Building a $1,000 Core 2 Duo PC
Here's a question I received by email the other day:
"I want to build a general purpose Core 2 Duo based PC that costs no more that $1,000. How would you spend the cash?"
The first place to start is to choose a CPU out of the Core 2 Duo range. Here's a table listing the features and approximate prices of the Core 2 Duo processors:
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 | Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 | Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 |
| Clock speed (GHz) | 1.83 | 2.13 | 2.4 | 2.67 | 2.93 |
| FSB (MHz/MT/s) | 266/1066 QDR | 266/1066 QDR | 266/1066 QDR | 266/1066 QDR | 266/1066 QDR |
| Pipeline stages | 14 | 14 | 14 | 14 | 14 |
| L1 cache - (total per core (KB) | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
| L2 cache total (MB) | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Thermal Design Power/TDP (W) | 65 | 65 | 65 | 65 | 75 |
| Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) | x86 x86-64 SSE-SSE4 | x86 x86-64 SSE-SSE4 | x86 x86-64 SSE-SSE4 | x86 x86-64 SSE-SSE4 | x86 x86-64 SSE-SSE4 |
| Operating voltage (V) | 1.2 - 1.3625 | 1.2 - 1.3625 | 1.2 - 1.3625 | 1.2 - 1.3625 | 1.2 - 1.3625 |
| Approx price ($) | 180 | 225 | 320 | 530 | 1,000 |
To me, the Core 2 Duo E6600 is the best option for a general purpose PC - it's powerful, cheap and has tons of room for squeezing more power from it through a bit of overclocking.
OK, so that's $320 spent. That leaves $680 left to spend!
Next. a motherboard. I'm partial to ASUS motherboards so my choice would be the P5W DH Deluxe. It's a bit pricey at $270 but at present there aren't an awful lot of choices and I like the overclocking tools that come with ASUS boards. I also like this board because it offers ample scope for future upgrades (more RAM, hard drives, etc).
$410 left to spend.
Next tough choice - graphics card. If I were building this system as a general purpose PC that was going to be used for gaming I would fit a Sapphire Radeon X1600PRO. For $100 this would give the system all the graphics power it would need while keeping the cost at a reasonable level.
2 x 512MB OCZ Gold Series 240-Pin DDR2 800 is darn good value at $100 and is enough to make sure that Windows Vista will run on the system just nicely. We're now left with $210 to spend.
What's left? Well, we still need storage. A 160GB Western Digital SATA drive costs about $65. Plenty of storage space at a reasonable price.
We still need a few bits. A PSU in the 500W range should be more than ample and a decent one will cost about $40, while a DVD writer (16x) costs about $30. The total for the system is now $925, leaving $75 for a chassis and any miscellaneous bits and bobs (like cables).
System Summary
| Component | Description | Price |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 | $320 |
| Motherboard | ASUS P5W DH Deluxe | $270 |
| Graphics card | Sapphire Radeon X1600PRO | $100 |
| RAM | 2 x 512MB of OCZ Gold Series 240-Pin DDR2 800 | $100 |
| Hard drive | 160GB Western Digital SATA | $65 |
| PSU | 500W | $40 |
| Optical drive | DVD 16x writer | $30 |
| Misc | Chassis/cabling/etc | $75 |
| Total cost | $1,000 |