DualCore, 2MB L3, 64bit	http://ark.intel.com/products/71072/
	$67.00	RAM	8G Kit 1600 Patriot-S	DDR3, 2-sticks
	$69.00	Hard Drive	WD Green EZRX 1TB	3.5" SATA internal
$20.00		CPU Fan	Thermaltake Contact 16	2 copper pipes, 100W	http://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00001805
$22.00		CPU Fan	CoolerMaster Hyper TX3 EVO	3 copper pipes	http://www.coolermaster.com/product/Detail/cooling/cpu-air-cooler/hyper-tx3-evo.html
	$15.00	CPU Fan	DeepCool Gammaxx200	2 copper pipes, 95W	http://www.deepcool-us.com/Product/GAMMAXX200/
	$43.00	Case and PSU	Generic	ATX
	$0.00	Wireless Adapter	Use existing PCI wireless adapter
	$0.00	DVD RW	Use existing
Total	$  300.00